So today was just like any other day with basketball practices and whatnot. Around 9:30pm, a woman was walking back and forth by the bathrooms of the gyms. Eventually, she asked me to check the boy’s bathroom to look for her son. When I did not see him in there, she looked in the gym and still did not see him. We then went to the multi-purpose room and when he was not there, she started to panic. She grabbed her daughter and asked where the boy went and last she had seen he was in the bathroom. When I looked again and did not see him, I radioed for a “Code Adam” which is the code call for a missing child. I gave the descriptions of the child over the radio and waited to see if he was in another part of the building. The mom started to become hysterical, running around the building. About five minutes after I called the code, a member of the staff spotted him in the corner of the gym. While I am happy that the boy was found this is just an example of parents leaving their kids in the Gemini. She brought her kids in, essentially said “go play,” went upstairs to workout and only came down to get them. This may not have happened if she had stayed and played with them in the gym.
Typically, my posts are about incidents that occur, but today is different. This may have been one of the best times I have spent at the Gemini. It was actually a very slow day—nothing was really going on. The gym had been empty most of the day, there were no scheduled programs/events going on.
There was a group of about six middle school kids in the gym and they asked me to lower the hoops so they could “dunk” on it. Now they are not actually allowed to dunk on the nets but I told them I would lower it to 9ft. Once I lowered it, they were all having a good time but could not get close to the rim so asked me to lower it again. With hesitation, I lowered it to 8ft with the threat that if they even touched the rim on the hoop I would raise it up. The boys had a blast! They were so funny trying to jump high enough to get a good dunk. It was just a fun time watching them and seeing how happy they were. Obviously, I had to put a time-limit on the fun so after about 15-20 minutes I raised the hoop back up. The best part is that they all thanked me! Normally, when I get a thank you I have to ask for it, but they all thanked me first for letting play with the net down. Prime example of how it really is the little things! So there is most likely something going on every weekend. This weekend was no different. In fact, there was a wedding going on with an Indians theme. I also worked yesterday (Fri Mar 5th) and the wedding party had come in and set up everything. What is one thing that a baseball party would have that would make the maintenance staff mad? Peanuts of course! It makes sense: peanut shells get dumped on the floor then get stepped on so it gets crushed into the rug. That would be very difficult because you can’t vacuum those up, you would have to sweep first, taking extra time.
Once Nancy, the full-time night maintenance staffer, heard about the peanuts she was outraged. Really what it comes down to is communication. Mary Hart, who schedules these events, should have informed the wedding party that peanuts were prohibited. However, that did not occur and all Friday night, Nancy was worried about the mess that would most likely occur. Since I was working tonight as well, when I welcomed the wedding party I made it a point to talk to the wedding party. I asked if they could have guests put the shells on a plate instead of all over the tables or on the floor. Thankfully, when it came time for them to leave there were not many peanuts shells on the carpet. We are very fortunate that these were very nice and cooperative people. There have been many guests that when we ask them to do something out of courtesy they blatantly disregard it. At the end of the day, Nancy was very thankful to me for saying something and the staff did not have to take extra time cleaning up the rooms. I received an e-mail today from Jack, the Programs and Building Facilitator, and it looks like I am getting a new supervisor. In his e-mail, Jack mentioned how he has loved working the last 8 years at Fairview but he is moving on to Brecksville, where he will be in charge of a brand new facility to open August 2016. Unlike when Amanda left, people were not necessarily happy but understood Jack’s decision.
Jack was one of the three remaining original staff members from when the Gemini Center opened in 2008. Since the Gemini has been opened, there have been four Directors. Jack had applied to be the Director three times and was passed over each time. It seems pretty clear that there was no progression for him within Fairview and moving on is more than understandable. Here is the problem to come: who will be the new facility director? It was almost implied that Bob would become part of the full-time staff when Amanda left but now everyone is at a loss as to who it will be. It will be very interesting to see who it will be: a woman, someone from another recreation center, someone from a different background??? Saturday's are pretty busy in the Gemini during the winter. Recreation league basketball games go from about 9am until 5pm. While I do not come in until 2pm for Saturday shifts, I find it ridiculous how people just do not listen to rules. I have to tell adults to put away their food or to take it outside of the gym; you would be amazed at how many have complained or talked back to me about this issue. Even after the end of the games, the amount of food in the bleachers or water bottles left by the players on the sidelines is ridiculous. I talk to my co-workers all the time about the fact that I would never disrespect a facility the way that some of these people do. The children do not even clean up their water bottles after a game….why do the parents or coaches not say anything?
On top of that, I have the rambunctious boys who are used to having the courts. I mentioned this in a previous post, but it still astounds me that some of the kids will come at 11am on a Saturday morning, know that they cannot play basketball until 5pm but stay the entire time. The unfortunate part for me is the fact that whenever there is a timeout or a break between games, they like to go on the court. Either myself, the refs or the site supervisor has to constantly tell them to get off or threaten to kick them out of the gym for the day. I need to always be on my toes when there are events going on that prohibit the kids from being active: they will either barge on the court whenever they have a free moment or they will buy food at the vending machines and make a mess in the lobby. Both evils are a pretty common occurrence every Saturday afternoon. Not much to talk about from today. There were a few 3rd and 4th grade practices that I had to lower the basketball hoops for and, of course, scolding kids who bring food into the gym. I also gave a tour of the facility to a new resident of Fairview and showed one of our banquet rooms to a woman and her daughter for an upcoming baby shower. Typically, when I am not running around it means that the facility is running smoothly. During these days, I sit on the bleachers in the gym and just watch residents play basketball games or sit at the front desk while talking with those workers and welcoming guests.
So, we have a lot of different groups that exercise within the Recreation Center, but I have not mentioned my favorite one: SOAR. Unfortunately, I do not remember what SOAR stands for, but it is a group for autistic adults to exercise. The gentleman who runs the program is amazing! He is always there at least an hour before the rest of the group to set up and to make sure everything is in place. There are two main programs that they do: volleyball and Zumba. For volleyball, we set up a tennis net and chairs on either side of the net. The participants play with a big, blown up beach ball and hit it back and forth like volleyball. For Zumba, one of the members comes, plays music and just dances with the members. While this is not a recreation group, I thought I would devote a post to them. It is just really nice to see all of the participants having a lot of fun in the facility every week.
Lately, my weekday shifts have been fairly quiet and easy. I have just been setting up volleyball for recreation league practices, raising and lowering hoops for recreation basketball practices and opening studio doors for group classes. All of the tasks that I have been doing on a daily basis. Thankfully it has been a pretty easy month so far with no major incidents.
I do not talk about it much, but there are a lot of parties in our banquet rooms. There are luncheons, birthday parties, engagement parties, weddings, etc. Like I stated in a previous blog, sometimes I have to stay later if the parties are renting the rooms later. The largest problem that I had until today was just people getting out on time—sometimes people take an extra 10-15 mins to clean up and get everybody out.
Tonight, however, this was a crazy situation. It was an Arabic engagement party. Not only did the party demand to get into the room 1 hour early (when typically it is 15 minutes) they left the place a mess. I knew it would be a rough night when there were no tables. All they requested were a chairs in a large “L” shape. I knew the worst was yet to come when I went in to check up on the party and they were not even using plates; they were putting the food on napkins. By the end of the night, there was food everywhere…literally. There is a small patio off of the banquet rooms and there was a ton of food on the patio and in the plants. When you walked into the room there must’ve been a thousand water bottles just laying on the ground under every chair and food crumbs all over the carpet. It was so disgusting and there was so much garbage I do not even think my description right now is doing it justice. I wrote a very long e-mail to Jack as well as the director to inform them what happened. I also took pictures and attached them to the email so they knew exactly what it looked like. The maintenance crew did more than they are expected cleaning up that horrible mess. I even stayed a little later to help clean up all the water bottles. I really hope that they get fined. If they get fined maybe they will think twice about leaving a mess like that again in our facility. No good deed goes unpunished and this woman will have something good coming her way.
I was called to the front desk and a woman mentioned that she had just witnessed a hit-and-run. A car had pulled out at an angle and scrapped the side of a parked car, sat for a minute and then took off. This woman was nice enough to write down the license plate number of the car and turned it into us. We called the police to make a police report and soon an officer had arrived and asked all of the questions we had just asked the woman. The only question no one could answer was, whose car is it? When I went to look at the car, there was some obvious damage. I got the license plate number and model and went hunting for the owner. I made an announcement over the PA system, but no one came to the front desk. We approached people on the fitness floor but eventually found the owner in the main gym playing basketball. **I thought it was interesting that he wanted to finish his basketball game before going to look at the damage.** He had borrowed his parent’s car and was pretty heated after seeing the scrapes. Everyone thanked the woman for coming forward and when all of the information was collected, everyone went their separate ways. Unfortunately, I never found out if they caught the driver, but I hope that they did. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
August 2016
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