testing123

The equipment has been sketchy at best as has everything the parent company has been responsible for. I'm pretty sure that they make pretty good money, they could afford to be a little freer with upgrades, but the way much has been handled so far this year they don't expect to be in this region next year...  That's just the wind up for todays near- miss-

Every year, a Santa is noticed on the national screen, and nearly never for the good that we do.
"Santa refuses to see a little girl because her service animal is a pit bull"
"Santa refuses to let little handicapped girl sit on his lap"
"Santa manhandles little girl to ruin mother's cell phone shots"
(This line of work is fraught with perils enough that Santa often carries an insurance rider against such lawsuits)
You never see,
"Santa watches mom watch little boy put his finger up his nose just moments before she put him on Santa's lap and hugs child anyway"
"Santa saves family's Christmas memories"
"Old fat guy gets on floor to be less intimidating to children who's anticipation reached overload"
So today I am escorted out from my sanctuary/dressing room about 5 minutes late because part of the crew had gone and ordered lunch for the crew before the shift started. Along with her, in her apron pocket, were the keys to the cupboards with all of the incidentals that make it easier to make children laugh, or at least get their attention, and while we meant well and intended to begin without ado because children come excited and will "run out" if we aren't careful when disaster struck-
The camera that we used last night to replace the camera that wouldn't talk to the computer wouldn't talk to the computer and when it did the blur was pronounced enough that, in keeping with the talking motif, it had been drinking and was slurring it's words.
(At one point I'm pretty certain that it hit on the computer in some unwanted fashion and had to be removed)
The first guy in line seemed to have some knowledge of cameras but somehow couldn't hold his mouth just right and made no headway.
IT, who by now is on speed dial and the manager refers to "Jimmy" and her new BFF has today off, but so does the manager who has forged such a great relationship with him so we were happy that the first guy in line was at least willing to try. He wasn't very happy to be taking pictures with his cell phone but he was a pretty happy guy so it really just dialed down his happy instead of dialing up his anxiety.
There were others try their hand at "pulling the sword from the stone" but it took the PIC's slow hand tactic to get us off the ground.
After a while we had winnowed the crowd down and crying baby and helicopter parent thinned out to a fairly happy crowd and the tactic changed and I wasn't sure who was in charge. The source of children had split, and I am okay with that except that the flow had changed and visiting children, children whose parents had opted out of pictures, were now funneled through the same side as the folks with reservations.
Why does this matter you ask? Because people with reservations have reservations and visitors don't have them. They specifically don't want to buy pictures, which, again, is no skin of my nose but I'm hearing about a reservation and the side without reservations is coming toward me and there is someone coming from the reservation side at the same time...
I asked the crew who was coming and the wife of the man who was paying for pictures (happened to be dark skinned maybe Hispanic maybe South Seas I don't pay a lot of attention) asked what was going on and he replied, "He wants to make sure who is paying for pictures..."
I said, "No sir, I wanted to make sure we were going in the right order, I don't care who is paying I want these children seen in the order that they got here"
The OTHER guy, the other family looked to be a middle income household who may have already opted for pictures but there children wanted to see Santa again or they just wanted to check out THIS Santa but they went second because they got there second.
This world, this culture of racism that I keep hearing about- seems to me to really often be about looking for reasons to claim offense.
Santa has been dealing with folks who are different or stand out from the crowd for as long as he's been at the North Pole and longer. Bullying and freezing out, but if you will recall he is now the most famous reindeer of all