I'm into my Niche Phase here, with a regular spot and a regular job. But I'm also starting to get more and more frustrated. As an usher, you handle small problems, but you never get to deal with larger problems. You call your supervisor. And that becomes frustrating after awhile. Eventually, this frustration would combine with boredom and routine to result in my changing my role with TeamOps.
For every cool part of this job, there's a shitty part. In general, working this event was one of the shitty parts. This was originally written December 19, 2007.
The story of the day was the weather. For all of you who envy my job as an usher, this was one of those days which you might not be so eager to work. And you wouldn’t be alone.
I went to bed at 3 AM Saturday night (Sunday morning, really), and the snow hadn’t started falling. When I woke up at 5, there was 4 inches on the ground. By the time I left my house at 6, there was 6 inches.
Route 1 was unplowed, but the 6 mile trek to Gillette wasn’t so bad. Nobody else was on the roads, and four winters of driving the back roads of upstate New York have turned me into the Jimmie Johnson of snow driving. I got to the Stadium at 6:30, took a 30 minute nap in my car, then went in to work.
The timing of the snow was perfect for creating a mess. It hadn’t started early enough for Stadium workers to really get on top of it. By the time people got there, every row and aisle was buried in 8 inches of powder. Not surprisingly, the crews cleared the premium club seating first, even though most club members would stay inside their heated lounges for the duration of the game.
My post was in the corner of the North End Zone, underneath the upper deck, so I was able to stay relatively dry.
A tarp covered the field, and as plows labored to remove the snow sitting on it, something unexpected happened in the concourse. Several Jets players ran by. With the field covered, they warmed up by running laps around the Stadium. As a fan, it was difficult not to blast them with obscenities. We’re not even supposed to talk to players, let alone verbally harass them. But I was able to contain my fanaticism.
At around 11, the snow turned into freezing rain. Tiny specks of ice bounced off the seats and aisles. When driven by the 30 MPH wind, these grains of frozen water turned into a sandstorm, pelting my face until it turned red. But this is New England. This is the weather the Patriots are supposed to thrive in.
Before the game, someone tried to bribe me. He handed me his ticket, wrapped in a $20 bill. At first I thought this was a mistake and said “I’ll take the money.”
But when he said “Thank you.” I knew something was up. I looked at the ticket and it said “Section 324.”
I was tempted to take the money. There’d be a lot of empty seats anyway. But all it would take for me to get in trouble would be one complaint about someone’s seat being occupied when they arrived, or one person seeing me take the $20.
Despite the weather, and the snow in their seats, people were still in a very good mood. I didn’t see Eugene Wilson’s interception and touchdown, but I knew what had happened based on the noises generated by the crowd. There was the low drone that precedes a defensive play, a high pitched rise in everyone’s voices as Seymour hit Clemens, a sharp blast of noise when Wilson picked it and ran it in, then the sustained music of jubilation and celebration.
After the touchdown, the snow flew. Playfully, everyone threw bits of snow into the air, reminiscent of the impromptu celebration that occurred when Tedy Bruschi returned a pick for 6 against Miami in 2003. But the launching of snow would soon prove troublesome.
The game itself turned into a dull grind of incomplete passes and punts. Special teams play provided the most excitement, with the Jets returning a blocked punt for a touchdown, and Kelley Washington blocking a punt to set up a Laurence Maroney score.
But the tedium was isolated to the field. When fans had nothing to celebrate, they got rid of their snow by rolling it into icy balls and indiscriminately chucking it.
Two men in my section approached me and complained that they had been hit with snowballs from the 200 level. Both men were irate, screaming at me to do something about it. I beeped my supervisor, but knew there was little we could do.
Both drunk men threatened to “Go up there and do something about it” themselves. That’s the last thing I wanted, and the dumbest thing they could do. I had to physically restrain one of them from going up to the 200s. The other one fell into line when both my supervisor and I yelled right back at his face.
Our only backup was a lone Foxborough Police officer.
So my supervisor and I became the roam team. We went up to section 240, which was a mess. The trampled and uneven piles of snow had been glazed by the freezing rain into uneven moguls of slickness. I couldn’t even stand up there, let alone run after the guy we saw throwing a snowball.
My supervisor convinced the guy to come downstairs with us. He was somewhat sober, relatively calm, and explained that he wasn’t aiming at anybody, he was just throwing snow - like everyone else. He said he’d stop, and we let him go. For his sake, he better have stopped, because the surveillance cameras were focused heavily on that section. We’d eventually eject 4 people from 240 for throwing snowballs.
During half-time, more and more people started complaining about snow throwing. One woman had red abrasions on her cheek where she was struck. About a dozen people came up to me to say that they had been hit with snowballs. Another dozen people came up to me and said the guy complaining had a reputation for being a jerk. Another group of people tried to convince me that he “Never gets this mad, so something must be wrong.”
One snowball that reached the field struck a cheerleader in the shoulder, nearly knocking her over. That’s when it became personal. Nobody messes with my TV timeout distractions. Even if they were wearing vests.
The third quarter began, and the whining only intensified. I felt bad for the fans in my section, but there was really nothing I nor my supervisor could do. EVERYBODY in the Stadium was throwing snowballs. And even though they were somewhat icy, they were still merely balls of frozen water. They weren’t throwing batteries, bottles, rocks, horseshoes, knives, ninja stars, grenades, or anything truly serious.
At one point there was a cacophonic maelstrom of people yelling at my supervisor and I. People complaining about the snowballs. Others complaining about the complainers. Guys wanting to fight people. People asking where the standing room section was.
“Where is section 143,” “Where’s the bathroom?,” and all the questions we get asked all poured on us at once. My supervisor yelled at everyone to “Back off!” And they did.
I had to go down into the section and stop a near fight between a complainer and a thrower. The complainer wasn’t thinking things through. By standing in the aisle and yelling at people, he was making himself a target.
I had beeped my supervisor and the police so many times that an Event Manager came over with the cop. Event Managers are like the Generals of our operation. They’re not in charge of everything, but they’re in charge of you.
The Manager’s first question to me was about the standing room people in my section, and whether or not two guys had tickets for the ADA section. I wanted to scream and say something like “I’ve had a couple hundred people yell and bitch at me for hours, it’s the third quarter and I haven’t had my break yet, I’m cold, I was one of the few people who made the effort to show up today, and you’re asking me about my goddammed ADA section?” But I didn’t.
The Manager went down into the section with the cop. After a few minutes, they came back up. He told me that if the troublemaking complainer lodged one more complaint, I was to call my supervisor and he was to be ejected. I asked the cop how it went down there. He laughed and said “Sucks to be you, buddy.”
Finally, they made an announcement over the PA system ordering fans to stop throwing snowballs, otherwise the game would be halted. The snow throwing essentially stopped. There was one incident later in the game that resulted in a delay, but nothing serious.
Near the end of the game, the snow throwing once again picked up. I dropped down to the bottom of my section at the 2 minute warning. As I crouched on the bottom step, trying to keep my balance on the uneven mounds of ice, a snowball clocked me right in the kisser. I stood up, and like a substitute teacher yelled out “Who did that?” Of course, no one admitted to it, nor did anyone squeal.
Speaking of squealers, in the first row of the section next to mine was a man dressed as a rat in honor of Eric Mangini. It was actually a good day to be wearing a giant furry costume like that.
When the game ended, a torrent of snowballs rained down on the field, the crowd, and myself. But there were very few balls actually thrown, just bits and pieces of snow flying around, drenching everything and everyone.
The parking lot was a slushy quagmire. I got more saturated from the walk to my car than I did from 8 hours of work. After 90 minutes of driving, I was back home, all dry and warm. I checked the forecast for Sunday’s 4:15 game against Miami. 40 degrees and cloudy. Sounds like beach weather to me.
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