This episode describes the experience of working my first Boston College event: a football game with ACC rival Wake Forest. This was sort of the end of my naive and bright-eyed period of working events. My natural cynicism and hatred of people really comes out to shine thanks to this event. I've since grown to love BC. I've worked EVERY single hockey game they've hosted the last 2 years, and most of the men's and women's basketball. This was originally written on September 4, 2007.
I had never been to a Division I-A football game before. I’ve seen football in Alumni Stadium, but it was always high school football. My first day working at Boston College was one of highs and lows. I went from wanting to quit at one point, to realizing why I got this job in the first place.
I also worked the Patriots pre-season game on Thursday. I didn’t see a single play, but that was by choice. I volunteered to take tickets. Kickoff was 7:38, but it’s amazing how many people will show up late, I mean real late, for a pre-season game. I didn’t go on break until about 9:30, and people were still streaming into the gates.
After working the gates, I went on break, had some food, and a supervisor asked who wanted to go home. Since it was the 3rd quarter of a pre-season game, and the traffic was going to be in mid-season form, I raised my hand and went home early.
Navigating the concourses during half-time of a football game should be an Olympic sport. Getting from the north side of the Stadium to the south side took me about 10 minutes, which might be close to a record for half-time.
One thing I like about this job is the variety of people I work with. The guy taking tickets next to me was a civil engineer who specialized in water treatment and storage facilities. He explained to me the science behind water usage at a facility like Gillette Stadium. Then a guy doing pat downs in front of me was a semi-retired man who gives speeches to companies and consults them on how to rebuild themselves during struggling times. Then there are a few recent college grads like myself. There’s a very good cross-section of people.
Anyway, back to BC…
Getting to Boston College on game day is tricky. There is nowhere near enough parking for fans, let alone employees, so they have us park in the Needham Industrial Park right off of 128. Those familiar with Eastern Mass know this area, it’s right around exit 19A, by the Coca-Cola bottling plant. BC runs buses from here to Merket Hall, next to the Stadium. It’s about a 20 minute bus ride because they take the most circuitous route possible, going through Newton, Brookline, back to Chestnut Hill, then Salem, Gloucester, Portsmouth, NH, then back to Boston College.
Working the gates at Patriot games is fun. Working the gates at Boston College sucks on more levels than I thought something could suck. There’s no security in front of you, the scanners often go offline of their wireless networks, and the people at BC are simply obnoxious pricks for the most part.
Boston College people are the cream of the upper middle class in Boston. These are the doctors, lawyers, teachers, corporate middle managers, and small business owners of New England. These are the people who got rejected, or never applied to, Ivy League schools, but still had good SAT scores and GPAs. These are the people who could easily afford the $38,000 a year, or whatever it was they had to pay to go there. These are the people who sat atop Chestnut Hill, looking down on the rest of the schools in Boston, and thought they were better than BU, Northeastern, Emerson, Suffolk, UMass, Bentley, Brandeis, and because they had parties and weren’t complete nerds, thought they were above Harvard and MIT people.
Now, this isn’t every BC student/alum. And it wasn’t every BC fan I encountered at the gates. But it was about 40% of the people who came through my gate on Saturday.
BC had just implemented a new policy: Fans must enter the gate that it tells them to enter on their ticket. I was assigned to Gate D. At first, as traffic was slow, it was easy to tell people to go to Gate C, or Gate E, or Gate A (the student gate). And most people were fine with that.
Then this one kid came through my gate. His ticket said “Gate C” so I told him to go to Gate C. But the ticket taker next to me had already scanned in his father. His father started yelling at me from inside the gates. So I said “OK, I’ll scan him in then. Sorry, I didn’t know you were together.” And the father gave me the most condescending look from under his BC hat. It was a look that said “Who the fuck are YOU, kid? Telling ME, an alumnus of THE Boston College, where I can and can’t go?”
Then an older gentleman approached, also with Gate C tickets. I politely told him to go to Gate C. And he yelled at me. He yelled at me about how he was old, and handicapped, and how he’d been coming to games for years, and how his seats were right there. I quickly gave in and said “Sorry, sir, I’ll let you in. I apologize.” It was the first time I wanted to quit this job.
I gave up on the whole wrong gate thing, and just let everyone in. Then my scanner went offline. You see, they’re on a network, and they send and receive info from the database to see if a ticket is valid, and to get the correct attendance figure. But mine kept floating off and on the network. And even when it was online, it had trouble scanning, so I went to the backup plan, which is ripping stubs and putting the bar code in my pocket.
By this point, about 45 minutes before game time, I had met a fairly large number of mean, nose upturned Boston College fans. I had also met a few really nice BC fans, including a priest, which tends to happen at a Jesuit run school. But I must say that the Wake Forest fans were the nicest people I’ve ever met in my life. They were all wearing black and gold, and most had strong North Carolinian accents. I’d say “Welcome to Boston College” and they’d start up a conversation with me. I’d say “How are you today?” They’d politely respond and ask me how I was, AND ASKED ME WITH SINCERITY! It was amazing. These people actually gave a rat’s ass how the lowly ticket taker was. For a few hours, I wished I was an usher in Winston-Salem, NC.
After scanner malfunctions and obnoxious BC assholes, I was ready to quit. If I had seen the guy that runs TeamOps at BC, I would have told him I was done. I went on break, didn’t see him, smoked 3 cigarettes in 10 minutes, then was redeployed. I got sent to the East Side of the Stadium. I was placed at Section R, which was right behind the Wake Forest bench, at the 40 yard line. In other words, the best freaking seat (I had to stand) in the house. I was standing in front of where Row 1 would be, right next to the 50 yard line, about 5 feet from the Wake Forest players. And all I had to do was make sure nobody was standing near the entrance to the section or on the stairs.
I had a sick view of some amazing plays. The interceptions Dejuan Tribble hauled in. BC’s 4th and 1 stop in the 4th quarter. The big hits, the big passes, everything. I could hear the Wake Forest coaches talking to their players, and could see the plays they drew up on their white board. I knew what the Deacons were going to do before anyone else in the Stadium. When there was a big play, and the band would start up, the Stadium would vibrate, and I’d get goose bumps. It was truly awesome. And it was why I applied for this job, to be close to, and almost a part of the action.
One absolutely horror filled moment came in the middle of the 3rd quarter. I had expected to see kids from my high school at the game, even kids I hadn’t really liked. So I was ready for that. But I wasn’t ready for my former principal and dean of discipline, sitting in my section. God, what a shitty moment that was. I wanted to go the rest of my life without dealing with that fucker and there he was, in Section R, with his kids, in the 1st row, right in front of me. Real unfortunate moment there.
Near the end of the 4th quarter, I got sent to guard the players’ exit off the field. Pretty simple stuff. The players go through the concourse underneath the stands. They curtain off the area, and we stand in front of it. Then we had to go out and “flush” people from the Stadium. One woman and her friend gave us some shit, saying “Her husband works for Boston College.” The game had been over for nearly an hour by this time, but the Boston College attitude was still in full force.
Anyway, I got paid about $70, had to deal with assholes for about 2 hours, but also got to see 3 quarters of great football from a great vantage point.
I love my job.
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