Gee I hate school hilidays

[Troyza]

School holidays are just as hard for Staff. It's easy to throw around the blame.

You should try oiling 24 lanes whilst front end continuously put on social play, it is hard. I don't know about other centers, but we make every possible effort to get our lanes conditioned, though there is only so much we can do. At the very least what happens in our center (now anyways) is we get our league play lanes oiled at around 3~4 PM, & "try" to minimise traffic. Sadly it doesn't always work out like that.
League bowlers are our bread & butter, which is why I always make an effort to go a few extra yards. My partners on Thursday night league were surprised the lanes even got a thought - one didn't even bring his normal gear because he expected the sahara.

Jason, that's a fairly good idea, & I'd encourage any full-on league bowlers to do the same. As for tuesday night... You were on 23 & 24? My techs started oiling down that end, & I know for a fact that they did not burn in the first lane because they were racing some bookings. Sorry about that.

 

[CHIN]

Easy, dont bowl league on school holidays. Have 2 weeks off.
Let the centre's social bowl themselves to death for 2 weeks.
Every league in the centre has 2 weeks off 3 times a year. Wont take em long to wake up.
Best 1 i remember was S.A. Cup qualifying many years ago at Woodville. Could only use 28 lanes for qualifying because they had birthday party on
29-32 in the middle of 1 squad.

 

[jason_doust]

As for tuesday night... You were on 23 & 24? My techs started oiling down that end, & I know for a fact that they did not burn in the first lane because they were racing some bookings. Sorry about that.

Thanks Ash, that explains it and I appreciate the apology. I've gotta tell you that 24 was unplayable though. I got in front of the ball return with four steps looking for a way and it just hooked even more in there. One guy on our pair shot a game where he never hit the headpin on it. Missed it left every shot, including using his plastic ball, and shot 10 open frames. I only got there by chucking and even then, nothing was working.

A couple of minutes saved by staff led to subsequent hours of customer pain. Seems like false economy. I'm sure the bookings would have waited a couple of minutes with a brief explanation from the counter staff.

I appreciate that the techs are stuck in the middle and it's really the duty of the management and front desk to let customers know that a delay of a few minutes is necessary to maintain the expensive equipment on which they're about to play. It's plain unfair to expect the techs to magically create time savings on fixed-time mechanical processes.

Cheers,
Jason

 

[MinusZero]

I too have found in the past that centres dont care too much about regular bowlers when it comes to school holidays. It is the regular league bowlers that keep a lot of centres afloat. I went to Hornsby once during school holidays and asked for a few lights to be turned on and they flatly refused. I could have walked out but instead decided to play and actually bowled a 259 in the dark, so i wasnt too upset. But i have been to other centres, Castle Hill for instance, and they were more than happy to turn on a set of lights. I think if i am paying so much to play, i at least want to have some light. In saying that though, i find with dimmer lights i actually concentrate more on my mark because its so difficult to see.