on the brighter side.. the hellacious life of a tourguide.

to break with blogging about burma, let me relate to you about the worst tour group in the history of tour groups that i was just fortunate enough to experience.

first off, there is apparently a private school on our campus today at the history center. i've seen at least 4-5 groups of uniformed 5th graders, all accompanied by teachers. these teachers must be part of an experimental group exploring new teaching methods, because they all equal their students in common sense and overall mental acuity. my co-worker and i have had to interrupt tours not once, not twice, but FOUR times to yell at kids to stop ringing the doorbell or trying to open the locked front door. the worst part is that every time we've done this, the children have been accompanied by adult teachers who seem to lack the understanding that ringing a doorbell is disruptive and that if a door is locked, it wont open. no matter how much noise you make.

in my experience here, public school children are largely more well-behaved than private school children or (especially) home-schooled children. who knew?

but they weren't even part of this group.

we were supposed to only have 16 people, but of course when you're wanting a smooth tour, you end up with a million extra people. in total we had about 25 which is the cut off point, so it could've been worse. however, these just happened to be the 25 dumbest people that visited the history center all day, and they descended upon us in one pack rather than spreading out over the day like usual.

what we do first is gather everyone in front of the house and give them a brief overview and rules (don't touch!) before we let them inside. it's not a lot of information, and most of it is common sense. it's always a pain when you're halfway through your spiel when 5 other people decide to walk up. which is what happened. twice. two of them were old men who my co-worked immediately pronounced senile, which i was to soon discover. we eventually succeed in doling out the audio equipment and let them in, locking the door behind them as is standard practice.

then the fun began.

within the first 5 minutes, i had my personal space assailed upon by two of the old men. as this is standard old man practice, i'm pretty used to close-talkers. however, one man repeatedly interrupted my bubble physically, holding my elbow in a 70yr old iron grip as he asked me questions about former tour guides and who was "in that picture over yonder?"

after i wrestled my elbow free, i was able to run across the foyer to throw open the front door and attack a group of 5th graders who all screamed as if i was the ghost of swan house. not surprisingly, they're standing there with 2 teachers who proceed to try to stick their heads in the door of the house to see the inside. heeellll no. i say "you need to stop messing with this door right now. we're giving a tour, we can't let you in, you're being disruptive and inconsiderate." slammed the door.

i walk back to my station only to find a million people standing around the dining room, wondering why the audio tour doesn't make sense. it doesn't because I JUST TOLD YOU FIVE MINUTES AGO that you have to wait until you're on the other side of the room for the audio to make sense.

finally people start trickling upstairs. one lady in a motorized scooter and two of the old men remain downstairs. i open up the hall door for the scooter lady and the first old man because they obviously can't make it up the stairs, so i let them into the second half of the downstairs to wait for their groups. the other old man follows us in.

as i'm standing in the kitchen trying to supervise this second station, i see the first old man walk BACK down the hallway, open the hall door (big no no, do NOT open closed doors!) and go back into the first half of the house where i can't see him. i can't run after him to stop him because i'm dealing with other mortards in the kitchen. after a couple minutes i'm able to grab him as his friend is wandering in the front half as well.. i usher them back into the kitchen as a third old man tries to wander into the front half also. (this is probably really confusing but basically, these people are wandering all around a multi-million dollar 80 year old mansion where they aren't supposed to be). so the third man wants to go upstairs, doing the whole house out of order and generally wreaking havoc. whatever, i let him upstairs.

as i'm trying to once again close the hall door, i have three other people try to get back to the front of the house to see the dining room. people, look at your map. the dining room is in the BACK of the house. go away.

after a while i manage to get most of the people out of the house. the scooter lady needs to be let back out the front door since the back door has stairs. as i'm trying to explain to the scooter lady's friends how to get to the farm house without encountering stairs, the third old man who'd gone upstairs attempts to leave the house with his audio equipment. i have to interrupt scooter people to run after the old man to get his head set back. i lead the scooter people to the front door and remind them the farm house isn't wheelchair accessible. "that's okay" she says, "i have my cane." YOU HAVE YOUR CANE!? we aren't supposed to let scooters in the house but i figured she couldn't freakin walk!!! and because i had to open up the hall door to let her scooter through, that's why i had to deal with a million people wandering back and forth in parts of the house they aren't supposed to be in. YOU HAVE A CANE!?

so i smile and let her outside where there are two people waiting for the next our. as soon as i open the door, they attempt to rush past me into the house. NO, WAIT UNTIL 2:00 LIKE THE SIGN SAYS PEOPLE!

and then i got to do it all over again because this is my job.



on a REAL lighter note, i finally completed my first crocheted afghan. i'm making a lot of stuff lately that i'm going to attempt to sell.. i'll post examples on here as i get them up.