Baseball and Boring are synonymous.
Here in my city when you have a kid in baseball, you have to parent volunteer in the snack stand. That means, two 2.5 hour shifts. A total of 5 hours per kid registered for baseball. But you can’t bring your kid. It’s your punishment as a parent of a player to work alone.
That wouldn’t be a big deal (parents volunteering) to help keep costs down, but costs aren’t down. Last time I checked, paying to put my kid in baseball was same cost as sports that don’t have snack stand duty!
Our baseball league has 5 stands/fields in our city and let me tell you…when I am forced to work….as I was twice this season, it’s free food for the family. Well….free crappy food…which means nothing….cause no one eats anything anyway…but if we wanted to I’d have let them!
So I get my jollies in other ways. When kids come up, asking for nachos… or beans…or cup a soup….or anything involving opening a can, heating, or making a bigger mess with pots and pans…I say sweetly, “No, so sorry we are out tonight.”
Why? Cause I have to clean up too – and that’s outside the 5 hours total we have to work!! So when I work, it’s packaged snack stand food and drink only.
Don’t be all mad at me till you hear the next tidbit: Those five snack stands make over $350,000 for the year!! I’m not sure where that $$ goes but it’s not saving me a penny! Not a cent on any baseball fees or paying to have a high school student work in my place for minimum wage!
So I do what I can to survive.
Now if they would let me bring my child with me….I’d think differently. It’s a new story!
Why? Because now it’s an opportunity to learn. Throughout my shift hours I can teach my child how to:
1) Talk to others.
2) Sell – Upsell (want fries with that?)
3) Money – change back please?
4) Cost vs sales and profit (when I learned that at 8 from my dad (everywhere we went!)…I immediately never wanted to work for Myself!)
5) Clean up.
Best part? We’d be doing it together – teaching and learning – and isn’t that what baseball is all about??
Thankfully, no one from my area reads these. (if they did, they’d agree!)
Email me at lovelifelaurie@gmail.com
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