I Don't Give a Duck

Today was another day in paradise being my usual hospitable ambassadorial self watching rich people cheer Canadians punch each other in the face.

I will admit that I was slightly excited that the visiting team was the Mighty Ducks. Fun fact: the real life NHL team was actually founded in 1993 by the Walt Disney Company, who then sold the franchise off in 2005.

I know that if I just get handed enough arena schematics that I will someday be able to answer every question these people can come up with.

There's the damn Green Room the players' families keep asking me about. Listen lady I doubt you even bought a ticket to get in here so why don't you use your millions to buy a compass.

I will definitely memorize all of the different 2021-2022 Seattle Kraken Seasonal Credentials. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

Today was actually special in that I was stationed on the east side of the stadium where's the NHL locker rooms are. This is both way cooler and way more of a pain in the ass for both myself and the guests. Anytime the players are moving between the ice and their lockers they are using the tunnels from which the tunnel clubs get their names. Due to covid the players are supposed to be in some sort of bubble and separated from the fans. So in order to control this situation we are constantly enforcing lockdowns to keep everything legit. There is also a large section of the backstage type area that some genius has decided is off limits either to me. So if I'm on the close end of the circle sometimes I have to walk all the way back the opposite way around the circle to get what would be three steps ahead of me, if that makes any sense. My boss and the literature officially refers to this hallway as "lava" which adds a childish nature to the already annoying rule. The rules have really been piling up here I feel like. As the wild west nature of the operation starts to calm down the killjoys have gone to work ringing every last bit of enjoyment out of everything. At one point they decided that my rich guests can buy alcohol all game, and can drink it in their suite, but the cannot walk it 10 steps to their seat to watch the game. Being rich people who paid a ton to be there, they often get pissy when I try to police them. So, I do not try to police them. Problem solved I think. Another stupid alcohol rule: I think the rich people areas are the only ones that sell hard alcohol. Poor people cannot be trusted with the devil elixir and so I'm supposed to police my rich people walking to the elevator with drinks containing hard alcohol. Minus taking a sip of that pink thing you are carrying, I do not know if it's wine or a cosmo and I can assure you I do not care. I'm almost certain at this point I am breaking more rules every day than I am following.

One of the fun parts of being on the action side is that there are more workers of various stripes to talk to. Then news crew people who interview the players are very rude in my experience, even the camera guys think they're too cool to chat so I avoid them. Yes you point a camera sweaty men missing teeth all day, you are very cool and talented I'm sure. I spend a lot of time talking to the security and police who enforce the lockdown. The security people I kind of feel bad about because I think I made like $10/hr more than them to essentially both stare at the same wall in different uniforms. I thought it was fun to see the goalie's I guess spare masks sitting in the hallway behind their little bench. Those metal tube things behind that is a glove warmer/drier thing that they put their gloves on.

Player interview area. One thing that's fun is the players are all friends with the guys on the other teams. Maybe our team especially because in the NHL expansion teams are made from like a garage sale of stealing players from other teams. So everyone is from somewhere. OMG just like me! Anyway they'll hang around in the hallway and wait for their friends to come out of the opposing locker room. Join me, fellow wall starer. I had some small illicit conversations with a few of them. I know I'm supposed to be seen, not heard, but arrest me I guess.

I do like a good hockey fight.

Another group of people that I stand around and BS with are the low level NHL employees. I actually had a really interesting conversation with the puck boy about the different kinds of pucks. I think some of them have like a RFID chip that automatically tracks the position of the puck and maybe who has possession of it type stats at the same time. I thought that was cool. I was tempted to try to bum some pucks out of them but... I don't want pucks and would probably end up throwing them away anyway. Sort of like I throw away my time telling people where the bathroom is for 8 hours a day. Anyway...