Pins. It's all about getting those pins. What pins? memorable pins you stick on your lanyard. Everyone who has seen "Office space" are probably aware of the "flair". I hope I spelled that right.
"You don't have enough flair...."
Pins, the craze is beginning for our group. We have discovered the secret ins and outs of pin training. What is pin trading? It's like little pieces of flair, or pokemon cards. You can make new friends by exchanging pins, some are hard to get, such as the Saudi pins, Japan pavilion pins, Great Britain and Volunteer pins. Our director has scored many sweet 'valuable' pins that go up for TONS AND TONS OF MONEY (hundreds of dollars which is ridiculous!)
I officially started work on Saturday, July 31st 2010 on one of the hottest days and on top of that on a weekend. I started out in queue where I am basically a sheepherder. Herding large groups of sheep into the mazes as they mindlessly follow the
ir fellow sheep. I have to rope off people when the lines 1-6 start to get crowded and sometimes I cut them off from their family, this is when people freak out. Visitors also get very anxious when they get cut off at the turnstiles and are separated from their families. We always have to politely tell them that they'll have to wait, and some people lose their minds and start putting up a fuss. I've already gotten scolded, yelled at by several people today. 'sighs' exhale, it's my first day ....no one in ops is giving me a hard time. I was already flustered by the 3rd hour of working. So many things to manage while a herd of 500+Chinese people come into the pavilion in mass waves. Wave after wave you have to swim against the current and make sure things run smoothly as possible.
Since it was brutally hot, everyone was suffering under the heat. I was already sweating nearly oceans of sweat and it's not fun when you enter and exit from cold comfortable indoors to the brutal humid heat of Shanghai.
Many people gave me a little attitude, many were sympathetic and told us that they respected our endurance with the heat and how hard it is to work outside. One incident stuck out in my memory. It went down like so.
I walk over to turnstile 5 and 6 where two guys were sorta staring down. I say hi, and they say,
"America is a developed country, you should hand us free water"
"What? say that again?
"America is a developed country, it's so hot outside, you should hand us free water."
Oh boy.
"We would, but we'd have to hand out thousands of bottles to visitors."
"you guys have the financial support to give us free water don't you?, China is also a developed nation, their pavilion has Nongfu Mtn Spring Water and they hand it out for free."
his friend added, "that waterfall you have over there is such a waste, you are wasting water don't you know that?"
So I said politely, "well, if you guys are thirsty, you can drink from that waterfall, it's free :-D"
"you know the German pavilion handed out free fans for us."
"well I'm sorry sir, that's Germany, you'll get into the pavilion soon" Our wait time is only 7 MINUTES LONG. People in total wait about 10-15 minutes overall to get in. I know it's hot and believe me I'm hot as well. Let the comments and yelling continue.
