And here is the Saturday’s story.
Now, just a bit of background for those of you who weren’t following me earlier: the day before Paddy’s day, the 16th of March, it is always the busiest day of the weekend, maybe of the whole year.
Last Paddy’s weekend I did before my maternity leave we counted over 7.500 people on the 16th. Last year I wasn’t there because in maternity leave and they told me that the record was broken with over 8.300 people in.
Let’s have a look at the facts and I’ll tell you later about the numbers.
It’s useless writing about all the wigs, make ups and green dresses I saw during those days, because it was common sense to expect them, as Paddy’s days are celebration of the green and Ireland and being Irish too!
I admit that meeting a guy from Hong Kong wearing a tie reading “Kiss me, I’m Irish” was a bit extreme but still, everything is about loving this island and its culture.
Anyway, let get me started!
Stag and Hens wise, nothing particular, the best group was going to come in the next day:
– German Stag party- they were all dressed like, of course, leprechaun. The stag was more elegant and dressed in a different shade of green.
– Group of normally dressed people a part for the stag who was wearing an Irish flag coloured wig, a shirt and just underwear.
– Stag group with jacket half bottle green and half vomit orange.
– Three elegant guys dressed with a dark green suit, light green shirt and red tie.
– Hen’s group with nice green jumpers and dolls printed on it.
Weird people wise we have today a good go too. Sometimes is surprising how people just get nervous because it’s too busy while it would have been us entitled to freak out:
– I was on tills and this girl was paying with the credit card and the dialogue went as follow: “Do you have the pin number for your card?”, she nodded and then looked around her for maybe two minutes solid and then I decided to ask “Can you enter it?”. Honestly a part of me wanted to wait and see how long would it take, but it wasn’t the right day to do that, and you’ll get why in a while.
– I was still on tills and a lady come over my counter hugging a small blue teddy bear and with a twisted and anxious face on the verge of tears and asked me “Have you seen a stuffed animal?” Honestly I didn’t even know how to answer. I muttered something that sounded like “No, I’m sorry…” but I’m sure that if she paid attention to my tone she would have been pissed….very pissed. Anyway, for all the stuffed animals lovers out there, don’t panic, I saw her later on passing by with two of them.
– Still on tills: a girl came over and I asked where she was from and she said Switzerland. When then I asked “What language you prefer your map in?” (Because we do know that they talk 4 different languages, at least, depending on the part of Switzerland they’re from. We have maps in German, Italian and French, so I asked!) And she went “Switzerland!” again. Eventually I managed to give to her one in German!
– Still on tills: a girl approached with headphones in her ears talking to someone else on Skype with a video call through her phone. Nothing major here, but I’m annoyed with people doing everything when you try to help them in their travel. Plus chat_with_customer rules cannot be respected a lot if the person in front of you is talking to someone else while there. Should I pick the phone off their hand in the future and hung up telling them I want 100% attention so I can perform my role as I’m requested? Anyway, I’m sure I’ll write a post listing all the odd things customers do when they come on tills to buy tickets.
– And talking about nasty people, I want just to remember the snob lady that start arguing with one lad of the staff because she wanted to enter in one of the bars although she was without ticket because she already used in another one. Now, you see he agreed in helping her although she was very rude to him. He’s very sweet and honestly he didn’t see the mean part of the situation. There are unfortunately many people out there that believe that if you argue and complain you obtain what you want. I don’t like them, because they surely get it eventually. I’d be ashamed of myself if I did.
– Copying the name of people due to have a certificate in our bar I found some “famous names”: Fred Weasley, George Weasley, Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. You cannot even imagine what people invent as names!
– There was a group of Italian lads. It was also the end of the day and loads of people went through. It was also almost the end of my 10 hour shift. They came over to return the audio guides and to be fair I probably hadn’t the smartest expression on my face but this chap went “Ma questa sta dormendo o si e’ bevuta un cicchettino di Guinness” (Is she sleeping or she’s had a Guinness shot?). I let him finish, I let him being proud of his joke and then I answered in Italian to him “Well, considering that I’ve been working since this morning at nine and we had thousands of people in, I’m just a bit tired! And now, please don’t bother me anymore!” Of course he went all the shadow of read till he resembled a ripe tomato! Then we chatted a bit, they were nice! The only problem is that often Italians go around saying stupid things, because they just assume that they won’t be understood!
And then for the curious of you let me tell you how our day went on. I mean it was a busy day indeed and everybody knew it was going to be like it.
At the very opening there were already people waiting in the queue. While counting the tills the people waiting for us to finish were already twenty and as many purchased with credit card and were waiting to get in.
At 11.00 I heard for the first time on the radio the order to slow down on tills because the flow of people was too intense.
Around 12.00 Q started to form outside the door. Double queue for a few hours. The one outside was going around the corner and far down in the main street.
Around 14.00 Artists were asked to perform outside with percussion to entertain people waiting outside. Luckily it didn’t rain that day!
15.00 Already 5.500 people in. The order to stop serving people and slowing down was issued once again.
Around 16.00 the catering began to give cups of hot chocolate to the people waiting outside. It was very smart and sweet of them.
16.03 The microphone died in the atrium and there were a huge noise on the top of the music. It was almost unbearable. But also promptly fixed!
17.13 We already were over the record. 8.500 people in.
17.30 We managed to get rid of the Q outside.
18.00 An IPhone was dropped, I hope by mistake, from the one of the upper floors into the atrium smashing itself on the ground. Luckily it didn’t hit anybody.
Final number was 9.364 people. Nothing to add, right?
Let me know what you think about that in the comments! Looking forward to hear opinions about that!
Dr.Franny and Mrs.Myself 