When I pulled into the VFW parking lot this evening, I was hoping it would be an uneventful evening of bingo. It was my off week for doing the bingo calling, so I was ready to just put it on cruise control and be just one of the customers and play. Not a chance. We were still at a volunteer defecit from the two workers who got mad two weeks ago and left, and three more workers didn't show up. Needless to say, I ran my ass off tonight.
For the first 45 minutes during the early bird games, I didn't know if I was truly coming or going. But once that was over with and we settled into the groove, I thought things would get easier. Wrong again. There was major drama after the very first regular game of the evening. I'll give you a little background first - this regular game paid $60. There were two winners, and I ran to the back of the bingo hall and verified both winners, and then ran back to the other side of the hall to get the $60 to split evenly between the two of them. A second grader would have known that you would pay each winner $30. The caller handed me the money, and I ran to the back of the room where the winners were and paid them. We had already started the 3rd game when the drama hit. The VFW Quarter Master was running around asking us who paid the winners of the first game. At first, the few volunteers there looked at each other like "WTF?" Then I told him it was me. Apparently, the two winners of the first game said that I stiffed them $5 each. Once again, WTF? For the first time in my year of volunteering at the bingo, my integrity was challenged. I know for a fact that I paid each winner the same denominations of currency -- one twenty, one five, and five ones each. Yet they still said I stiffed them. My only mistake was not counting the money when the caller gave it to me. I trusted her ability to count and divide out money. Boy was I wrong. Never mind that I only gave out what money I was given. If they wanted to get on anybody, then they should have gotten on the caller for making the mistake; for the caller is the one that divides the money up if there's more than one winner. From now on, even if my own mother is the winner of a game that I'm verifying, I will count the money in front of her to make sure this doesn't happen again.
2 comments:
Integrity is a hard thing to come by anymore. We are all "in danger."
One of my faithful readers emailed me her comments -she doesn't have an AOL screenname yet, so I told her I would copy and paste her comments. Here's what my co-worker JM had to say about this:
Is there any honesty left in this world???
You would not believe how many older people would try to keep there dimes from being swept away at the cake wheel of Guardian Angels picnic. It's a DIME!!! I don't mind giving a child a break who stands there and plays $5 in dimes to win a prize, you just want to make them happy (okay, I guess that makes me dishonest now LOL). On that note, I guess I better shut up!
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