nementh

So, last night at work, around 11pm, when the line was mostly empty and most of the other cast members had gone home, I was pulling my boat up from unload to load, when some guy yelled at me, "Oh good, it's a guy skipper!" Now, there's not a lot of things that guests do that make me immediately angry, yeah, they annoy me a lot, but outright anger is hard to get from me, but automatically assuming girl skippers aren't funny just cause they're girls pisses me off no end.

Anyway, I stopped way short of load cause there weren't any boats behind me, and said loudly into the PA to he lead, "Hey, these people want a girl skipper," to which ten to fifteen people in line all yelled back, "NO!" So at this point all I'm thinking is "Ah hell no." I pull up to load, and get a full boat, including all the sexist assholes.

I did a National Geographic (NG) trip for them, no jokes, nothing interesting, just lame animal facts in a quiet boring voice. this is completely within our right to do so, it's not in our operating guide that we have to tell jokes, all we are required to say is a safety spiel at the beginning and end of the trip. I have never done an NG trip before, and didn't really have anything prepared. It was the hardest trip I have ever done on the Jungle Cruise, it was actually harder to try to NOT be funny than it is to try to make people laugh.

At the end of the trip I noticed the guy that had first yelled at me from the dock standing next to our exit. When I noticed him, he said to me, "you picked the wrong people to do that too, I'm a former guest relations cast member." Which made me think, well then you should know better than to make disparaging remarks about cast members, but since I didn't want to give him anything to actually complain about, all I said was, "There was nothing wrong with that spiel, it was completely OG."(From the operating guide)

So then the lead walks up and I immediately said, "Hey, this gentleman would like to speak with you." The guy refused to even speak with the lead and wanted to talk to a manager instead. So the lead calls for a manager and then comes to ask me what's up. When I was done telling him, he said. "That seems like a stupid thing to be mad about." At first I thought he was talking about me but he said he no, the guest was being stupid.

The manager shows up, talks to the lead first, then the guest, then calls me over to talk to me. He asks me what happened, he knows I'm "a pretty consistent skipper" and I tell him the same thing I told the lead. So then he tells me about the conversation he had with the guest. He told the guest that we are not required to tell jokes, that we are there to pass on information about the animals and the jungle and if we choose to be funny while doing so then that's up to us. Apparently the guests response was, "Well that's very west side of you." (Disneyland is split up between west side attractions and east side attractions, keep in mind this guy said he used to work for guest relations.) So of course acting like a douche isn't gonna endear him to the manager, so not only did he tell me that there was no problem, but he also called guest relations and told them to ignore the guy if he went there to complain.

before I knew what was going to happen I was nervous and kinda shaky, after I found out what was gonna happen I was shaky from the adrenaline high of pretty much telling some sexist asshole to screw off.