They replied within hours. So did many, many other people.
August 13, 2001 To Whom It May Concern: I attended your Otakon 2001 convention this last weekend, and I am glad to have met four very nice volunteers and staff members. There was one guy at the lamination line who was very pleasant and had a big smile. There was a volunteer in the vendor's room named "Jeff," whom I believe was also a doctor. Another person named "Ron" politely gave me useful information about the Video Game room in the hallway. Then there was a volunteer in the vendor's room whose name I do not remember, but he guarded our table during closing in the vendor's room. These people stand out as being polite and friendly for one major reason: they were islands of pleasantry rare amid a sea of extremely rude and unfriendly staff and volunteers. I was stunned at the appalling treatment that was dished out to attendees, vendors, and guests (specifically American guests) by the staff. I realize that running a convention this size presents some unique problems. I also realize it was terribly hot outside with intermittent thunderstorms and pouring rain and that the City of Baltimore was suffering some underground problems and had to close off a lot of the streets. But all of this could have been negligible if your staff had been friendly, polite, forgiving, understanding, or even remotely human. Here are some incidents I personally witnessed (and I assume they were staff members, because they were wearing black Otakon Staff shirts): * One volunteer refused to let us use escalators on the way downstairs, something that happened more than once. When asked why, he didn't answer, he just said "Down the stairs! C'mon, let's GO!" He told another girl that they were afraid she might "fall down." The escalators were working, no one was on them, so I am puzzled as to why this rule was held to all the way through most of Saturday. In my opinion, you have more of a chance to fall down stairs than standing on an escalator, so I don't know if this was an Otakon call or just the call of the escalator guards. * One security/crowd herder was breaking the line as it went across a fire exit. I applaud you for thinking of that; fire exits should always remain clear. But the manner in which this person treated the line to the vendor's room was appalling. As I watched from the balcony, he angrily shouted his demands for people to move or stop with comments like, "C'mon pokey!" or "Move it, MOVE IT! Jesus...!" When people weren't moving fast enough, he took the liberty of pushing several people in the back, pulling them by their shoulders, and generally angered or frightened a lot of people standing in line. Maybe he was really good at line herding, but his method would be less questionable if he was herding unruly sheep or goats, not people. * I was working the Katsucon table, and I watched, stunned, at how vendors were being treated. It was too way hot and lights were turned down on one side of the room before opening and after closing, making many vendors have to do all their work in dim lighting. On top of that, we had some vendor-room staff rudely herding people out of the room at closing time. On Sunday, one pair tried to physically remove a woman from our table as she was finishing up a complicated sale. Our chairman told the people not to touch her, that he was sick of how he and the rest of the attendees were being treated, and if one of them touched anyone else again like that, he would call the police. They told him to do that, and while we didn't, we were met by a two more people, one of whom was introduced as a "strong caveman" to "guard us" because we were "troublemakers." * My pre-teen son, used to being treated at least with kindness by convention staff by dozens of conventions since he was a baby, received a grave learning curve this last weekend. I won't even go into how he was treated because I fear I may say many things I regret, but if I personally witness any staff treat him with contempt, patronization, and lack of consideration on this level again, you will hear from legal counsel. To treat adults like vermin is bad enough, but getting an 11-year old kid to be forced to apologize for no wrongdoing to beneath moral contempt and at the very least is just being a bully. Normally, I don't let him wander the con alone because of the crowd and being in a major city and all, but this was the first time my son and I were ever scared of convention staff. I spoke to someone I know who wanted to be a volunteer, but he was told he "arrived too late and missed orientation," and therefor, rejected. Orientation? You are the only convention I know who does this with general volunteers, and I am sure you have your reasons. I would think this would limit the number of volunteers, but maybe that is part of your goal for some reason. But if you do have orientation, here are some things you might want to re-stress or cover: * Attitude is like shooting a laser into a mirror. It comes right back at you. You treat people mean, they will treat you mean. It doesn't matter of you are right or they don't matter to you. And if enough of your staff keeps treating enough people badly, the whole convention will be full of angered, embittered attendees. Incidents will rise, like fights, vandalism, or at the very least, staff being treated rudely right back, which will escalate the cycle until a riot ensues. You are very lucky people did not riot, because the grumbling of everyone I met suggested you were on the verge of mutiny by Saturday night. Especially because of the heat and rain. Especially because Baltimore was hard to navigate with the closed off streets and police. While these were beyond your control, your rude staff made these problems seem a lot worse. Your staff constantly milled around us like angry cowboys in the midst of a terrifying stampede. * Do not touch people unless they invite it, they touch you first, or you are yanking them out of sudden harm's way (like a falling object). I saw a lot of pushing, shoving, and dragging being done by the staff used for crowd control. This on top of the yelling and lack of professional courtesy. I never saw anyone shove back, but if they did, I feel it would have been justified. * If you don't like a job, don't volunteer for it. I have made an educated guess, based solely on attitude, that a MAJORITY of staff were sick and tired of their jobs and of the attendees. Their body posture of sagged shoulders, hoarse voices, tired expressions, and grumpy demeanor reminded me of my retail days, when I forced my employees to do something they hated. But it was different for me: my employees were being paid. Your volunteers are donating their time and effort out of the goodness of their heart, and I think they may have felt used or tricked, because they certainly didn't care for what they were doing very much. "But no one will volunteer for the hard stuff," you may say. But other conventions do it. I think it's because they treat their staff with dignity and gratitude. I apologize if you feel you do the same, but it certainly doesn't show. * If they are not on duty, don't wear the shirt. I can't count the number of staff in shirts "not on duty" who told attendees that "this isn't my department" or "I am on a break." While I am on this topic, the choice of shirt colors was also questionable. Black clothes make POOR summer wear, as any Goth or 2nd-grade science teacher will tell you: it heats up a lot quicker. On top of this, the print was not very obvious, and when I wore a black T-shirt (not an Otakon one), people timidly asked me questions, thinking I was staff. Maybe you should try a different and not often used color like yellow, magenta, orange, or neon-green. Even white with a lot of red stripes. Just something that stands out from the plethora of other black T-shirts in fandom. Other problems: * There were multiple instances where traffic flow was diverted from major arteries with no explanation as to why. It was like the old PC game "Lemmings" where you accidentally put the "stopper" Lemming someplace disastrous. While I was never diverted to fall off a cliff or anything dangerous, I often had to choose alternate routes around phone booths, down some stairs and then up the other side, around the concession stand, or other places that really made an irritable crowd in a worse mood. It almost seemed as if someone was just stopping traffic randomly by throwing darts on a map of the convention center. * You knew about the heat, you really, really should have had water stations for the attendees, and reminded them to drink water. I saw some that a few were set up Saturday, but with no cups! I am surprised more people didn't pass out. * I also noticed when someone DID pass out, your security moved the body, which is a basic, simple, primary, essential first-aid NO-NO. Unless you are POSITIVE that no spine or neck injury has occurred, you should not pick up the body, and carry it around the con to some hidden place, like I saw your team do. Call 911. Immediately. As they taught us in First Aid Certification class, "Unconsciousness is not a normal state for a human to be in, and should be treated as a code red situation and authorities must be called." * In America, in any two-way traffic situation, you stay to the right side of the road, and traffic passes on your left. What applies in vehicle traffic also applies in people traffic. Many times, especially the vendor's room, you reversed the two. This caused confusion as people tried to exit out the entrance (which wasn't labeled until late Saturday), because all their lives, they kept to the right. In the vendor's room, people entering and exiting crashed into each other, making rude staffers even ruder by patronizing attendees confused and befuddled by the traffic knot generated. I have listed things I have personally witnessed, but even if less than 10% of the hundreds of other incidents I have heard from other people were true, you need to seriously reconsider your priorities of respect. Attendees PAID to attend this convention. They put money in YOUR pocket. You are doing them no favors by angrily "putting up with them." If your attitude and organization are not equipped to handle yourselves in a respectable manner, then you should simply give up. Because if you don't, one day, this whole mass of people that come to your conventions will either do one of two things: stop coming (if they are smart) or retaliate (for those few people who are not so smart). I fear Otakon 2002 because I fear the latter. I attend anime conventions to see fictional monsters and giant robots fight each other, not real people. I am only thankful I did not pay for my badge, or come to your convention for the purpose of attending it, because I almost certainly would have asked for my money back, and never returned. My part in your convention was that I worked as a vendor at the Katsucon table. My opinions are expressly my own and may or may not reflect in whole or in part the opinion of any other staff or attendee of Katsucon. But I showed this letter to the Katsucon chairman before I submitted it to you in case he felt it would be bad for inter-convention friction, and he approved it. This letter will be posted on my web page, several convention mailing lists, Usenet, and my newsletter. Your reply, if any, will also be made public. This letter was not written to flame Otakon or its staff members, but to serve as a stern warning, because for every person who complains, there will be a hundred who do not, but will vote with their money next year. Respectfully yours, Grig Larson Anime and Sci-Fi Convention Attendee since 1984 punkwalrus@yahoo.com |