Miller Time Is Teh Ghey

Well, with Ryan in town on the 5th, it made sense to have some DDR craziness at Miller Time. The Augustana people showed up, and it was going to be a grand old time.

Cue annoying little kids.

Now, we’re used to annoying little kids, it’s just a fact of life in an arcade. Sure, they run around on the pads, sometimes while people are actually playing. Sure, they often hit or climb machines, sometimes breaking them. Sure, they flip the lights on and off, as if they were some kind of toy… wait, lights? Yeah, at Miller Time, any old schmo can walk by and screw with the lights - something no arcade should allow.

Now, usually when the DDR group plays on Wednesdays, the lights are off. Sometimes a kid flips them on and off, and we ask politely that they stop. Sometimes this works. Other times, the kid runs to their parent, complains, and somehow we get accused of kicking the kids out of the arcade. Normally, this also gets resolved and goes nowhere. Often, a compromise is made and only half the lights are turned off.

Well, this Saturday, one particular child would not take “no” for an answer, and her mom got involved. First, the accusation was that we were kicking the girl out of the arcade. Next it turned into, “the lights are affecting our bowling!” This of course prompted management intervention. This consisted of a manager simply walking in and demanding the lights stay on. We told our story, but were outnumbered and outranked. Unfortunately the manager decided to be rude, and threatened to kick us out of the bowling alley if we didn’t simply comply. I’ve come to learn threats aren’t accepted well by anybody, and that proved true this time as well.

Cue the following conversation:

Me: Hey, I guess you don’t like money.

Ass: What did you say?

Me: I said: I guess you don’t like money.

Ass: Alright, that’s it. Get out! All of you, get out. These bowlers pay a lot more than you stupid kids and your dollar machine.

Now, there were over ten of us there, and he had just thrown everybody out. Apparently he doesn’t care about public relations. Now I’m telling everyone in the area not to play DDR there, and doing my best to have their arcade vendor move the machine to another location. I also don’t think the general manager will be happy about this whole event if it hurts business at Miller Time.

When it comes down to it, the Miller Time arcade has just been a huge headache anyway, and this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I hope the manager, the kid’s mom and her friends are happy, since being civil wasn’t an option. Yeah, I could have refrained from being an ass, but I’m fairly certain “the bowlers” would have found some other excuse to have us ejected.

The funny part is that I’d bet $50 that the kid went right back to flipping the lights on and off, and nobody said a word.