The Supervisor, The Racist, And Me.

As a ride operator, you can summon the entirety of your many daily tasks down to two simple, overarching duties. The first is to operate your ride with the utmost safety and efficiency. The second duty is to “stop” and abandon your first duty whenever you determine that it cannot be done or is not being done safely and legally. The year was 1984, My 3rd consecutive season for a local park I will simply call Flaggerville. Flaggerville was a rapidly growing park, with attendance reaching in excess of two million. I was fortunate enough to have proven my skills as an experienced operator early, and had been promoted to an attraction lead the previous summer. This particular year however, I was placed in charge of one of the most complex and tall amusement devices ever conceived by man. No joke, This ride scared the living shit out of me.

The ride was brand new that year, it seated 72 people, spanned 250 feet wide and punched a hole in the sky at 173 FT. To rotate and raise that much weight required 7 large electric motors driven in relayed series with a very basic system monitoring the RPM of each individual motor. If a motor failed for any reason the rotation stopped, even if the ride had reached the top. Once the ride had stopped however, Getting it moving and on the ground again took an act of God. Sometimes taking hours to get the ride fixed, it had become common place for maintenance to just watch the ride instead of waiting for it to be called in.  The worst part about the shutdowns, was the explanation we had  to give the guest.

There is a saying in Texas that if you don’t like the weather wait 15 minutes. This day was no exception to that. We would open the ride long enough to have a full que house, and than we would have to shut her down for lightning. I was coming back from break when a guest approached me to inquire about why the ride was closed. I took the time to explain to her that there was lightning in the area, I even used the magic words for your safety. This lady wouldn’t have it, I could tell right away that she was the type that no matter what excuse I gave she was just wanted to argue. Things escalated from a casual conversation to her screaming at me, She accused me of being racist and that I closed the ride because of her specific race. Now looking back at the year and how things where, I can see how it might seem like that. But… the ride was broken, and closed for weather, the other operators has been sent on break.  The entire conversation, I kept my mouth shut. I pretended to listen very intently, and smiled as she gave me a good public ego bashing. My supervisor had heard what was going on, and entered the conversation with Mm… Mam… Please calm down. He his not racist, in fact we are pretty sure he hates everyone. This supervisor happened to be of opposite race to miss mam, and after receiving his share of verbal abuse had her escorted out of the park.

I spent the rest of the season wondering what happened to her, Having spent most of the season at that ride I can safely say she didn’t return. Later that summer i was promoted to an area supervisor, And avoided that ride like the plague. Over the years the park struggled to keep the ride running consistently, and while in its final hour it was still extremely popular, the mear thoughts of upgrading the rides control system to W2K compliance made management cringe.

If you know what ride I’m talking about, Feel free to PM me.

Until next time…