Father’s Day

I know Father’s Day was over a week ago, but I’ve been busy with moving and had limited Internet access and limited time. Also, I had a visitor yesterday that had played Father’s Day for his first time ever, which inspired me to take a few minutes to write.

Unlike Mother’s Day, which was the first day in a long time we didn’t have enough players to play a game, Father’s Day was quite busy. Actually it was one of our busier days that we’ve had and combined with the Saturday the day before, was the busiest two day weekend we’ve had in our eight year history. This was great considering we didn’t have an advertised special of any sort for Father’s Day this year. We did let dads (and moms) play free as we have every year since we’ve been open, but just didn’t do any advertising this year.

My visitor wasn’t a friend, but rather someone who had played on Father’s Day, had forgotten a hat at the field that was important to him, and came to my home to retrieve it. I found out he was retired, so it wasn’t a big deal for him to take the time to come out. It was an hour and a half roundtrip for him, but the hat was a memento from his job he had retired from, so he wanted it back. Besides, it was a beautiful day for a motorcycle ride, which is what he and his wife arrived on.

I had to stick around our new home to wait for the telephone guy (why is it those guys can’t give you a better idea when they are going to arrive?) and they were in no hurry, so I had a chance to talk to them a bit.

It was his first time ever playing and since we cater to a lot of new players and obviously want more new players in the future, his feedback was of interest to me. He said he had a great time. Both he and his wife had no idea that paintball was such a big deal. They had no idea that there were that many people who played the game. They had done some research on the Internet and stumbled upon a review site for paintball fields. Apparently our field has some good reviews so they decided to try us out. They said that during their visit they talked to several people at our field and everyone. They heard nothing but good comments from everyone there. It’s these kind of conversations that really inspire me to go on with what I’m doing, even if I’m never going to become a millionaire running a paintball field.

The only negative feedback I got was that the porta-potties were a little rank. I told them that it was probably the busiest weekend we’ve ever had and that combined with the hot weather, definitely wasn’t a good combination. I apologized for that, although I’m not quite sure what I can do about it, but I will give it some thought, and see if we can’t at least improve the situation. A paintball field owner’s problems vary greatly. Who knew that one day I would be pondering how to make porta-potties smell better?