Union Reunion

Tonight we got together with Nick Kuwada, his girlfriend, and a couple of their friends for Nick's birthday. Nick and I go back to high school (maybe middle school?). We also went to college together at the University of Utah where we both worked at the student union as building managers. It was a fun, crazy job. Just to share some samples of the many things we did there:

• Shifts from 4pm to anywhere from 11:30pm to 3am (sometimes the whole night if there was a LAN party).
• Given way too much responsibility / free reign over the building.
• Bringing lawn chairs onto the roof and inviting girls to watch the sun set over the Great Salt Lake.
  
• Covering the information desk, the "rec desk" (where they sold candy and rented out pool tables), and the bowling alley when they needed a break. There was a girl whose name neither of us could remember, but she would ask for a break about every 15 minutes. I hated working when I saw her name on the schedule.
  
• Coordinating events including but not limited to:
• Magic The Gathering tournaments
• All-night LAN parties
• High School Dances
• Bahai Club
• Campus Crusade for Christ
• A Bangladeshi Wedding that went way too late. (I sat in the kitchen waiting and waiting and waiting for hours. I didn't have the heart to kick them out.)
  
• The Canadian olympic team's rowdy parties in 2002
• LDS president Gordon B. Hinckley talks
• Blackalicious, The Shins, Macy Gray concerts
• The Objectivist Club, the leader of which started stalking me when she found out my middle name is Rourk
  
• Speaking of weddings, there was another building on campus that would "borrow" us from time to time to manage after hours events. The Alumni House. I once spent three hours picking up rice in the cracks in the pavement, because the bride insisted on throwing rice, and I was worried about the birds. Another time the mother of the bride came and found me sleeping upstairs. I thought the door was locked: "Oh, we couldn't find you. We need help with the DVD player." *yawn*... "Ok, I'll be right there. Just let me put my shoes on."
  
• The building was a very strange 1950s experiment in postmodern architecture. There was this one wing that had a second floor, except it was called the third floor, and it didn't have an elevator. But there were classrooms up there, so legally it had to be accessible. So they retrofitted a wheelchair lift on the stairs. Problem was, it ran on batteries which, when fully charged, could either get you all the way up or down, but not both. So if you went up you had to wait four hours to come back down. I usually tried to reschedule people to other rooms, but sometimes you couldn't and several times I was verbally abused by obese women on rascals. But they were right. If there was a fire or something...
  
• One time there was a LAN party and a high school dance at the same time. The gamers liked to put their Alienware computers on these maintenance carts we had and push them the party room. To get to the party room you had to go through the ballroom, where the dance was. Mixing both extremes of the teenage social spectrum is entertaining, to say the least. We ended up having to sneak the geeks through the back hallway, like a hidden passageway.
• Speaking of hidden passageways, there were tunnels in the boiler room downstairs that went to other buildings. One time I spent my whole shift spelunking... Past the "Danger Asbestos" signs, past the rat droppings... Only to come out on the other side of the boiler room!
• Outside of the boiler room was rape alley. So called because sometimes we'd find strange men back there, and it was very dark, and a female employee finally insisted that they install lights and give us pepper spray on our massive, prison warden keychain.
• We had keys to everything, including the back rooms of the food court, where I would go to get condiments, fountain soda, and packs of paper bowls and plastic spoons for my Easy Mac.
• They had these parties we were supposed to manage put on by a student volunteer group that would go until 4am, Crimson Nights. Seemed like there was always some kind of gang fight or violence of some sort. I must've helped fill out about ten police reports.
• I'd disable the BIOS passwords and remove the Windows passwords on the nice office desktops that belonged to my boss and her boss... And we'd install Warcraft 3 and play all night, often locking ourselves in the office and telling everyone else we were too busy to give breaks.
• I never liked kicking people out, but I was good at it. Homeless guys who booed at me when I turned off the History Channel and told 'em we were closing. The weird guy who would sexually harass the girls at the rec. desk. Cranking on the lights at the high school dance that was going too late. They were all no problem. The worst: the student government. They'd have their little meetings where they'd play government. I was always told to never let them go past 11pm, that it was a problem. Usually around 11:45pm I'd finally tell them to leave. It would go like this. I'd walk in and tell them they had to leave in 15 minutes, they were already late. They'd look at me like, "who does this guy think he is? I'm student body president." I'd come back and tell them to take their little UN nameplates and leave the building. Usually they were in disbelief and would scoff at me, because I interrupted some very important legislation. Then I'd call the person at the information desk on my walkie talkie and tell them to call security. Then they'd leave.

Anyway, I could go on listing things but I realized this probably isn't as exciting to read as it is for me to remember. Despite all the adventure, I mostly did homework, read books, and watched Strongbad Emails. But it was a great job.