A couple of days have passed now, such that i think i can talk about an unpleasant incident with some degree of objectivity. As i’ve mentioned in a couple of recent posts, i’m the partnership coordinator for the Raleigh tournaments. People contact me if they need a partner, and i try to pair them up with others who are also looking. Usually people contact me in advance, and the week before the tournament is always a flurry of emails and phone calls about partnerships. During the 4-day tournament, as well, i will find out about people whose partners got sick and would still like to play, and we play catch-up at the last minute trying to find fill-in partners.
The most activity by far always surrounds the Sunday Swiss teams. This event is different than the Thurs/Fri/Sat events, and requires a team of four. So the most common request i hear is “my partner and i need teammates for the Swiss.” Second most common is “i am available to fill in as a 4th for a Swiss team.”
I try my best. We don’t have guarantees for partnerships but we do what we can. Especially if you let me know several days in advance, your likelihood of getting a partner is pretty high.
This tournament seemed busier than most in regards to partnerships. Saturday evening i thought i had everyone paired up, but that night i fielded two phone calls regarding partnerships for the next day. Sunday morning i had two more phone calls to deal with, so we raced to get ready and were out the door pretty quickly to get to the playing site. Fortunately all these problems were easily resolved, and it was a pretty low-stress morning.
Until.
At the hotel, I was sitting in my usual spot next to the table where entries were being sold. I had been there for 10 minutes when someone came over to me and said “Audrey, this lady over here has been standing here and needs your help.” Hey, i have a name tag on and everything, why hasn’t she approached me? By the way, it is 9:35 am. Game time is 10 am.
So she says she needs partners for today. “Oh,” i say. “Let me see what i can do. How many master points do you have?” She seems unsure, “Um, 23.” For those of you who don’t know about bridge, 23 is not very many. We call folks with less than 300 points “299ers” and they are generally considered novices. I often get partnership requests from the 299ers because they don’t know many people in the bridge community yet. It also isn’t surprising that a 299er pair wouldn’t necessarily know the drill about Sunday Swiss or that they could have better success if they had talked to me a few days in advance. But that’s perfectly allright.
“We sent you an email last night,” she says, “didn’t you get it?” I wrinkle my brow – i am pretty sure i checked my email last night, but i did not see an email about this. So i tell her i did not, but that i will make some calls and see what we can find. “Well, we did send an email.” She seems quite anxious to play. As it happens, there is also a single person (a 299er) who wouldn’t mind playing, but she doesn’t seem to mind either way. So if i can find just one person, we’ll have a team. So i cold-called about ten of the 299ers. (Cold-calling sucks, by the way. You sound like a telemarketer.)
No luck. I ask a few other players if they have any ideas. In the meantime, the pair who sent the email is getting more and more agitated. As if i’m not working my butt off on their behalf. She keeps standing too close while i make phone calls and making annoyed faces. And she makes that impatient noise in the back of her throat.
At 9:55 we still have no team for them. In walks a pair of 299ers who thought they could play a pair game (as they had the previous days). I pounce upon them and said “It’s OK! As a happy coincidence, i have someone you can team with for Swiss teams – would you still like to play today?” They are thrilled, and i introduce the four of them. I apologize to the single 299er lady, but she is happy to get on about her day. I am relieved to be done for the day.
And then.
Stomp, stomp stomp. I hear heavy footsteps heading my way and an abrupt voice barks right next to my ear. “We have a problem,” the email lady says. “This will never do. They only have 80 points!”
“Oh, excuse me. I thought you said you had 23 points?”
“No i did not. I never said anything of the sort. We have 23 hundred points.” I see. It looks like i’ve been calling the wrong sorts of folks to find a team for them, but there’s nothing i can do about that now. I don’t really know what she wants me to do at this point, either, but she’s standing there in a huff, expectantly looking at me.
She throws her hands up and turns away to go complain about me to our club President, while i go to explain to the 299ers what just happened. That they had been rejected by a snobby bitch who thought she was too good to play with them. They were nonplussed and said they’d just wait to see if she changed her mind.
She comes up to me again and we had this exchange:
Her: I’ll have you know that we drove TWO HOURS to come to this tournament this morning.
Me: You did not… (she cut me off here, i was not trying to disagree with her but she did not let me finish. I was trying to say “you did not give me much advance notice.”)
Her: Yes! We absolutely did. We got up at 6 am and drove here.
Me: And you didn’t play any of the other days? <she shakes her head> And you just got up this morning and decided to drive to our tournament, knowing you didn’t have teammates? WHY would you do that?
Her: Well, we sent an email!
She leaves to go shake her finger at our president some more, and i overhear her talking once more about her damned email. He is trying to calm her down and he is even talking about accommodating her by expanding a 4-man team to a 6-man team (this isn’t very common at smaller tournaments, but it is allowed). I was furious! She was going to get away with behaving all entitled and rude and snooty.
As it seemed she would get her way, i couldn’t stand not saying something, so i pulled her aside:
Me: You know, the gracious thing for you to do would have been to play with the less experienced pair.
Her: Yes, i suppose that would have been the gracious thing to do…
Me: I really don’t appreciate your attitude. You have abused this position. My job is to HELP people who need partners or teammates. It is NOT my job to find partners at the last minute for people who are TOO LAZY to find their own!
I admit i might have raised my voice at the TOO LAZY part. She had a very satisfying jaw-dropped look on her face. I turned away, walked a few steps and then i felt the tears coming. I told someone, “OK i’m going to go cry in the bathroom now.”
Which i did. For the next 5 minutes i was unable to stop the tears. Ladies, does this ever happen to you? I had an emotional moment where i was standing up for myself, and yet i’m the one crying in the bathroom instead of the woman i yelled at.
At 10:05 am, the game started. After all that, the email woman and her partner decided to play with the 299er pair who came in at the last minute (but only after our president assured her that these 299ers were up-and-coming). I also understand that two people blew her out for treating me the way she did – the club president, and a director who happens to be a personal friend. They told her to apologize to me, which she did, an hour later.
The story ends when i got home and checked my email. There it was, in all it’s glory. The email i had heard so much about. The email that apparently justifies treating everyone else like garbage when you don’t get your way. Sent at 2:26 am Sunday.
Yes, 2:26 am. Apparently, this is enough notice to have a team (with more than 80 points) ready and waiting for them when they arrive. Perhaps we should have laid out a red carpet as well.
Tags: bridge
Raleigh is hosting our late winter, early spring sectional this weekend, and once again i am the partnership coordinator for the tournament. Our 
