February 2026 Entry:
A lot happened in the shortest month of the year.
MISC=========================
- Went to El Kiosko after work (02.03). I have passed by this place a few times on the way back home from work. Before the cold snap came in, I looked it up and there are lots of locations around the area. Not only that, but they had an excellent menu in the food, snack, drink, and dessert categories. The plan was to go there towards the end of January, but again the cold snap. I cemented a day that I would be opening and would leave before 7PM. They close at 9PM, but that seemed a little too late (even though I've done similar in the past).
I was greeted by the worker in Spanish. After I replied with "hi" they switched to English, ha. I didn't see it on the menus in the vicinity, so I asked about what I planned to get; a trole. She directed me to where all the flavors were, I asked for sizes, got the biggest size, and she said I could get three flavors. I chose (in this order) mango, watermelon, and vanilla. I mentioned I've never had trole so she explained how they're like shaved ice, but they stay solid longer and the flavor is stronger. As she scooped them, I was hoping she'd mix the flavors instead of just piling one after the other and she did (it's like she knows what she's doing, ha). Someone entered the building to pick up an order. At that point, my trole was done and she handed to me and said "see you next time." I gave her a look and she was said "wow, I almost let you go Scott free with that." I sat down at a nearby table as the guy that came in wanted his order. After he was done, I walked up to the counter to pay. I sat down to eat it for a few minutes. I really liked it. The flavors were very distinguishable even when mixed. Before I left, I went to the counter to ask for a lid. I waited for about a solid minute before she poked her head out. "I felt your presence so I poked my head out." Then she pointed out the bell, which was hidden at the counter. She asked if I liked it, and I sure did. I asked for her name (I don't think I gave mine), she mentioned she only works there once a week since she has another job at TopGolf (close by this place), I mentioned where I worked and said I'd give her a card...I had not card, but she said she would look it up, I asked about other options for food and she said they're all good, I mentioned how I would keep this place in mind and try something new next time. We said our byes as another customer walked in.
On the way home, I kept eating the trole. This was similar to a few months back when I had the mason jar of ice cream while coming home from the sister location. It stayed fairly frozen the whole way and only really started to melt an hour later while eating it in my room. Good stuff. As of now, I can definitely recommend the troles from El Kiosko. Hopefully I'll be able to recommend more in the future.
- Ordered some snacks for my last order while having free Amazon Prime. I chose Reese's Filled Pretzels + Turtle Chips (02.05). Never knew about the pretzels, but I knew of the Turtle Chips. I was a little disappointed with the chips. They aren't bad, but I think it was overhyped. Definitely sweeter than what I was expecting. The pretzels were excellent though.
- Ordered a Nintendo 2026 Desktop Calendar (02.08). These normally get sold alongside the NSO Desktop Calendar. I have no idea why they weren't sold at the same time, especially since this was available to purchase towards the end of January. Basically I didn't use January at all.
- I only watched Bad Bunny's Halftime Show during the Super Bowl (02.08). I smiled the entire time. The surprise guests were awesome, the dancing was so good (knew one of the dancers), and the culture was proudly on display.
- Mini-HeXagon meetup (02.10). Originally it was for the night before, but it didn't happen. But NRM was going to help BL with their mail outs and invited others to join. I wasn't able to if it were the night before, but I could now. Headed out around 5:30PM and got there about an hour later. First time seeing NRM's home so I got the tour. Good stuff. BL showed up about half an hour later. My part was writing "thank you" notes and taping down cards and notes to a card. They took care of the heavy lifting. We took a break around 8PM to eat pizza. But the whole time we were chatting it up about many things. While music was playing the whole time, towards the end of the night NRM started picking specific videos to talk about and share with us. Left around 11:30PM. Got home close to 12:30AM. Fun times with the guys.
- Finally went to The Paleta Bar after work (02.12). While I had been there once with others, we decided to go elsewhere as there weren't a lot of places to sit. I kept this on my radar and waited for a good time to go. It wasn't busy so I was able to let the worker know it was my first time and they walked me through the process. I knew the base I wanted; Cookies & Cream. I still use it as a barometer as if that flavor itself isn't good, I wasn't going to like wherever as much. She cut a little piece for me to try and I was surprised with how solid it was, but how easy it was to bite into. And it wasn't as cold as I was expecting, like a popsicle. Best of all, the flavor was strong. So I chose that base. She showed the three dippings/drizzles to choose from; dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and white chocolate. You can choose two and I chose the latter options. Then there were about 6 toppings, Can't recall all, but I chose peanuts and sprinkles. Watching her put it together was cool to see. The base gets put halfway into one dipping and then the other half in the other. Then the toppings were sprinkled on top before ending everything with drizzling the whole thing with the two dipping options again. I paid and sat down to eat it. I was there for maybe 20 minutes eating it and catching on the games I was interested in from Sony's State of Play. I finished, cleaned up, and thanked them as I left.
Still had some free time before meeting others so I went to the Marquee. Walked the whole area and noticed a few changes (new restaurants), but nothing big. I stopped by the escape room business there and asked about their rooms. The worker was very kind and informative. I mentioned I had done one of their rooms many years ago and they mentioned that room changed over time to be one of the toughest rooms they offer. I asked if I could tour some of the rooms, but they were occupied. I let them know I worked for another escape room and we bantered back and forth. They mentioned how they get a lot of business from the Dave & Busters as parties would simply feed into them. I thanked her for her time and finally went into Dave & Busters. I had been there maybe within the last year because I remember that the new changes were implemented. It's smaller than the one by the sister location so walking around didn't take long. The plan was to find a game or two and spend time trying to win a prize or two. Unfortunately nothing stuck out. And the minimum per game card was $25 and I was only looking to spend $10-$20 at best. Since that was a bust, I figured I would lie down in my car and catch up on social media and a podcast while waiting for about another hour. I did that for about half an hour when I had an idea.
I went to the old HER Memorial location. We already knew it was occupied by a live game show company for about a year now, but neither of us went to it or have been to their specific live game show. It's called Game On. I was worried they would be closed since it was around 7PM and usually businesses like that without bookings would close early, but they were open. The person in the lobby asked if I was part of the party that was happening as they were waiting for a few late comers. He gave me the business spiel and I asked if I could take a tour. Since one room wasn't occupied, he double checked it and then opened the door to let me in. It was large. Larger than the ones I've been to. There was an actual audience section where they were still part of the team. 6-50 players with options to swap out. 3 different games to play. BYOB and has a snack section where I guess you can bring food or do catering. I asked if it was okay to film it so I could show it to my friends "to convince them to play." I was given the okay to do so. In my head I was checking off "this used to be this room and this used to be this room." Then he showed me the other side where they take photos and have a gift shop. When I looked down the hall I realized that's where the second room was. I mentioned how large this was and the worker said that they bought the business that used to be behind us too. Honestly, impressed. I sent the videos I took with the information I learned to the HERetirees. I wouldn't mind going there once.
Then I finally met up with my friends at 8PM. One of them I had not seen in a long time since they had shoulder surgery and had to stay home to heal. It was great catching up with them and just having fun with them.
- I posted my thoughts on Love and Leashes (02.16, 02.14, 01.28). The dates you see are when I posted them, the day I forgot to post them, and the day I originally watched it. This was recommended by HD during the HeXagon Holiday/Birthday/White Elephant dinner event. It's a good movie. It was a good balance of silly and serious about the world of BDSM. The main draw of seeing SeoHyun do things and hear her say things...crazy. She pulled it off, but knowing who she is and the image she fashioned for herself, this role was on the opposite end of the spectrum for her. Definitely recommend it.
- Decided to treat myself to a dessert during this long work week by going to Angels' Churros N Chocolate (02.17). There were a couple other choices, but I wanted to go for something different and it had been a while since I had a churro. Their website only speaks on their churros, but their Instagram showed so much more including variations, drinks, other desserts, and more. It's about 15 minutes away from work. Small venue, but it looks so good. You can feel the culture. I let the worker know it was my first time there and he was good at letting me know what I was getting. He was anxious and admitted he sometimes worries when he talks to customers, but I reassured him that he did well. I went with a Churro Pop since I never had seen a churro like that before. I chose the Oreo toppings and substituted the white chocolate with milk chocolate. I asked him to pack it to-go just in case I don't finish it. I ended up eating it all, ha. It was good, it wasn't heavy, and I didn't feel bad eating it all in just a few minutes. I probably should have saved some for later, but I needed the distraction. Thumbs up for me. I might order some randomly for coworkers some day.
- After taking a shower, I saw some messages left on my phone from a friend I had not heard from in a while, CN (02.20). She thanked me for being part of her life during a difficult time. We exchanged pleasantries and caught up a little bit. She's definitely gone through some rough times, but is now a better and important person to her kids and her husband.
- Celebrated two birthdays for HeXagon members (02.20). I stopped by NRM's home at 3PM to hang out beforehand. I helped bring in some tubs of toys, games, DVDs/Blu-rays. It was fun seeing what was in them. Lots of classic stuff. He started to sort them out to things he'd keep and sell. I took a few small Mega Man figures and a dollar I found, ha. We then carpooled to Dream so that he could buy Wendy's vinyl. I saw that they had the aespa guitar pick packs. Of course it was a blind bag so it's not guaranteed what you'd get. I counted 10 bags and then picked the 4th bag because of the 4 members. I opened it up in his car and to my surprise, I pulled Karina's guitar pick. I have it back now, yay.
The drive to Itaewon Pocha was close by. Got there around 6PM. It's been a few years since I last went there with the HeXagon crew. Since then, they have extended to have karaoke rooms available. We ate inside there and slowly the members arrived. There were 7 of us total. We ordered our food (our server told us not to buy the bulgolgi tacos, I had the spicy sea snails with noodles), he showed us how the karaoke machine worked, and we proceeded to have fun. It was neat that you could use your phone and YouTube to pick songs as a secondary option to the machine. Unfortunately about an hour in, their wi-fi went down. It happened at the time I wanted to share WingedVoX Revolution with everyone so the joke was that I broke it, ha. The wi-fi was down the rest of our time there so we had to use the built-in remote and songs. While we found songs to enjoy (it was funny when the different backgrounds matched with songs we sang, ha), we could not access all of them. We could see that a wi-fi icon would pop up on some of them and that's what we figured tied them together. It was very defeating to search for a song, get excited, hit enter, and it didn't play. We originally were going to be there from 6PM-10PM, but decided to leave an hour early. There were just too many instances of searching for a song that we couldn't sing. NRM mentioned that to our server and he understood. We weren't angry as we did have a good time. It just dampered our moods. At least our server was kind and would joke around with us.
We ended up going to Feng Cha at the Marqee to get drinks and carry on more fun conversations. I got the Jasmine Apple Green Tea and it was okay. I feel like every time I get a drink from that company, it's always just okay. Not bad, but more of a "I guess I'll finish my drink." Half the crew parted around 10PM while the rest of us went next door to Rocket Fizz to check out their snacks. NE found a few things to get for himself and his mom. NRM spotted a water jug that had instructions for a game. The top was cut open and it was filled with water. The objective was to drop a quarter in and for it to fall into a shot glass at the bottom. I used the dollar I found at NRM's earlier and exchanged it for quarters and gave one to each of the members. NRM went first and missed, but noted how it falls and floats uniquely. BL tried next and was close. NE was third and missed. I was last and NRM suggested I break the water surface before dropping it in. I also turned my coin a quarter of the way so that it falls differently. I did that and actually got it to hit the shot glass. Then I wanted to try again, ha. NRM donated a dollar he had and we got our quarters and went in order again. With my final attempt, I broke the water surface again, turned the coin a quarter again, but this time dropped it more to the right instead of in the center...and it went in, yay. The prize for winning is a free drink, I asked one of the workers earlier about their favorite drinks and she suggested to get a Jones Cane Sugar Soda. Even though I just had green apple at Feng Cha, I got that flavor as the others ones didn't speak out to me. I decided to not drink it right away and save it for later since we just had drinks.
After that, we checked out NE's new car, NRM and I got gas, we avoided stand-still traffic on the way back, had some good talks, and made it back to his place a little before midnight. We parted ways and I made it home around 12:15AM. Fun times.
- ESPN replayed the recent Royal Rumble on TV (02.22). Sure there were commercials, but it's not like I didn't know what the outcomes were. It was nice to get a chance to see things play out.
- Took the day off for a dentist appointment (02.24). A normal routine cleaning. I did have to wait about 15 after my scheduled time of 10:30AM, but I was fine with that. Only things that were pointed out were a couple of lower teeth needing more work than the rest. Once everything was done, I scheduled my next one for June 30th, which was sooner than I thought.
Went to see BL at work afterwards. It was 10 minutes away and I never really go visit them. It wasn't super busy customer-wise, but he was busy working. Once there was a bit of free time, he called me over and we talked for a bit. He mentioned one of the higher-ups was there so he couldn't have too much fun. Exchanged a few pleasantries for a few minutes before leaving. I didn't want to accidentally do/say something to get him in trouble. Plus I just wanted to say hi since he was close by.
Then I headed out to surprise Rannchan at work. She was on the way back so I figured why not. I only had to wait for one customer in front of me before getting to talk to her. It wasn't super busy so we had time to catch up. After a few minutes, I asked if the boba place in the plaza was good. She said it was mediocre. I didn't want to drive far to get anything so she mentioned the Dutch Bros in the plaza. I haven't had Dutch Bros in months and offered to get her something. I got a Blended tropical lemonade with poppin' boba. Brought the drinks back to Rannchan to talk some more. I think I was there for about half an hour total before going home.
I was settled in at home for about half an hour before BL messaged me around 1:15PM. He was wondering if I was still in the area to get lunch. I mentioned I was already home, but could go out again to meet. I had not even finished my Dutch Bros drink yet, ha. He mentioned a few places, but I recommended a new (to me) place online called Poke Burri. He agreed to it and I met him in half an hour. The place had a lot of options with poke bowls and sushi burritos being the main attraction. There were also sushi burgers, sushi pizza, sushi donuts, and ramen. Plenty of stuff to come back for. I ordered a lunch special where you can pick and choose what you wanted for an appetizer (Tokyo fries), a drink (dragonfruit lemonade), and and entree (Crabbritto). BL joined a few minutes after and also got a similar lunch special and some wings (I got to try one, spicy). Spent a good 90 minutes enjoying our meals and chatting it up. Left around 3:30PM.
The only other thing that happened was that the new car was now over 10,000 miles. It might have happened the night before, but I noticed it when it was already 62 miles over.
- I watched Bon Appetit, Your Majesty (02.16-02.28). I've had it recommended to me by multiple people and have been told "I immediately thought of you" during the Gee reference. I liked the series. I might have more gripes about it (slow start, romance, etc), but the positives outweigh the negatives for me. My biggest gripe was simply the runtime of each episode. It's harder for me to set aside 90 minutes daily without thinking I have other things to dedicate time to. I would have been okay if the series had more episodes that were only an hour each. There was a good balance of action, drama, and humor with the cooking being the main draw. The food looked amazing. I would have eaten every single dish made. When they ate food, their exaggerations and graphics used reminded me of Food Wars. I definitely see why it's popular and I would recommend it to others.
And yes, I'm aware I watched two pieces of media involving members of Girls' Generation. Maybe that was intentional, ha. But shout out to Kang Hana who was in there. She was one of my favorite repeat guests on Running Man so I was delighted to see her in this. I did recognize a few other actors and actresses, but didn't know them by name.
- I don't know when, but I injured my left wrist this month. It definitely happened towards the beginning of the month as I recall a friend recommending massages to do at home and that happened prior to Valentine's Day. The thing is, it doesn't hurt all the time so I forget that it's injured. It hurts the most when I turn my wrist or if I carry something only in that hand. I've shifted how I do things to use my right hand more and I found a soft brace I've used in the past and wear it often (02.22). It's not broken and it's not like I can't do what I normally do. It just hurts. Hopefully it goes away over time.
GAMES=========================
- Demo Showcase Shorts continues. 22 demos tried with 18 still on deck. A lot got added consistently throughout February. 6 were added on 02.11 and 5 on 02.12. 6 were specifically from Kairosoft and those were lined up back to back. A couple notes; Pocket Academy 3 was a demo...but there is no Pocket Academy 2...but there is a Pocket Academy Zero, ha. And Pragmata was the only one I added to my official wish list.
Extra note; I started to play demos specifically with the joy-con controllers. Might have started that last month, but I don't recall. The only exception might have been PRAGMATA.
- One of my favorite Final Fantasy songs was uploaded to their official YouTube page; Final Fantasy X-2 - Kuon -Memories of Waves and Light-. I really don't remember when I first really liked the song. I didn't even like Final Fantasy X-2 when it first released and waited on it. The only thing that I can remember is that I had the song downloaded and listened to it on repeat on a bad day and it really helped me relax and feel better. One of my final streams was for THEATRHYTHM FINAL BAR LINE and I wanted to play Kuon. I believe I was going to make it the last song I played. Unfortunately it was on a list of several songs in the game where it could get the stream muted or flagged for copyright. I provided a link to that list to anyone that was there that requested a song. While I could have not cared since it was one of the final streams to occur, I didn't want to risk it. But that's how much I like the song; I wanted to play it last.
- Nintendo Direct: Partner Showcase (my standouts) (02.05):
- Orbitals
- SUPER BOMBERMAN COLLECTION (later today, physical August)
- FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH (06.03.26)
- CONSOLE ARCHIVES (Cool Boarders, Ninja Gaiden II)
- DEMOS (Pragmata, Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection (available later today)
- amiibo (Resident Evil: Requiem amiibo - Grace, Leon)
- Finished FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE from FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE INTERGRADE (02.01-02.10). I've had multiple people offer their PlayStations to play it when it was originally released and I always rejected it. I was content with watching the cutscenes on YouTube. After so many years later, I finally got to play it. Outside of the gameplay and seeing all the in-betweens I missed between cutscenes, I got to hear the Japanese voice cast. That was one thing I would have done had I streamed it and probably get flack for. But as I said during my Grandia playthrough "I've heard the English voice cast already. Plus I would have naturally played it in Japanese regardless."
This game was tougher than I thought it would be. It took a while before my first death. But the biggest extra hurdle for me was Leviathan. Each time I fought it, I could get it to 1/4 or 1/5 of its health left before it wiped out the entire party because I didn't heal them effectively to take a tidal wave. Even after leveling up through the story progression, I still couldn't do it. Then it was when you get into the Shinra building and the opportunity came up again, I thought to myself "if only I had infinite HP." And I remembered the streamlined progression options. I used them in the demo, but wanted to play the actual game as is. I turned on the infinite HP option, finally beat Leviathan, and left the option on. I probably lost 2 hours of playtime on my multiple Leviathan attempts alone. But I knew we were close to the end and I wanted to wrap things up. I could have turned on more of the streamlined progression options, but I wanted to experience how difficult these fights would have been. So I still had to put in the work without having to worry about healing the team.
Overall, I enjoyed my playthrough of it. There were parts I remembered and parts I totally forgot. For some reason, I thought there was more, but 40 hours felt right.
Funny side note; Claudia popped up in rotation on Crush Crush the same day I beat Remake, ha.
- Fishing Planet was the free-to-play game of the month (02.11). It's fishing. It's quiet and not exciting. You have to be patient just like you would when you actually fish. Graphics aren't great (lots of pop-in and not spectacular looking). The optional things you can buy with real money were sold at ridiculous amounts. While there are a lot of upgrades you can get through playing or paying and there are a plethora of fish to catch, this wasn't for me.
- Ecco The Dolphin was the Genesis NC game of the month (02.11). I played this when I was younger (cousin probably owned it). The first three levels were familiar. I also knew what I was getting into with the game itself. It's not an easy one and the controls take getting used to. I had a video guide ready and was able to do well until I hit Island Zone (9th-10th level?). I checked to see how many more levels were left and decided to just use a password to get to the last level. I really was planning to play through the remaining levels, but the fact that some needed a bit of accuracy through traversal was time consuming as I hit a few of those in what I played. I had the passwords at the read too so I knew it was there as an option. No matter what I was going to play the last level, which was still tough without rewinds and battle the Vortex Queen. And I finally got to see the ending for the first time to my recollection. I know I've seen others play the game and even beat the Vortex Queen, but didn't remember how the ending played out. But what's done is done.
I knew when picking a small theme for the free-to-play and NC games that this batch was going to be tough.
- Uncharted Waters: New Horizons was the SNES NC game of the month (02.13). Notice the theme for the last three games yet? I knew ahead of time I wasn't going to beat this, but I wanted to give it a try and to fit the theme. I found things I liked about it like the characters and the music. But everything else felt so slow. The story started off slow, character movement was slow, battles were slow. If it weren't as complex and if it weren't slow, I would have at least tried it for a couple of hours. I was done within one hour.
- Got my copies of the Virtual Boy + Cardboard Model for NSO (02.16). These are solid. While I have little experience with the Virtual Boy, the replica felt just like the original. The cardboard version is excellent to and part of me thinks I might lie down playing with that version a little more rather than sitting up with the regular model. I only tried it for a little to make sure they work and to look at the settings. I am glad that I can wear my glasses while using either model.
- The second game off the Capcom Fighting Collection 2 was Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium 2001 (02.14-02.19). Calling this game my favorite fighting game (or at least top 3) will let you know how I feel about this. It's so good and it holds up. Fighting Shin Akuma and Ultimate Rugal were tough as heck though. Not that I was specifically trying to get to them, but any time I did fight them, it took many many many tries.
- Played the Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. World Stage Open Beta Test (02.20). The game looks so good. Watching matches was fun and intense. I've just never been good at Virtua Fighter. Wanted to at least beat arcade mode once (used Wolf) and I did. I did not beat Dural though.
- Returned to FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE INTERGRADE to play FF7R EPISODE INTERmission (02.22). Much like Remake, I watched the cutscenes for this, but I did not remember a lot of what happens in the middle. Mainly remembered the beginning and ending. I gave myself a couple days to beat it, but it only took a few hours. Sure, I looked up HowLongToBeat ahead of time and saw the timeframe, but didn't really believe it for some reason. It took one day and under 7 hours to do it. I would have spent a little more time with it if I was trying to do all the Fort Condor stuff. But after a few matches, I realized it wasn't clicking for me and continued on.
I also took advantage of some of the streamlined progression options like I did with REMAKE, but early this time. I kept max gil on so I bought at least one of everything and stocked up on healing items so I wouldn't have to worry about it. And I only had to max out HP for fighting Ramuh. That was a tough fight without (lost in less than 5 minutes each attempt). I did lose a few fights throughout, but the game wasn't as difficult as REMAKE.
I liked it overall. Taking a break after REMAKE helped as I was excited to jump into it rather than continue through it right away. It may have been only one extra day, but it was nice to get back into after a few weeks removed.
- 3-D Tetris was the first game I tried on the Virtual Boy NC (02.23). This was a good chance to test the two Virtual Boy players. I started with the traditional set up. It was very good, but I was having pains leaning and sitting up to play it. I switched and played mostly with the cardboard set up while lying down. At first I kept the joy-con attached to the system, but I wasn't feeling relaxed. Having them removed with the cardboard sitting on my face was the best for me.
The game itself was very interesting. The main crux is that it plays like Tetris. You get five layers that you can stack with everything being a 5x5 square. So 5x5x5. That adds to the strategy of placing pieces down. The original setting has the cube area constantly rotating. I tried that for a bit, but later would stop it and keep it centered. The pieces being movable in 3D was a great touch as it again adds to the strategy. Thoe paired pieces surprised me as I really had to think about placing them down. There were a good amount of modes too. Traditional non-stop was what I spent the most time with. Centered was okay. And Puzzle makes you think to place the pieces provided in the correct spots.
Even though I can compliment the game a lot, it wasn't for me. It's not just the fact that I'm not great at Tetris in general, but it just felt slow. It will speed up the further you go in traditional mode, but it's most likely slow because of it being 3D and needing players to process it properly especially at this age of early 3D. It's not bad, but it's not for me.
- My Switch copy of Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution arrived (02.24). The hat came packed with it. The shirt came in a couple of months ago and I decided to hold off on taking a photo of it until having everything. While I have the GBA copy that came in last year and actually works, I knew I wasn't going to play it that way. This is currently scheduled for September.
- Galactic Pinball was the next Virtual Boy NC I tried (02.25-02.27). Figured to ease myself into the system with short simple games. At least this one had an ending that seemed attainable. Credits rolled if you reached 50 million points. That meant a lot of rewinding and only sticking to one board (I didn't try the rest). I thankfully chose the one that had a mini-game where you pilot Samus' ship to shoot down enemies. The physics in general felt a little off and the action itself was on the slow end. That might have been due to the 3D aspect.
I did take a lot of rest after a session of 10-15 minutes and played mostly with the cardboard console while laying in bed. I could have reached 50 million points faster had I known there was a loss bonus for losing a puck. I got 50 million, let the puck drop, and the bonus accumulated to 20 million meaning I had 70 million by the end, ha. Then it took a couple of minutes to let the remainder of my pucks fall and then credits appeared, yay. Not a bad game by any means, but there are definitely way better pinball games to play.
And I did make an effort to try and crop the images to make them look better when posting them online. It's the easiest with an IG story as I could simply zoom in. But I tried making a template with Canva. I got something to work, but I wasn't very satisfied by it. Not only that, but it wasn't particularly simple and reliable to replicate each time. I'll take another stab at it next time.
WORK=========================
- Simple Monday (02.02). At the beginning of my shift at 4PM, HL and I talked about the final touches for the Valentine's package (she'll look up stuff and buy them later in the week). There were only two bookings before she left. During that time, I was working on a specific IG story. It involved an image for one of our rooms, but split into multiple pieces. I mentioned it last month that I tried looking up stuff for it. While I couldn't find one that did it in the shapes of jigsaw puzzles (at least the way I needed it), I went with simple rectangle frames. Then it was all about putting them together and comparing it with the original image to make sure they lined up. This again took a very long time (at least an hour). Then I finally got it the way I liked, prepped the post, and sent it out. I posted it to a few friends to get more eyes on it as I was very proud of it. The small unfortunate thing was that two of the images were a tiny bit off. They were edge pieces so there was a high possibility no one saw it.
At the end of the day when there were no customers, I swept and mopped the bathrooms, hallways, lobby, bar, and control room. I was hoping this would have gone faster, but I was slower than usual because my back was hurting a lot for some reason. I was even sweating a bit as I was doing it. Originally I wanted to leave at 9PM, but ended up leaving at 9:20PM.
- Opened on a Tuesday (02.03). Before I arrived, Agent Ocean texted me about the story I put on IG and how the ladies really liked it. He wants me to do it for the sister location as well (I need access to the account) and to work on advertising some of our rooms for Friday the 13th. I did throw suggestions at him throughout the day, but got no approval so I let those ideas sit.
At the beginning of the shift, I got a phone call from a customer. It was typical stuff, but she mentioned that she had twins and how planning it was tough especially since one's a boy and one's a girl. She brought up how holidays go and mentioned Lunar New Year to which I said I forgot that it was happening soon. I mentioned how I forgot since I'm not "that Asian" and how before I wasn't always invited to Lunar New Year events. She felt bad, but I said it's understandable since Filipnos don't celebrate Lunar New Year. She said how there are going to be events in town and suggested for me to go to some. She was hoping she'd see me for the birthday they're planning, but it would be on a day off. Then she joked that maybe we'd see each other for Lunar New Year, ha. It was a nice lighthearted 15 minute conversation to start the day.
The whole time I was there, there were 3 teams total. During that time, HL and I were working on different things and getting opinions on stuff (Valentine's project, other side projects, etc). Other than that, I swept and mopped our rooms minus one since it was in use and has a carpet floor. As I was on the phone with a customer, the ladies and Agent Ocean arrived. They were at the third location and came back to drop Agent Ocean off, but they talked to us for a bit. Said they were impressed with the location, brought up some of the worries, let us know what rooms were being installed there, etc. They gave me compliments in person about the stories I've been posting and asked to do it on the main feed now to make them easier to share. I'll start to do that with the latest one I made. It'll just be a slideshow instead, but now I have to resize them, ha, Originally I was going to leave at 6PM, but that's when they showed up. Ended up leaving only a half early at 6:30PM.
- Came in at 3PM on Thursday (02.05). KH left within an hour per usual. I did a bit of organzing as there was a lot of stuff left out in the lobby area. I also made corrections to some (not all as I didn't see all of them or some were posted) Valetine's graphics made. They were missing the apostrophe. I also worked on making a post of the multi-image story I made. Had to resize it, resplit it, realign it, and repost it. Again, took longer than it should have.
Only 3-4 teams for the day and one no-show. All of mine were smelly. Shout out to the one team that cosplayed as the Scooby Gang. They were a fun final team of the day. Not much to say about closing as it was simple with no issues. I left at 9:25PM.
- 3PM again on Friday (02.06). I asked Agent Ocean if I could join him for his interview. The person was someone he spoke to when they were a customer. Not a bad interview, but not spectacular (to me). In the end, Agent Ocean said they were hired. That was a first for me as normally there was a waiting/discussion period. But as there weren't so many red flags, I couldn't disagree. Hopefully it turns out well.
We unfortunately had multiple bad teams for one room. One team had a guy that always had a "witty" comment for everything I said. His teammates kept telling him to stop and apologizing on his behalf. I even jokingly tried to kick him out, but I really wanted to. It didn't help that he forced open a door (the team thankfully didn't go in after I chimed them). In the end they had a great time, but another teammate commented that we needed to soundproof the rooms since hearing other teams was "too distracting." The other bad team for that room were two couples. After a while, we figured they came in buzzed. They kept making bad comments and I ended up taking that team from CS. CS also ordered some McDonald's for herself and HL. I only wanted a drink so HL figured it would be cheaper to turn her order into a meal and I could take her drink, thanks. I got an orange Fanta (it's been a while). It was a busy day overall with CS and I leaving before midnight at 11:40PM.
- Mid-shift again for Saturday (02.07). There were some camera issues when I came in. The normal method of getting them back online didn't work at first, but Agent Ocean eventually figured it out. Food picked by the team was Freddy's. I forgot to add anything to my hotdog, but I was fine with it being plain.
The majority of the day was slow. One team for our scary room was a mom and her daughter. The mom was already scared before we started. As I was wrapping up my speech, she asked if I could stay with them. I mentioned that I would go tell the team first and if it wasn't too busy, I would join them. If not, I would still be their Game Master. I let them know and went back and joined them. I said I would let them know when stuff would happen such as when they solved a thing, what to look out for. And I was giving them hints when needed or stood in the way of things. The mom was definitely more anxious than the daughter, but I had to encourage them an equal amount. They became more comfortable over time, but still needed their hints. After they were done, I gave them the normal business spiel. It's been a while since I've done in-room facilitation...and it's been even longer since I gave a customer my phone number. When the mom walked into the venue, I was already attracted. The fact that she asked me to stay with them was extra. She had a good personality and was having fun with her daughter. After they left a review, I gave them a promo code like we normally do, but I also gave an extra card with my phone number on it. Shot my shot. Per usual, I tried to find someone I'm attracted to on Facebook and I did...but there were plenty of photos of her with a partner. I did what I always do and checked for a wedding ring on her hand, but she didn't have one. If she did, I wouldn't have tried. Oh well.
After that, it got busier with last minute calls and walk-ins. We also had some unfortunate incidents happen like a team dropping a soda in one room and not telling us making the floor and a few props super sticky. Agent Ocean was pissed. We had to block the next time block and he ended up mopping the floor twice (I mopped once more before the end of the night). Plus they had a two-year old with them that just kept screaming and they wouldn't control him. Another team was incredibly high. I normally can't tell right away, but you could smell them as soon as they walked in. They were at least not hard to handle although they still lost. One team had someone that looked so much like one of our previous coworkers (others agreed). I got a $20 tip for recommending the package to watch your kids play, which was only $10. And I closed out solo again when there was only one team left. It was a group of Asians that did very well. Barely had to watch them as I was doing my closing duties. I even thanked them for being a great team to end the night on especially after the last bad incidents that happened that night. Once they left, I think I only had their room left to reset and everything else was done. I left around 12:05AM.
- Closing shift on Monday (02.09). There were two teams before I was there. I helped reset the room and then started to find things to do (emails, make gift cards, etc). HL left around 6PM. I did notice she recounted the wristbands even though I did it not too long ago (end of last month or beginning of this month). I also noticed that the cleaning spreadsheet was very empty from last week. The only things marked were what I did; sweeping and mopping. While we had bookings here and there, there was time for cleaning and those were neglected and that made me not want to clean. I spent the majority of the day making future social media posts. I even reached out to CG for a photo and a funny caption, which I borrowed for our mirrored posts.
Then I spent 1-2 hours working on a video. The idea was to highlight the Valentine's Drink Package. I wanted to make a short video and the original idea was to rotate around the display package. I decided to change the fake roses on display because they were both white. I grabbed the large bag of flowers and then figured I could make it rain roses. I needed to set up the party room. I moved things out of the background, moved the chairs out of the way, line up the package with the background, and figured out how to prop up my phone. I moved a nearby table closer and grabbed some books and small wood board games to be the base and wall. Then I grabbed a ladder to stand on top of (out of frame) and sat on top of it with the bag of flowers. After the first try, I knew I needed to grab the taller ladder. Swapped those out and attempted to toss the flowers again. The issue was grabbing the flowers out of the bag was sloppy so my cadence of throwing was always off. I figured a box would be better. Funny that I threw out a box earlier, but we had a small laundry basket that worked out. I tried it with the basket and it was better, but grabbing flowers was still off The next idea was placing the flowers in the basket neatly instead of a pile to make it easier to grab a few. This was way better and the final take I did. It wasn't perfect, but I don't think I could have done it better without anyone else there. (On 02.11 when the video was posted, it came out blurry and it wasn't muted. The service we use didn't have audio options to my knowledge and I'm guessing the video was compressed to hell. Agent Ocean texted me about what happened and I explained and even sent the original to show how it wasn't blurry at all. That was very disappointing as not only did I spend a lot of time on this, but this came less than a week after being praised for my posts. )
Plus I had to stop since there was a last minute booking for a father and daughter. Once they were done, I wrapped up the closing duties, which wasn't a lot. Left around 9:15PM.
- Opened on Thursday (02.12). I did specifically ask to be scheduled to open as I had plans afterwards. There were a few small issues while opening. It commonly and randomly happens when all the countdown timer screens update and we have to put the correct screen up. One of them, the URL was incorrect (how). The other had a pop-up that wouldn't go away so I manually restarted it. Then I couldn't navigate with the mouse. Called up Agent Ocean and he helped me with both. Had a phone call shortly after and really didn't get to do much else the first hour before waiting for the first team of the day. They were a fun team (uncle and niece). They both had a great time and got scared a few times, but highly praised the room. The niece ended up scanning the hiring QR code so hopefully they send their resume soon.
I wrapped up the alcohol inventory in the back as there was a note to do it. KH showed up at 3PM. I was working on social media images to help promote Friday the 13th. Simple in concept, but took a bit to create especially when picking different backgrounds for each. Once that was done, I cleaned the glass surfaces so that something would have been knocked out in cleaning. Had two walk-ins shortly one after the other. I spoke to the grandpa to give him information and even showed him one of the rooms. KH booked the family of two and then took care of them. I called back the person who called at the beginning of the day to further reiterate they were taken care of and prepped some gift cards for auction purposes. I left at 4:30PM.
- Shift at 3PM for Friday (02.13). It wasn't busy at the beginning, but it got busy afterwards thanks to late bookings and a few replays. Once it got busy (around when Agent Ocean left around 5PM) was when I didn't have much time to rest. The times I did, it was probably 5 minutes at most. While I normally won't complain about being busy, my body was aching more than normal. Things had to be re-prioritized too due it being busy such as leaving the party room uncleaned for a few hours until the end of the night. Shout out to the team that left a review about our black toilet, ha. And shout out to the last team for being cool. They were one of the replays of the day and ended up being our final team. They were hanging out a bit outside after we closed so I chatted them up a bit before leaving at 11:40PM.
- Busy Saturday (02.17). There were at max 5 of us until Agent Ocean had to leave around 4PM. RB was recruited from the sister location to help us as they had 7 employees. It was non-stop. I barely sat down to rest as I was going back and forth hosting and exiting teams and resetting rooms. At one point I hurt my knee by moving a little too fast. It was a similar pain I had on my left knee a few years ago, but morseo. I hobbled around a bit until it fixed itself question mark. I didn't do anything different other than be a gentler on it, but at some point it wasn't painful with every movement.
One good thing was that we sold four Valentine's Drink Packages that day, yay. Another good thing was that the birthday party left a nice tip. Before the mom left the tip, she asked how that works. I said that it gets dispersed among the staff working that day if you pay by card or you can give it directly to your Game Host/Master if you have cash. She said she wanted to only tip me. Per usual, I always ask "are you sure" because I want to be fair to the team. She said yes because I gave great service. She didn't have cash, but she asked if I had Venmo. That was a first; giving a customer my Venmo. She scanned my QR code and tipped me $55. She thanked me again and I replied "just doing my job."
At the end of the night as we were closing, I accidentally messed up on a pizza order for the next day. I set it to be delivered an hour later than it was supposed to. It was already late so I couldn't call the pizza place so I set an alarm and wrote a reminder on a sticky-note to call them the next morning. We wrapped up and left around 12:05AM.
- Worked on a Sunday (02.15). Agent Ocean was gone for the conference, HL and KH asked for the day off, no one else was available to work other than myself, AH, and RB. There was a bit of confusion as we thought SC was going to remote for us, but the message was sent to the wrong chat. So it was just us all day. It ended up being AH's longest shift ever. Shout out to her for picking up drinks from HEB (we had no more water bottles and Sprite). Towards the end of the day, RB was also remoting for the sister location after SC's shift was over.
Things that happened that day:
- Hot mom for a party for her daughter. She gave me a hug after everything was done.
- That same party accidentally broke a door for one of the rooms. They didn't know and we didn't know until we went to reset it. Had to quickly assess it, block empty time slots, and call up teams that already booked it to ask if they could switch to a different room. One out of two did. We still had to use it for the next party as there were no other rooms to swap them to. But I told them ahead of time what happened, what to look out for and not do, and that we'd message them once they could go through the door.
- I accidentally charged the wrong balance for one of the parties. It happened to be the party where I spoke with the mom over the phone about Lunar New Year. The thing is they had a receipt that showed they paid, but the booking still showed a balance. Later found out that I charged the next party's balance to them, which was almost double. I only found that out when I had to charge that party. I left a voicemail for the first party apologizing and asking them to come back some time to get a partial refund.
- The teams at the end of the night were cool. One was a return customer from Valentine's Day who came with her girl friends and not her boyfriend. She was the party that wanted to still do the room regardless of the technical issues to which they didn't notice. And one was a walk-in of guys that thought I was young. Turns out I was twice their age. They bought multiple drinks, were fun to talk to, and were a good team to end the night on.
- We reached 1600 reviews that night.
- I made an attempt to fix the door at the end of the night while AH and RB were taking care of closing duties. I FaceTimed one of the ladies. I originally asked Agent Ocean, but he wouldn't be able to help. Some point during the day I was meant to fix it with the ladies over the phone, but it got busy. When we finally got to it, we figured out a few things like why there were zip ties. By the way, during my first attempt to fix it, I asked the manager team if they knew where the zip ties were. They mentioned where, but it wasn't there. Even when on FaceTime with one of the ladies, they said it was at the same place. I actually showed her and it wasn't there. Then it clicked that we used them to tie up some of the props for the room that got replaced. Had to hang up the call at that time, but still texted her about any updates. Plus if we didn't have zip ties, there was no point continuing. RB helped me find them as she was able to find something else that went missing earlier in the day. I tied the lock up, was told which wire was negative (green) and which was positive (white), and then connected the loose wires...nothing. I reset the room a few times just in case and still nothing. Got a text asking to check if anything else metallic stuck to the magnet, which I was taught before, but forgot to try. And no, nothing else stuck to it so there was a possibility that either the wires needed to be replaced or the magnet needed to be replaced or something else was making it so that power wasn't reaching it. But that's where that project ended that night. I blocked time slots for the next few days and messaged HL to call one of the ladies in the morning to get a walk through on what to do.
Shout outs to AH and RB for doing their jobs to a great degree. AH was worried at first, but we kept assuring her that we could handle it. Honestly, having one room out of commission for the majority of the day helped alleviate things. We each got a nice piece of the overall tips for the day (since it was only us working). And thankfully nothing else happened to make the day worse. We left around 10:45PM.
- Busy Monday because of Presidents' Day (02.16). I came in at 4PM and our new trainee CA was already there. Got her a shirt and gave her a tour to start things off. Unfortunately she was not set up to clock-in or use the online training tools. Not only that, but it was busy (HL had to remote for the sister location) because some schools in the area had the day off so we couldn't completely concentrate on consistent training. She got to shadow me a lot if anything, but since it was busy I had to leave her alone a few times to attempt to do some things. She was able to do a few things with supervision like checking customers in, but she definitely needed to be guided. We did make notes for her to check over and read while interacting with customers. The times she did make attempts were around customers that were either repeats or at least very understanding as it was her first day. I kept reiterating that as long as you can say the base script, you'll be fine. I asked her one time to simply read from her phone for the next customers...and she forgot to look at her phone and held it the entire time as she stumbled through her speech. I wasn't harsh, but I was blunt with my critiques.
We also lost some necessary props for one room, but thankfully they were found during the next game. I also had to continue fixing the broken door from yesterday since HL wasn't able to reach the ladies to help when it wasn't busy. Thankfully it was fixed. It would have been fixed the night before, but one of the wires I cut was still too loose. I also processed the refund from the mistake I made on Saturday. The husband came by as it was on his card. He was very understanding and said he probably wouldn't have noticed if I didn't mention anything. I gave him a free beer for having to come out, but he was okay with it since he lives close by. He asked if it was okay to come by just for a drink on random days and I said a small handful of people actually do that.
Closed with CA and CS. There wasn't much for CA to do as the room was already reset and I already showed her and had her do the simple closing duties. Gave her homework of going over the speeches at home. CS also asked to leave at 10PM because they were very tired. I closed up alone (reset one final room, took out the trash, tip tracker, etc). I also made sure to leave an audio note for Agent Ocean about CA's progress and my worries. I left around 10:40PM. Got some gas on the way home.
- Opened on a slow Tuesday (02.17). I only had one booking to take care of (a few more happened after my shift). Spent time prepping gift cards for charities/auctions and swept and mopped the bathrooms and hallways. The person I prepped gift cards for replied fast and showed up half an hour later. I commended them for being the fastest turn around ever for this, ha.
Before I left early around 5PM (supposed to stay until 7PM), I asked HL if there was anything that needed to be done. She brought up how our neighbors across from us had one staff member parked their car in front of our building for a couple of weeks now. She definitely kept track and said that they only would retrieve or put something in their car and that's it. They would leave the car there overnight too. She wished that someone would go over to talk to them so I said I would do it. I checked the car and walked over and talked to the person in the lobby. I asked if they knew whose car that was and kindly asked if they could move it stating that we needed the space in front of our building for customers. He said he'll let them know. I went back to our building, updated HL, and started to head out. And then someone walked in. I saw them at our neighbor's lobby as I was talking about the car. It was his. I noticed he was no longer in his work outfit...which already triggered something in my head. He said I was out of line for asking him to move his car stating that there are no signs saying any space was reserved for anyone, which is true so I agreed on that. I asked why he didn't park on their side of the building and said it was for their customers/patients (pretty much the same reason I asked for him to move his car). He said they don't complain when our customers park in their spots. Their hours are different from ours as they are Monday-Friday only and close at 5PM. So that doesn't explain why his car remained in front of our building after hours and on weekends. The thing is, I didn't bring that up because I specifically cited our customers and not our staff. I stopped talking as at that point I knew he was more upset that I asked him to move his car and I figured there was a personal reason he had to park there and leave his car. But yeah, he kept saying I was out of line and left after a few minutes. I went back to HL who was facepalming and called him an "entitled b!tch." The only thing he really had was that there was no signage. I brought up that he wasn't in his scrubs as he didn't want to misrepresent his company, he didn't address anything when I went to their building and he was listening in, and he left his car after they closed again. I told HL to update the ladies about it as she had talked to them about it. I felt like crap as I knew (and did) think about it on the way home and while my brain was distracted by anything else at home.
- Arrived for my shift at 3PM on Wednesday (02.18). I started prepping training scripts for CA. When she arrived, we quickly got started on things. She mentioned how she practiced her lock speech with a friend at school and it showed. She definitely sounded more confident. I added extra speeches throughout the day as we trained. The plan was to continuously go over them and maybe get to read her speeches from her phone in front of the last team. That opportunity didn't happen as HL had her shadow her and I didn't update her on letting CA read her script because I was busy with another team.
During training, I had one of our iPads on hand as we were in the room CA was practicing for. I noticed that our neighbor that said I was out of line actually moved their car and drove off. It was very surprising. HL noticed too and we were excited he was gone (at least for now).
CA's training was way better compared to her first. She also got to interact with some fun teams. One was a team from the sister location. They remembered me from one of the last times I was there and cited that CG and SP would know who they were as they always used the same team name; Boobs McGoo, ha. They told many jokes and had an overall good time while being critical of a few things. The last team of the night was a group that was there the night before according to HL. They were chill. At the end of the night, they wanted to guess my name. Since they were the last team, I decided to engage with that while sending CA to start learning how to reset the room. The customers took longer than I thought, but they had a good time. There were a few ways they could have found my name out since we had some signs in the lobby that lists the staff and to leave a review. I took 2 of them away, but forgot one that they eventually found. Even then, it was a list of 10+ people that they had to guess. In the end, they thought I was Agent Ocean. One of them said it was either that name or my actual one so they were very close.
After they left, I rejoined CA to help with her reset training. We did nothing but that for her last hour. She was pretty good with only a few things she was unsure of. It's all about working on getting faster and more confident with it. We did a few more closing duties before we left around 10:05PM
- Opened on Thursday (02.19). Not much at the beginning of the day other than setting up the rooms as well as sweeping and mopping the lobby. I eventually did all the cleaning duties listed for the lobby. At one point, a delivery for 7 boxes arrived (6 large, 1 small). At first I was having the delivery man put them in the lobby, but I realized I would have moved them next door after so I asked him if we could move them all there. Thankfully I realized that as he was only 2 boxes in.
During that time, a call for one booking popped up. They asked if they could have 10 people in one room. I mentioned why they normally couldn't, but they were okay with it. They were a fun family with a mix of first-timers and veterans. As they were paying their parts before playing, our normal way of taking credit wasn't working so I had to manually type in 5 different credit card payments. Each time I tried to see if the machine was working properly just in case. And of course it happened on the last one, ha. I was their Game Master too. KH arrived for her shift about 10 after they started.
While they were playing, I worked on an email about doing convention/school appearances. It's something HL and I briefly talked about the other day, but I figured puttin an email out about it to the ladies wouldn't hurt. If they don't think it's worth it, no worries. If they approved, trying it once to see how it goes wouldn't hurt. The other thing I worked on was an Instagram message to a local content creator. I had gotten approval for doing this, but wanted to wait until Valentine's was over so we wouldn't have too many things happening around the same time.
After the family was done, I reset their room and left an hour early around 4:10PM. And that was the end of working 8 days in a row. I drank an apple Snapple to celebrate.
- Saturday at 2PM (02.21). Agent Ocean was back from the conference so I made sure to greet him. Within an hour he told me that he needed to talk privately. We finally got to talk before he left around 6PM. But his first day back from the conference was Friday and he was met with complaints from staff members about me. I just shook my head. He told me how he spoke up and raised his voice for me because it's ridiculous. And he is right about if this continues, I will get frustrated and do something regrettable. I thanked him for having my back like always because he knows what they said makes no sense. If anything more happens from this, you know you'll read about it here.
The day itself was slow to start with an alarmingly low number of bookings. Thankfully it picked up with walk-ins and last minute bookings. A good number of teams were fun too. The fact that we had to close early on a Saturday was a bad sign. I stayed by myself from 10PM to 10:20PM in case we got last minute bookings before blocking the last two and leaving around 10:25PM.
- Monday at 4PM (02.23). Most of the day was spent training CA. She worked more on her speeches and even did them solo towards the end of the day. She's still using her phone, but she knows what she needs to say. But that was also because of neccessity as we had a good chunk of walk-ins and late bookings all at the same time. She even had to learn how to do some Game Mastering as there were times I had to tend to teams or reset rooms she hasn't been trained in yet. Thankfully she seemed comfortable in clicking on what was needed and pretty much knew what needed to be sent clue-wise. Not only that, but her reset for her first room is great and she started to learn to reset a second room. She even remarked how she feels more at ease especially after her first day was hectic.
Some negatives of the day included bad resets from the Sunday team (they didn't click off certain switches and they didn't put everything in the back that needed to be recharged). I forgot to send a message to the team while I was still on duty so I ended up sending one close to midnight when I got home (didn't want to forget). And the final team accidentally spilled their beer in the room. I saw when it happened to so I knew what needed to be done. Whle most of the closing duties were done before then this added more time as the floor was sticky. Good thing it was only a small part of the floor. I left around 11PM and didn't get home until a little before midnight as I stopped to get gas.
Thankfully that last team was really nice. They were a married couple of 20 years having a date night away from their 7 kids. We chatted a bit beforehand and aftewards. They even took the time to leave really nice reviews which were highlighted in our Manager chat room the next day.
- I was late on Wednesday due to an accident that was 5 minutes away from the house (02.25). The original ETA would have been 30 minutes late, but that changed to 15 minutes once I got passed it. When I came in, I saw that the ladies were there having a meeting with KH. I wasn't told and I haven't asked what the meeting was about, but I have a feeling it stemmed from what Agent Ocean told me not too long ago. After their meeting, the ladies ask me to do a small task, but had trouble getting the words out. When KH left the area, I whispered if everything was okay. They replied that KH put in her two weeks notice. After they explained the task they wanted me to do, they left. KH left maybe 10-15 minutes later. CA came in for her training period and I had her do something that was to be done elsewhere, which HL was glad that lined up because she wanted to talk about things. Basically on what and how things will be handled with KH now being gone and shifting tasks and priorities. She also voiced her concerns about what I do and more particularly what I don't do. I had to reassure that I'm always doing something and had actually done a lot of what was asked of me even though it was assumed I didn't do them...and that I was the person taking care of those things before tasks were divided among others. We talked about what the future could hold as there are also changes with the staff at the sister location that will coincide with what we're doing. I honestly don't have too many large concerns. It'll be the same business as usual, but I'll pick up more of the slack on duties KH was asked to do for HL. However, I will be putting a majority of the focus on the new trainees as they need to help in general so the rest of us can have more time towards our duties.
Not much to say for the rest of the day. Trained CA more (they're progressing well and even feel more comfortable around the staff and customers since they're now cracking jokes, ha). Once she was done for the day, I spent time rearranging a few things like adding an extra keyboard and mouse to one of our rooms for easy access for the staff (locked away for the customers). The only unfortunate thing wa that the last team spilled a bit of their drink (yes, just like a few days ago), so I took the time to mop that up during the closing duties. Left at 10:15PM.
- The management team received a text that today was KH's last day (02.26). One of our concerns was that she would decide not to show up as a two weeks notice is a courtesy, not a contract. I even received a voice message from Agent Ocean the night before to be on standby just incase she doesn't show up to open the venue. She did, but was late. By the time I got there around 3PM, she was finishing up something before leaving maybe 10 minutes later. I informed Agent Ocean she left and pointed out that she emailed her two weeks notice an hour prior...so that was confusing. But he had already gone through the process of removing her from the schedule and other things.
We didn't have any bookings until later so I stared setting up the new PC (one of the three in the control room was on its final legs and we got a new PC on Saturday). In the middle of that, Agent Ocean asked if I could remote for one of the sister location's rooms. He was busy training someone new there so they weren't ready to do any Game Mastering. But there was an issue getting the PC to do it, I tried hooking up the old PC because that was the main one that had the ability to remote, but it was dead. After a bit of tinkering on the other PC, I was finally able to connect remotely. After that was done, I had troubles reconnecting to our local server and let Agent Ocean know. He mentioned how to change that and that he put in a maintenance ticket so that it could get fixed. This affected anyone else that tried to work remotely. This was thankfully fixed within 24 hours so remoting should work properly for everyone that had access.
DQ came in about half an hour later. It's been a while since we had seen each other in person. We were planning to go over changes for birthday party information on the website. But as she was prepping things, the website had changed. Things she wanted to show as examples were no longer there. She made some calls to see what was going on and corporate had simply made changes. That put a damper on our plans as now she needed to figure out where the information was and how to show it off. She did do some work while there and we caught up on recent goings on . She also brought in pizza from a local shop close by to see if they would be a suitable substitute for what we were normally using. While the pizza was better in quality, it wasn't in size. Their large was equivalent to a medium with the company we've been using and similar in price. Oh well.
CA continue her training. She even got time to GM as there was nothing else she could work on. Rather she do something she'll eventually do insetad of waiting around doing nothing. After she left, I made sure the sister location was okay as I receieved a message asking if I could possibly remote for them. It wasn't super busy, but I saw the pocket of time where they would need help since they only had one person (mid shift was called off). I ended up calling her as she didn't reply to the messages and she metioned she was fine. My reason to call was that we had no more sessions so I was going to close early. But she mentioned that one of the teams over there mentioned me and that they really enjoyed their time with me as their host. I took a peek to see who it was and I did know them. They were our "SS" that we had back in October. I told her to tell them to come back to my venue to try more of the rooms. And once all that was taken care of, I left at 9:15PM. That's the earliest I've closed in a while.
- Went to Sam's on the way to work (02.27). Needed to pick up supplies. I eventually made it to work around 3PM like when I was supposed to. Majority of the day was training Ciree. She's doing great. I did ask her to stay longer to get extra training (GMing and more intros/exiting of teams). There were only 10 sessions total, but the majority were at the end of the day when it was just us two. One disappointing thing was a review a customer left. He read it out loud, he was a top reviewer, it was funny...and it didn't post. Either that or he straight up lied to get the discount code. We checked both Google and Yelp and it didn't pop up. Oh well. Not the first time someone fakes leaving a review, not the last time either. Ciree left around 9:30PM while I had to stay and take care of the final team and close and leave around 10:45PM.
- Final work day of the month (02.28). Came in earlier than I had the last few weeks at 1PM. The reason being was that there were only four of us scheduled. Shout out to PH for coming in while he's on break from school. I actually spent a good chunk of my time being a Game Master instead of Game Host along with PH. Of course Agent Ocean and HL were doing their parts as a GM when needed. There were only a couple of mishaps when we didn't realize two teams were in. We were thankfully able to catch them up and they not notice. A few props maglocks did break and a few other props needed to be reinforced, but those got done in a good amonut of time. The meal of choice was Potbelly (I got a pizza sub sandwich). Cheers to the team for staying longer than needed to make sure things ran smoothly for all 38 teams. It was a busy day to end the month.
Oddly enough there was another couple that came in and they had been together for 20 years. And oddly enough, one of the last teams spilled their drink and I had to mop it up at the end of the day. I was the last to leave (HL left 10-15 minutes beforehand) and I wrapped things up at 11:50PM. This was also the fastest I ever came back home; 37 minutes. It would have been faster a few days ago if I didn't stop to get gas.
Next month...it's going to be something.
ETC=========================
- PLAYLIST | 2025 WENDY 1st WORLD TOUR 'W:EALIVE"
- I do have a resolution for this year. Sure I came up with it a month in, but it still counts. I want to maximize my off-time better. The couple years working, my days were work or days off. And for the days off, I would easily default to staying home. Of course special events were the exceptions. But now I want to be more open to going out or asking others to hang on a day off. That doesn't mean I'll do it every time, but if there is very little reason to say no or if I'm not exhausted or nothing else is taking precedent, I'll make more of the effort to go out with others. This can work in conjunction with how I have been trying new boba/dessert/restaurant places. While I tried to memorize those places, I have now made use of the Safari private tabs and have them saved. That way I can quickly reference and suggest them.
"Reprise the theme song and roll the credits."
