Arisia needs an attitude adjustment.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

I am sure this will offend many people, and if it does I apologize, but I feel it has to be said.

I am disgusted and appalled at the rudeness and sense of entitlement I encountered from many of this year's staff members. And I am not the only person who noticed this.


An example...
I got up early on Sunday and went down to the staff den, I was there about 15 minutes before it was supposed to open, but the lovely staff den ladies let me in anyway. I told them I needed food so I could take some meds, but I could see they weren't quite ready yet and asked what I could do to help them get stuff put out. They gave me a couple things to do (and a danish so I could take my meds) and I went off to help. At 8:02AM a person walked in, I was just plugging in the kettle to heat water, sie wanted tea so I told hir it would be a few minutes while the water heated that I had just plugged it in. Hir response was very snobbishly "What do you mean the water is not hot yet?" I looked at hir and said well, you weren't here 10 minutes ago to plug it in. You want it faster, then feel free to come in early and help. These ladies were up just as late as the rest of us, they are doing their best." and I walked away.
Sure sie hadn't had hir morning caffiene yet, but that was no excuse to jump all over me because the kettle isn't hot. Sie had a coffee maker in hir room, there was nothing preventing hir from using it. This is just one instance I personally encountered in the den, I witnessed many more acts of rudeness directed at the ladies running the den and other staff members in the den, during my visits there. (I was not den staff, I was just helping out while waiting for the food to be ready.)

In general many staff members were surly, rude, and just basically snappish, many came across with the "I'm staff, I'm better than you" or the I'm staff therefore I'm entitled to [...] ahead of you" attitude.

In my opinion, If you want to be involved in Arisia, and deal with hundreds of fans and random people all weekend and can't keep a pleasant attitude, no matter how stressed you get, or how tired or overworked you are, perhaps you shouldn't be doing that job. It's like any job that involves dealing with the customer, you have to keep it all to yourself so as to not take it out on the unsuspecting and not offend. I was personally offended by many of the attitudes I encountered during the weekend by staff members I did not know and who didn't know me. There are places to let it all out, you shouldn't be snapping and rude to the attendees or they will stop coming and we cant have an Arisia without them.

I have a whole essay/rant about Arisia and it's changing dynamic as of late, How I feel it's strayed from it's original mission to be all inclusive and such, how it's more of a fannish lifestyle and polyamory based con now instead of Science Fiction and Fantasy based as originally intended, and how it really needs to be able to encompass all things equally*, but I will likely not subject people to it.

Personally with the next Arisia being the 20th, I would love to see the theme be "Back to Basics" or "Back to our Roots." But since I am just a lowly staff member, costumer and artist (who BTW has worked at every Arisia in some capacity to the point of never having to purchase a membership to Arisia yet) and really do not want any other responsibility right now, who am I to say what should happen?


*Of the panels offered pre-con, 47 "fannish lifestyle" panels this year and only 12 art, 12 filk, and 8 costume panels is not treating all things equally.

Comments

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Because the Park Plaza WON'T let us go there.

You can't hold a convention in a place that won't give you a contract.

You mean you really didn't know this?

[nippyfrog.livejournal.com]

Do you really not understand how to not come off so arrogant and pretentious? This is EXACTLY the kind of attitude I am so incredibly tired of getting at cons.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

A: I'm not staff, nor a member of con-com.

I'm a convention goer, and that's it.

B: The issue about the hotel change has been known about since, well, before last year's Arisia.

So, now, let me again ask, fully hoping you'll answer, and not just be so intent on TRYING to be offended:

Did you not know why the con moved hotels???

[nippyfrog.livejournal.com]

Obviously not or else I wouldn't have asked would I?

[quietann.livejournal.com]

Start here: http://community.livejournal.com/arisia/90655.html

The Park Plaza decided, for various complicated reasons, to not renew Arisia's contract. As a general business decision, this was a mistake because most hotels in Boston are desperate for guests in January, and an event that fills the hotel and is relatively non-destructive is a win. But part of the PP management, probably the same part that got its panties in a knot over the Fetish Fair Fleamarket being at the PP, thinks Arisia is too weird and too downscale for their hotel.

Hotel space in Boston is really, really difficult to schedule. There are few hotels that come anywhere close to the size Arisia needs, many are very expensive and not willing to bend on things like corkage waivers, etc. The Hyatt *welcomed* Arisia from the very beginning.

Arisia considered moving to Providence, RI as another option. That choice would have had its own set of problems.

That's the short version. If you search forward in this community's archives (starting with March 2006) you will find endless discussion of the issue.

[nippyfrog.livejournal.com]

Yeah - you'd think they would weigh how sci-fi cons really don't get rowdy and destructive. Medical cons and what have you tend to have a lot of people who get drunk and act like jocks.

[ron_newman]

Arisia started after a very large Boskone got out of hand and was subsequently banned by its hotel, causing it to flee to Springfield for a number of years. (This is a very oversimplified summary of events I did not see myself, but have heard about.)

[nippyfrog.livejournal.com]

Yeah I did hear some about that.
What I heard was a lot of BU kids got wind of the parties and started showing up just to go nuts.

[cheshyre]

To me, this suggests that the staff's rudeness being criticized in this thread may just be representative of a general snippiness among Boston fandom.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I agree I was snippy, but let's look at some things, as well:

We were in this crappy hotel last year.
Hundreds of people wondered why.

The word got spread by the ConCom as to what happened with the contract at the Park Plaza.

That info has been posted in this lj community, and, more than likely, on the arisia webpage.

In other words, RTFM.

[cheshyre]

By that logic, since signs about the elevators were plastered in and around the elevators, does that mean that people were equally justified in being snippy to folks who expressed equally ignorant opinions about the elevators (dissing the operators or trying to exceed capacity)?

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

yes, especially them: they, by being dicks about the elevator, ignoring the signs, overloading it etc, are jeopardizing a shared resource.

[miekec]

Unfortunately, I have to say a loud YES to that. Dissing the operators is just plain rude and inappropriate. Trying to overload the elevators is dangerous and slows things down. I feel like a large part of this problem is that a lot of people have a feeling/sense of false entitlement. Being anti-social. And yes, rude.
To be honest, and to counter this - 99% of the time, 99% of the people and interactions were completely wonderful, courteous and good. 1% of nasty can undo a large % of good.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

Well, isn't this interesting, back to the original topic of this post. The rudeness and sense of entitlement found at Arisia this year.

The post took on a life of it's own for a while there and just got so far off topic I just stopped reading the responses.