dumb with dick & jane: part 2

Today at work there was another university game (it's autumn so football season is in full swing). The museum where I work sits right across the park from the huge stadium where the games are hosted. I was assigned to take care of visitor parking and museum admission in the museum's parking lot that was usually reserved for staff on the weekdays. On the weekends they open it up for visitors for a nominal fee. But on game days, in order to cover the musuem's ass from cheaters who lie that they're going to get some culture but instead steal away to the game right after parking in our lot (and thus we lose potential admission sales for the museum), we charge them an all inclusive museum and parking admission.

They don't care, actually, because it's still cheap to them after spending hundreds of dollars alone on seats in the stadium. They use the museum restrooms anyhow, and god do they use it! They get drunk from all the beer, stagger in, and stagger back out.

Working in the lot with a colleague and an immediate supervisor, it didn't take me long to observe how pathetic our system was. Or rather, there was no system. No streamlined, efficient way of selling museum admission and parking spaces. No consistent way of keeping track of the space availability, and for which kinds of vehicles (there were tons of SUVs and trucks, seems American football fans like their cars big and dumb and wasteful of fuel - and they wonder why the rest of the world looks down on them and makes cruel jokes).

And I realized that to obliterate many of the problems that were occuring, all we needed were three things: a laptop, a credit card reader, and a receipt printer. We were handling all the transactions manually, so of course there were going to be miscalculations, miscounts, and misunderstandings. We used paper tickets which we had to fill out individually. For each visitor and car we had to write down if they were a museum member or non-member, how many people were in the car, and the breakdown of person category (adult, child, senior, student, etc.), and calculate the total price accordingly. That took each of us an average of 1-3 minutes.

But a laptop and wi-fi connection to our LAN we would be able to handle both parking and museum admission sales per car on an average of 30 seconds to 1 minute. Doesn't seem like much of a difference, but when you have 10-15 cars queued up and stretching out onto the street and slowing down traffic, it can mean the world during that moment.

It could also mean that all cash sales can be accurate, and that visitors can use their bank cards, thus speeding up the transaction. We wouldn't have to send them away if they're low on cash (a car of 4 adults and 3 kids can jack up the price on top of the parking fee).

It still amazes me how this place can keep some semblance of polish, can keep a sane face. Look closer, though, and you'll see the embarrassing frisson belying a paper clip and bubblegum operation underneath.