Become a Concession Vendor
You’re not going to sell a lot of concessions, but you are going to get free tickets, free food and free items. The bigger connections are in the fundraising. You could work on a local ball team or concert venue as an extra hand at the gate. Many schools have nice facilities that they just don’t have time for themselves. You could even earn some money by making arrangements with them when they need someone to man their concession stand during games or concerts.
The advantages you’ll have as a concession vendor are that you don’t have to worry about the food being delivered to the venue. You simply need to set up and work your shift. If you get handed a cash box and tickets, it means that you’ll also be able to make money collecting other concession sales. I would recommend a nice coat or vest with several pockets that makes it easy to carry tickets around with you.
As a concession vendor, there are several important things for you to learn like how to give change, where the bathrooms are located and anything else about the venue that might be useful for an outsider who is working the game. Along the same lines, you’ll need to know where most of the people will want to sit and what they are going to buy during your shift. You should also learn where the other vendors are located within the facility so that you can work together and set up a system for handling money, exchanging tickets and other low-level things that could cause a long line if handled clumsily.
When I was younger, I worked as a concession vendor at several venues (including two minor league baseball teams and an arena). I knew one year when we were supposed to have some sort of promotion involving a guest appearance during halftime by an action figure. I found out that there was a vendor in that section who was working it. I tipped him off and had him hide the figure until the game was over, then I quickly called my friend on my cell phone and let him know that he needed to get there ASAP so that he could be the one to give away the final action figure.
It’s not all about giveaways and hidden stadium swag, though. I met girls at games who became my friends and later, some of them became girlfriends or even wives. It’s a fun job to work, but it can also be a good way to look for dates if you are shy about hitting on girls in other types of settings.
A few years back, a friend of mine named Fred (not his real name) was in a funk. He had just broken up with his girlfriend and he wasn’t sure what he was going to do next. The first thing we did was go out at night and hit on girls at several clubs in our area. I realized quickly that it wasn’t something that I wanted to do every night. After a couple of nights of not having any success, I told Fred, “We need some radical new ideas here because this isn’t working for me at all.”
“I know what we should do,” Fred said. “We can both become concession vendors at the events center. They have really long days, but we get to basically do whatever we want to do on our own time. It’s a great place to meet girls, too!”
We both decided to go ahead with it, and I was sold after two weeks on the job. We started making plans to hang out together at the next game and set up a schedule so that we could split up and take different sections of the stadium if that was what made sense. I hit on some women during games, but I also had a lot of fun hanging out with the people at the events center.
I was glad that I learned how to change a fifty so that I could get change for the tickets. That is a skill that will help you in many different non-concession related situations. It’s always good to learn how to handle cash without letting it touch your skin too much. You always have the potential for getting robbed if you carry too much cash around in your pocket, and it’s also important in case something gets sticky or wet in your pocket and you don’t want to ruin all of it at once.
I can’t give you an exact formula for how much money a concession vendor can make. The math will vary depending on the team, the location and things like whether it is baseball season or not. There are some factors that you should be aware of, though. Know the value of your items before you claim them as your own. For instance, if the price of hot dogs is $2 and fries are $2, it’s best to plan to keep all of the change from other people’s food purchases if they just ask for a hot dog and want you to keep the change from a $5 bill. You can claim the fries if they ask for fries, though.
A lot of people will want to pay with exact change, too. If that happens, you should count their change carefully before giving it back to them. Of course, they can give you any amount of money and tell you to keep the change, but you have to be careful about what methods they’re using to give money to you.
If someone asks you for a medium soda and pays with a $5 bill, then obviously it is easy for them to hand it off in a way that keeps the money in their control instead of yours. A lot of concession stands will not take small bills because they are so easy to fake. The more you deal with people, the more you’ll learn about their methods when they want to buy something and keep their money.
The people who ask for change are usually trying to save the restaurants a little bit of money. If you make change for them, then the restaurant isn’t out any more than before, but if you don’t give them change at all, then it saves them a few bucks. You can use this knowledge to your advantage in many different ways. If you ask for the price of a soda and want change, then you should probably buy the soda. If it is a very busy game and you don’t want to deal with lots of change, then maybe you can use this to get out of having to give lots of change.
I always used to ask for the price of things before saying how much I wanted in return when people gave me money. I would say something like “Three bucks!” or “$7 please!” This always worked better than trying to guess the cost when someone handed me money without speaking first.
Conclusion
If you want to be successful in any type of romantic situation, you will have to understand the process and learn how to improve your skills. I feel like these lessons will also be of great use in any other situation where you’re trying to make a good impression on another person. If they know that they can’t just walk away from you after a few minutes, then they are less likely to give up on the conversation or struggle with their ability to handle it with grace.
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