Finally home from the 'Dam.....

[BWillie]

Robbos reply to Steve

Brings up a point that I always have a problem with.

Are the teams and players "customers"? It seems to me that paintball players want to be considered athletes most of the time, customers when it fits the argument of the moment, and a boycott happy union when one of the other two persona isn't working. The problem is --

It is hard to mix a competition with customer service. In some areas it is simple. In some it is quite a challenge. And In a few it is damn near impossible.

As a player I absolutely never looked at myself as, or wanted to be looked at as a customer. I was a contestant in a competition. I honestly feel that most of my peers at the time felt exactly the same way. I believe this attitude has changed over the last few years. Why?

But specifically refering to Petes comment about how a ref is treating a "customer" is what really caught my eye. I think that is probably just a poor choice of words for Pete (as I think we probably see most of this issue the same way). But, there are lots of times that others absolutely feel they should get "customer service" out of the referees. A COMPETITION CANNOT BE RUN IN THAT MANNER. I cannot count how many times I have heard a team captain/owner say "The refs screwed us. It was a terrible call. Either fix it or we want our money back". How would the tournament organizers ever actually measure customer opinion with regards to reffing? Those who win say it was great, those who think they should have won but didn't will say it was the worst ever, and those who finished about where they expected will say it was about average.

I haven't given this a whole lot of thought. But I can say that when teams want to refer to themselves as "customers" it raises a red flag to me. I'm not quite sure why. What do you guys think?

 

[Robbo]

Robbos reply to Steve

Originally posted by BWillie
Brings up a point that I always have a problem with.

Are the teams and players "customers"? It seems to me that paintball players want to be considered athletes most of the time, customers when it fits the argument of the moment, and a boycott happy union when one of the other two persona isn't working. The problem is --

It is hard to mix a competition with customer service. In some areas it is simple. In some it is quite a challenge. And In a few it is damn near impossible.

As a player I absolutely never looked at myself as, or wanted to be looked at as a customer. I was a contestant in a competition. I honestly feel that most of my peers at the time felt exactly the same way. I believe this attitude has changed over the last few years. Why?

But specifically refering to Petes comment about how a ref is treating a "customer" is what really caught my eye. I think that is probably just a poor choice of words for Pete (as I think we probably see most of this issue the same way). But, there are lots of times that others absolutely feel they should get "customer service" out of the referees. A COMPETITION CANNOT BE RUN IN THAT MANNER. I cannot count how many times I have heard a team captain/owner say "The refs screwed us. It was a terrible call. Either fix it or we want our money back". How would the tournament organizers ever actually measure customer opinion with regards to reffing? Those who win say it was great, those who think they should have won but didn't will say it was the worst ever, and those who finished about where they expected will say it was about average.

I haven't given this a whole lot of thought. But I can say that when teams want to refer to themselves as "customers" it raises a red flag to me. I'm not quite sure why. What do you guys think?

BW, as I see it, we can call ourselves customers just as long we keep paying the money over.
The fact that our presence in any tournament is one of athlete and customer shouldn't detract from our ability to expect value for money and to be extended consideration worthy of an athlete.

These two considerations aren't necessarily contradictory; they should, and for the most part, be complimentary.
Just because we ask to be treated as athletes doesn't mean we are compromised when we need to treat people like customers.

I do see what you are getting at here mate but what you are falling victim to is taking an extreme example and letting that set the agenda.
For the most part, it is quite easy to achieve both considerations.

PS Say ‘hi’ to ‘er indoors for me and to the little ‘uns and to LD if you still see him

 

[gaff]

Robbos reply to Steve

Originally posted by BWillie

As a player I absolutely never looked at myself as, or wanted to be looked at as a customer. I was a contestant in a competition. I honestly feel that most of my peers at the time felt exactly the same way. I believe this attitude has changed over the last few years. Why?

possibly because, even with the excellent levels of sponsorship the top level of Euro teams get, it still costs us an awful lot of money to travel to and enter these events.

until the EXL teams are either invited free of charge to the event as a means to attract customers watching, or the sponsorship levels increase to somewhere near the US levels of entry and travel paid for we are always gonna be 'paying customers' effectively we are paying an amount of money for a set amount of facilities and struture.

 

[Buddha 3]

Re: Robbos reply to Steve

Originally posted by gaff
possibly because, even with the excellent levels of sponsorship the top level of Euro teams get, it still costs us an awful lot of money to travel to and enter these events.

until the EXL teams are either invited free of charge to the event as a means to attract customers watching, or the sponsorship levels increase to somewhere near the US levels of entry and travel paid for we are always gonna be 'paying customers' effectively we are paying an amount of money for a set amount of facilities and struture.

Agreed, but the way I see it is that the product or service you buy is basically the infrastructure that enables you to play. In other words, as a customer you are free to bitch and moan about the facilities on site, the layout, the queues at the fillstation, whatever. But as soon as you step inside the netting, you are a player first, and a customer later. If refs would make adaptations for you or your team, they would beasically be short changing another team. All you can ask for from a ref (besides knowing the rules and such) is consistency. That way you know that any other teams would be treated the same way as you are.

 

[Robbo]

Re: Re: Robbos reply to Steve

Originally posted by Buddha 3
Agreed, but the way I see it is that the product or service you buy is basically the infrastructure that enables you to play. In other words, as a customer you are free to bitch and moan about the facilities on site, the layout, the queues at the fillstation, whatever. But as soon as you step inside the netting, you are a player first, and a customer later. If refs would make adaptations for you or your team, they would beasically be short changing another team. All you can ask for from a ref (besides knowing the rules and such) is consistency. That way you know that any other teams would be treated the same way as you are.

Jay, you have touched on an important distinction here and that is one of professionalism of both athlete and judge once on the field of play.
That area of the game is where both parties should act like ruling body and participant.
But outside of that arena, for example, on these boards, I think Nick deserves to be treated courteously, professionally and not unlike a customer.
I take issue with Steve in the way he sometimes handles things outside of the playing arena and on these boards.
I have no doubt that Nick warranted the penalty but I don't think coming on here threatening Nick with further, undefined action is either professional or customer friendly, I'm afraid whichever way you cut this one, it's unacceptable but XBall is a pressured environment for both judge and player and we are all on a learing curve here, for some, it's a bit steeper than others
Overal, Steve did a good job, he just needs to learn when and when not to be inflexible.

 

[NaffyNerd]

Dear Mr Brockdorff,

Every opportunity to serve you, our valued customer, delights us. Another such opportunity has arisen. During the course of an X Ball game, which we had the splendid privilege of arranging for you, it came to our attention that our referees made a call which caused you quite some consternation. We are so very sorry for what you experienced and we are doing everything in our power to see to it that such distateful things are not done by our referee staff. We also apologise for the referee in question having the audacity to ask that you be penalised for abusive language, language which I'm sure was more than fitting considering the referee's mistake. Please accept our apologies. The referee in question no longer works with us.

Kind regards,

Your humble commissioner

 

[Buddha 3]

Re: Re: Re: Robbos reply to Steve

Originally posted by Robbo
Jay, you have touched on an important distinction here and that is one of professionalism of both athlete and judge once on the field of play.
That area of the game is where both parties should act like ruling body and participant.
But outside of that arena, for example, on these boards, I think Nick deserves to be treated courteously, professionally and not unlike a customer.
I take issue with Steve in the way he sometimes handles things outside of the playing arena and on these boards.
I have no doubt that Nick warranted the penalty but I don't think coming on here threatening Nick with further, undefined action is either professional or customer friendly, I'm afraid whichever way you cut this one, it's unacceptable but XBall is a pressured environment for both judge and player and we are all on a learing curve here, for some, it's a bit steeper than others
Overal, Steve did a good job, he just needs to learn when and when not to be inflexible.

Pete,

I can't help but feel that the 'difference of opinion' that Nick and Steve seem to be having is largely based upon different ways of interpreting someone's words.
I can't help but feel that Steve has interpreted Nick's original post as an indication that the Ducks, or Nick specifically, will be using more harsh language in the future, thereby more or less deliberatly continuing to break the rules. This could clarify Steve's reply in which he said that there might be follow ups, not per se to what has happened, but what might happen in the future.
But I agree that it can just as easily be interpreted as Steve just having made up his mind on f*cking Nick over for no real reason.
Anyway, that's just the way I read it, and since I can't look inside people's minds (I tried, and it just took forever to get the stains off the carpet) I have no way of knowing whether this is the case or not.
So before Steve and Nick start throwing hissy fits, I think it is important that they find out what the other party was really trying to say. We all know how hard it can be at times to get across what you're trying to say on a forum, with the complete lack of non verbal communication.

Other than that, I completely agree with your post. I too feel that outside the field of play (and even on it to an extent, fields with pieces of rock and glass is just bad customer relations) everybody deserves to be treated with nothing but respect, since in the end we are the ones paying for all of it. And that would include these forums too.

 

[TJ Lambini]

But as posters ain't paying to use these forums, all tha mods reserve tha right to treat you all with tha contempt and disdain you deserve, you snivelling little maggots.

 

[Wadidiz]

I enjoy this forum and felt my participation was generally welcome, especially since so few people that have an organizing function in the leagues participate regularly here. I realized that some people don't think it is professional to get on here and discuss sometimes controversial matters.

As an individual participant I feel I have a right to defend or explain my opinions or actions taken as an official. I know that concerning one or two situations people have a clearer understanding of what happened because I could shed some light.

I agree with the sentiments put forward here that players and teams are our customers and must be treated with respect (all people should be treated with respect). But I also believe there's a time to hold a line even if the customer disagrees, especially when it comes to something we want to call a sport.

Now Pete is right that I shouldn't have used this forum to give a player a warning about possible penalties. That's why I deleted the post. I will avoid such in the future even when I'm very tempted to balance what someone writes here.

I will comment a last time about this situation so we can put this behind us:

Originally posted by Nick Brockdorff
NO top judge would ever had made that call (penalising after the game)....

It was a top judge who made the call regardless of what you think and I respect him enough to post the penalty. The penalty only goes down on record; it was too late to put someone in the box.

Originally posted by Nick Brockdorff
and none of the judges were going to there either, until Steve apparently thought it was time to assert his authority.

It wasn't a matter of "time for me to assert my authority" but because a referee reported the infraction to me. At that point I was acting as a statistician and needed to get the facts and record them.

It was then that Mr. Brockdorff came into the picture and chastised me for recording the penalty claiming that I instigated the penalty. It was then that he said quite publicly "you're an ******* for doing that" for which I gave a warning.

That's the way I recall things and we can just drop it now. I apologize to Mr. Brockdorff for talking about possible penalties on this forum. Nothing more will happen with this unless Mr. Brockdorff wants to contact me personally about this.

Steve

 

[BOOGIE]

Steve , Nick any more of this humblness and im gonna throw up !! LOL