I quit ushering for the local community theater down the street from here. I had seen productions there in the past that I enjoyed, but for the most part, the caliber was really hit or miss. In the past few months, I had ushered 2-3 events, and my god, the volunteer experience was boring as hell, the other ushers were weird and not that social, and ultimately, the white top/black bottoms catering uniform drove me insane!! So I quit and instead decided to volunteer with the more upscale theater near my work.

They had some crazy 2-hour orientation even. And when I attended and saw so many blue-hairs, I grew skeptical that this would be a repeat crap experience. Last night, I dared to give it a try. Hey, at least the uniform was just all black (yes, much more doable). And turns out, there were a couple young people in my group. And the production? Fantastic. All I had to do was operate the bar code scanner gun (yup, really hard work) to zap the tickets before people entered the theater and then at the end, we just walked through the aisles picking up programs. Not hard at all and then I get to watch the show, whose tickets run about $45-50 pp! Not a bad deal.

Next month, they’re having a new works festival. I’m going to usher a staged reading that’s a psychological thriller… should be interesting to watch without the costumes, props, and stage dec. I just hope I don’t get too creeped out!