Read 'em and Weep

The poker tournament was a raging success. Which is basically a big, fat “BITE ME” to Miss Daisy Burpee.

Last week, it was uncertain if we would have enough participants to break even on the event. But in the end, we had to turn away a lot of people at the door. We capped the event at 150 and easily could have raised the cap to 200—if we could get that many tables in the room.

That’s not to say that there were no bumps in the road to our crowning as the Kings and Queens of Law School Iniquity. We had to rent tables because the group we hired to stage the tournament insisted that the available tables were not sufficient. This was a great part of the reason we thought we might not be able to break even on the event—renting tables is not cheap.

Then we had to hire the union to set up the tables and chairs. For us to set up the event ourselves would apparently be a violation of union rules. Now, I’m not speaking out against unions. My father is union and I am of the opinion that unions can be a valuable tool to give the worker a voice and a modicum of clout in dealing with employers, who otherwise tend to hold all or most of the cards (hee. No pun intended...). However, the fact that we had to pay $20 per hour for them to unfold and set up 11 banquet tables and 150 folding chairs seemed to me a little out of control. That’s $20 per hour, per worker. I wish *I* could get a job doing such work for $20 per hour. And of course, the guys they sent to do the job succeeded in fulfilling every negative stereotype of the union employee. Two supervisors stood around and watched four men take their sweet time meticulously setting up tables and chairs as though they were dealing with precious and delicate antique furniture with deep historical value instead of industrial grade metal chairs and tables that can be replaced from a mail-order catalog.

While all of this was going on, I was sent to put signs on the entrance doors and the elevator lobbies, directing the participants to the event. When I stopped on the first floor to tape up a sign, one of the union boys self-importantly informed me that I better have Dean Sybill’s permission to put up those signs. I assured him that we had been in touch with her regarding the event. He gave me the Look of Condescension and threatened (and yes, he intended it as a threat) that he would just tear down the signs. I told him that if he heard from Dean Sybill that directing people to the event was a problem that she could give us a call and we’d work it out with her. He huffed. I left.

A few minutes later, I passed by the first floor on my way to run another errand and the signs had been torn down. Now really. Let’s get a life, little boy. Besides, I have at least 20 more of those signs and four rolls of Scotch Tape, so all you did was piss me off and give us more ammo to complain to the union about your work. Plus which, did you not see the big letters at the top denoting that this is a “CHARITY TOURNAMENT” while you were ripping down the signs in a petty fit of pique? That means that we’re not doing this for fun or to enrich ourselves. We’re raising money for CHARITY, you dimwits! Cut us a little slack, mkay?

On my way out, I noticed that three of the four employees were lounging around the front door, smoking. This was maybe 15 minutes after they began working. I reported to La Presidente, who called their supervisor’s supervisor and pitched a fit about the way they were wasting our money. Shortly thereafter, we heard one of the supervisors’ cell phones go off. Shortly after that, the three smokers were back downstairs setting up.

In the end it took four men 1 ½ hours to set up 11 tables and 150 folding chairs. Pathetic.

The group staging the tournament (we’ll call them A1 Poker) showed up and whipped through their preparations. In a matter of an hour, the Student Lounge had been transformed from an institutional break room to the Den of Iniquity that your mother always warned you about. It looked fabulous. And the company was very professional.

The main tournament was scheduled for 7 pm, but smaller side tables were started around 5:30. And people were lining up to register or sign in by that time. It hit us in a great rush, standing there at the Registration table with nothing else to do but greet people and keep an eye on the proceedings, that this was actually going to happen. We did it. We actually pulled it off—in the space of three weeks, we staged a huge event that was going to blow all other Fall fundraisers out of the water. The excitement in the air was palpable. LaPresidente, the Masshole (side note to the Masshole—if you want me to change this, I will), and I couldn’t stop saying “This is so exciting!” to each other.

And as 7 pm came closer and closer, and the waiting list to get a spot in the tournament grew longer and longer, the magnitude of what we had done became clearer and clearer. People had driven in from another university that is well over an hour away. The only minor problem was the...caliber of the outsiders with no connection whatsoever to Our Law School that registered.

We had opened the tournament to the mailing list for A1 Poker because the low registration numbers at the law school left us concerned that we wouldn’t have enough participants to cover the expense of staging the tournament. And boy howdy, the people who came from the list were interesting. Most of them were either under 25 or over 60. All of the young guys think they’re Chris Moneymaker and showed up wearing reflective wrap arounds and ball caps and carrying bottles of “Gatorade”. Once word got around that, while we weren’t serving alcohol (so as not to attract the attention of the State Liquor Control Board, much as the low level Imperial troops might try to avoid attracting the attention of Darth Vader), we were turning a blind eye to those who might choose to pack a hip flask, all pretense was dropped. This actually kind of burned my biscuits. I mean, all we asked was for people to be discreet about it. Somehow, in my tiny little mind, “discreet” does not equal “Run across to the 7-11 and return with a bagful of 22 oz. cans of Bud Light”.

The other oh-so-charming thing about the “extras” was that they were a bunch of pigs. Those cans of Bud Light? They would put them on the floor under the table, end up kicking them over (because apparently they are also none too bright), and then instead of doing the normal person thing and either cleaning it up or letting someone know that a cleanup was needed on Aisle 5, they would just leave it pooling on the floor and open up a new can. This is mind boggling on so many levels to me. I went through miles and miles of paper towels over the course of the evening, mopping up Lake MGD. Disgusting. It made me feel like I was back in undergrad, waitressing my cute little tush off, only I wasn’t making bouku bucks in tips.

That was, however, the only real downside to the evening. The vast majority of the participants were our classmates and their family members, and they were having a blast. We even had a professor playing at one of the tables. Actually, we were expecting another professor and his entire family: Professor Feedback. The closer it got to 7 pm, the more we started looking for him. He had seemed very excited about the tournament and even agreed to sponsor a student in each of his classes. We were so touched by the support that he was showing for our organization. But he didn’t come and he didn’t come and finally the tournament was starting, so we were forced to give his spots away to people on the waiting list. More than half an hour after the tournament got under way, he came wandering in and was very shocked to find that he was not able to play. We felt horrible, but we really didn’t have any other choice.

It turns out that it was his daughter’s fault that they didn’t show up until long after the begin of the event. She is a member of our organization and has been involved in the planning of the event. In fact, she even signed up to work a shift later in the evening. But apparently she didn’t grasp the concept of the tournament because she told him that they could just show up whenever. He said to me (and I swear, I’m not making this up) “Well, Phoebe’s a little scatterbrained. She gets it from her mother.” I think my eyes must have bugged out of my skull. From her mother? If that’s even close to being true, it’s a miracle that she survived to adulthood!

The tournament started moving pretty quickly as many of the less-experienced poker players were eliminated along with others who just had bad luck or took a risk that didn’t pan out as desired. As players were eliminated, the remaining players were consolidated into a smaller number of tables. Then the newly open tables were converted to smaller winner-takes-all games that people could buy into for an additional amount of money. The process continued as more and more players were eliminated.

The biggest and best shocker of the evening was Neala. She showed up with small “cheat sheets” that she’d printed out online, showing each hand and what it would be worth. She didn’t really know how to play, but she figured she’d at least have some fun. In fact, she ended up being one of the last law students left in play and made it to the last elimination before they roped off the final table! It was so cool that someone who didn’t have any experience made it that far.

The biggest non-shocker of the evening was that Daisy Burpee showed up late, stayed less than an hour, and spent the entire time she was there whining to anyone who would listen about how she couldn’t believe that we’d turned the law school into a “den of iniquity”. I wanted to scream. A den of iniquity. Seriously, is Prohibition still in effect in her world? It’s not like we were selling bathtub gin out of the Ladies’ Room and providing hookers in the Faculty Lounge. The local synagogue is holding a Texas-Hold-‘Em tournament as a fundraiser in January, the Catholic Church holds Monte Carlo night, for Pete’s Sake, get a grip! Of course, her moral rectitude didn’t keep her from trying to claim credit for the event in front of the Deans...

The tournament ended up being won by a 1L, who took his trophy and his money and hightailed it out the back door before we even had a chance to take his picture. I was so relieved that one of our students won the tournament—it would have sucked to have to announce that one of the A1 Poker ringers won.

And there we were, 1 am, picking up the trash and basking in the afterglow of having pulled off a phenomenal feat of fundraising. We done good, y’all. We done good.