Lol after seeing the debacle of the two dry lane threads, I'm not sure I want to go here, but I wanted to get some thoughts or comments. We continue to have problems with pin spots at a center I bowl at. Unlike the dry shot issue, which is the same on every pair, that affects everyone equally, the pin spots are all different from lane to lane. There are pairs that have chronic problems, and the pins that are most commonly off spot are the 3, 4, and 6. These are all pretty important pins. You would think that over the course of the year everybody would take their turn on the rough pairs and that it would be rough for both teams on that pair, and yeah it does work out like that, but keep reading. However, this league has several league-wide competitions going on. We have an eliminator, takes the top half of the scores from game 1, and everyone that makes the cut gets 2 bucks, then you take the top half again to the third game, where everyone gets a minimum 4 bucks, but your score the last game determines your payout, to a max of 14 bucks a night. The league fee is 20, so you can almost pay for your night just by winning the eliminator. We also have a 2nd game pot. Take everyone's scores the 2nd game, and low man is out (ties for low man result in both/all players being eliminated). Continue to do that every week until you have a winner. 1st is 140, 2nd is 70. We ALSO have random match play, you get randomly matched up with someone else in the league every game, every week, and if you beat the person you're against, you get 30 bonus pins. Every week you are ranked on total score with bonus pins, and you get paid out at the end of the year according to your rank, and the payout is in the hundreds. This is why I feel it's important for everything across the league to at least be consistent, whether it's fair, unfair, good, crappy, or otherwise.
Due to these reasons, I don't feel like complaining about a 3 pin that's so far deep and left that it's almost touching the 5 pin makes me a crybaby. We had one rack last week that I could see 5 different pins off spot on just from the approach. Now the people I was bowling with and against were telling me to just bowl and not worry about it. That is until they started leaving all kinds of junk that was costing them money. Last year when I complained about it, I didn't make much headway, I pretty well got shut down, so I've kept my mouth shut this year. But at what point do you just have to take a stand? Or should you just choose to hit the bricks? It's also interesting because I'm the city lane certification director, and our pin spots were so bad last week that the lights shouldn't have even been on. They're cleaning and rebuilding the pin decks throughout the house, so they didn't want to spend a ton of time adjusting pin spots when they're just going to come through and redo everything, BUT pin spots are still off on the ones that have already been repaired, apparently no one made sure the pin spots were on after the repairs like they were supposed to and like I was told they would be.
Again, instead of being my typical self from the past and blowing up and getting all pissy, I haven't taken any action yet, and all I'm doing is presenting everyone with an explanation of the situation to get some input. At what point do you "just bowl," and when do you stand up and say it's not right and needs to be fixed? People fudge on rules all the time because they don't want to be the snitch or people don't want them to be a stickler, but as soon as someone has those problems directly affect them, it's different. Why have rules or standards if they're not followed? People will use easy slide on their shoes and argue with people who have a problem with it, but as soon as they're sliding fine one night and have to slide through someone ELSE using easy slide, then it's an issue.
Objectively speaking, it seems to all average out at the end of the year, but I still don't think it's right. I don't like my scores and my payout affected or influenced by mechanical problems outside my control. It's also still early in the year, but I thought I'd get some opinions first before I be my normal self, thanks.
