Okay I can see this happening during the summer months when business is much slower. They must not be seeing enough business to yield oiling the lanes which would be the only reason why I wouldn't oil the lanes. Synthetic lanes don't really need to be oiled unless there being used a lot in the day then yes the friction of the ball can do damage over time to both lane and ball.

We need more info to the story as to why they might not be oiling the lanes. Slow business or if it's not slow business then maybe just pure laziness?

Half the house was league, half was empty. I was going to practice on the empty half. Irrelevant though.

What did you have for breakfast?

^^^notice how the question was asked, but still not relevant^^^

My point is, it doesn't matter if it's for league play or practice, damage is still being done to the lanes when you don't oil them for 2 days.

Rocker,

I have bowled at many alleys which had a second league bowl after the first league was done. In none of the alleys did they reoil before the next squad. That means if both were 5 person teams...you have 15 games on each lane for each shift, a total of 30 games on each lane. Although I did not work at the alleys, I would venture to say they did not reoil first thing the next morning and allowed open play to come in and bowl some more before reoiling for league that night.

After leagues were done, was there another shift? If not, then unless each lane has at least 15 games of open play I do not see a reason to reoil. If a set of lanes did not have league and did not have 15 or more games, I see no reason to reoil either. I would want to track the # of games on each lane to ensure that if one did get used for 10 or however many that other lanes were used.

I also agree with Radio's point that house balls get stuck all the time from not absorbing the thick oils used today. Those oils stay on the rubber and other house balls and make it difficult for the machine to spit the ball back up the lane.

I also agree with your point that it would be nice to have oil on the lanes, but in tough economic times, centers have to do what they need to to save money to stay open. Yes, if they do not reoil forever, I do agree that it will eventually fry the lanes. But if AMF is going out of business...from their standpoint, who cares if they fry the lanes, they are not going to be open to replace them.

3835

Please provide the name of the bowling center because i will not be bowling there... If they are that cheap I wonder what else they are cutting corners... Not oiling the lanes damages lanes and league bowlers will not come...

Speaking as an ex-bowling alley manager, we would strip/oil the lanes every night after we close or before we open.  If there was league coming in on the evening shift we would make sure they had a fresh shot plus 6 lanes for anyone that was a league bowler and wanted to get some real practice. We had a very low league base to begin with. I can understand not oiling a full house everytime you get the oil machine out but at some point the house needs to have some kind of consistancy for bowlers that want to come and practice.  If you give them a shot that hasn't oiled for 2+ days, what is the point in going down to practice?  If you want to learn to shoot spares (which couldn't be a bad idea) then its ideal, but 90% of the league bowlers want to practice strike shots/timing.  Its a wounder why bowling is on the down swing.  Maybe it is time to start looking for a bowling center that cares about league bowling instead of cyber/birthday/parties. 

With this behavior, in my town, if you ran a bowling center, you would never pay for dinner or a drink again. Seriously.