No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

This past Saturday evening, I volunteered to help sell concessions at a boys’ tournament basketball game at Newton North High School. Concession sales are part of the fundraising efforts of the newly formed Tiger Booster Club and proceeds go to support all sports at Newton North, not just boys' basketball.

Tip off for the game was 7:00. By 6:30, a huge line had formed in the hallway between Hull Street and the gym entrance. By about 6:40, the spectator area in the gym was completely filled up. Accordingly, the police officer on duty and the athletic director made the decision to close the doors to the hallway. Scores of potential spectators were shut out and understandably disgruntled. For some unknown reason, however, most if not all of them stayed crowded together in the hallway for the duration of the game.

As the game got underway, the police officer and athletic director scrambled to stop people from sneaking into the packed gym. While they were both busy escorting scofflaws out through another exit downstairs, the crowd behind the Hull Street hallway opened the closed doors.

My fellow concession stand workers acted quickly to stop the crowd from rushing into the saturated gym: one went to find the police officer, the other to find the athletic director; and I went to the opened doors to remind them that for fire code reasons, no other spectators were being allowed in the gym. Several in the crowd behind the now opened doors complained that they had tickets. I politely asked them to wait for the athletic director to speak to him about that.

One of the unhappy people who said she had a ticket was a little girl about seven years old. She started to cry when the athletic director came back and said he couldn’t let any of them into the gym. I asked her who she was with, and she explained that she had gone outside to try to find her mother. She then said her “nanny” was in the gym, and then said she had been in there with her but then sent out because he mother was coming later to meet them at the game. I told her she shouldn’t be alone in this crowd and she wouldn’t be able to go back out to look for her mother. I then said I would walk with her to make sure she got back to her “nanny.”

It was so crowded in the gym that people were sitting in the walkways of the bleachers and we had to climb over them to reach her “nanny.” I tried to calm down the little girl by asking her name and calling her by that as we made small talk maneuvering down to her “nanny.” The “nanny” turned out to be the girl’s grandmother or “nana”. I made a pointed remark to nana about the danger of sending little girl outside alone through this chaotic crowd. The nana then exploded at me screaming that I had “traumatized” her granddaughter and she was going to report me to the authorities. Unfortunately, in the heat of the moment I responded in kind by repeating in a louder voice that she should not have left the girl alone in these circumstances and then told nana in her ear (so the little girl wouldn’t hear) that I should report her to DSS for such a negligent action.

According to the spectators around her, the grandmother then spent the rest of the first half of the game complaining about me traumatizing her granddaughter. At half time, she came up to complain to the athletic director and to the police officer about me. She left shortly after halftime – again complaining about me the whole way to another concession worker who was now helping to show people who were leaving how to get out (since those doors to the Hull Street hallway were still closed and that hallway was still packed with would-be spectators).

Given the grandmother’s reaction, I wonder if I did the right thing in this situation. Should I have gotten involved at all? Any comments would be appreciated.