Scares and Squares is the Rosetown Ramblers annual fly-in. While I enjoy the dancing, it usually falls on my birthday weekend, and I don’t love that. However! this year they moved the weekend of dance to the second Saturday weekend, which was great!
Aside from really fun dancing, I volunteered for check-in on Saturday morning. Ted was running the 50/50 raffle and setting up ticket packs. I don’t remember the exact breakdown, but for the raffle, your dollar gets you 10 tickets, and five dollars gets you an even bigger number. So, to save time, Ted pulls out 10 tickets, separates the keep-this-coupon ticket from the drawing tickets, tears each drawing ticket, and then stacks the whole thing in a neat pile that is held together with a rubber band. That way, when someone hands over a dollar it’s very easy to hand them their half of the tickets, and drop the entry tickets in the bucket.
As we were both sitting at the same table, I also helped set up ticket packs. While we worked, we discussed the differences between the different colored rolls of tickets (they very much varied in quality!) and techniques for quicker packaging. As I observed to Matt, it was not unlike temping, where there is a boring task, but that task can be broken down into steps and those steps improved. Plus, Ted is fun to talk to.
At the Saturday evening dance, Ted came over to show me yet another satisfying part of the process: getting to the end of a ticket roll.