Ever since I was a young girl, the Whitecaps had been a safe haven for me. I remember coming to countless games as a kid with my best friend from childhood because her dad worked there. The vibrant atmosphere, exciting games and enthused workers never seemed to disappoint, and my fond memories from games at the ballpark are still some of my favorites to this day. I suppose that it was only natural that when my then best friend and I grew apart, so did me and the ballpark.

Maybe it was fate that led me back to the park one day trying to get home from a golf lesson in unfamiliar territory. Scared out of my mind with no money or gas and a dead phone, the Whitecaps sign was a sight for sore eyes when my tank was almost completely out and I had been driving around with no idea where I was for an embarrassing amount of time. I ran inside to ask for my friend’s father because I knew he still worked there and found out that he wasn’t in that day.

Defeated, I started to walk back out the door to try and find another way home when one of the workers I had just talked to offered to lend me his phone so I could call someone for a ride. Another offered me money so that I could fill up my tank enough to get home. Thanking them, I took up the person’s offer to borrow their phone and called my dad to come pick me and my car up.

Call it cheesy that, when summer rolled around and the majority of my friends were looking for summer jobs, I chose to apply for and accept a job at the Whitecaps. Even with such fond memories there, I was terrified that working and attending games would be polar opposites from what I had heard of other people’s experiences working at different places. As it turns out, though, my time there flew by and I was surprised that it was a job, because it never really felt like it.

However, there is one thing that irritated me about some customers; They seemed to have forgotten that I wasn’t just some mindless robot behind a counter ringing them up. I wish that I could’ve told this select few that every dollar that they handed to me had been worked for as well, that most, if not all, of the people I helped would be in the same position as I was then at some point in their lives also. Trust me, I don’t get paid enough to deal with your bad attitude, I just get paid to sell you Whitecaps merchandise. You’ll never realize how fantastic some people are unless you give them a chance to show you.