Laser tag can be a load of fun. It's one of the safer activities one can partake of in the dark. But, like any job that depends on the occupancy of the public, employment duties can be strenuous and down right grotesque. Those who work in the world of laser tag are often left will the human "clean up" craziness. Next time we're tagging... act accordingly people!
Redditor u/Dcashmoney33 wanted laser tag employees to share a few tidbits about their days by asking.... Laser Tag employees of Reddit, What was the weirdest things you've seen happen in the Arena?
Happy Poop Day!
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During a birthday party, for a teenager, a 16 year old girl took a poop on the carpet. She was also the birthday girl. bbjteacher
Why would a 16 year old do such a stupid thing, like these rounds are like 5 minutes long. _Clex_
Oh the drunks.
Don't know if it's weird, but someone got drunk, climbed onto one of the set pieces, and rode it like a horse, grabbing onto the fire sprinkler head above for support, and then proceeded to rip it out of the ceiling causing the whole arena to flood into the cell phone store below... thousands of dollars of damage. We followed that up by implementing a strict zero tolerance policy on alcohol.
Also the guys we hired to paint the arena walls all space themed hid penises all over the place (it was very dark in there so easy to miss them), took a while before we found them all. Liv4damuzik
No Running.
I never saw anything super strange, did see a couple surprising injuries though.
The arena is dark and lit by blacklights, so of course for liability purposes we do the whole rule-reading before each round and one of the rules is obviously 'no running.' Kids would inevitably break the rule and end up running into something, but usually not at a speed that could do any more than some bumps or bruises. One little girl managed to sprint full-tilt into a wall and break her nose, that was quite the event. Real bloody, real traumatizing for the other kids.
Our arena also had some obstacles, like boxes and barrels. Some of them were loose and could be adjusted between rounds (but were still quite heavy to avoid accidental movement), other stuff was nailed down so it couldn't go anywhere. This one time a group of boys around 11-13 ripped some barrels out of the ground so that they could build their own custom fort, but didn't notice the nails protruding from the barrels.
Another kid ran by, ran their hand along the barrel as they ran, and sliced their forearm waaaaaay open on one of the nails. Thankfully I didn't actually see the aftermath but that was also quite the gossip, especially because the victim's parents tried to blame us at first. That threatened lawsuit fell apart pretty quickly when the actual story came out. GlitterLamp
As a Shield.
Back when I was early 20s, me and a few guys went laser tag. Since there was only a couple of us, we got paired with a group of kids, and some of their parents.
During the match, one of the fathers had looped his arm through his daughters vest, and was using her as a shield, and she was just getting carried around like a little shooting shield. Still makes me laugh. andehpants
Not poop or sex.
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When i was young my family went to play laser tag (this was in new orleans). Mostly kids were playing that day, but there was also an older guy (maybe 25?).
This older guy was competitive. He wanted to win bad. Here i am, probably 13 years old, running around like James Bond from N64 goldeneye, using the structures to cover myself. I round a corner looking for prey and what do i find?
The older guy, coming at me full speed backwards, bent over, with his gun between his legs. Butt first. His strategy was simple yet effective. If he shoots between his legs, no one can shoot his chest or back. He was an unbeatable butt gunner. Worst game ever. Aliencj
Family Fun.
Worked at a small family run laser tag for about 3 years.
I saw so much weird stuff over the years, and with 3 floors in pretty much total darkness (only lighting was UV lights) I knew I was pretty much bound to find weird stuff going on.
The worst thing I happened to find was a group of friends (about 7 or 8 people) came in to play a few games. Fast forward to their second game and as the game is going on, I walk around a corner to a couple, with her hands down his pants and his hand down her pants, fully going at it.
Obviously I had to ask them to leave, although I did want to know what made them even want to do that when there were kids around too.
The most SFW weird thing I saw was probably 3 or 4 dad's had unenthusiastically joined the game and found them in a large open space on the ground floor trying to beat each other doing handstands. I later found out they were dad's of kid gymnasts. Smartie967
All the Fun.
Sex. Condoms. Tampons (used and unused). Poop. All of these things can be found in laser tag arenas.
The weirdest thing I've seen happen was when I was working in the arena and a kid stuff in the middle of the game. Some poor soul game running through and slipped in it. That was fun.
Second weirdest was finding crappy underwear in the bathroom. It looked like the scene from Dumb and Dumberer.
Third weirdest was the car fire in the parking lot where I had to pull a kid from a car seat.
Those places are black holes of normalcy. Everything is weird there. Jobeofthejungle
Birthdays.
One day, a birthday party comes in. Everything went normal until the match ended and everyone had to come back. They all made it back and had cake, except for two little guys who thought it would be hilarious to camp in one of the corners. Everyone noticed they were gone and panicked. Two other employees went looking for them in the arena, and found them. What was strangest is they decided to make a poop and pee hole if they were gonna be camping there. That was no fun to clean. munching_cactus_74
FORTNITE!
Former arcade employee, worked there for a year. We had:
- Birthday kid vomited, didn't tell employees. Had the next group come in and the girl slipped and fell face first into it.
- Kids who screamed "FORTNITE!!!!" then proceeded to fall down when they got shot, crawling around and begging to be revived. I told one he could just get up, as the vests power back on. He just looked at me and said he was playing Fortnite.
- A kid came out, calm as crap, nose obviously broken and blood pouring everywhere. Said a kid had hit him with the gun. Filed an incident report, never heard from the kid again.
- A hispanic family came in, a lady fainted and the family started screaming at me to get them some alcohol so she would wake up.
- I did a lot of wingwoman work there, often times girls or guys would ask me to put them on the same team as someone they liked, and it was cute seeing the results. CarnivalRat
Under the Vest.
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I wasn't an employee, but I was playing laser tag against a group of random kids, and while in the match I saw a kid who took off his laser vest and all his clothes down to his undies, and was running around shooting at people with his laser gun, with the vest dragging by the cord behind him on the floor. Wasn't sure how to react, but he got me with his gun as I wasn't prepared for that. SuperSpirals
- People Describe The Trashiest Thing They've Ever Witnessed - George Takei ›
- People Break Down The Stupidest Thing They've Ever Done Just To Prove They Could - George Takei ›
- People Break Down Things They Did As A Kid That They Now Realize Are Extremely Weird - George Takei ›
- People Break Down The Dumbest Thing They've Ever Seen Their Pet Do - George Takei ›
Try not to follow the bad advice given here, because you don't want to get the results that these guys did.
U/Duckerton375 asked: What's the worst advice someone ever gave you, but you still followed?
The workplace can bring a cornucopia of terrible advice. Don’t follow these unless you want to get fired.
Bad jobs are usually not worth it.
Stick with a job no matter how bad it is. I stayed with a terrible job working retail, dealing with horrible customers and sexual harassment. I was told I wouldn't find anything better.
"No, no, you misunderstand. I said you wouldn't find anything better at making you feel like complete garbage."
This gets really creepy really fast.
frustrated workplace GIFGiphy"After you put in a job application, you need to call them at least once a day every day until they hire you."
Note: this did not get me hired. It got me called out by the HR person I was calling and forbidden to ever contact their facility again.
I work for a law firm that employees over 1500 people in the home office alone. Once I received a call from the building security saying, "Insert Name is here to speak with the owner." Well we are run by a committee so that's odd. Found out they just applied for a job and wanted to talk directly to the person that would potentially hire them. Told him the firm will contact them to schedule an interview. They refused to leave without "talking to the owner." Had security escort them out of the building.
This is absolutely not true.
"Sleep is for people who do not want success" great words from my uncle, it almost killed me.
Now I may be oversleeping.
Interpersonal relationships are also a big breeding ground for terrible advice. Don’t listen to any of these.
Heartbreaking.
My father always tought me and my brother that "having friends is bad and in the end they will never be there for you" so everytime I told my father about my friends he would get kinda mad and give me the advice to stop talking to them.
Now I am afraid of people and have several trust issues, thanks dad.
This won’t end well.
A Christmas Story GIF by filmeditorGiphyIn the fifth grade my teacher was talking about bullying, then she said "if anyone tries to bully you just agree with them." So the next time I got bullied I agreed with the bully and they bullied me more.
Dude one time I saw an anti bullying video that told the victims to just BE NICE TO THE BULLY. Like the bully was hurling insults and the victim was smiling and complimenting him. My first thought was about how much I hated the mere thought that this would work. My second thought was of how the people who came up with that method had clearly never been bullied.
Oof.
When I met my now wife at the age of 19, one of my coworkers said that it's very important to start at the bottom with presents and work your way up, she still has the socks I gave her on our first anniversary on the wall over our bed as a reminder...
I'm still trying to teach my boyfriend about good presents and bad presents. Biscuits from the supermarket = bad present. Cheap unbranded laptop battery from China as my only present = bad present (and only lasted 2 months). Anything off my 7-page wishlist = good present. It's literally a list of things I want to receive as presents.
Can tell you from experience that this is a bad idea.
Had a falling out with some friends. My husband recommended I reach out to an old friend who ghosted me suddenly in a manner that induced some pretty severe abandonment trauma. Went for it anyways because "it's been so long, surely they changed". Am now experiencing the same things as last time.
When you follow bad advice, it can lead to mistakes that you just can’t come back from.
Buying a house is tricky.
for sale dancing GIF by Lisa VertudachesGiphy"Buy a home now before the prices go up!" -my FIL in 2006.
We bought in 2007 and paid $259,500 for our 1,300 sq ft house (we really couldn't afford it and had an 80/20 so we had 8% interest for one loan and 6% on the other) and in 2008 it was worth $97,000 so refinancing wasn't even an option. We watched all of our neighbors walk away or get foreclosed on but we kept paying our bills and as of this very moment our house is worth $462,000. I'm so happy we stuck it out, we both worked our @sses off and the house will be paid off in 2 years.
It worked out for us, it's a horrible idea. Especially since 1300 sq ft houses are $460+k
My heartbreaks for future generations, I honestly don't know how people are going to afford housing in the future.
It’s there for a reason.
"Never apply for any government assistance."
Cue years of suffering trying to work full-time with a painful disability. Quit a particularly terrible job, and wanted to apply for food aid until I could find another gig; a friend with lots of DHS experience recommended I apply for Social Security "just to get in the system." Turns out my disability was bad enough to get accepted the first time, which I wasn't expecting. Really could've used that support, oh, the 30+ previous years of my life.
Credit is important to have.
I was told to not get a credit card until after college. I was super fortunate to have my college paid for so I had no loans, car paid in cash, no credit card or anything to start building credit. Found myself out in the world at 22 years old with a credit score of 0.
So while a lot of this bad advice came from trusted people, oftentimes they were too misinformed to give that advice in the first place. Don't trust the word of one person--do your research, and make decisions for yourself.
It'll be way better in the long run