Friday, December 09, 2011

Over the Top

Today for my day off, we planned a busy day, including a trip to The Chiller to enjoy their (less expensive) noon skate. On the way out, we picked up some used ice skates at Play it Again Sports (think early Christmas presents), and we were all excited to try them out.

When we got to the Chiller (we go to the "Ice Haus" one at Nationwide Arena), it seemed awfully empty... and the guy behind the counter told us why; there was no noon skate scheduled today. It seems the Blue Jackets had scheduled the ice, and, well, if it weren't for the Blue Jackets, there wouldn't be an Ice Haus. He really politely told us that if we wanted to, we could come back for the skate at 3:45, which wasn't really a choice for us, because we needed to be back to M'port around 4.

We tried to think of something else to do with the kids in the arena district, when the guy behind the counter came back out. He explained that the goalie had been out skating and had only used a corner of the ice and it would be better ice for what they had scheduled later if the ice was more cut up, so if we waited for a while, we could skate after all. We just had to wait for one guy who was out practicing.

It was actually cool to watch him practice - it can be easy to forget how quick a hockey player has to be to excel in his sport. But after he had finished, we got the go-ahead to take the ice. We had a great time!


Jonathan really is picking up ice skating. Andrew spent a lot of time on the ice. But both boys had a lot of fun, and Tara and I enjoyed it fully.

But that wasn't all. The guy behind the counter, feeling bad that we had to wait so long to skate, gave us four free passes to come back and skate. And when we were leaving, he gave the boys each a Columbus Blue Jackets hockey stick.

He didn't have to let us skate at all; after all, the mistake was ours. He could have just told us "sorry, we don't have noon skate today" and we wouldn't have held it against him, the Chiller, or the Blue Jackets. But he went above and beyond, over the top even, in his customer service. What an awesome day!

1 comment:

The Lundy 5 said...

Awesome! Thanks for sharing that.