The manager straightens his visor and leans on a miniature golf club. “And over here, we have the 11th hole. It’s real tricky. You’ll learn that real soon once you start work. First of all, it’s a Par Four. Most of the other holes are Par Three or even Two. So, like I said, tricky. If you start to get a bottleneck of folks, it’s gonna be here. And families don’t come play pirate miniature golf because they want to stand around. The kids are going to get antsy.”
“Got it.”
“And it’s easy for the ball to go into the water on this hole. We’ve put up some netting, but it only seems to work about half the time. Also, the 11th tends to be where a kid admits their suicidal ideation, so that’ll slow things down. Anyway, you may have to provide an extra ball if it goes too deep into the water to extract easily. But don’t worry, we’ll get it during the Monday cleanout.”
“Wait. What?”
“We’re closed on Mondays so we can do a good deep clean, get all the balls that have gone in the water, that kind of thing.”
“No, no, I mean the thing you said. About suicidal ideation?”
“Oh yeah, right. That’ll cause a bottleneck, too. The moms seem to take it extra hard. With that and the Par Four and the water hazard, you might need to encourage the waiting families to go around.”
“Can we go back to the suicidal ideation part? That doesn’t seem … normal.”
“Well, that’s not for me to say. A big problem is that the bathrooms aren’t really accessible until the 16th hole, so that’s five whole holes—ha—people gotta get through. And we don’t actually keep facial tissues in the bathroom, but that’s ok because most moms carry some in their purse.”
“Facial tissue?”
“For the crying. Some are good at holding it in, bless ’em. But every now and then you’ll get one who can’t stop the tears and you just have to hope another mom has Kleenex in her purse and takes pity. Now, here on the 12th hole, you’ll notice that—”
“I’m sorry, can we go back again to the 11th hole? Kids are confessing thoughts of suicide?”
“Well, not all the kids. You’ll learn to tell which. Like, the five-year-olds are fine. They just want to read gory stories about pirates and hit their balls into the water. It’s the preteens mostly. The ones who look kind of uncomfortable. Boys who maybe seem a bit too girly, girls who look like they wouldn’t be caught dead in a skirt. You’ll figure it out the longer you work here. It can be helpful to kind of draw out their check-in process, so they end up behind the other families rather than in front. Less likely to have a bottleneck.”
“I… the bottleneck is not…”
“We gotta keep things moving, you know? Turn, burn, and earn, baby. That’s a phrase from my restaurant days. I used to run a restaurant. Margins were too low, though. Mini golf is way more lucrative. But only if we get ‘em in and out, right?”
“Aren’t you at all worried that these kids are having thoughts of suicide? Beyond just the bottleneck it causes at miniature golf?”
“Well, that’s hardly my business. I’m not here to tell anyone how to parent their kids. I’m here to run a miniature golf course.”
“But there must be something we can do! These are kids—”
“If you’re suggesting we turn away the families with the weird kids, the LGBT-whatevers, I get your instinct but it’s just not good business sense. All it takes is one keyboard warrior and a bad review.”
“That’s not—”
“Now, I did look into moving the bathrooms closer to the 11th hole, but the overhead on that was too high to be practical. Besides, the suicide-and-crying thing doesn’t happen that often. Maybe one or two times.”
“A season?”
“Ha! If only. One or two times a day. Well, that’s the off season. Spring break, Memorial Day through Labor Day, that’s when you gotta be ready. We’ve had as high as three to five times an hour. Lord, that was a rough day. So many complaints about the bottlenecks. I had to refund six families.”
“Signs! We could put up signs with the suicide prevention hotline number!”
“I see you’re trying to think entrepreneurially, and I appreciate that. Lots of kids from your generation are just here to put in minimum effort and get a paycheck. So, don’t take this the wrong way, but signs about suicide prevention are a terrible idea. Might make even more kids start confessing. Then the bottleneck’ll just get worse. But you keep brainstorming like that. I can already see you might be assistant manager material one day.”
“But why are kids confessing thoughts of suicide at a miniature golf course at all? Why would this course make them think about suicide?”
“Look, I can tell this has you rattled, but I only have about half an hour for this training, so we really need to move it along. Josh can only handle the front desk for so long on his own.”
“But—”
“The short answer is miniature golf doesn’t have a dang thing to do with thoughts of suicide. These kids had ’em before they came in and they’ll have ’em after. They’re unhappy. They don’t feel like they can be themselves, I guess. That’s not on us. That’s a society thing or whatever. We aren’t gonna fix that with a sign or moving the restrooms. Now, can we finish the training?”
“I…”
“Ok, great. Because the 12th hole has a blind corner that’s kind of a doozy. Add in a mom and kid both trying to blink back tears and you’re looking at a lot of balls being hit off the course. Hey … ! Where are you going? Bah. Young people today. No one wants to work anymore. Josh! We need to reopen the job posting! Yeah, another one. Oh, excuse me there, ma’am. No, we don’t have tissues in the bathrooms, but you can use the toilet paper. Only five more holes until you can easily exit to the restrooms. No problem. I hope you and your son—oh, sorry, daughter—have a great rest of your day. Oh, and remember: if you get a hole in one on the 18th—you play again for free!”
The manager straightens his visor again and looks toward the 11th hole. Another kid, another mother, both teeing up. He thinks to whisper a prayer but goes to refill the toilet paper in the bathrooms instead. Tonight is Kaylee’s 11th birthday. He’s taking her bowling.
