Why I am Literally Done With Frozen Parties
I’m not going to post this on facebook because I have coworkers on there so I have to pretend to be a normal competent human but HOLY FUCKING SHIT let me tell you why I am done with Frozen parties. And libraries. And kids and parents, especially parents.
We threw a Frozen in July party at work yesterday. Planned out the whole thing 6 months in advance, it was going to be this huge to-do, we were going all out and using the entire children’s space, princesses were coming, it was gonna be epic.
About a month ago, when rumors of the afore-mentioned budget cuts started to get serious, we responded by cutting the program down A LOT. This was ok; we hadn’t started seriously advertising for it yet. We narrowed it down to one room, added “registration required” to all the posters/calendar entries so we could cap attendance at 50. 50 people was all that the room would fit. We announced this at all of our pre-k programs.
It turned out to be a good decision, since with all the lay-offs we ended up having to reduce the number of people working the event to 3, and the number of people helping me set up to 1. There just weren’t enough people to work the event AND get all the regular work done that our absent people would normally have handled.
I was stressing the hell out during set-up, because even with my amazingly helpful fellow librarian helping me, we couldn’t get everything done. I had to leave out activities. It was frustrating, I skipped lunch to get more done and then started to cry when my computer froze, but by starting time we were prepped and ready for our 50 visitors.
Except 50 visitors did not show up.
TWO HUNDRED VISITORS SHOWED UP! We only had about 20 families registered. Literally FORTY EXTRA FAMILIES had dressed up their little Elsas and Annas and Rapunzels and Sophias and showed up unannounced for a party where we LITERALLY DID NOT HAVE ROOM FOR THEM! Even after we took the registered families into the party, the others packed every inch of the children’s area, sitting on the floor because we didn’t have enough tables. I had no idea what to do with them.
It would be one thing if they had seen the event on some of our earlier calendars before registration was required; I have been hella apologetic about that. But, no, every parent I talked to said some variation of, “Oh, I/my family member heard about this on facebook or something and we decided to come. Were we supposed to register?” One parent even had the nerve to say, when I told her the princesses would come outside for meet and greets but we couldn’t fit anyone extra in the party room, “Well you’re going to be disappointing these little girls.” Like, are you serious?! I’m not the one who got these girls all hyped up for a party without checking with the person hosting the party to make sure they could get in! It was sad/infuriating.
It took 2 and a half hours and lots of confusion, but every single little Elsa and Anna and Rapunzel and Sophia still got to meet the princesses, every one went away with a coloring sheet and construction paper crown; and for every parent who yelled at us because their precious snowflake wasn’t getting individual attention, there were 2 kind parents who went out of their way to thank us for hosting this event.
Which was sweet of them, really very sweet, but even so I guarantee its the last time I’ll be doing this.
I waited until all the families had left before doing any sort of crying. Next week I don’t have any programs to worry about so I can go back to crying about the impossibility of making a working schedule. Today Idgaf, I’m going to lay around writing bad fan fiction and eat a lot of chocolate.
