Unfiltered Story #191928

An older couple (late 60s) comes in to bowl. I give them their shoes and assign them a lane and think nothing more about it until about 5-10 minutes later they come back up to the desk and the older lady has a very “concerned” look on her face…)

Me: Can I help you guys? (I notice that their scoring screen still has no names or scores so I figure they needed help with the computer)

Her: Yes, we cannot get the bowling balls to come up.

Me: (confused) You mean the balls are stuck and didn’t return?

Her: No, they just haven’t come up.

Me: (still confused) Wait…have thrown a ball yet? (I knew they hadn’t because when you throw a ball, the scorer will mark a score whether there is a name in there or not.)

Her: No. The balls haven’t come up for us to use.

Me: (now very confused but thinking I got the gist of it) Well, you have to pick out a bowling ball first like from one of these racks (point to one next to desk that holds 16 bowling balls).

Her: (glancing at the balls, then the lanes, then back to me) No…we’ve come here and the balls have ALWAYS come up for us to use.

Me: *so dumbfounded, I am at a loss of words – I had no idea what to say to that*

Husband: Come on, honey, let’s go find a ball that fits you. [to me] Thank man.

Me: No problem!

(I still haven’t gotten over that one. She thought the bowling balls would automatically come up through the ball return for her to use. The only thing she may have been referring to is if a customer threw a ball down the lane while it was ‘off’, the ball would have sat there until the lane was turned on again. Then the ball would come back up. Maybe that happened to her and the ball just happened to fit her hand. Either that or she was thinking about Skee-Ball!)

Me: *facepalm*