The 'How Did Your Airsoft Day Go? Thread

[Tackle]

@Druid799, make you right mate, that's a disgusting attitude, gotta question the h&s aspect when they ran live fire clays at the same time as an Airsoft event, definitely dodgy as fuck.

As for his not giving a shit attitude, he's lucky someone didn't put him on his arse.

Everybody lost money over the last 18 months, doesn't mean you abandon all integrity just to squeeze a few more quid out of a day, prick deserves to go under, then someone else can step up & run it properly.

Is this the same site that stitched up your friend, the former head marshal ?

Next thing, destroy the mofo on every forum & FB page, as well as the review sites such as trustpilot etc 

😈

 

 

 

[Skara]

I fully understand why the site owner pulled that stunt, but I don't agree with him and genuinely think it was a shit move to piss off a bunch of locals.

After all locals are the major source of income for sites so they should be treated almost like kings.

 

If we were to become greedy fucks, I think I'd quit playing Airsoft for good (I manage the finances of my club btw).

[MiK]

@Druid799 That’s a proper shitter matey, this is one reason I pay with either PayPal or my Credit Card - there is always a way to turn about bad service but bad manners need punishment wether it’s financial in form of a card chargeback or to the council where you can cite lack of safety of minors 

[Adolf Hamster]

As much as i hate to be the devils advocate, it is understandable that sites who've spent the last year taking it rough from the government are gonna be desperate to get back to some sense of financial sensibility.

 

However, there's a right way and a wrong way. My local's answer to the problem of wanting more money was hey, lets open more (as in doing wednesday evening and saturday shoots on top of their normal sundays) because our customers wanna play as much as we want their money.

 

The wrong way is diluting down the service and not even giving your customers the common fucking courtesy of explaining why.

 

However i might want to hazard a theory as to the way he was acting. I'm not saying this is what is going on, and without the context of being there it's equally possible he's just an asshole.

However, sometimes folk who are on the spectrum can have quirky ways of dealing with confrontational situations, if they start to get overloaded then falling silent and walking off to do seemingly mundane tasks can be a coping mechanism relied on right before the bottled up panic gets unleashed as rage.

 

If this is the case then the very last thing you want to do is to follow them/further elevate the situation as they may be very close to breaking.

[Druid799]

13 minutes ago, Adolf Hamster said:

As much as i hate to be the devils advocate, it is understandable that sites who've spent the last year taking it rough from the government are gonna be desperate to get back to some sense of financial sensibility.

 

However, there's a right way and a wrong way. My local's answer to the problem of wanting more money was hey, lets open more (as in doing wednesday evening and saturday shoots on top of their normal sundays) because our customers wanna play as much as we want their money.

 

The wrong way is diluting down the service and not even giving your customers the common fucking courtesy of explaining why.

 

However i might want to hazard a theory as to the way he was acting. I'm not saying this is what is going on, and without the context of being there it's equally possible he's just an asshole.

However, sometimes folk who are on the spectrum can have quirky ways of dealing with confrontational situations, if they start to get overloaded then falling silent and walking off to do seemingly mundane tasks can be a coping mechanism relied on right before the bottled up panic gets unleashed as rage.

 

If this is the case then the very last thing you want to do is to follow them/further elevate the situation as they may be very close to breaking.

Do see your points but to openly say they couldn’t give a toss about customer satisfaction just as long as there recouping lost money ? As to could he be on any spectrum he runs a business that has four sites two of which are open Severn days a wk running multiple events at a time , when he was first actually informed we wanted to speak to him with no real details about what being given to the marshal and the fact he looked at us shrugged his shoulders and walked off in a different direction and finally the fact his wife said ‘he doesn’t like being questioned about his business practices” so I think I’m more than right in saying he’s an arrogant prick nothing more nothing less ?  

1 hour ago, Tackle said:

@Druid799, make you right mate, that's a disgusting attitude, gotta question the h&s aspect when they ran live fire clays at the same time as an Airsoft event, definitely dodgy as fuck.

As for his not giving a shit attitude, he's lucky someone didn't put him on his arse.

Everybody lost money over the last 18 months, doesn't mean you abandon all integrity just to squeeze a few more quid out of a day, prick deserves to go under, then someone else can step up & run it properly.

Is this the same site that stitched up your friend, the former head marshal ?

Next thing, destroy the mofo on every forum & FB page, as well as the review sites such as trustpilot etc 

😈

 

 

 

No that was a different site and yes I fully intend to put up truthful revues on there customer service attitude .

[Adolf Hamster]

3 minutes ago, Druid799 said:

Do see your points but to openly say they couldn’t give a toss about customer satisfaction just as long as there recouping lost money ?

 

Hence my point about opening more being preferable to double booking which i agree is a shitty way to go about solving the problem.

 

5 minutes ago, Druid799 said:

As to could he be on any spectrum he runs a business that has four sites two of which are open Severn days a wk running multiple events at a time

 

Thats the problem with autism- at the "lesser" end of the scale folk can, especially as they age and gain experience, become very adept at appearing normal, right up until the point they're not. indeed for the older generations it's very common for folk to be undiagnosed (and by extension unaware themselves why they act certain ways).

 

12 minutes ago, Druid799 said:

when he was first actually informed we wanted to speak to him with no real details about what being given to the marshal and the fact he looked at us shrugged his shoulders and walked off in a different direction

 

Possibly, although as mentioned it can be incredibly hard to tell in person let alone secondhand. Saying things either verbally or with body language that are just the wrong fit for the situation is a common symptom (leading to more frustration because now people are pissed off).

 

19 minutes ago, Druid799 said:

finally the fact his wife said ‘he doesn’t like being questioned about his business practices”

 

Again as with above this could be interpreted either way.

 

23 minutes ago, Druid799 said:

so I think I’m more than right in saying he’s an arrogant prick nothing more nothing less ?  

 

Given you were a regular there and had a much clearer view of how he was acting you could well be right, as mentioned it could be interpreted either way when reviewed second-hand in writing.

 

Tbh the reason i brought it up was more just to plant the seed that there could be an alternate explanation, having read it and realised some of the similarities.

 

28 minutes ago, Druid799 said:

yes I fully intend to put up truthful revues on there customer service attitude .

 

For sure, i mean they could at least have been up front about it- let folks know what was going to happen so they could decide if they still wanted to make the trek or not.

[MiK]

@Adolf Hamster Almost every business has got fucked this last year, I’m self employed so I was earning zero moolar even more so than most as I live in the fuck-wit city that is Leicester who couldn’t follow simple rules, I think from March 2020 to May 2021 I worked a total of 17 weeks out of 60+ weeks

There’s always ways to improve/succeed without be a douche to your customers.

 

Happily I’m now back fully working I’m back being my usual happy self putting my clients first and even tho I lost a sack load of money whilst still paying costs which have now increased I still haven’t increased any of my rates to my people as I know they are probably struggling financially too.

 

 

[Adolf Hamster]

19 minutes ago, MiK said:

@Adolf Hamster Almost every business has got fucked this last year, I’m self employed so I was earning zero moolar even more so than most as I live in the fuck-wit city that is Leicester who couldn’t follow simple rules, I think from March 2020 to May 2021 I worked a total of 17 weeks out of 60+ weeks

There’s always ways to improve/succeed without be a douche to your customers.

 

Happily I’m now back fully working I’m back being my usual happy self putting my clients first and even tho I lost a sack load of money whilst still paying costs which have now increased I still haven’t increased any of my rates to my people as I know they are probably struggling financially too.

 

 

 

 

It is the unfortunate side effect of this pandemic that people have had some vastly different experiences, everything from mostly continuing as normal, working hammer and tongs on the front line, sitting indoors going insane on furlough or even worse ending up with no income and no certainty.

 

I'm glad to hear as hard as your troubles were that you had the resources to weather the storm.

 

You are right though, there are ways and ways, as i mentioned originally the way my local looked to solve this same problem was to open on more days, which gives both the site and the players what they want.

[Rogerborg]

Sorry to hear that, druid, it's sad to hear that a good site has gone bad.  I'd sack it off for the owner's attitude, there's no fixing that.

 

On the money though, I actually appreciate Mrs Owner's honesty, and I think we need to have an honest conversation about that.  £25 per person for a full day plus maybe a couple of quid profit on BBs or bangs is great value for us, but a poor earner for sites.  I'm astonished that they manage to run at all on such thin gruel. Compare that to pack of chavs where they turned over £600 in 2 hours.

 

It rather sounds like the site owner has decided that you're more trouble than you're (literally) worth.  If he's trying to make a living from the land, he could actually be right about that. So it might be best to just wish him the best of luck and move on.

[Druid799]

31 minutes ago, Rogerborg said:

Sorry to hear that, druid, it's sad to hear that a good site has gone bad.  I'd sack it off for the owner's attitude, there's no fixing that.

 

On the money though, I actually appreciate Mrs Owner's honesty, and I think we need to have an honest conversation about that.  £25 per person for a full day plus maybe a couple of quid profit on BBs or bangs is great value for us, but a poor earner for sites.  I'm astonished that they manage to run at all on such thin gruel. Compare that the pack of chavs where they turned over £600 in 2 hours.

 

It rather sounds like the site owner has decided that you're more trouble than you're (literally) worth.  If he's trying to make a living from the land, he could actually be right about that. So it might be best to just wish him the best of luck and move on.

Again all valid points that you could sort of understand with a simple explanation but not this way , pre pandemic on a couple of occasions he actually thanked the airsofters at the end of a gameday for still turning up in large numbers wk in wk out during the ‘lean’ winter mths when all the other activities where dropping off due to crap weather .

But for me the real stab in the back is that just over a wk ago a large group of these ‘annoying’ airsofters spent a day at one of his other sites (and we were planning the same at the others as well) clearing all the overgrowth back and repairing the structures and barricades that had fallen in to disrepair due to the lockdown for him for free as we wanted to help him out as we knew money was tight !
So me personally I wont be forgiving or forgetting what happened on Sunday for a long time if ever .

[Madhouse]

It's how sites (and businesses) recover from the setbacks of the last 18 months that will define their future success, as has been said there's a right way and a wrong way. There's an abundance of people right now that want to catch up on all they missed out on in lockdown so there's a ton of demand and any business owner will want to get as much of that pie as they can, but as has been shown there's a fine line to tread so that you don't alienate those that were coming before and will continue to do so once things calm down a bit. Getting too greedy now may prove to be short-termist and cause more problems in future.

 

Am all for sites doing it the right way, weekday evening shoots would be right up my street as my weekends fill up fast. I for one am also happy to muck in with the maintenance too, we all want our sites to do well after all.

 

[Fatboy40]

54 minutes ago, Madhouse said:

It's how sites (and businesses) recover from the setbacks of the last 18 months that will define their future success, as has been said there's a right way and a wrong way.

 

My preferred local site has worked hard to get things back to normal, they've put the effort in, and due to this I've decided that I'll buy my BB's and gas from there rather than online even though they cost a little more as they deserve to recover from all this mess.

[Rogerborg]

1 hour ago, Druid799 said:

But for me the real stab in the back is that just over a wk ago a large group of these ‘annoying’ airsofters spent a day at one of his other sites (and we were planning the same at the others as well) clearing all the overgrowth back and repairing the structures and barricades that had fallen in to disrepair due to the lockdown for him for free as we wanted to help him out as we knew money was tight !

 

Oof. OK, sounds like you've been properly mugged off.

 

Well, he's made his choice, all you can do is to make yours.

[concretesnail]

We have all suffered through covid, the site owner is no exception, but they aren't going about recovery if that is how they treat folk who choose to play at the site.

Anyone who has decent leasure retail experience will tell you its not the one-offs that grow a business, its the repeat client. Once they go then things get very tricky.

I know, as I'm sure others here do, that as self employed folk things are as hard now as ever as we have had to dip into savings, cut back, find cost saving where we can to survive.

Slapping the faces of locals and regulars isn't the way to do it.

Edited June 8, 2021 by concretesnail

[Tackle]

2 hours ago, Druid799 said:

Again all valid points that you could sort of understand with a simple explanation but not this way , pre pandemic on a couple of occasions he actually thanked the airsofters at the end of a gameday for still turning up in large numbers wk in wk out during the ‘lean’ winter mths when all the other activities where dropping off due to crap weather .

But for me the real stab in the back is that just over a wk ago a large group of these ‘annoying’ airsofters spent a day at one of his other sites (and we were planning the same at the others as well) clearing all the overgrowth back and repairing the structures and barricades that had fallen in to disrepair due to the lockdown for him for free as we wanted to help him out as we knew money was tight !
So me personally I wont be forgiving or forgetting what happened on Sunday for a long time if ever .

What a Cnut, so he openly acknowledges that his airsoft regulars have given him a continuous revenue stream when all his other fair weather punters have stayed away, he's also exploited the good nature of self same airsofters by asking for free labour (& probably skill sets) towards the upkeep of HIS property, from which he profits, & then the first opportunity he gets, he stabs his most loyal client base in the back😡.

As for whether we should consider if he's on the spectrum & that therefore affects how he deals with questions on his business ethics, what a load of bollocks, the guy runs 4 locations catering for "outdoor pursuits" & is probably minted, so clearly nothing has held him back up til now, he's just taken his most reliable (& in some ways naive, no offence meant) client base for granted, in the knowledge that if he can get guys working for nothing, then what other liberties can he get away with.

 

like I said, definitely no offence meant with my "naive" comment, I used to work in engineering on a heritage steam railway, as well as the skeleton crew of paid staff such as myself, the place had a massive core of volunteers, mostly retired people who were affectionately known as "puffer nutters", enthusiasts who were prepared to do all sorts of work, some of it menial & pretty shitty, just to get their fix of Steam etc.

What I found objectionable about this though was the upper management/board of governors paid themselves very very well, while making lots of empty promises to the small core of paid staff regarding bonuses, wage increases & other incentives, when in truth those in charge were doing their best to trim the paid workforce even further, in the hope the volunteers would take up the slack on the less skill intensive roles.

its one thing to volunteer for charitable ventures, but a completely different kettle of fish when greedy entrepreneurs exploit the interests of good natured reliable people, which I think is the case at druids EX-regular site.

[Druid799]

2 hours ago, Tackle said:

What a Cnut, so he openly acknowledges that his airsoft regulars have given him a continuous revenue stream when all his other fair weather punters have stayed away, he's also exploited the good nature of self same airsofters by asking for free labour (& probably skill sets) towards the upkeep of HIS property, from which he profits, & then the first opportunity he gets, he stabs his most loyal client base in the back😡..

Exactly AND it was us who came with the idea to help get the sites back up to scratch as in the end it would benefit us the most if the sites where back to full playability and not all over grown so we could only use the main tracks on them . Yea couple of carpenters an arborist and the manager of a tool hire place even offered free equipment to use ! You know what mate you are right we were bloody naive to think he’d not stitches us up ! Lesson learned . 

[Rogerborg]

Trying to be charitable, he might have been having a bad day after realising that he'd taken on a lot more than he could deal with.

 

But that deserves an apology later.  If he's just shrugged it off then it's likely to happen again.

[Tackle]

48 minutes ago, Rogerborg said:

he might have been having a bad day after realising that he'd taken on a lot more than he could deal with.

I typed that in to Google translate, it came back with:

 

"Clearly the Greedy Cnut tried to squeeze every last penny out of the area of land he'd rented, without considering the the consequences or repercussions of his tightwad actions"

 

Isn't this new fangled technology amazing 🤣

[Impulse]

First milsim event on the books and I'm going to ache tomorrow. Did something stupid like 24k steps through the event (kept my smart watch on under my gloves as I was curious) and only got 3h sleep! Was it enjoyable? You bet. Will I do it again? Probably not, but you never know. I think the happy middleground of filmsim / battle sim is where my preference will lie, as milsim just seems a bit too... uptight? Serious? Pay-to-win? (just keep reading, you'll know why I say this) I get why people are drawn to it, but to me it's just not my cup of tea; I play airsoft to have fun with friends and play BB wars and maybe do a bit of silly RP and follow a story through a longer event, I'm not looking for that strict military feeling.

 

High point? Our squad using site knowledge to sneak behind the entire enemy team using a really out of the way route to start engaging them from behind, though a premature endex hampered our impact as it took a while for the squad to get into position. It's such an out of the way route that one of the others in our squad was a regular on site and he didn't know about it. Runner up was dressing up in civvie gear and shouting insults at a very on-edge Taskforce after they got a journalist blown up by an IED.

 

Low point? No NODs in a sea of lots and lots of NODs (on both teams). Our squad did one firefight in the darkness because we were assigned to defend an objective and got absolutely rolled over by double our number where almost all of them had Gen2+ NODs, while our squad had none. I got one of them with the mp5k before getting hit myself as I just shot at the red light in the darkness, but the fight was over in less than 10 seconds.

[Skara]

Had a blast today but we all left earlier (around 11 AM) because the heat is unsustainable now.

I parked my car in the shadow and the when we got back it said 35°! Way too fucking much for me.

Nonetheless we managed to play a fair bit of games, we got a couple of new members and overall the day went smoothly.

 

On the technical side, I took the 933 which performed flawlessly and the aap, unfortunately this one decided to die on its first 3 shots, the hop wasn't doing anything other than pissing bbs at 5 metres (turns out it still doesn't like MR-Hops even with a TDC installed) so I threw it in my backpack and kept playing.

Shame as I would have liked to test the TDC potential.

I am forcing myself to drink regularly, it's something I don't usually do but staying hydrated is key on my field, I ended up drinking 4 litres of water without even realising it until I got back to the car, luckily there's a bar/restaurant thingy on the way back.

 

While we were at said bar we started talking about random stuff, at some point one guy approaches us asking what club we were part of, when we told him he started spouting insults for no reason (he's a member of the cheater club we used to play with a couple of years ago).

Okay, I guess

 

[Rogerborg]

33 minutes ago, Skara said:

I parked my car in the shadow and the when we got back it said 35°! Way too fucking much for me.

 

Heroic, I'd call it quits at 25.

 

I took 4 litres of water today but only got to drink 2 since we got into a literal fire-fight before the end of the day, and our priorities changed rather sharply.

 

[Skara]

Pyro, I guess..

[Monkman]

Hot..i'd say, but managed to get to around 15:30 before started to suffer real bad effects...and this is with having 3ltrs of water & sportsdrnks to get electrolites into me.  Sat in the car at the end with air-con on..got out to talk to someone, and immediately got real bad cramping in the thighs. (To much salt loss today)  Considering i'm 47 and younguns quit hours earlier due to the heat..I thought I did rather well.

Good day and had fun being a sneaky bastard with my Wolverine MTW...getting to places the enemy team didn't expect an attack from...and the new Daniel Defence "Repo" stock is good. (To a risk getting it from China)

 

 

[Fatboy40]

UKARA 😁

 

Dead AAP-01 😭

[Impulse]

I had a decent day, even though I couldn't use the VSR as the battery connectors needed fixing (they're fixed now and reinforced with a bunch of electrical tape!). We played a long game across the whole morning and I got a good number of kills from my hide next to one of the objectives, even after it got completely overrun and I repositioned to start shooting the enemy in the back. However, I think my days using the ghillie are numbered; if it was much warmer, I'd have dropped it as I was pretty damn warm wearing it today!

 

However, I found that I'm really not used to using 1J guns, as I would get into a hide with my m14 and lament at the shots I could've made with the VSR that I just couldn't with the m14. I don't think I had anyone within my usual 30m MED once through the whole day, which made the fact I had no MED (as the m14 is 1J) a moot point.

 

Next skirmish day I'm looking forward to using the VSR again. It's a much lighter-weight loadout than the m14 as the VSR is lighter and I don't need a chest rig as everything fits on the belt.