AMF Training Program - is there one?

grumpie

grumpie

Active Member
I was at Belconnen on the weekend to watch the Holt Challenge and also bowl in the John Dobson Memorial. I was amazed to see that these poor people who are employed by AMF obviously are taught very little.

The poor girl behind the counter who had to keep removing the pins from the gutter had obviously had no instructions given to her. She kept walking through the sensors each time and obviously it would score the next bowler with a miss. You could see by about the 3rd time, she had figured out that what ever she was doing would cause a scoring problem but really had no idea what.

This is not the first time I have seen this incident. I am really upset with this as this effects these kids self esteem. A little time spent with them could make such a difference. :mad::mad:

To top things off, at Belconnen, they can't even be bothered to open up their pro shop when there is a couple of hundred bowlers going through there each day for a fortnight!! The only time the pro shop is open is weekday evenings.

Four balls were damaged on Saturday evening. Some of the damages were actually on the track. They can't be fixed until Monday evening !!! There are a heap of qualified drillers amongst these bowlers, and they can't even use the pro shop. This is really really poor service !! :mad::mad:

Liz Fabian-Czmok
 
Not the first time there has been no facilities available for ball damage during such events. Two years ago one of our bowlers thumb insert slipped to inside his ball and despite no amount of prising could we get it out. Took 2 days to finally get it fixed and he could not use that ball at all till it was. Unfortunately only had 2 balls and ended up having to use his spare ball all the time.

Think it should be in the tender documents that pro-shop should be open during the tournament or at least access given to experienced/qualified persons to use the facilities.
 
Two of the problems I've seen over the Years, !982 Nationals at Golden Bowl in Victoria, no Pro-Shop open on the Sunday during the Australian Masters, I just needed to fix up my Thumb hole, could have done it myself but the Shop wasn't open. SPC had a habit of bringing in Managers from all over the Country to help, not good if the Female Managers are wearing High Heels and have to run down the capping to move a pin, I've seen that happen.

IF they are experiencing a lot of pins out the front than they should have converted to Fast Drop Rakes, it nearly eliminates this problem.

willey
 
Ahh the old days of the AMF training facility at Bankstown Bowl where Jim Roberts ran full on training schools for Technicians and a phone service for trouble shooting.
They even had a front end staff training school too !!!

Recently we had several scuff marks on the approach and when in practice and asked the control staff could we get them cleaned off. She said "well that is strange the boys oiled the approaches a bit earlier" Hello !!!!!
We also had, on the same night , the 8 pin missing regularly in a deck. When approached she said " Does it matter , i thought that would make it easier" Double Hello !!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Oiled approaches..? Explains why the lanes hook so much!

Social bowler's don't care about these things, so they're not a priority.

I was told of training, that happened recently at the aforementioned pinball arcade with bowling lanes attached, regarding a loyalty program. When it was mentioned that more than half of AMF's games come from social play, a cafe staff member piped up "So now we know that they're (league and tournament players) the minority, does that mean we can tell them where to go?" A staff member who happens to be a pretty good player explained the concept of "arithmetic" and a whole new branch of this concept called "division" so she could understand the concept of "games per player." It may even have got through. This person can be pretty convincing.

If you ran a golf course, would you hire people who knew nothing about golf and the people who played it? If you ran a restaurant, would you hire people who knew nothing about food and what patrons want? It would be short-sighted, bordering on foolish to do so. Like hiring an operations manager to run a hotel. Unless they have fabulous natural aptitude for hospitality, they can only do the business half of the job well and the hospitality half, with customers and staff (the return business half) merely adequately at best.

Back on topic, a lot of balls get damaged at Belconnen every week. I get people bringing them to me fairly regularly for repairs and hear about a whole lot more. They even have a "damaged balls pickup" point near the front desk. (I took a photo of it after I stopped laughing!) It gets denied when you ask about it, but so do other things like the filthy state of affairs from the approach onwards. Apparently cleaning machinery is operationally inefficient, like getting the social players to wear bowling shoes. You get used to it, or you don't bowl there. Despite living less than 3 kilometres away, I choose not to bowl there as it's simply disgraceful.

Yes, AMF used to have some pretty good training. That must have been inefficient. They used to hire staff with a view of retaining them. Probably inefficient too. I remember when it was unusual to see a counter staff memeber who didn't bowl league. Now the opposite is true in many places. Some kid with an attitude who's been at Tuggeranong for a fortnight read me the riot act about needing my league membership card if I wanted my cafe discount last night. I guess the "Track" shirt I was wearing and the fact I was wearing bowling shoes on a night with no social lanes until 8:30 wasn't enough proof, (although somebody else's card would have been.) The other staff just know me, but that's probably inefficient. Geez, this efficiency thing is going well. Keep up the good work!
 
Gawd help us, how long before before all AMF staffers know no bowlers at all or anything about bowling. "Welcome to McBowling may i take your order please!!!"
 
It is very sad to me , and the likes of others who have been around a long, long time, that AMF is now a joke and cares even less about League and Tournament bolwers than they did in the past.
AMF have management that have zero experience or care factor for Bowling
It is really up to US as bowlers and the TBA and to an extent the local Associations, to drive Ten Pin Bowling in the direction we want it to go
We now have Chris Batson as the National Coach who is in my view THE person for that job as well as the kind of person to give direction for the GAME not individual agendas
 
Does this "post" mean that we are back using the forum to discuss AMF subjects & or tournaments in AMF centres?

I thought that was a "no go" area?

You might NOT want to stereo type the staff at AMF too much. There are a lot of good ones out there ... and a lot of them that bowl or know plenty about bowling.

You may end up pissing off the ones that actually stick up for the league bowlers.

Why don't we start with the topic of this post .. and maybe direct it to something along the lines of questions regarding Pro Shop requirements during tournaments OR Tournament committees & centres - what should their relationship be?

Just a thought.
 
Staff in any centre or position are usually as good as their training is, and there are many helpful and dedicated staff members in tenpin bowling.

The comments about certain centres are mainly concerning Sydney area where there are only a handful of independent centres and many more Macquarie Leisure Entertainment venues. And from a business point MLE are performing very well.

I am involved with tournament management and committees and ensure all centres are sent tender docs for tournaments, unfortunately most do not wish to have their lanes occupied by tournaments when they might have walk-ins or social bookings jeopardised.

Having a business back ground I prefer to work-in with centres to set times that do not overlap 'prime time', no late squads for satudays, start early, fill lanes, early sundays for training sessions etc.

Having a proshop open for a tournament is just good business. If they have no staff available - negoiate with manager if you have someone to help, access to facilities is usually the only thing required.

And the list goes on. The sport is too good to let fall through the cracks.

Leanne
 
I believe AMF have gone with the philosophy that why train staff members when the league bowlers are going to do it for them. After all how much training does it take to take money and tell a social bowler what lane they are on, oh apart from knowing how to type in a person's name of course. Yes I know what you are all thinking now (what about safety issues etc. but hey that is how they do it). This is how I perceive things after observing what has happened at Chadstone for the last couple of years. Throw them in the deep end and see if they can swim so to speak.

Now the key is to control your frustration and not loose your cool and simply and clearly explain to them the problem and eventually they learn to deal with it in the manner we want them too. After all it isn't their fault there employer shows such a lack of courtesy to their bread and butter customers.

Now as for proshop facilities being available during a tournament I think you will find that OH&S and Insurance dictates this scenario. Simply put if you are not a member of the bowls staff then you won't be using any equipment in the proshop.
 
Golden Greek said:
You might NOT want to stereo type the staff at AMF too much. There are a lot of good ones out there ... and a lot of them that bowl or know plenty about bowling.

You may end up pissing off the ones that actually stick up for the league bowlers.QUOTE]

Good point, well made. There are still staff at AMF who bowl and who love bowling. There are assistant managers, managers and regional managers who do so as well. We must do our very best to keep these people on side. At the rate that they're disappearing, they're becoming precious!

Perhaps the pendulum will swing back toward the subscription business model, although looking at the Ardent Leisure (MLE's oxymoronic new name) website, this doesn't appear anywhere on the published plans.

Nobody ever thought I'd say this, but;
Come back Steve Mackie! We miss you!
Click to expand...
 
AdrianS, don't you mean could the Industry, not afford, to pay him what he is worth. Believe me he is worth more than All those running the Company at the moment.

willey
 
Counter Staff - "what counter staff", are they the ones we find outside having a smoke with the Mechanic and the snack bar attendants, the ones that don't know what a rosin bag or bolwer tape is, or KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BOWLING.
Most have been trained, to have an attitude - "the customer is never right"
 
Most of the staff at my local AMF are pretty good however we did find that last Sunday night the counter was unoccupied when one of us went to pay. After waiting a while he rang on his mobil phone and asked if the games were free on Sundays because his friend was there and everyone was walking out without paying. A mere 5 seconds later a very worried looking trainee manager came flying out of the back room, it was good for a laugh for us but a bit of a worry for the Trainee.
 
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