Running the Open

The 2012 US Open... The last Grand Slam tournament of the year... And I was a part of it...

HA!

My mom wants me to get famous one day just so I can go back to the Open one day, do an interview with ESPN to talk about my days as an employee, and to be really nice to all of the other runners.

I've thought long and hard about how to present this particular blog post. Should I only tell the fun stories? Should I dazzle you with celebrity sightings? Should I crush your fantasies by telling you all of the grungy or boring responsibilities I had as a runner for ESPN?

No... I shall tell it all...

Before I go any further, the US Open is a really big tennis tournament. For those of you who were unaware, that little tidbit of information could come in handy as the blog progresses. Also, a "runner" is basically a Production Assistant, or a go-for, or the hired help. That is how I spent the past three weeks- helping tennis happen on live TV. You're welcome.

Each morning began with an hour and a half train commute to Flushing, Queens. Flushing is about as "middle of nowhere" as New York City gets. In Flushing, you can go to the Mets' Citi Field, the Billie Jean King national tennis center, the Worlds Fair Marina, or BJ's wholesale store (and all of these sites are practically on top of one another). Other than that, Flushing is basically useless. After about a week of this commute, I started to realize I didn't say a single word for the first three active hours of my day. I'm not sure if that was refreshing or frustrating. My mood varied.

They fed us three times a day in Flushing: Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. We also had a ridiculous bookshelf full of snack boxes that I was partially responsible for keeping fully stocked (Thank you BJ's for all of your help). The food is one thing I really am going to miss about the Open. Three free hot meals a day are hard to come by in the real world. And as I mentioned, there was no reason to ever be hungry because of the snack shelf. Shopping trips to fill the snack shelf were adventurous to say the least. One day, we spent over $2,000 on snacks at BJ's. The office motto was "if you think you have enough, fill up one more cart."It definitely took me a little time to get used to dropping THAT much money in one shopping trip. Shopping was always pretty fun, if occasionally overwhelming... That is, until I was put on shopping probation for taking a 5 hour snack trip one afternoon. Nobody seemed to understand that wasn't my fault though... There were hundreds of people out on that Sunday afternoon, all trying to get groceries, and all trying to check out at the same time. It was a nightmare.

One of the main responsibilities of a runner is to keep people fed and happy. Providing snacks is part of that, but not nearly as pivotal as fetching meals... That's right... making lunches and dinners for people who were either too busy or too lazy to go get their own food (to be fair, most people were actually too busy to leave the production truck or computer screen, but there were definitely some bums scattered in). On my first day of making lunches, I created an epic mess of a sandwich. We had menu charts that we would give to everyone to fill out and hand back in. The check boxes were spaced in a very strange way. We would take those charts, locate the requested food, and pack a lunch box to bring back. Sounds simple enough... until you end up with 6 charts, a confusing check system, and very hungry production people. I was asked to make a sandwich for a man that I will refer to as "R." As I was making R's sandwich, and including everything he checked off, I was a little taken-aback to see that he requested beets and eggs with his provolone, mustard, and mayo. All I could think was Maybe he's on a weird diet. Maybe he's European. There are a lot of foreigners here. Maybe they eat funning things... But this is the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. I tried to let it go and I just made the sandwich as requested. I delivered his meal and went on my way. When I was coming around later to take out trash bags (WOO HOO!!) he stopped me and asked me to look at the sandwich. I knew something was fishy when the guy sitting next to him pulled out his iPhone and started recording the conversation. He asked me what happened to the sandwich, if I made it, and who put me up to it? I was so confused, but I was not about to be humiliated, so I denied having anything to do with the sandwich and said that there were tons of runners making sandwiches so I didn't know who got his menu. I also told him is was the most disgusting thing I had ever seen. After a few minutes, he said he actually believed me but that he was determined to find out who set him up... He thought it was a practical joke. I had NO IDEA what was going on!!!!! I had to figure it out, so I went back and looked at the menu chart. As I mentioned earlier, the check system was rather confusing. The boxes that were closest to the food items were not, in fact, the boxes related to those food items. Everything was shifted, which made sense after closer evaluation, but for a frazzled rookie, it was an honest mistake... He hadn't ordered beets and eggs, he had requested lettuce and tomato!!!!! OH I was so embarrassed!!! But I had denied it, so nobody knew it was me. Everybody knew the story by the end of the afternoon, and other runners were getting blamed. It was awful. I wanted to crawl in a hole. My conscience caught up with me by the evening, and I had to go back and tell R that I had lied. As it turns out, coming clean was the best thing I could have done. R was embarrassed that he had been tricked and exclaimed that he knew I was either completely innocent or the best actress he'd ever met. When I told him I studied theatre, he was impressed and made sure everyone in the production truck knew that I was talented. HA! It was a mess. R and I bonded over that incident and I brought him correct lunches for the rest of the open. The only people who DIDN'T find that amusing were my bosses - they thought I was an idiot for the whole first part of the Open.

My bosses were something special... To insure anonymity if this ever gets published for some crazy reason, I'll keep names down to initials. So, here's the list:
J was bipolar and easily stressed. She was easily the most sugary sweet of the bunch when things were going well, but she stormed out of the office so many times it was almost comical.
E was cool... In college... I'm not sure she really grew out of the college mentality. She likes to party, and she wanted the runners to know that. I think I was a little too "cute and sweet" for her liking.
T was the crazy asian lady. Neurotic, strict, and rarely friendly. She called me an epic failure after my long shopping trip. She also called me Lisa for most of the Open. Unfortunately for some, I wasn't even her least favorite...
C was pretty cool. He's Irish or Scottish or something. He had a really cool accent. He was laid back and often sarcastic, but in a funny way, not a mean way. He got work done, but he was the most connected to the runners. I would work for C again... I don't know if I could handle the others again though.

The runner team was pretty awesome, too. We were a melting pot of accents and ethnicities: we had runners representing New Jersey, Mississippi, Delaware, Lithuania, Austria, England, Texas, Ireland, Bermuda, Mexico, and New York. Our group worked really well together. It was a drama-free Open, which made things a lot of fun.

Speaking of fun, I did get to do some pretty neat things.

One of my favorite running stations was the GTX-16 truck. This was our main production truck. I got to sit and watch the team make live television happen. There were a bazillion screens and monitors and people talking on headsets constantly over each other. I have no idea how they made it all work, but it was really a neat thing to watch. I also really enjoyed running the P2 cards from camera stations back and forth to the truck. That always made me feel important.

I was also stationed at the President's Gate for a few sessions. At "arrivals" it's the runner's job to spot celebrities and key players and make sure the camera man records them coming in. Considering the fact that I didn't even know who Andy Murray was until three weeks ago, this probably was not the best job for me, but the celebrities were pretty neat. To curb your interest, I'll just list them out: Amanda Seyfried (oh my gosh she's tiny!), Jon Hamm, Will Ferrel (who was looking a little old), Pippa Middleton, Sean Connery (I just walked up on an interview he was giving), Matthew Morrison (we totally smile at each other), The Wanted, and Mayor Giuliani. I almost tripped the mayor... The camera man and I were set up to catch him come across from the parking lot. We had gone over our plan to stay out of the way of the entourage, and I was ready with my coiled cable to broadcast the entrance of the Mayor! Leave it to politicians to mess up the plan. Instead of crossing in front of us like we thought he would, Giuliani started to walk straight towards me! We (the runners) were NOT supposed to be caught on camera during the tournament, so to avoid being seen and to get out of the way, I had to dive into a nearby flower bush. It would have been fine if I hadn't tugged the camera cable with me, lifting the cord off the ground and nearly tripping the entire party! Fortunately, I dropped the line just in time, and nobody was hurt... except me... but who counts a few flower bush scrapes anyway?

We also got to watch a good bit of tennis: I saw the Williams sisters play together. I watched Andy Roddick's last match before retirement from both court-side and from the roof. I saw Sharapova, Azarenka, Djokovic, Federer, and all of the other impossible names up close and personal, and it was quite thrilling. For someone who has never been a tennis fan, I've grown to really appreciate it.

So, that was my "quick" summary of the past three weeks... I'm sure I've forgotten things, and we're all just going to have to accept that. I'm now back in Manhattan working as an Assistant Casting Director for Mungioli Theatricals. My experience at the Open has definitely reminded me of how thankful I am for this job!

Speaking of, I have work in the morning, so I think it's time to call it a night.

Grace be with you,
Lindsey Shea