How come everything old isn’t new again?

Is there a time and place where people start getting cynical?  A point of no return where people decide they have reached the proper age to start complaining days on end?

New Year’s eve.  3,000 people came to Kursaal Oostende to celebrate the new year.  Target demographic about 18-26 years old.  The cloakroom had a capacity of more than 2,500 but that doesn’t mean anything when most people decide to leave at the same time.  Result… some people had to wait a really long time to get their coats back, some of them almost an hour, that’s a long wait for someone who’s tired and really wants to go home after a long night.  Was there complaining?  No.  Did they like it?  Hell no.  Who would?  The important thing is they understood the difficulties, the problem and rolled with it.

December 2008.  A classical concert.  Target demographic about 50-70 years old.  Same cloakroom, only 600 people.  After the concert same problem, everyone wants to leave at the same time so a big bottleneck problem.  But waiting times weren’t that bad, 10 minutes tops.  Was there complaining?  A lot!  They complained about having to wait, about the service, about the building, the organization, the concert,… everything they could complain about.  Ofcourse, I’m not trying to generalize, there where a lot people who didn’t complain and understood that cloakrooms will always be bottlenecks and require people to wait.  But it’s remarkable that from a certain age it becomes ‘easier’ to complain, and I really wonder why?  I have nothing but respect for people who’re older than me, but some of them make it really easy to dislike them.

So what’s the problem really?  Why do they start acting that way?

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Tagged as: customer relations, generation gap, Kursaal Oostende