Heat staff thanked for selling all season tix by getting fired

I don't recall Dan Gilbert firing all his ticket selling staff when the Cavs sold everything in sight.

Of course, VP of sales, who no longer has a staff or tickets to sell, remains employed.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/07/30/1754155/with-heat-season-tickets-sold.html?pageNum=5&mi_pluck_action=page_nav#Comments_Container#ixzz0vDApjkX2

 

That's fucking cold.

You'd think they could retain some of them in customer relations and/or fan experience jobs.

But they'll rip off their fans, and then wonder why the building is empty again in a few years.

 

Here's another article that says it is SEASON ticket selling staff.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/miami-heat/sfl-heat-season-ticket-staff-fired-20100730,0,510407.story

On the one hand, if they have sold all the season tickets, what is there to do? But on the other hand, really?? Can't reassign them?

 

Every year I see ambitious interns who have the dream of working for a pro sports team. And every year I resist the temptation to tell them that anything below the VP level is a shitty job with no security and that, on an hourly basis, most people working for teams make less than those working at K Mart.

I have a friend who was downsized out of a PR job right before the team spent $100 million on a free agent.

 

Why do you resist the temptation?

Do what I do and crush dreams.

 

Considering there are two errors in the subhead, maybe some of them can get jobs as copy editors at The Herald.

 

The lesson as always: Don't be good at your job.

 

The lesson about working in pro sports is that you either have family connections to land a job, or you work your way up from giveaway monkey.

 

Most (all?) of them had to be temporary positions. What organization would have 30 full-time people selling season tickets?

Let's say you begin with a clean slate (nobody owns season tickets). You need to sell 20,000 of them in the next 5 months before the season begins. If 30 people sell 4-5 per day, that takes care of it.

You aren't paying 30 people to sell 4-5 tickets per day.

 

And if they don't sell them, they don't deserve to stay.

 

Smasher is right -- There aren't many good jobs in professional sports below the executive level. The people who work for sports teams are mostly jock sniffing flunkies who think they are impressive and/or important because they can walk around to their buddies and other people and say "I work for the [insert team name here]"

Forget for a minute that they are likely working 90 hours per week for less money than RickStain claims he lives on and thus have no life and can't really afford one anyway. And forget for a minute that they are mostly irrelevant and easily replaceable.

None of that matters - what matters is they can walk around with the one item of cool gear they might get with the logo from the team and the fact that they can get into games for free by volunteering to hand out stat sheets to reporters.....

 

Outrageous treatment of staffers.
Awful to read about.