How to kindly tell the d-bag to stop clapping

Currently covering a collegiate volleyball match, and the idiot reporter from the visiting student newspaper will not stop clapping for the visiting team. Every fucking point. *Clap. Clap. Clap.* Neither SID will tell him to stop. I haven't even introduced myself, so I don't know how to approach, "Dude, stop fucking clapping before I kill you." Because I'm about at that point.

 

Lean over and laugh and say, 'Are you clapping? That is so cute! God, I remember clapping when I was on my first job, I think it was 6th grade! Clapping, wow, that takes me back!'

Or spill a Coke down his back.

 

Reach over behind him.

Grab the back of his head.

Slam his face repeatedly into the press row table.

Problem resolved.

 

Great advice, and solid execution on my part.

He's a non-factor, now.

 

Show him a .38-caliber revolver and tell him you never, ever want to hear that shit again.

 

Tell him that they still haven't found the body of the last guy who caught clapping on press row.

 

The visiting team's paper sent a kid to a volleyball match? You sure it wasn't a student SID assistant?

 

I'm usually all for the tactful solution, but this is such a no-no, I'd have to recommend to you to fuck tact.

Go over to him and tell him his unprofessional behavior is disturbing your work. Do it front of the home SID to embarass his chicken-shit ass for doing nothing about it.

Had this happen to me two years ago all season long in a football press box. School I cover used a student assistant -- an ex-volleyball player -- to run their 1970s era scoreboard. Dumb fuck loudly made a spectacle of herself in the rare instance touchdowns were scored, yelled and screamed for her "buds" on the team, and when the team I covered was inevitably getting their ass handed to them, she'd have the temerity to start calling her friends on her cell phone, talking at the same volume you would if you were in a crowded bar.

I was new to the beat at the time, so I tried to play it cool. Mid-season, I went to the SID and expressed my concern (my first "dick" move on the beat), he said he was embarassed and would say something. He never did, probably because they couldn't find someone else to run their board, though as far as I could tell, a rudimentarily-trained dog could have handled it.

At the last home game, she brought two friends IN THE PRESS BOX WITH HER, and the SID and two athletic administrators on hand did nothing about it. They gabbed like they were hanging out in their dorm room or something, and the visiting beat writer, the visiting SID and I were getting pissed. I had enough.

I got up -- timing it so they were yakking on their cell phone -- and said, "Do you mind? We are trying to work down here. This is working press box, which means work, not yakking on your cell phones to your buddies. You're being extremely rude to the people who actually work up here for a living. Do you understand?"

Their shocked faces were etched with the fact that they thought I was the biggest dick on earth. But the girl meekly said, "Yes."

Since the game was a blowout and my story was mostly done, I decided to add a theatrical touch and walk out of the press box in a huff. As I walked by, the visiting SID gave me a wink. I sat outside the press box, laughed my ass off, and returned with the best serious-as-a-heart attack visage I could manage.

They sat there silently like 9-year-olds in detention for the rest of the game.

 

It's an in-state tourney. Wasn't much of a travel. He's for real.

That said, back again today, and he hasn't clapped once. Either someone got a hold of him last night and knocked some sense into him, or he's just hungover and tired like myself.

 

I'm guessing someone did your dirty work for you. You likely weren't the only one disturbed by this.

 

give him a seattle hot pocket