Wednesday, March 08, 2006

La Ronde Employees Pretend Not to Understand Shapiro

Continuing to make his rounds amongst all his glorious properties, new Six Flags head Mark Shapiro paid his respects to Montreal-based La Ronde today. As has been the case with each of the parks Shapiro has toured, the employees were treated to a harsh appraisal of their failures, as well as a discussion of improvements that Shapiro will demand from them before the start of the next operating season.

As opposed to most of the American properties Shapiro has visited, where management figures from the parks gamely followed Shapiro around like obedient lapdogs and nodded enthusiastically at each of the four thousand ways he told them they sucked, the La Ronde employees appeared to be oddly aloof and uninterested in what their new honcho had to say. Indeed, they all stared blankly at Shapiro, until one of his assistants determined that not a single employee at La Ronde spoke a word of English and that he was therefore making no sense to them at all.

Shapiro then attempted to tell the employees about the new guest-services training and repricing, still in English, but much louder. Then he tried his lecture slowly, in English, with large hand gestures. After several more attempts, the CEO grew exasperated and went all the way back to the United States, looking to recruit a French translator for another try next week.

"That was the most frustrating day of my life," said a distraught Shapiro.

"Américain stupide," noted an amused La Ronde representative to his entire staff, every single one of whom speaks perfect English, just after Shapiro was successfully annoyed.

--JCK