SacAnime 2010 January: From the Eyes of a Booth Girl
(Because Tom doesn't have "Babe" in his dictionary)

It has been said that people learn most swiftly in two ways. The first is physical pain and the second is financial loss. I take it upon myself to be an educator, which is why you’ll find my editor KValentine looking a bit worse for wear or why you’ll see said person looking quizzically at his wallet. So I as an educator, I too endure pain for you the reader.

This weekend I attended SacAnime 2010. I decided to work as a booth girl for a Mr. Hugo, owner of Anime V. I began on Thursday taking off with a U-haul full of goodies and a new acquaintance. 6:00AM Friday saw me unloading and setting up the booth as all around the hall people unloaded enormous amounts of swag and hardware. More than one curse could be heard emanating from the half constructed booths. As we constructed a wall of displays and secured everything so that it would not collapse onto any overzealous grabby-type, we prepared for the oncoming stampede of customers. Working as a vendor really opened my eyes as a consumer. Most fans can’t appreciate the effort vendors put into their booths. But after working a full weekend as a vendor I can say that I learned and suffered equally enough to admire any soul crazy or ambitious enough to brave the Dealers Room.

Anime V offered a wide selection of merchandise, but the biggest seller was Pocky and Ramune. Any con attendee knows that cheap sustenance is key and a 3 dollar "meal" could be purchased at our stand. Other booths sold clothing and various goodies such as the obligatory squeaking hats from Pawstar and the ever popular Lokisa Kisama sidepouches. The most popular trend among customers was window shopping and scouting for the cheapest possible item.

I feel it necessary to mention that people need to learn that when if comes to the value of imports, the customer must take a small financial loss. And to the ones who tried to pick fights over reasonably priced art sets, I’m thinking the physical end of the pain spectrum needs to be shared. I had one particular customer who, after firing rapid questions about one of our higher priced items, proceeded to berate me for having something he could not afford. It was clear during our conversation he had no clue what the item was even used for and he went on to pick fights with what seemed like the entire Dealers Room. This was during the third day of little sleep and long work shifts. Other than that incident the weekend went as smooth as retail can go, and I had the opportunity to take money from people I knew. Such as KValentine, who swears that the melon soda s poisonous… guess who got a good laugh about it. So as the police are sent to my house to arrest me for biological warfare, I will close with this by saying SacAnime was productive for a vendor but judging from the general crotchetiness of customers, not worth a repeat trip.