SOTLSEGB continues

Then there was the actual tournament.

From the “into each life some rain must fall” category was a flaw in the transfer of prefs, which slowed us down a while. One of the things we need in the tabroom.com tabbing software is a failsafe so we can transfer to TRPC in the middle of a tournament. This means creating a particular XML file, which, in its present incarnation, gets the heebie-jeebies with prefs. So CP and I sat there manually checking all of them and fixing the handful that didn’t track, which is not problematic because it’s a pain in the butt so much as one always just wants to get things started because other problems—no-show judges especially—are more stupefying. This one was just busy work. (And, of course, there’s the time-consuming process of doing the judge assignments, about half an hour per prelim with a tournament the size of SOTLSEGB. There’s no way around that until CP unveils a version that’s better.) In any case, we did have ballots out on time, and that, of course, was when we learned that, oh, he’s not here until round 3, usually from people who had heard from the particular him when he texted from the New Jersey turnpike.

Here’s the thing. We gave you an A+ judge whose team did not bother to inform us that he or she was not on the premises. Your last-minute push sub is a 5 because everyone else is already in their rounds. Look at the schematic: you should easily be able to figure who to blame.

The problem with judges not showing up or picking up is not limited to any one tournament. And no, we’re not going to wait a couple of hours for the s.o.b. to show up. The s.o.b. is usually out front smoking, out back smoking, napping no one knows where, deliberately hiding, getting high (yes, indeed, we really like a doped-up judge in the back of the room, so glad you came to help out), getting drunk, getting anything but into the chair to begin a serious job of judging. It’s not just college kids, either. Adult judges, even those who won’t get many rounds, disappear the instant the skems come out. Is this the way they perform their non-debate jobs? Don’t want to judge? Fine. Don’t sign up to judge. Problem solved. You signed up to judge? Fine. Pick up your ballots and go to your room.

I had this conversation with one judge. His school is, lately, repeatedly breathing down my neck about their prefs. Why are they getting this kind of judge and not some other kind of judge? But at the same time, the judge I was having this conversation with is a repeat no-pick-up offender at multiple tournaments. As I told him—he’s relatively new—you have to choose now between being the judge who’s always there on-time and available to pick up an extra ballot if we need you, or you can be the judge who’s never there and who forces me to give the kids he’s supposed to be judging not the 1 that he is but the 4 that the sub is. Make the choice now, before I’ve marked you down as the latter. (He picked up all his ballots in a timely fashion for the rest of the tournament.)

But I can’t complain about the judges too much as a body, as for the most part they showed up and things worked okay. A couple of times there were communications issues, as noted above, but they tend to get settled as a tournament progresses. We only had to push one run-off ballot, and we had been sort of expecting that this particular goofball, who already has a history of goofballishness, might not show up early Sunday morning, so we were prepared with a solid backup.

One of the nice features of the tabroom.com software is that, when you replace a judge, instead of just doing it on the computer and going to the next one, while the clock is ticking and the start time has passed, it does it on the computer AND IMPOSES A FINE so that you don’t have to make a list that you ultimately lose. The record of missed ballots goes into the system, and there’s no doubt about it. I can’t wait for that. As the VCA certainly knows well, judges who do not respect their obligations get no respect from me, up to and including cutting them from tournaments (which I’m doing this year at Bump, as promised.)

Don’t be the judge I can’t find. You will pay for it, sooner or later.