My Eyes Are Always on Operations 

by Jack Guarnieri, Jersey Jack Pinball & PinballSales.com

I was recently at a resort on holiday and, in something that’s not unusual for me, I took notice of the business runs. It’s a natural curiosity of mine, and I would guess most other business owners do likewise, looking and learning from others.

On this trip, what I keyed in on was the nonstop work that was going on to maintain the property. With a resort full of guests, the staff was nevertheless painting beach huts, cleaning windows, polishing the brass, buffing floors and air-blowing the sand.

We were eating in a beautiful restaurant, and a sound of a gas-powered leaf blower came closer and closer … and louder and louder. (I must point out that years ago, they used a broom and dustpan which disturbed no one!)

I asked my wife why they can’t do this stuff at night. She answered that it’s because people are sleeping so the engine noise would probably make people upset. (She’s not wrong!)

I realized that guests have become accustomed to hearing the noise and it just gets filtered into the background. If you’re not like me, you probably won’t even notice it. After all, it’s common practice to block some things out, instead hearing or focusing only on what we want to hear.

This reminds me of big arcades and FECs. People often ask me how I tolerate the noise of all the games? My answer is always, “Because, that is the sound of money.”

So, it follows that it’s okay to have your staff perform maintenance while you’re operating the business. Think of casinos that run 24 hours a day with guests gambling at all hours while, at the same time, their slot techs repair games and cleaning crews tidy up, empty ashtrays, pick up trash and vacuum.

Now, I wouldn’t pull out the vacuum cleaner during a party at home, but I guess it’s just fine to do it in the arcade.

The simple fact is that people appreciate the efforts you make to keep your game room (and the dining areas and bathrooms) as spotless as possible. And as we learned during Covid, the guests seeing you attend to those things made all the difference. It reminds them that you are diligent in those efforts all the time, not just during the hours in between closing one day and opening the next.

For the best customer experience, we should all remember our ABCs: Always Be Cleaning!

Jack Guarnieri started servicing electro-mechanical pinball machines in 1975 and has been involved in every phase of the amusement game business since then. He was an operator in NYC, then began a distributorship in 1999, PinballSales.com, selling coin-op to the consumer market. In January of 2011, he founded Jersey Jack Pinball (named after his RePlay Magazine pen name), which builds award-winning, full-featured, coin-op pinball machines. Email Jack at [email protected].