Picture this: You're hungry, rabid Hyena steal a turkey leg from your own mother hungry, and after waiting for days to eat you finally arrive at a restaurant to order some food. You go for an appetizer and an entree, thinking dessert might be possible too, but you'll wait and see. You start with Crispy Calamari Rings with Warm House made Marinara- it arrives, except there's no calamari and there's not warm or cold marinara! It's just a greasy stained gingham paper liner and an empty ramekin where your marinara used to be. You ask the waiter, "what's this?" offering the empty basket back to him. He replies, "we were hungry, so we ate it, we left you some though". Behind the ramekin is a gristly piece of squid tentacle. "you're welcome" the waiter assures you. Confused, you regroup, hunger making your mind tick a little faster, but still sense of the situation cannot be made. Then the ribs arrive, or what's left of them. Instead of a $22.95 Baby Back Bonanza, bones litter the plate and only barbecue sauce stains and some jello-like fat glisten on the rim. The waiter, with greasy lips, chewing the last bite of your ribs says "we saved you some ribs too," he glances down at the plate and informs you, "the fat is where the flavor is." You remain hungry. He presents your check and offers one last hope for sustenance, "Let me know if you'd like dessert". You're left with a bad taste in your mouth and unfortunately it's not the ribs or the calamari.

Now you don't need to be a genius to realize that if restaurants operated like this, they wouldn't operate for long. So why is it I see surfers visiting a surf camp where the owners charge full price but the paying guests only get the leftover waves? You could argue that the guests are paying for the room, food and amenities, not for the waves, but I'd say that's bullshit! Hell, these surfers aren't even MY guests, they're surfing in front of my house and I'm doing my best to get them into waves, but I don't make money off of them. I just share waves with them because I want to see them get the wave of their trip, it's the right thing to do. In the mean time, the owners of the camp where these Lemmings are staying, owners who are making hundreds, if not thousands of dollars off these suckers, are back paddling the whole lineup and calling their own guests off of waves...and the guests let it happen?! You might even say these surfers deserve it if they're letting it happen so blatantly.

This pisses me off, for several reasons:

1. If I wait my turn behind the suckers, the pack paddlers are stealing my waves too. To keep the order, I have to push everyone deeper or I have to resort to the same bad behavior as the guys ripping off their own guests. Of course I can take off deeper and out surf most of the visitors, but I don't want to. I just want to wait my turn so I can get the wave of my choice. It just takes one turd to ruin the soup and these guys are serving it up and charging top dollar!

2. People have gotten soft! The guests, instead of calling out the owners for taking more than their share, glorify the owners with compliments..."sick barrel man"...the owner ignores them. Put on a pair of knee pads and blow'em while you're at it! If you came home and found some guy in bed with your wife, would you ask him if he wants a pillow. "Can I get a towel for you sir?"... I fight more than my share of battles in the lineup often because I'm defending some cuckold who seems happy to watch his turn taken repeatedly by the same people he's paying too much to stay with. The camp owners don't need to give you every way, or even let you go out of turn, but as ambassadors for their guests and other visitors, they should be using their knowledge to give you any hint of advantage they can to ensure you have a great time. Have a calamari ring my friend...want some marinara with that?

3. What happened to hospitality? I would hope that somebody operating a hospitality business, would know something of hospitality. "Thank you for choosing us, I hope you tell your friends about us, we look forward to seeing you again soon!"....or "What can I do to make your stay with us better?"...those were the things I learned about hospitality when I was working for tips . They're the things I remember now that I'm the owner of my own camp. I'm just amazed that my competition is young men with no experience in hospitality, thinking that they can build some rooms and then go surfing for the rest of their lives while treating their guests like shit. I'm hoping it's a slow process watching them fail, because at the moment they're succeeding way too much for this travesty. I'm not chewing on your meatless bones, your guests shouldn't have to either!

Maybe I should be thanking other camp owners for doing such a shitty job! They're doing my marketing for me. Their poor guests who come and pay for the leftovers, meet me, I get them into the barrel of their life and they don't go back to the leftovers. So to my colleagues- "Keep up the good work", back paddle me and your guests. Karma is a dish best served cold, like your hearts!