The Foundry Bingo

This review is ONLY for the BINGO that is held at «The Foundry». For «The Foundry» itself, please go to their business specific Unilocal…
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GRAND OPENING was on Sunday, November 17^th. They had anticipated a very large crowd. I arrived around 5:45 to meet a friend and see what this was all about. Since the American Legion Redwood City bingo «non-​profit» (not the actual AL-​RWC) had stopped their bingo due to… uh… legal reasons, everyone has been looking for a local bingo. This is along bayshore and in the dark is a little hard to find. You then have to drive down the side of the building that actually has a red/​green light since only one car can fit at a time. I am little wary of that, because in case something happens and a panic ensues, we are all… SOL.
I was greeted at the door by a gentleman opening and closing the door. Quasi security? I suppose. The tables are wooden with white butcher paper laid across it. The chairs… a tad flimsy. Wooden chairs that definitely need padding if you want people to sit there for hours on end playing bingo. Snack bar with your staples of nachos, hot dogs, popcorn, donuts, coffee and tea. The extras on the menu were pizza (which I ordered and almost LOLd at… oh wait I did LOL at it, very un-​impressive), cup o noodles and chili over rice. The bathrooms are VERY clean which is wonderful. Overall the facility is very clean, which is nice. What isn’t nice is they allow the smokers to smoke 5 feet from the door. Somewhere I think that is a HUGE no-​no and not very respectful of the facility and the people inside the building and the non-​smokers.
The bingo machine they are using seems to be very new. They are able to verify everything via machine (some games had a bit of trouble) which makes it go faster. However, the games they play are LONG. Some are convoluted and one game I was a tiny bit perturbed at. They need to have volunteers that actually know what they are selling and know how to play the game before they go selling the tickets. Once game in particular they say is going to pay $ 400, but in fact is 4 games in one set. $ 50, $ 50, $ 100 and $ 200 payouts out of one game. Then another game had 5 (if not more) serial numbers that paid out $ 400!!! Now, I felt cheated on that game. How can you have multiple serial numbers playing the same game? Ask a volunteer selling and they should be able to tell you right? No. Don’t think so. They had no clue what was going on. The speaker system for the caller was HORRIBLE!!! You could not understand anything they were saying. Too loud, too muffled, too fast, too closer to the microphone. It was bad… real bad.
I can understand that there are kinks that need to be worked out for anything that is new. However, it seems like the people who put this on… have NO CLUE about bingo. There was one lady that was doing most of the payouts and she was very cheerful which is nice. Volunteers should be excited about the game in order to get their patrons excited about being there. The gentleman in the plaid jacket… not so much. Sir, you were NOT friendly at all!!! If a patron of your business asks a question, you shouldn’t say «I don’t know» and walk away. That leaves a sour reaction for those who come to you for a fun night of bingo.
Wrapping up… am I going back? ehhhh… I rather hit up Vanguard in Santa Clara (
) or Boys & Girls Club in South San Francisco. The two stars are for the lovely, happy, joyous lady doing payouts, the half of a bingo I won and the clean clean bathrooms. Maybe I will let them work out the kinks and then go back… stay tuned!