behold, I come as a thief

Yesterday after Grant and Ike got done with basketball and Emmett was done with piano we went to a water park in Salt Lake to hang out with our friends the McAllisters.  We had a lot of fun, but I don't want to talk about that right now.  I want to complain about how poorly run it is instead.  So, there is one drinking fountain in the entire park, and it was out of order.  You could stand in line to get cups and water from one of the coolers they had filled with warm water, but most of those were empty, so there wasn't much point.  So have fun being dehydrated, which is probably a good thing anyway, because of the eight or ten toilets in the only women's restroom, four were out of order, so at all times of the day there was a minimum ten-minute wait in the line to use the bathroom.  I mean, people pee in the pool even in optimal bathroom situations, what are they going to do when there's only one bathroom and it has a ten-minute wait?  Also it has been so long since the floor was mopped that there are layers of sedimentary filth deposits around the drains in the bathroom floor--grass, mud, ancient toilet paper, and unnameable mystery substances.  Then toward the end of the day someone stole our triple tube, which is angering since they cost so much money.  John went to the tube rental place to seek redress, both of us assuming there would not be any, but we enjoy participating in social experiments. 

John:  "Hi, my wife rented tubes, and somebody came and stole our triple tube, so we were wondering if you could give us a replacement." 
Tube Rental Person:  "No, sorry.  It's against company policy." 
John:  "It's against company policy to give somebody a replacement tube when theirs gets stolen?" 
TRP:  "Yeah, we can't do anything." 
John:  "But she already paid a lot of money for it, and now we can't use it because somebody took it, and you can't get us a new one?  There's like a half hour left before you close, and you can't just let us use a new tube?" 
TRP:  "No, it's company policy." 
John:  "But I just barely got here, and I want to go on the slides with my kids.  Can't you bend company policy at all?"
TRP:  "No, sorry." 
John:  "So we just don't get to go on the slides, because somebody came and took our tube.  That we already paid for." 
TRP:  "There's just nothing we can do." 
John:  "So what you're saying is that I'd be an idiot to rent tubes, because if we do, someone will just take them and you won't do anything to make it right, so we won't get to use them anyway.  So if we do want tubes we should just take somebody else's, because that way I get a tube for sure, and it doesn't cost me any money.  Then if somebody comes and steals that one, I just steal another one, because that's what everybody does, and there are no consequences if we do.  That's what you're saying.  That no one should rent tubes, we should steal them.  You realize that's the behavior you're encouraging." 
TRP:  "I don't know, we just can't do anything to help you." 
John:  "Okay, I guess we'll go steal a tube then." 
TRP:  shrugs

So we walked over to the lazy river and saw a triple tube leaning against a fence and Willa said, "Hey, we could use that tube!"  So, since it was all by itself with no stuff around it marking it at all (unlike ours, which had had towels draped over it and was sitting directly on our stuff) it seemed likely that it was one of the many that people leave lying around when they leave the park.  John grabbed it and even though we figured they'd let him ride with Willa on a triple instead of a double, we wanted to continue the experiment.  So he went back to the tube rental place and said, "Hi.  I have a triple tube that I want to exchange for a double and a single."  The guy he'd talked to was talking to some other employees, and when he turned around and saw John he started to laugh, turned his back and elbowed his friends, then started whispering and pointing at John.  I think he enjoyed John's moxie.  They exchanged our poached tube and John and Willa had a delightful time riding slides for the next twenty minutes until the park closed.  So it was a very fun day, but I do wish the park were managed and maintained better.