[RainMaker]

They have a lot of trouble finding officials around here. I know a few hockey games had to be postponed over the Winter. Not sure if it's low pay or just people don't want to put up with people's shit.

I was an umpire over the Summers in college for travel leagues and really enjoyed it. Could work a normal Summer job and then umpire on the weekends. Our college coach encouraged it and was able to get us good gigs. You could do 3 games in succession at the same park and make $100 for 6 hours of work (which was really good for a 21 year old in the early 2000's). Getting a nice tan and free drinks from the concession stand was a nice perk.

Parents could be pricks but it never bothered me much. Probably because I was 21 and didn't give a shit. But there was an older guy who I worked with a lot who did not put up with anything. He was an ump at the college level and did travel and legion ball over the Summers to stay fresh. He tossed a lot of parents which is funny in retrospect.

My only issue came in my last season and made me quit. A coach was mad about losing and ran off after the game without giving us our ticket (you turned in the tickets for payment back in the day). He wasn't mad at a call or anything, just a sore loser who thought he was sending a message to his team by racing to his car after the game and going home.

Anyway, he denied not giving us our tickets (likely because he didn't want to get disciplined by the league) and the league basically said "nothing we can do". So that was it for me and a few others. I think they had to have some parents call games because it's not easy to fill ump slots in the last few weeks of a season.

I had looked into it again years ago because I did kind of enjoy it and it's a nice way to stay active. But the pay was pretty bad and I didn't feel like taking all the classes to be certified for high school ball.