Hi folks, hope you can dispense some advice.
I’ve been happily conducting ghost tours in my city for the last three years, working the whole time for the same company (only such company in town, really). I’ve done some other tour-giving, but the ghost-related stories have always been in the purview of the ghost tour company. My boss has always voiced the opinion that the stories we’ve collected are our stories, and other tour companies shouldn’t be trying to use them.
Well, boss was asked recently to give a ghost tour to a group of schoolkids, which would end with a conventional tour of a local hotel (also haunted). Problem is my boss never got back to the teacher, so they dropped that aspect of the field trip, and it’ll just be the conventional tour of the hotel with another local guide.
Yesterday this guide called me and offered me $50 to supplement his tour with 20-30 minutes of ghost stories about the hotel in particular. Not a ghost tour per se, but it would consist of information from the ghost tours. He’s encouraging me to keep this off the books, and just take the $50 for myself.
I’m torn! Obviously it would be pretty shady of me to pocket the $50, but I don’t know how to assert my rights here. My boss is also a friend, so I want to do right by her, but I also feel I have some right to share my expertise and skill in spooky stories in circumstances besides the ghost tour company.
My opinion, there is a distinct difference between “experience and skill in telling spooky stories” (which is yours to do what you want with–though competing directly with your boss is pretty skeevy) and the facts/details of any particular ghost story which your boss has some sort of proprietary claim on.
I think, although I reserve the right to change my mind after others put in their two cents, that I would be ok with you telling ghost stories that are not the same as those you usually tell on your ghost tours. Don’t be lazy and cheap and tell the story of Almost Brainless Alice in place of Nearly Headless Nick (blatently stolen from Harry Potter) swapping out a few obvious details, but if you tell an original ghost story I’m not sure I see a problem
Of course, double checking the OP, that isn’t exactly what the other tour guide really wants either.
But in my book, telling stories just like you would on the tour, only not on a tour is too close to what your boss usually has you doing to be kosher.
Of course, if you can talk to your boss and get her to agree to you doing it, probably for a portion of the offered fee, then it magically becomes kosher.
What say we lay off the judgmental comments? :rolleyes:
The stories are collected by us from people who share their first-person accounts regarding experiences they’ve had. The stories are for entertainment purposes, and the students are well aware of this. Whether they’re true or not has zero relevance to my OP.
The OP does know that once she does this, if it ever gets back to her boss she’s fired, right? (not just fired, but friendship-over-fired with free cold-shoulder-in-a-small-industry baggage) And that once she does this for the competitor, the competitor is going to use it to own the OP. He’ll/She’ll want you to do this regularly and for really small amounts of cash and always with the implied threat of how it would be such a shame if your first employer should happen to find out about what you did. IMHO, Fifty bucks is a pretty cheap price to be owned for.
Ditto. Tell the boss you have an opportunity to drum up more business, and would she be interested in a percentage. I mean, it’s only $50, she’s your friend AND employer, and you’re happy with your job. Keep it all above board or decline.
Do it. But make up a ghost story, out of whole cloth. Don’t steal one; invent a brand new story of your own.
While you’re telling it, standing in the hotel lobby (or wherever), pause halfway through and stare into the middle distance. Say: “I’m getting to that part.” Pause. “No, I have to tell that part.” Pause. “The story doesn’t work if I don’t include that part.” Pause, then get a fearful expression. “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend. Okay, I won’t tell the story. No, really, I won’t. I won’t!”
Then grunt and double over, and puncture the zip-top bag of fake blood you’ve hidden in your inside jacket pocket, so when you straighten up again, screaming, hands twisted into claws, you are covered with glistening scarlet.
