Otimon said:
As a Cast Member who does a lot of pin trading, I can tell you we would never tell a guest that what they had was junk.
Most CM's wouldn't, but it does happen, and in our case, we didn't know that it was a bad pin.
The CM "lectured" us, saying we should be ashamed of trading bad pins, and that pin trading would probably be eliminated because of people like us. The entire incident did not go well, and I wish I had reported it so that another child doesn't have a similar experience.
It was DD7's first day of trading, and she's shy - but she wanted to try trading. We had 3 sets from Disneyshopping - Dumbo, Musical Moments, and Mice. She traded with a couple of CM's just to practice, but she didn't want to keep those pins. This pin was obviously lighter weight, but in the small amount of research I did on the boards before the trip, I thought I had read that Sedesma pins always said Sedesma on the back.
She then asked this particular CM if she could trade. DD wasn't wearing her lanyard because it was bothering her neck, but she was getting in her backpack to take it out. The CM said "Depends, what are you giving me?" and he was serious, not joking around. When she said it was Aurora, he was pleased, until he looked at it.
Then came the lecture, during which he took DD's lanyard from her without asking, to inspect the rest of her pins. He told her they were good pins, then asked why she tried to give him a bad one, and even said that he could be written up if he accepted the bad pin.
I finally spoke up (I can't believe it took that long, or that DH didn't say anything either, but we guess we were just shocked that it was happening) and asked how he knew it was a bad pin. He said it was obvious, and that the stamp on the back proved it. He turned it over as "proof", found that it simply said Disney, mumbled that it must be ok after all, and walked away.
DD was in tears, and it took a couple of days before she attempted another trade, still fearful that the CM would think her pin was bad.
A very kind CM sensed that DD was being very hesitant, and asked us why. We told her that DD was afraid of picking a "bad" pin, so the CM explained about the Cast Lanyard pins, so DD started looking for them mostly.
When we got home, I browsed through many pictures on pinpics & found the pin in question - and it was indeed Sedesma.
We are very grateful for all of the wonderful CMs who made the pin trading fun for DD - she's looking forward to trading on our trip next month. We bought Cast Lanyard pins on ebay, so she doesn't have to worry about trading bad pins.
Denise
