I finally found out what it's like up at the front of a race!
My running group race directs the local fall festival day 5K so I spent all last night and this morning handing out bibs. I only screwed up one that I know of and gave it to the wrong person, thankfully by pure luck, the girl covering the 1-299 range with me and I both new the picker-upper (who was picking up a friend's bib) from HS and remembered that she had told me "97, Clark" and I said "that's not Clark... oh she's 94", then I proceeded to dig out the 97 bib and hand it to her and didn't realize it until the real 97 showed up. We kept scanning the crowd and eventually my buddy went off to look for her and ended up finding her and her friend hadn't even shown up yet so I think we're in the clear on that.

We got the guy whose bib was given out assigned a new one.
Then I saw the start of the race! I had no idea that local races have lead cars! There was a cop car and a convertible with a beauty pageant winner in it who also went to hold the finishing ribbon. I am always standing so far in the back I never see what happens up front. I'm usually lucky if I can hear the anthem. Then we had to hustle to the finish line where I had the stressful job of being the backup timing machine clicker to the chip timing. There's these machines with thumb clickers attached to them and they print out the backup timing and we had to have a writer, a caller (calling out bib numbers for the writer), and a timer clicking as the torsos cross the line. Then after the top 20 of men and women are done, we could stop writing/calling/clicking, unplug the clickers, and go to spot timing where we just punch in bibs as we see them approaching and hit the enter button as they cross (not needing to get every single one).
I never knew the backup to the chip timing was so complicated! I am so annoyed now with anyone who does not wear their bib front and center on their shirt!

I will try to never cover my bib or put it on a pant leg again now that I know there are poor people who are the backup timers responsible for spotting the bib numbers and calling them out or punching them into a little timing computer. So many people with them covered or pasted to their backs or on their leg where you couldn't read the number because their leg is moving all around. Thankfully for the spot timing it wasn't a big deal, you just pick someone else, but for the top 20 when you have to call every one, I felt bad for my buddies doing that. I also had the great luck of one of the two machines (the backup to the backup to the backup I guess, because I was double clicking 2 machines and there was a 3rd person responsible for just clicking the top 3 winners) that I was using immediately malfunction on the first click as the male winner crossed and it was the one printing the tape. We turned the tape on my second machine after a few more men crossed, but then someone from the timing company unplugged my clicker before I was done doing the top 20 women, so I'm sure that the backup is a disaster, I think I missed a few men who were out of the top 20 but I was still supposed to be clicking for women, and hopefully no chips malfunctioned.

Apparently there was also a photographer lady who is the backup to the backup to the backup to the backup taking pictures of everyone as they cross getting the clock in the background.
It was really weird seeing this side of a race!