Cubs On Sunday Night's Chaos: 'There's No Excuse For It'
(CBS) A day after a lack of available restrooms left some fans waiting as long as an hour to use the bathroom in Sunday evening's opener at a Wrigley Field that's under renovation, the Cubs sent letters to season-ticket holders apologizing for their lack of customer service.
"The most important thing is it was unacceptable (Sunday) night," Cubs spokesman Julian Green said in an interview on the Laurence Holmes Show on Monday evening. "I certainly want to apologize to all of our fans. If any fans or season-ticket holders are listening, we weren't up to par. We missed the mark. We set a high quality in terms of standards for customer service, and we missed it.
"Our job is to anticipate and have a plan in place so that we can accommodate our customers. The plan we had in place simply didn't work. Compounding that issue was two restrooms upstairs, a men and a women's restroom, we had some flooding upstairs. So we lost those restrooms for about 30 minutes, forcing people to from the upper deck to the bottom deck. At that point, when word is traveling in the upper deck that restrooms are not working or broken, everybody is going downstairs. So a 40-minute wait downstairs turned into a 60-minute wait time, plus. It was a bad issue."
In an embarrassing look for the Cubs, at least a few fans relieved themselves in plastic cups. Others were known to have left the game to use the restroom at nearby bars or restaurants. Green acknowledged there were lines "almost like a block long."
The Cubs allowed fans who left the game to re-enter, but nevertheless, chaos reigned. The Cubs took plenty of heat on social media from upset fans.
"A number of folks took to Twitter and social media voicing their concern and displeasure," Green said. "And certainly we heard about it.
"Boy we heard it. But you know what? We should have. There's no excuse for it."
Chicago lost 3-0 to St. Louis on Sunday.
For Tuesday night's game at Wrigley Field, the Cubs are bringing in about 70 portable toilets, Green said, bringing the number of bathroom fixtures to what they had in 2014.
"We just didn't do our job," Green said. "We got to get it better."
Green disputed the notion that the Cubs ran out of hot dog buns in the stadium, explaining that the bottlenecks from the bathroom lines prevented food from being moved to stands that needed buns. That issue should be cleared up for Tuesday night as well.
Listen to the full interview below.