“After three hours I was sent home” – Vincent van der Voort revisits failed supermarket job

A job in a supermarket was never going to last long for Vincent van der Voort. In the podcast Darts Draait Door, the former top darter looked back with a smile on his shortest employer ever.

There was also a lively debate about who is actually the best player who can’t quite be called a true world-beater, while Wesley Plaisier and Van der Voort shared the most amateurishly organized tournaments they had ever experienced.

Asked what he would have done if darts hadn’t worked out, Van der Voort said he once studied Business Economics. He never finished that degree, though. “I did a higher professional degree in Business Economics, but I didn’t fully complete it. As I kept progressing in darts, I kind of let it slide.”

If he had to choose another profession now, he wouldn’t need long to decide. “Pro golfer,” he answered with a laugh. “At least something in sport. I’m a real sports nut, so I’d always want to do something in sport.”

His brief stint outside darts also came up. Van der Voort once worked in a supermarket, but that adventure lasted just three hours. “Yeah, three hours. Then I was sent home. That wasn’t a success.”

The reason? A disagreement with a supervisor while front-facing the shelves. “I was fronting those products and then a man in a suit came up to me. He said, ‘You can do that with two hands as well.’ So I said, ‘If you can do it better, you go ahead and do it then.’”

Not long after, Van der Voort was called in. “I had to come to the office. He thought my response wasn’t normal. I then didn’t respond quite the way he wanted me to either, so he said, ‘Shall we just call it a day.’ That was fine.”

Another viewer question sparked an interesting discussion. Who, according to the two, is the best player of all time who was just not an absolute world-beater?

Van der Voort first found it tricky to define who is even part of the absolute world elite. “For me, Luke Littler and Luke Humphries are the absolute world elite right now.”

He eventually landed on Danny Noppert. “You basically end up with the player whose fan club I chair: Noppert. He’s just below the world elite, but he’s always there.”

Not everyone agreed with that definition, though. When Jonny Clayton’s name came up, Wesley Plaisier responded immediately. “I think Clayton is straight-up world elite.”

That led to laughter at the table, after which Van der Voort concluded with a grin: “Who actually decides what world elite is? I thought I got to set the rules.” Plaisier ultimately mostly aligned with the choice of Noppert. “I find it difficult, but then I’d indeed go with Noppert too.”

They were also asked about the most amateurishly organized tournament the two had ever played. For Van der Voort, that was easy to answer. “I once had to play a tournament outdoors. That made no sense at all.”

Because of the strong wind, it barely resembled darts, he said. “The luckiest one just won. It couldn’t be otherwise. We ended up just making a nice day of it, but playing darts outside really isn’t possible.”

For Wesley Plaisier, the choice was tougher, but he ultimately went with the 2017 World Masters, where the organization, in his view, completely fell apart.

The problems started with the draw. “They had done the draw beforehand, but it included players who weren’t even taking part. Other players were even in there twice.”

So everything had to be redrawn, after which communication broke down again, according to Plaisier. “They announced all matches over the speaker, but in part of the hall there was no speaker at all. I was ordering a drink and didn’t hear my name called.”

When someone eventually came to get him, it was almost too late. “I ran to the board, but on the way I heard: ‘Wesley Plaisier, eliminated.’ That really wasn’t going to happen to me.” Plaisier stormed up to the match officials in anger. “I said: ‘I’m going to play.’ But they just said: ‘No, no, eliminated.’”

Through then-NDB chairman Patrick Stolk, he tried to make his case anyway. “I said: ‘If I don’t play a match, no one plays. I’ll pull all the boards down.’ I completely lost it.”

Outside, he kicked a chair out of frustration, after which Paula Jacklin spoke to him. “She said: ‘I’m going to help you. But if you ever throw a chair again, you’re never going to play a WDF tournament in your life.’” Plaisier didn’t know her at the time. “The only thing I said was: ‘Who are you?’”

Van der Voort closed with another striking example of a poorly organized tournament. “At the Open Denmark, they only applied the seeding list to half the bracket. The other half had nothing but Danish players.”

As a result, almost all the seeded players faced each other early. “So you had all the seeded players against each other and on the other side only Danes. That obviously isn’t right either.”