Oh, well, if we're going to talk about food service nightmares (and I'm going to pretend we were, because my mind is starting to shy away from talking about the other thing)...
My first job was at a Showbiz Pizza, which was basically the precursor to Chuck E. Cheese, animatronic critters and video games and all. First of all, every single manager at said pizza joint was a fervent fundamentalist Christian; now, there's nothing wrong with that, but when it means that they play the same ten lame gospel-rock songs over and over and OVER all summer long, and leave scary-ass Jack T. Chick pamphlets in the restrooms to terrorize children, that IS bad.
Lesson No. 1: Families come to Chuck E. Cheese to be entertained, not harangued and terrified.
But of course, the worst thing for me was my own, personal job. It was my duty to take the grubby handfuls of red tickets from whining snot-nosed children in exchange for various cheap trinkets and prizes. No big deal, if the child has less than fifty tickets, and her parents aren't hanging over her shoulder demanding that the child be given a QUALITY toy.
Lesson No. 2: You do not pay for QUALITY toys with grubby little red tickets.
But there would be a couple of hours at the peak of the night when the counter was stacked three deep in whining, screaming, clawing, greedy children and their parents, all competing to get THEIR TOY next. Twenty of them, one of me.
Lesson No. 3: Sometimes, even Americans, even WHITE Americans, even white American CHILDREN, have to shut up and wait their turn.
And then there were the teenagers who would come up with several THOUSAND tickets, to buy one of the big-ticket items on the wall. So I'd have to sit there. And count EVERY SINGLE ticket. And they'd always come up a thousand or two short, and then they'd whine at me.
Lesson No. 4: Nothing is worth playing five zillion hours of Skee-Ball for. Even less is worth counting ten THOUSAND tickets for. But if you're nice enough to the employee, she'll give you the item no matter how many tickets you are short, because she hates her job.
And then, of course, there was the fact that enterprising children would go through the dumpster, dig out handfuls of discarded tickets, and trade them in for prizes. So I was required to take every single one of these grubby little red tickets -- tens of THOUSANDS of them, every night -- rip them all down the middle, and soak them in a huge bucket of water, thereby destroying the ticket and marking it as 'used'. Said bucket full of water and half-full of soggy red tickets must eventually be emptied. To keep the tickets from going down the sink and clogging the drain, the employee must put her hand in the bucket and hold the tickets in place while pouring off the water.
Lesson No. 5: Walking around with your left arm permanently dyed brilliant pink to the elbow is not sexy. It would take upwards of three days and three showers to get the dye off; when I worked five days a week, that wasn't happening.
Oh, and I was responsible for keeping the salad bar filled up, for selling balloons, and for making cotton candy. Ask me how much time I had to do these things.
Lesson No. 6: When your merchandise employee cannot stop to take a bathroom break for five hours, she doesn't have time to maintain a 60-item salad bar. She thinks that making cotton candy is kind of fun, though.
And finally, I worked up front with the cashiers. The restaurant was firmly divided into three social strata: the front, staffed with the older, calmer, more mature teenagers, who were capable of handling lines of angry people; the kitchen, staffed with true adults; and the drinks bar, staffed with cute, exciteable, fluffy teenagers. The managers encouraged us to bond with our section and loathe the other sections, to 'increase productivity'... through mutual competition and bad feelings, I suppose.
Lesson No. 7: It's easy enough to be loathed by perky cheerleader-types at school. It shouldn't happen in your job, too.
(This is actually a mildly edited repost of a lengthy entry I wrote in Lex's guestbook, which acts as a sort of makeshift BBS for those of us crazy enough to post there. So, in essence, not only do I recycle blog content into my main site's library, I recycle other content into my blog! I am the Queen of Recycling! It may not be ecological, but it's logical!)
Replies: add your comment: currently 3 comments
LOL!!! I remember ShowBiz! I was SCARED of all of those robots (and I had good reason to be...) when I was a kid!! You really used to work there?? LOL!!! I am not sure I can imagine you doing that!!
I never went to a Chuck E. Cheese, so I don't how wha tthe differences are/were. I hope they got rid of those robots....
Posted by Wolf @ 09/16/2001 11:41 PM EST
All I can say is, I don't think I could stand a job of that nature... *contemplates how long it would take his sanity to snap*
Posted by Nathan @ 09/17/2001 03:24 AM EST
I remember that thing they had in the game room, which was basically a crappy little real computer you could play with. It had a program that would say words you typed into it. One day, some cousins or friends or something and I got the bright idea to type four-letter words in and see if it would say them. Tried "shit." Response: "Billy Bob would not say that." It would, however, say "ass."
Posted by chaobell @ 09/17/2001 10:28 PM EST
