A scene from the living room earlier this evening.
Me: "Hey, SON... are you just hopping around in a circle there and fartin'?"
THEBOY trots off to the bathroom.
Some comedian said something like, "Parenting is like having a drunken midget in the house."
No. I'd say it's more like having a drunken chimp in the house.
***
In a daze here, just sort of in limbo... I need to dive into some homework, but damn it's hard to let a perfectly fine Saturday night and all its lethargic anti-potential go to waste.
***
Jobs... My worst jobs ever:
1. Being an audio-visual tech in a hotel. Basically I was a roadie in a suit, setting up slide projectors and PA systems in the conference rooms. A lot more gear than you'd think, and you know, if you lift something the correct way while wearing a suit, you split your pants. So there was always the choice: Wreck my trousers or wreck my back.
(And I complain about seeing a chiropractor twice a month.)
The schedule was merely a suggestion, and a day was never just eight hours. An assistant manager complained about the guy I replaced: "After about eight hours his eyes would just glaze over and he wasn't good for much."
Go figure.
On my fifth day, a crazy Friday, I'd been busting my hump all day, winging it to accommodate a schedule that was changing non-stop. The (married) boss had spent hours on the phone with someone, and I didn't appreciate it. He got off and told me, "That woman is a friend of mine. Nothing's going on. She just needed someone to talk to and all." I told him that it was really none of my business, which is why I hadn't asked. Then I said, "You sound like you have a guilty conscience to me."
I left that day and never came back.
2. Being a production coordinator for a place in Arlington that shot commercials for (mostly) local ad agencies. My job, for $17k (salaried) a year, was to cover absolutely every single logistical detail of the in-house and on-site schedules. You name it. Meals, transportation, tickets, gear, actors. And it was just way too much. I remember this PSA they were going to shoot. They had almost no budget, so I had to scare up two brand new Ford Mustangs to use FOR FREE. They were going to shoot all over downtown Dallas, so I also had to arrange for dozens of actors to be at vague locations at vague times for the roving shoot all day (again, for FREE). I did it too.
Or trying to arrange a shoot in Freyburg, Germany. Turns out there are at least three Freyburgs in Germany, and no one in the office knew where they were really headed.
I lasted five weeks.
(I did at least get to meet Mr. Peppermint while working there. Can't remember his real name... something Hayes. His son sings for the Butthole Surfers.)
3. Being a wedding DJ. Ah... not a great gig for a guy who's hard of hearing, has very particular taste in music, and can't stand to be around drunks. I can still hear one: "If you don't turn it up I'm going to kick your ass." I didn't, and he didn't either.
I lasted a few shows with the boss, though I quit after my first solo show.
***
My greatest exit, though, was from Jack in the Box, my first job ever. That place was a special sort of torment. They'd schedule me one day a week, from 5pm-4am. So when I was there, I busted my ass until I was stumbling around in weary oblivion, going home to blow grease out of my nose after a day running the fryer. 11-12 hours a paycheck didn't equal much cash, but I worked hard and the boss was complimentary of my work.
Until the day $50 turned up missing from the drawer on my shift. It had been me making the food and a woman running the register. No one else. Suddenly, not a day removed from my latest "great job" from the boss, he called me into his office to say, "You're not doing so good, and we're thinking about letting you go."
Even at 16 I knew what they were inferring. Keep in mind that I'd never operated a register, and didn't even know how to open one to steal the money they were hinting about.
So after the boss finished his vague threat, I stood there with my hands clasped behind me, nodding. I looked at my watch. "Oh, it's my break time," I said.
I stepped out for my break and never went back.
***
Please feel free to offer up your own job horror stories. I was trying to remember one Bruiser told me the other day, a construction-related thing where he was doing something with rivets on this rickety scaffold all day maybe.
***
Scattered funny/embarrassing/awful moments from the workplace:
My boss at Jack in the Box showing me the training films on super 8, telling me, "Sometimes I like to take these home and kick back with a few beers and watch them just for fun."
A boss at Hastings catching me in the mall on my day off and begging me to come into work. I was emphatic with my "no way" until she stuffed $40 cash in my hand. I finished her shift. I found out later she was so desperate to leave because for some reason she'd crapped her pants.
A confused, rambling, probably-not-sober customer at Hastings telling me he had a gun. "You don't believe me? You wanna see it?" I assured him I didn't. He left and I got mall security in there posthaste, and you know, that wasn't the least bit reassuring.
Taking my first paycheck from Larry's music to the credit union to cash it. Turns out they were quite familiar with Larry and his checks, and wouldn't begin to let me have cash in exchange for that little slip of paper. After that Larry paid me in cash and/or gear.
For four years at KERA, on every single memo my supervisor spelled my name "Brain."
Recognizing a customer at Sound Warehouse but being unable to place her. She gave me a coy smile: "I don't know WHERE you might know me from." It hit me hours later: She worked in the strip joint I'd just patronized. Turns out I didn't recognize her with so many clothes on.
***
I'd better end there before I start dusting off moldy old strip joint stories.
Have a good weekend.
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4 comments:
Your stories were so good I had to read them twice. The Jack in the Box thing really sucks though.
I could add a couple:
One evening, while answering the phone for Domino's Pizza, I took a call from the scuzziest hotel in Angleton. (you know, that one on Hwy 35 heading towards the hospital). A hopeful male voice asked if I was going to be delivering his pizza. I got off the phone and griped about the guy to Kyle, our 300-pound prison- guard -by -day, pizza- guy- by- night driver. He took the dude his food. Hope he enjoyed it.
Being a nurse provided lots of gross and humiliating moments. You know those tubes that go up a person's nose and down to their stomach? At the end of the shift it is a nurse's job to empty the suction container and measure the lovely stuff that is in it. One day I somehow managed to splash a large amount of this on my pants. And, I was not able to locate a clean pair of scrubs so I got to wear it for the rest of the shift.
Every day for two weeks I was assigned this teenage bedridden, diaper-wearing, tube-fed, non-verbal kid. He weighed 150 pounds, needed turning in bed and complete care. I weighed 95 pounds. Still don't know what I'd done to hack off the charge nurse who did that to me.
One Friday night as I was getting ready for work, I ran to answer the phone and stubbed/jammed my big toe. It immediately got very big and purple. They do not accept call-ins less than 4 hours before a shift. And who would believe I'd hurt it that badly last minute on a Friday night of all things. So I hobbled to work, and just asked that I get patients in rooms next to each other. So I was given patients at complete opposite ends of the hall, including Mr. Bedridden too of course. My foot hurt so bad it was nauseating. To this day that toe is not right.
And there were lots of stressful and sad times too, which is why I a no longer want to be a nurse.
There was this one guy, a fellow very close to my own age (21 at the time). He was a friendly, funny, smart kid. He was in often, and well-loved by the staff. He was in the final stages of a terminal illness. We had kind of a friendship. He was one of my very first patients when I started there. He chuckled as I fumbled around learning how to draw blood on him. He grumbled when I woke him at 7 a.m. with a cupful of pills. It was never admitted between us but I think there were some feelings present that might have been followed, had the circumstances been different. One weekend evening I came in and everyone was crying;he'd suddenly gotten critically ill. The charge nurse was outlining a complicated list of instructions for his care. I thought surely he would need one of the better nurses. It was shocking when the nurse making the assignments said, "Will you take him?" Now normally I was one to hold my breath and hope for an easy shift. Easy patients, not too complicated and such. Not this time. I jumped at the chance to take care of him. It was hard, but I really would not have missed it for anything. He died the next day. Some of the staff went to his funeral, including me. All who attended shook the priest's hand as we left. The priest paused as he shook mine. "Are you all right?" he asked. I could not stop crying long enough to answer. I just nodded and went on. But I wasn't. It was the first experience that told me I was in the wrong line of work.
Wow Sis. Nothing like seeing REAL hardship on the job to make me feel like a whiner. "Oh I had grease in my nose... oh I was gonna split my pants."
But seriously, good stuff.
Did not mean to make you sound like a whiner! If you want to hear REAL hardship, let Eddie tell you about blowing PVC out his nose! Or the tales of him checking all his stuff from 6:30 till 8:30, and then getting to sit and do nothing at all till 2:30. The horror of it all..... I tell him I have never had a job that cushy. It is not always that easy. They have messed up days and working outside in crappy weather sucks. But pretty often his job is easy.
Oh God, dude, I was laughing so hard about the guy watching Jack-In-The-Box training films and Larry's rotten checks. I still love to hear that story about the guy shopliftng the guitar from Larry's store. All I have to imagine is that guy being dragged down the road and I grin like a cheshire cat.
Yeah, the scaffold/construction story is pretty good. I was working a shutdown at Dow in Brazosport and hated it - we were working twelve hour shifts and were getting ready to start sixteen hour ones. I had to climb a scaffold about 50 or 60 feet in the air and was getting pretty sick (I don't mind heights, but I need to be enclosed in something). So, I get to the top of this scaffold and I removing nuts and bolts from this industrial size motor. Being half sick and suffering from a bad case of vertigo, I start accidentally dropping nuts and bolts off the scaffold. I've never had a nut or bolt hit me on the head, but, for some odd reason, it sure was pissing off the guys below. After about 30 minutes of this BS, I climbed off the scaffold, found a ride to the front gate with a cute Dow secretary, and told U.S. Contractors to kiss my butt.
On the bright side, the whole episode was a "Moses and the Burning Bush" moment - it made me get my ass back to college and say adios to the chemical plant life.
Bruiser
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