My best friend at the time, her parents owned this local pseudo-carnival thing, only open in October, based on Halloween. They ran a pumpkin patch with hayrack rides, had bonfire pits, a miniature animal petting zoo, two or three haunted houses, gift shops, homemade foods, caramel apples, funnel cakes, crafts, all sorts of fall/Halloween things. Her mom hired me for my first "real" job, and all I told her was I wasn't working at McDonalds for a reason, so no food duty. I don't cook, and I'm not about to start.
People who had been working every October for them for years got first dibs on the little shops and such, so her mom decided to be "creative." (Sorry, I'm starting to sound like Carl, all these quotes...)
My first job was as the Great Pumpkin.
Sort of. No one liked to dress up as the costumed characters, and since I was doing theatre, she decided that would be my gig. 95 degrees, they put me in this really big costume (we had to roll up the pants and sleeves about six times) with a scarecrow body, and then this giant pumpkin head. If I remember correctly, it was rather frightening. Being so hot out, they had this vest that you fill with ice packs so you don't pass out and die. Because who wants to see dead carnival characters lying strewn all over a farm? We strapped that head on me, and away I went.
The head was also six sizes too big. There was supposed to be a chin strap, but I guess I have a small head, so it didn't hold the head in place. I had to walk carefully around the farm, balancing this head on my shoulders, and every time I turned, it would flop down (boy, was that heavy!) and hit the back of my head and I wouldn't be able to see past my feet. I couldn't see out the eye holes anyway, had to look out the nose... So I was going a little cross-eyed. Getting bruises on the back of my head and on my shoulders. And my neck was getting stiff.
Kids screamed and ran and cried and hid. Grown-ups kept coming up and pummeling me right on top of the pumpkin (ouch, ouch, ouch!). Bad grown-ups!
I think I did it a few hours, in between frequent trips to change ice packs, the first day, and for about an hour the next day. But there's a reason you don't often see people wandering around looking like the headless horseman.
So her mom put me on corn shucking duty. All the dried blue pretty indian corn, yup, I had to make them into crafts for people to hang on their front doors. I guess one of the other personel developed an allergy to the husks, or something odd, so they started quickly rotating people out of that, just in case.
So they put me out in a booth alone with a cash box, taking quarters to let toddlers ride on these adorable little tricycles that look like mini-tractors. And giving tickets to the pony rides. But once it started getting cold (October here goes from 90s to teens quite quickly), she decided I'd be better off at the exit gate, as security. Sitting outside, making sure people with pumpkins went to pay for them first, and that none got snitched. I ended up wearing two coats, three gloves, two hats, and my old My Little Pony sleeping bag, which I kept in my car for emergencies.
After that, her mom put me in one of the quaint little shops. First time with a cash register, it was the one that you couldn't void figures on, and they didn't train me. On top of that, I was alone most of the evening, being the one to give breaks to the regular staff, and didn't have a walkie-talkie. No, they don't have phones. Of course it's the costume shop, where all the kids keep changing their minds about the color of fake teeth they want, and no one had told me I couldn't void, so the cash register makes this big squawking noise and won't shut up, and I have to ask one of the parents (thank goodness he was honest!) to watch the shop while I ran downstairs out of the loft to the bakery in hopes of finding someone to make the infernal thing shut up.
Then they put me in the diner. I got to make caramel apples, which was grand fun. Stab them, dip them, then roll them in a topping. During dinner that night, it got really busy, as they had a few tour groups, so they called me over to help serve drinks. A whole busload of deaf people from a local school, and none of us signed, none of them spoke well, and pointing from five feet away is not easy. That was so frustrating, that's when I decided to take up ASL when I got to college. Just so I could help a lady get a Mountain Dew.
I actually did that two years, bouncing around, doing odd jobs. Chasing bunnies when they escaped from Bunnyville. Scaring small children. Getting beaten up by adults. Freezing to death. Giving people directions on how to get to Pig Races.
***
I always start my jobs in October
After that, I moved on to Medical Records, which is where the sad depressed women go when they can't find other jobs, I guess. These are the people with no interest in life, who don't have any hobbies, who hate everything, half of whom were only there to supplement their welfare checks, but were careful not to make too much to jeopardize the free money. Okay, they weren't all like that. But I will give as an example, one of the two guys who ever worked there, he called in one day in July and said, "I can't come in to work today, it's too hot." The other male just stopped showing up one day, but they left him on the roster, just in case he decided to come back.
The only reason I got the job was because my sister worked there. They let her train me. She'd already been there six years. She forgot to tell me what anything meant, just assuming I would know by osmosis what she was talking about, as if it were hereditary. Five minutes after I started, she told me to answer the phone. I didn't even know what I was doing, so I knew I couldn't answer a question. I was about to answer, though, when I ran through my head: "Medical Records, this is Tammy." My name's not Tammy, but I'd called my sis there enough, that's the first thing that came to mind. It's just best not to answer the phone when you don't know your own name.
Then horror of horrors, the evening supervisor went on maternity leave, leaving my sis as my boss... I thought this was a bad idea, especially after she nearly fired me my second day. I had to explain that she was terrible at explaining duties, so she lightened up. If I thought she was bad, that was nothing compared to when she went to days, leaving The Incarnation of Evil as our new sup. That lady was one step below Satan. Because of her I ended up working alone every Saturday night, being yelled at by doctors, having to leave the department unmanned to run half a mile across the hospital to deliver records to the ER. I guess she thought, since the guy who stopped showing up was still on payroll, that I would have help or something.
Six years. I dunno how I made it that long. We were shortstaffed for most of it, but I finally had to get out of there when over half of our co-workers were on maternity leave. At the same time. And they didn't hire anyone to take their places, not even temps. I have since learned that you get a job where you can be happy, not where you're going to be miserable for thirty years. I guess my sis stayed because she has happy memories of marker fights, rubber band wars, and being thrown in the recycling bin... But all that fun stuff was over by the time I joined the crew.
***
While I was there, I started working at my first library on the weekends. No one ever comes in. I went a little stir crazy at first, making little oragami clothing for our plush frog. Putting the skeleton in odd places for the week staff to find him. I got a lot of homework done, and I'm mostly security. Why do I, who stopped growing when I was ten, keep ending up playing security? What do they think I'm going to do?
I have since learned much better how to entertain myself. I get a lot of writing done. The poor new guy is going stir crazy, though. He had been here one hour by himself and I said, are you bored? He was. Poor gay guy (he got a perm this week...) who keep untwisting the phone cords. That's his pet peeve. He's already whimpering about what he's going to do here alone two Saturday mornings when I'm gone. He hasn't learned to entertain himself, yet.
***
I cat-sat for a guy once--okay, twice. I'm a glutton for punishment. This was the second job (after medical records) that actually made me cry. I'd been there two minutes, decided to throw my shoes in the closet so the cats wouldn't throw up in them, leant down in the dark to drop them, and nearly screamed. I didn't even know they made
books of porn. And I was in the middle of nowhere. I ended up crying for like an hour in the side room. I had to search the house, just so I wouldn't be surprised again. And yes, I searched for hidden video cameras, too, and refused to use his much-tauted giant bathtub, just in case. The only reason I did it a second year was because his cats were actually quite nice, and I had to get out of the house, because my mom had just retired.
***
My second library job, which I got after graduation, is much the same as the first. Only it's a lot more like babysitting. We have Storytelling Steve, who can't entertain himself unless he's telling stories to people, and listening to stories. He likes to regail us of tales of how he fell off a mountain--twice--and got caught in an avalanche. He imagines himself to be a cross between Davy Crocket and... that other guy. Daniel Boone. He gets dressed up in fringey outfits, wears bandanas around his knees, leather pants, and goes hiking. Sometimes he wears his coonskin cap, sometimes his old-fashioned hat, and once he was walking in the city on a trail like that, and some girl with a dog ran screaming because she thought he was a bear. We have storytime, and snack time, occasionally naptime. We learn all sorts of new interesting things, dress up the skeleton, decorate with construction paper and crayons for major sporting events, and entertain the med students.
--GB
I love seeing their faces light up when they finally get something you've been beating into their heads forever. I also love hearing all their stories. Teaching is not a 8:30-3:30 job, but it's fun and rewarding.
After that, I moved on to Medical Records, which is where the sad depressed women go when they can't find other jobs, I guess. These are the people with no interest in life, who don't have any hobbies, who hate everything, half of whom were only there to supplement their welfare checks, but were careful not to make too much to jeopardize the free money. Okay, they weren't all like that. But I will give as an example, one of the two guys who ever worked there, he called in one day in July and said, "I can't come in to work today, it's too hot." The other male just stopped showing up one day, but they left him on the roster, just in case he decided to come back.
