This subject is usually good for a few laughs, lol. So how about it? Does anyone have any embarrassing stories from past places of employment?
Recently in a conversation with Jacklyn, the subject came up on how dirty some fast food places are. We ended up telling each other our horror stories from our respective stints as young fast food employees, back in the day. From that, I felt that the subject would make an amusing thread.
Here..why don't I start? And try not to laugh too hard at my misfortune. 😛😛
The job was POPEYE'S FRIED CHICKEN. I had just turned 16, and this was my first job ever. The minimum wage back then was a whopping $3.80 an hour. Yeah baybee...big money! (Pfffft!!)
Anyhoo, it wasn't too bad at first. I trained in many aspects of the job, from preparing the food....to loading supplies.....to being the place's janitor. But fate played a cruel hand one afternoon when one of my managers came up to me and offered me a chance to "move up".
The proposition? I would be given a staggering 50-cent raise, if I agreed to wear a costume for two hours every day, and go out on the sidewalk to distribute the restaraunt's flyers. Well...me being the enterprising young IDIOT that I was, I readily agreed. Bad mistake.
Now, allow me to describe this infernal costume. It was a POPEYE costume, as in the CARTOON CHARACTER. It consisted of a huge plastic Popeye head (and when I say huge, I mean like Mardi Gras huge) complete with corn cob smoking pipe....a black and blue sailor suit with exaggerated bell-bottom pants like the one in the cartoon....fake, oversized foam rubber forearm muscles with anchor tattoos painted on them....and huge size 17 foam rubber shoes.
Ok now, problem number one....the suit was designed for a person of at least six feet six inches in height. At age 16, I was not exactly a tall guy...in fact, I was all of five foot one inch tall back then....LOL...so...you can imagine what this suit looked like on me, especially the head. Ah, but what a sad sight that was.
Problem number two. It was the middle of summer, and it was blazing hot outside....making it about 1000 degrees inside the suit. Also...I wasn't the only guy to wear the suit. There was a guy that would wear it and stand outside before me. This guy would come in, take the suit off and hand it to me for my stint. And let me tell ya....that dude would be sweating in that thing before it got to me, so the suit would be very damp, and mucho mucho mucho SMELLY! I'm talking FUNKY! I mean really FUNKAYYYYY! No...you don't understand...I'm talking ODERIFIC BAYBEE!!! I'm talkin' play that funky music white boy funkayyyyy!!!!!
But...I didn't know any better to refuse. I thought I'd get fired if I didn't go through with it, and I didn't want to get fired....so I wore the suit.
So now..here I am...wearing this disgustingly putrid suit which did not fit me right, trying to keep my heavy Popeye head from tipping over to the side and possibly taken MY head with it...walking down the street towards 42nd Street and Broadway, which was where I was to stand and distribute the flyers.
My indignities do not end there. The heat was stifling. On top of that...people would walk past me and punch the Popeye head....causing it to spin around 180 degrees. Children would come up and stomp on my size 17 Popeye feet. People were making really bad spinach jokes. People would make comments about the bad smell emanating from the suit...a smell which I did NOT create!
Ah...but worst of all....I would have foreign tourists coming up to me begging to have their pictures taken with me. There would be little French and Japanese kids climbing all over me vying for a good camera position....as well as whole families. God....the fact that I smelled so bad around these people made me even more mortified.
I must have taken a million pictures that week. To this day, somewhere in various parts of the world, there are pictures of me in a bad-fitting Popeye suit, sitting in people's photo albums. Yes....my humiliation actually went international. Yay me.
Ah, but then there were the other tourists....the two or three Japanese entourages that would only walk up...snap a picture of me, then stand there pointing and laughing in Japanese. Ha-ha, very funny mother (expletive deleted). LOL.
Ya know what my response was to that? Each time they did that...I would point at the sky and scream "GODZILLAAAAAA!!!!!" really loudly under my Popeye head. And they would actually get this puzzled look on their faces and look where I was pointing...the idiots. Lol!
Anyhoo, I did the Popeye suit thing for about a week. Subsequently I got fed up with the whole deal and quit my job. I was there a total of three months. I never worked at a fast food place again. Not just because of the suit thing...but also because during my stint there..I saw a whole LOT of unsanitary and dangerous practices. That's why I don't trust the food at fast food places to this day. But that's a story for another thread.
Anyhoo...that's my horror story. Hope you got a hearty chuckle out of my pain. LOL.
So how about you guys? There have got to be a few of you out there with an embarrassing job tale. Let's hear them! I don't want to be the only one in here. 😛😛
Recently in a conversation with Jacklyn, the subject came up on how dirty some fast food places are. We ended up telling each other our horror stories from our respective stints as young fast food employees, back in the day. From that, I felt that the subject would make an amusing thread.
Here..why don't I start? And try not to laugh too hard at my misfortune. 😛😛
The job was POPEYE'S FRIED CHICKEN. I had just turned 16, and this was my first job ever. The minimum wage back then was a whopping $3.80 an hour. Yeah baybee...big money! (Pfffft!!)
Anyhoo, it wasn't too bad at first. I trained in many aspects of the job, from preparing the food....to loading supplies.....to being the place's janitor. But fate played a cruel hand one afternoon when one of my managers came up to me and offered me a chance to "move up".
The proposition? I would be given a staggering 50-cent raise, if I agreed to wear a costume for two hours every day, and go out on the sidewalk to distribute the restaraunt's flyers. Well...me being the enterprising young IDIOT that I was, I readily agreed. Bad mistake.
Now, allow me to describe this infernal costume. It was a POPEYE costume, as in the CARTOON CHARACTER. It consisted of a huge plastic Popeye head (and when I say huge, I mean like Mardi Gras huge) complete with corn cob smoking pipe....a black and blue sailor suit with exaggerated bell-bottom pants like the one in the cartoon....fake, oversized foam rubber forearm muscles with anchor tattoos painted on them....and huge size 17 foam rubber shoes.
Ok now, problem number one....the suit was designed for a person of at least six feet six inches in height. At age 16, I was not exactly a tall guy...in fact, I was all of five foot one inch tall back then....LOL...so...you can imagine what this suit looked like on me, especially the head. Ah, but what a sad sight that was.
Problem number two. It was the middle of summer, and it was blazing hot outside....making it about 1000 degrees inside the suit. Also...I wasn't the only guy to wear the suit. There was a guy that would wear it and stand outside before me. This guy would come in, take the suit off and hand it to me for my stint. And let me tell ya....that dude would be sweating in that thing before it got to me, so the suit would be very damp, and mucho mucho mucho SMELLY! I'm talking FUNKY! I mean really FUNKAYYYYY! No...you don't understand...I'm talking ODERIFIC BAYBEE!!! I'm talkin' play that funky music white boy funkayyyyy!!!!!
But...I didn't know any better to refuse. I thought I'd get fired if I didn't go through with it, and I didn't want to get fired....so I wore the suit.
So now..here I am...wearing this disgustingly putrid suit which did not fit me right, trying to keep my heavy Popeye head from tipping over to the side and possibly taken MY head with it...walking down the street towards 42nd Street and Broadway, which was where I was to stand and distribute the flyers.
My indignities do not end there. The heat was stifling. On top of that...people would walk past me and punch the Popeye head....causing it to spin around 180 degrees. Children would come up and stomp on my size 17 Popeye feet. People were making really bad spinach jokes. People would make comments about the bad smell emanating from the suit...a smell which I did NOT create!
Ah...but worst of all....I would have foreign tourists coming up to me begging to have their pictures taken with me. There would be little French and Japanese kids climbing all over me vying for a good camera position....as well as whole families. God....the fact that I smelled so bad around these people made me even more mortified.
I must have taken a million pictures that week. To this day, somewhere in various parts of the world, there are pictures of me in a bad-fitting Popeye suit, sitting in people's photo albums. Yes....my humiliation actually went international. Yay me.
Ah, but then there were the other tourists....the two or three Japanese entourages that would only walk up...snap a picture of me, then stand there pointing and laughing in Japanese. Ha-ha, very funny mother (expletive deleted). LOL.
Ya know what my response was to that? Each time they did that...I would point at the sky and scream "GODZILLAAAAAA!!!!!" really loudly under my Popeye head. And they would actually get this puzzled look on their faces and look where I was pointing...the idiots. Lol!
Anyhoo, I did the Popeye suit thing for about a week. Subsequently I got fed up with the whole deal and quit my job. I was there a total of three months. I never worked at a fast food place again. Not just because of the suit thing...but also because during my stint there..I saw a whole LOT of unsanitary and dangerous practices. That's why I don't trust the food at fast food places to this day. But that's a story for another thread.
Anyhoo...that's my horror story. Hope you got a hearty chuckle out of my pain. LOL.
So how about you guys? There have got to be a few of you out there with an embarrassing job tale. Let's hear them! I don't want to be the only one in here. 😛😛