Much in the way our beloved Buffy had her "dream" job at the Doublemeat Palace, I'm sure there are a few of us out there who have had the great fortune of holding down a nightmare....or maybe just humiliating....job.
I'll fess up. I've never held the greatest jobs in the world, but the one that really stands out was my very first job ever.
Aaahh, the memories.
Allow me to paint you a true picture of horror. 😛
It was my first ever summer job when I was all of 16. The place....POPEYE'S FRIED CHICKEN.
The minimum wage back then was a whopping $3.80 an hour. Yeah baybee...big money!
I trained in many aspects of the job, from food preparation, to loading supplies, to being the friggin' 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.
Mistake.
Now, allow me to describe this infernal costume. Yes, it was a Popeye costume.
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, fake, oversized foam rubber forearm muscles with anchor tattoos painted on them, and huge size friiggin' 30 foam rubber shoes.
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 fella...in fact, I was all of five foot one inch tall back then, so you can imagine what this suit looked like on me, especially the head. Ah, but what a sad sight that was.
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, trying to keep my heavy Popeye head from tipping over to the side and possibly taken MY head with it, walking (more like flopping) down the street towards 42nd Street and Broadway, which was where I was to stand and distribute the flyers.
To add to the indignity, the heat was stifling, and 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 30 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 their whole families. Man, I was mortified that I had to stand around all these folks smelling as bad as I did.
I must have been in 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. I rock. Oh yeah. I rock hard. Pffft!!!!
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.
Oh yeah, Ha-ha, very funny. Laugh at the misshappen Popeye, you Japanese mother (expletive deleted). 😛
Aaah, but I devised a response. 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. Petty, yes, but satisfying to me at the time. 😛
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....except maybe for White Castle.
Go ahead, kiddies....try and top THAT one. I know there are some horror stories out there. Spill. 😛😛
:: tu ::
I'll fess up. I've never held the greatest jobs in the world, but the one that really stands out was my very first job ever.
Aaahh, the memories.
Allow me to paint you a true picture of horror. 😛
It was my first ever summer job when I was all of 16. The place....POPEYE'S FRIED CHICKEN.
The minimum wage back then was a whopping $3.80 an hour. Yeah baybee...big money!
I trained in many aspects of the job, from food preparation, to loading supplies, to being the friggin' 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.
Mistake.
Now, allow me to describe this infernal costume. Yes, it was a Popeye costume.
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, fake, oversized foam rubber forearm muscles with anchor tattoos painted on them, and huge size friiggin' 30 foam rubber shoes.
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 fella...in fact, I was all of five foot one inch tall back then, so you can imagine what this suit looked like on me, especially the head. Ah, but what a sad sight that was.
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, trying to keep my heavy Popeye head from tipping over to the side and possibly taken MY head with it, walking (more like flopping) down the street towards 42nd Street and Broadway, which was where I was to stand and distribute the flyers.
To add to the indignity, the heat was stifling, and 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 30 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 their whole families. Man, I was mortified that I had to stand around all these folks smelling as bad as I did.
I must have been in 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. I rock. Oh yeah. I rock hard. Pffft!!!!
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.
Oh yeah, Ha-ha, very funny. Laugh at the misshappen Popeye, you Japanese mother (expletive deleted). 😛
Aaah, but I devised a response. 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. Petty, yes, but satisfying to me at the time. 😛
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....except maybe for White Castle.
Go ahead, kiddies....try and top THAT one. I know there are some horror stories out there. Spill. 😛😛
:: tu ::
