Eye-Opener: Memo

blue collar job

so today I got a taste of a more realistic blue-collar job...the mascots and the cheerleaders went to IdleWild and worked as volunteers to fundraise...

Ideally I would have like to worked in merchandising like the gift shop...but I ended up in the food section...

my first job was cleaning the tables...it was pretty easy...all i did was to squirt some cleaning agent mixed with water on top of table surfaces and wiped the dirt away...at first i thought i was going to go crazy...in my mind I thought how can i possibly do this for four hours?...

i became somewhat obsessed...i should have been promoted employee of the day...i became adamant at cleaning the tables...as soon as the "guests" left their table...their disposed trash and crumbs were at my mercy and believe me I didn't show any mercy to those scumbags...my trigger fingers were quicker than the germs...they didn't even had the time to bother the guests.

Time did fly by...one of the benefits with cleaning the tables was being mobile. I wasn't stuck in a games booth or a souvenir shop. As soon as my job was done, I was free to roam around...I didn't get that far but I was still free.

luckily I didn't encounter any rude guests...one possible demeaning comment I received was from a lady who saw me wiping ketchup from the condiments area where she said to me: "You must be used to this."

i didn't mind doing this kind of job for two days to raise money but I couldn't imagine myself doing this type of work for the rest of my life... I decided to cheer up and tried to turn my work into some kind of meditation...sort of like the kid in "karate kid" wax on wax off...same principal wipe on wipe off...

i think my assistant manager thought that I was having way too much fun cleaning the tables so she pulled me in and told me that the kitchen needed a runner*. A runner, I could do that, as a matter of fact I did cross country in high school (j/K). With so limited space in the kitchen, one can't possible go in circles for 3.1 miles but I did get a chance to utilize my legs and arms getting the fries and the extra cheese...

I left at 4, four hours earlier than the rest of the squad because I had an OA meeting to attend. it was an okay experience, very interesting...

*someone who puts the orders together (organizes it for example getting the drinks fries etc, not necessarily making the order)

Day 2

the second day wasn't that bad...although in the middle of the day, time slowed down for me...the people I worked with were friendly. They all thought I was 16 or 17 and was still in highschool. They were surprised to find out that I was 21...at the end of the day, I got a free corn-dog, idlewild hats and name-tag, and a baby kermit for a dollar (with help from a persuasive team member)....the weird part was we were all able to work together as if I knew them (even though 99% of the people I worked with already knew each other and worked before together)...

out of the hours I've worked in the sandwich factory...only two customers complained and started to make a scene...the first was a mother who was just tired and had a pretty long day... she was very stressed and when my co-workers got the order wrong she started b*tch!ng like everything in her life was just messed up (just because my co-worker had put cheese in her sandwich-- she didn't need to freak like that)

the other incident was with guy who freaked out because he couldn't find napkins...we told him that they were on the side of the building and he couldn't find them so he returned complaining how he spent 40 minutes in line (not really, more like 15 minutes) and he couldn't even get napkins...my co-worker pointed out that there were napkins he just didn't see them ...boy, was he salty!

Posted by Michael Diezmos at August 23, 2005 9:34 PM