Five joe jobs.

25Mar07

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I’ve had plenty of joe-jobs, nothing I’d call a career. Let me put it this way: I have an extensive collection of nametags and hairnets. That line was spoken by Mike Myers as Wayne Campbell in Wayne’s World. I, like Wayne, have had many joe jobs in my illustrious 20 years as a worker bee. Here are five highlights from my days of minimum wage hell.

<1> My first job was as a busboy in a deli. I hated having to clean up other people’s half-eaten food and begging the waiters for tips at the end of the night. I worked there about three weeks before the owner of the deli got pissed at the cook and dragged him through the restaurant and threw him out the front door. I kind of wished he had thrown me out the door and it was with that thought that I knew my heart wasn’t in the busboy trade so I quit.

<2> After ditching the deli I signed on to scoop ice cream at a joint called Won’s Gourmet Ice Cream. It was actually a good gig and I worked there all through high school. The owners Mr. and Mrs. Lee were really nice and they made us eat all of our mistakes. For a couple years after my service at Won’s I couldn’t stomach ice cream.

Mr. Lee was an engineer and he applied his skills to the science of the scoop size. He actually created a to scale diagram of the exact radius of what a Won’s Gourmet Ice Cream scoop should be. Of course that diagram went out the window when my friends came by for some ice cream.

<3> Having tired of scrubbing ice cream off my arms every night for two year I sought a new gig to make my spending cash. And the oppourtunity presented itself with the opening of my town’s first (and to my knowledge, only) indoor miniature golf course. The place had a jungle theme and was called Putter’s Paradise. I handled the registers, handed out the golf clubs and balls, and served the food. I got pretty good at miniature golf and my specialty was getting the ball through the plastic alligator’s mouth.

To add to the paradise theme the place played reggae music non-stop. At first that was a plus, but after hearing No Woman, No Cry for the thousandth time I wanted to cry. To this day Bob Marley reminds me of dried out hot dogs and fake grass carpeting.

I stayed there until the night the store’s deposit bag was stolen. The cops came and questioned me and the store manager. The manager blamed it on a women who had her kid’s birthday party there during the day. However, I’m about 90% sure it was the manager who stole the cash, but being fresh out of high school I still had that don’t snitch mentality. I should have ratted his punk ass out.

<4> I lived in Ocean City, MD for a summer with six people in a two bedroom apartment. As if the living situation wasn’t bad enough I also went through numerous crappy jobs that summer. I would quit one job and then once my cash flow slowed I would go get another.

My worst job that summer was renting umbrellas, boogie boards, and folding chairs on the beach. Laying around on the beach all day sounds great but they only paid you 12 bucks a day plus a small percentage of what you rented throughout the day. The pay sucked so bad that people would skim off the top. This was easy to do since it was an all cash business. The company would send spies around at random times during the day to make sure what you had rented out matched up with your records.

There was also the issue of rousting the homeless people out from behind your box every morning. I suppose the big wooden boxes that stored all the umbrellas provided the homeless people shelter from the wind at night.

I was not long for this job and the final straw came when I almost killed a lady with an umbrella. It was a windy day at the beach and any time someone rented out an umbrella we would set it up for them. You had to stick the umbrella in the sand and then rock it back and forth until it was firmly set in place. On this particular day I suppose I didn’t rock the umbrella enough because a huge gust of wind picked it up and sent it flying down the beach.

It tumbled end over end with the heavy, wooden, spear-like shaft leaving deep gouges in the sand. I gave chase but I was no match for the power of mother nature. I watched helplessly as the killer umbrella made it’s way towards an unaware sunbather. The pointy end of the umbrella struck inches from her exposed stomach and then the wind sent it flying over her. She looked up a moment later wondering what that thing was that briefly blotted out the sun.

I continued my chase, but the umbrella was finally stopped by a beach life guard who tackled it from his chair. He held it for me until I was able to run over to retrieve it. He gave me one of those you idiot looks as he shoved the umbrella back into my hands. This was definitely not worth 12 bucks a day.

<5> One of my last joe jobs was working as a shoe sales man. Yes, I was a modern day Al Bundy, but at least I was hawking hiking boots and skater shoes. I had taken the gig to help pay for my wedding. I was already working a full time job during the day and then I would smell random people’s stinky feet at night.

The shoe store was in a shopping mall so I spent most of my time sitting on a stool and people watching. For the short time I worked there I became amazingly immersed in the day to day soap opera of mall life. Shoplifters were tackled in front of the store. I learned which store managers were cool and which were retail Nazis from the other joe jobbers who would stop by. I learned to accurately track the time by monitoring the mall rat’s repeated trips pass the store and throughout the rest of the mall. I probably could have done a sociological study on mall life if I wasn’t so tired from working my regular nine to fiver.

Soon after my wedding I used my store discount to buy a pair of boots then I quit. Being a shoe sales man was one of my last forays into joe job hell. I had short stints at a gadget store and a furniture seller. But I finally gave up trying to make extra cash and became the full time cubicle dweller that I am today. I can’t say I didn’t have fun at some of my jobs. I even fantasize about quitting my professional job to retun to low stress of joe jobdom like Kevin Spacey in American Beauty. Of course that is only a dream since I have a kid to feed.

Do you have any fun joe job stories or odd jobs you would like to share? Please share them in the comments, I can’t be the only one around with a resume of crappy minimum wage jobs like this

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