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This week: My First Real Job - The End Edited by: SophyBells  
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Hi, I'm SophyBells ~ your editor for this edition of the Comedy Newsletter. This week is the final installment of "My First Real" job series -- wait, is that applause because you have LOVED my series so much, or that you are glad it's over?!?  Anyway, this week we'll learn about saying goodbye to that first job, voluntarily or otherwise. |
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My First Real Job -- Part 3 -- The End
In last month's issue "Comedy Newsletter (May 19, 2010)" I shared some of the actual experiences I had working at my first "real" job at Disneyland in Anaheim, CA. In this week's final installment I'll tell you about how I parted company with the Magic Kingdom, and why. It is my hope that by sharing some of my experiences with you, you will avoid working at Disneyland no matter what they offer to pay you your comedy muse might be sparked to do some writing about your own first job experiences.
First there are two things you should know:
1. I did not plan on making a lifelong career out of slinging hot dogs and grape juice at Disneyland, even if I got a better outfit or more money. This was a summer job before I started college, and while I considered returning to work over Christmas break and possibly the following summer, I did not plan to become a Disney cast-member forever.
2. On the other hand, my father DID make a career out of his job at Disneyland. He started there in 1957, two years after the park opened, and remained until his retirement in 1989. Back then, as a WW2 vet, you could work your way up in the company, which he did. He started as a young upstart electronics expert (well, expert for 1957 -- it basically meant he was a whiz at repairing TV's and radios), moved through the world of audio-animatronics, and ended up in a supervisory position. During my stint as a food-service slave in Fantasyland, my father was one of the bosses in Fantasyland. Which means that he was, if not directly supervising my bosses, he was certainly over them in terms of his position. And my dad was a great boss -- unless you were a terrible employee. Then you had to deal with his wrath.
Soooooooooo ... you guessed it, my boss was a HORRIBLE employee. He was the manager of food services in Fantasyland, and he was a .... hmmm, gotta keep this 13+ or lower ... let's see ... okay, my boss, Mark, was a #%&!?$# employee, and an even worse boss. And once he found out who my dad was, he set out to make my life a living hell. For instance -- we could be scheduled for daily eight-hour shifts -- the only thing was we could not work less than eight hours apart on our shifts. So one thing he LOVED to do to me was schedule me for a few days from 6pm to 2am closing, just enough days to disrupt my sleep routine since, getting off at 2am meant getting home at 2:30am, and then trying to unwind and get to sleep. Then on about the third day, after he'd schedule me from 6pm to 2am, he'd then schedule me for a 10am shift the following day. Legally it was fine -- I had the required eight hours off. But humanely it was just evil. I'd have to come back to work eight hours after I left, with maybe five hours of sleep if I was lucky.
Or, here's another one ... on the aforementioned (Part 2) pirate ship where I sometimes worked, there were swinging doors from the "galley" (kitchen) to the serving line where we set out the food, cafeteria style. One day during lunch we were super busy, and it was my job to restock the foods that were getting low. So as I was heading back to the serving line with a large metal tray filled with fruit popover dessert things (how they had any relation to a pirate ship, I have no clue), my horrible boss was heading back to the galley to get more food as well. But when he saw me heading through he stood off to one side, holding open one side of the swinging doors for me. Of course he let go of his side of the door as soon as I was halfway through the door, and so the door struck the front of my tray just right, so that I ended up wearing that tray of pirate popovers. Even though everyone saw him do it, he told ME to clean up the mess that I had made, and then to rush to wardrobe to get a new costume and be back in 15 minutes or he'd dock my pay.
Another day he sent me over to Frontierland, next door to Fantasyland, to bring back two large pots of chowder for the Pirate Ship. These pots were hella heavy, and once again he gave me a near impossible deadline to get to the Frontierland kitchen and back with the chowder. But off I dashed, determined to return before his ridiculous deadline. On my way back to the Pirate Ship, sweating and straining with those two hot, heavy pots, a food service manager in Frontierland, passed me on a little golf cart, stopped, and backed up to ask me what in the heck I was doing. I explained that Mark wanted me to bring two pots of chowder to the ship -- and this person, bless him, rolled his eyes, called Mark a couple of choice names, informed me that the chowder pots were to be transported via golf carts, not human slaves, and proceeded to drive me over to the Pirate Ship with my chowder pots.
Now to my credit I did not mention any of this to my dad -- I didn't want to be a big whiny baby, nor did I want to make things worse for me with Mark if my dad came over to Fantasyland and put the smackdown on him. So when Dad asked how work was going, I said, "fine, great, fun, love it!" And my dad would always look surprised because A) he knew what a jerk Mark was and B) some of the other employees who liked my dad and got along well with him would tell my dad what Mark was doing to me. But I didn't know that.
When summer finally arrived, I was never happier to be released from the workforce to go back into the world of academia. My plan was to return to hell Disneyland for a month over my Christmas break. But that was not Mark's plan. On my paperwork he stamped "No Rehire," which is the same as saying that I had been fired and told never to return. So that when I tried to come back in December, I would not be able to get my job back. Fortunately one of his bosses, a friend of my dad's, saw the "No Rehire" on the form and evidently called on Mark to explain himself, which he could not. He mumbled something about a mistake. And I returned for four weeks in December/January, where I found that Mark had been demoted transferred and was doing some other job -- hopefully cleaning up after the horses on Main St. or something!
And that was the end of my Disney work experience. I found another job the next summer, and never looked back. Except when I go to visit Disneyland now, all these years later. I am especially fond of and patient with the food service employees ...
SophyBells |
Below you'll find some offerings from other WDC members about leaving jobs -- voluntarily or otherwise:
This first batch come from a recent prompt in "The Writer's Cramp" :
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#1680418 by Not Available. |
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And a few others about parting company with an employer:
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Have an opinion on what you've read here today? Then send the Editor feedback! Find an item that you think would be perfect for showcasing here? Submit it for consideration in the newsletter!
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Now for a few comments about my last newsletter about working at D'land:
From Annette 
Super second installment of this work experience. Can't wait for part three. This does inspire me to write more about normal life, and maybe I'll even find humor in writing about the dark ages of my time at the world's premier purveyor of coffee (that's what they say).
IMO, the best comedy comes form real, normal-life experiences -- because people can relate to them, and they usually are funnier than anything we could make up! Good luck, and I hope you share the results with us! 
    
From Waltz Invictus 
So my takeaway from this, Sophy, is: 1) Pepsi sucks; 2) tourons are stupid; 3) it's fun to mess with peoples' heads.
I already knew that.
You forgot 4) Never work for Disneyland. 
From billwilcox
God, I love your newsletters Sophy
Aww thanks Billy -- the check's in the mail!
From LJPC - the tortoise 
Delightful, Sophy! Your anecdotes are terrific. I remember my days 'slinging hash' at an Arby's -- a time I'd just as soon forget. Great newletter. -- Laura
Don't forget about it -- WRITE IT! I bet there's some funny stuff in there!
From Ghostranch
This made me laugh so much! It also brought back bad memories of when I worked as a ride operator in a theme park -- our uniform was HIDEOUS! It consisted of shapeless trousers with a bandstripe down each leg, steel-capped shoes (soooo painful), a shirt and a bright red bowtie. We all looked ridiculous... and felt it too!
Oh wow, do you have any pictures? ROFL! That does sound dreadful -- maybe you can write about it to help with the recovery ...
That's all for this month -- see you next time! And on behalf of the other regular Comedy Newsletter Editors, Waltz Invictus and Ẃeβ࿚ẂỉԎḈĥmas  remember to WRITE AND LAUGH ON! SophyBells
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Comedy: June 16, 2010 Issue [#3802]
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