I didn’t even have a resume. What exactly would I have put on it? High school attendee…no criminal record… reasonably high score on Duck Hunt. I was going in on name alone. Not my name, mind you – my name was pretty worthless. I was banking my job prospects on my sister’s name. It was the summer of 1998. I was going to be a senior in high school in the fall and I had never had a real job before.
I’d like to tell you that there was an especially compelling reason why I didn’t get my first job until I was 17 years old, but I just didn’t want to work. Ever. My food and board were covered, I had no hobbies and no drug habits. I could stretch a $20 birthday check from my grandmother for 5 months. And up until that point in my life I had primarily passed the summers reading, daydreaming and hitting wiffleballs in the backyard. But I was getting older and college was starting to loom like a grim, money-sucking specter on the horizon. So I decided to get a job.
My sister is only a year and half older than me but she had been working for a long time by that point. I’m not sure what she needed the money for, other than to support her interests, allow her to do fun things with friends and build her savings. You know, loser stuff. Personally, I think if she had a more developed appreciation for the simple pleasure of kicking a soccer ball into the side of a house for 8 hours she wouldn’t have bothered. But luckily for me she did, because I absolutely rode her coattails to the pay window.
Seacoast Fun Park is so named because of its proximity to the sea and because Seacoast Overpriced Go Carts, Unimaginative Mini Golf, and Urine Soaked Waterslides Park doesn’t roll off the tongue nearly as well. The park is situated in Trenton, Maine on the main thoroughfare heading towards Bar Harbor, which is a very popular tourist location. Most visitors were on their way to some place more enjoyable and looking to ease their way into over-paying for everything. Some were locals who simply didn’t have access to real amusement parks and didn’t know any better.
The manager of this magical congregation of faded astro turf and unnaturally-colored chlorine water was named Scott. He lived in Florida in the off-season and worked recovering sunken ships. He also looked a little like Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart coming off a bender. He never took his sunglasses off. They may have been stapled to his head.
My sister had worked at the park for a while and built a reputation as a quality employee and responsible human being. I hadn’t worked anywhere ever and I was pretty sure I wasn’t even remotely responsible, but I followed her into work one day all the same and let her tell Scott what a great guy I was and how excited I was about making minimum wage. Scott just shrugged. “Alright. Whatever.” I quickly filled out some paperwork while Scott rummaged through his desk drawers.
“Everyone wears a nametag,” he announced heavily. “I’ll order you one with your name on it, but for right now you gotta pick from the ones I already have.” He pulled out two nametags: one said Brian, one said Stephanie.
I started to reach across the table for the Brian tag. “Wait!” said my sister. “People are going to be so confused. They’ll always think your name is Brian. You should pick Stephanie instead.”
I paused. “But…uh…”
“It makes sense if you think about it.”
“Uh…ok.”
Scott slid the nametag across the table. “Welcome to the team, Stephanie.”
There were no good jobs at the Fun Park, per say, but there was certainly a steeply sliding scale of terrible that started at the go-carts and ended in a damp, smelly pile at the waterslides. There were two jobs to be done at the waterslides: sitting at the top and telling people when they could go down the slides, and sitting at the bottom making sure no one ran back to the top. Technically, the person at the bottom was supposed to be a certified lifeguard and they were supposed to make sure no one drowned, but the pool was about four feet at the deepest end and I can’t tell you how many times I saw a 250 pound man-torpedo clobber some unsuspecting 8 year old girl. And they were always fine so the pool basically ran itself. Joyful running, however, is the single biggest scourge of the American amusement park. We were all but given free reign to tackle these little fun terrorists when the whistle and our shrill screaming proved ineffective. Enjoy yourself within reason, kids. That slide’s still gonna be there if you walk calmly to the top, but if you slip and fall and crack your head open you won’t be allowed to ride it. We have a strict policy against hemorrhaging on the slides.
In reality, 90% of the work over at the aquatic end of the park was monotonous and not much else. The trouble was that last 10%, when you had to clean out the changing rooms at the end of the day.
I’m not interested in getting too graphic here, but let’s all be honest with one another: people are disgusting. The only thing more disgusting than people is people on vacation. I’ve never had much of a hard time “hitting the target” when visiting a strange bathroom. I get that the size and location of the target has been altered from what you’re working with at home, but the basic philosophy and mechanics remain the same. So if anyone anywhere can explain to me how so many people can miss the mark quite so badly and have it be considered anything other than intentional please let me know. I owe about 600 people an apology.
My favorite attraction to work was the go-kart track and I only liked it for one reason: talking over the loud speakers. After loading the paying customers into their mighty chariots (speeds may exceed 20 mph! Watch out sound barrier!) we were supposed to review a fairly standard list of instructions and regulations. Gas on the right, brake on the left, no machetes on the track, etc. I liked to mix it up occasionally and throw in a joke or two, which usually went over well enough…
On one exceptionally hot day I had somehow been conned into working a double because we were short staffed. After sitting exposed at the top of the waterslide for five hours I was called down to man the go-karts. The go-karts were usually a two-person gig, but you could go solo if you had to. I felt that I had things under control – people were getting in and out of the go-karts, the go-karts were going around the track, there wasn’t any blood anywhere – but somewhere late in the day, as the sun began to fall and I was delivering my usual witty take on amusement park flight attendant, another employee came sprinting out of the ticket office. His name was James and to that point we’d never been introduced. He snatched the microphone out of my hand.
“Hey, let’s give it up for…” He bent over to peer at my nametag in the failing light. “Stephan! Good work, buddy.”
It didn’t occur to me how disoriented I felt. “My name’s not Stephan,” I announced, slightly annoyed.
“Oops, sorry…” He leaned over again. “Stephanie?”
“Damn straight.”
James got the go-karts out on the track and set the timer. “Sorry about that,” he said, sticking out a hand to shake. “But they could hear you out in the ticket office.”
“Hear me…what?”
“You were talking for literally five minutes. How long have you been in the sun today?”
I frowned. “What was I saying?”
James picked up the flag to wave in the carts when the timer expired. “Lots of stuff. A little European history, directions to the local hospital, what you had for dinner last night…You were kinda all over the place.”
I blinked as the carts all thundered past. “But they were into it, right?”
~~*~~
I came back to work at the amusement park the next summer as well. I never did get a nametag with my name on it…
