Chapters 8 and 9: Glow Sticks & Waffle Cones, Respectively

Despite everything I put myself through, I managed to survive my first year at Western. The parties, beer bongs, staying up all night drinking and doing another shot at 8am on my way to class, and daily beer pong games was tuition money well spent. The best part was that I never had to get a job. All of the money from my graduation party had pretty much become a limitless supply of all of the drugs, alcohol, and late night Taco Bell runs I could ask for. And that was after I bought a computer! I was lucky to make it all the way through, but by the time I got home, I knew it was time to find a job. And fast. Since every other returning college student was coming home and looking for a job at the same time, I needed to be on top of things.

And it just so happened that a new mall was opening in Novi. The Fountain Walk, deemed a necessary addition to the city by absolutely no one, was starting to open a few stores. And a few of those few were hiring. Finding a place of employment really wasn't as hard as I had feared, and within a week of being home, I had interviews for Putting Edge (glow-in-the-dark mini golf. Perfect) and Coldstone Creamery.

Did I say interviews? I'm sorry. I meant "auditions." Not interviews. I guess the best piece of advice I could give someone looking for a part time job would be...be weary of places that hold "auditions." Putting Edge's audition wasn't too bad. That was more or less a group interview. Nothing strenuous. Just making sure you can play well with others, really. Coldstone, on the other hand, was a little bit more garish. You had to sing. Yes. Sing. For a part time job scooping ice cream for the summer. You had to sing. Have you ever been to Coldstone? You know those terrible songs they sing about ice cream, to the tune of "The Flintstones" or "If You're Happy and You Know It" and all that shit? The ones they sing when they get a tip? Yeah. I had to sing one. Let's just say, when you base your hiring completely on how someone sings some tacky rendition of The Addams Family song instead of on whether they have any customer service or cash handling skills, it shows. I sang this:

(To the tune of 'Row Row Row Your Boat')
Choose choose choose your cone
Put your ice cream in
Lick it up lick it up lick it up lick it up
Wipe your sticky chin!

The only reason I chose that one was because it was the shortest, and therefore, the least embarrassing.

Actually, we had to make up a song at the Putting Edge interview too. So maybe it was a little bit like an audition after all. I did mine to 50 Cent's "In The Club," cleverly titled "With A Club," (miniature golf, remember? Shut up. It's funny).

I ended up getting both jobs. Are you surprised? With these pipes of mine I can sing my way into any situation. The problem is, both places planned on over staffing, in the most severe sort of way. Because of that, I decided to work at Putting Edge and Coldstone. The funny part is that despite having two part time jobs, I was still pulling in roughly 20 hours a week. Talk about big money.

Now, I don't use this phrase lightly, but Putting Edge was one of my favorite jobs ever. That may seem hard to believe, but try to remember, I've hated almost every place I've worked at. It doesn't take much to get into the top 3. I was an Entertainment Coordinator there, which sounds like I had a lot of responsibilities and jobs. Actually, it's just a fancy way of saying "regular employee." There were three aspects to being an Entertainment Coordinator. Retail, which is working the register and selling merchandise and admission. Marshaling, which was walking around the course, having fun with people and enforcing the rules. Being a Party Host was, well, self-explanatory. Although I suppose "retail" and "marshaling" were pretty self-explanatory also. Marshaling was pretty fun. It was basically walking around playing mini golf for an entire shift. I would be armed with a putter and 2-for-1 passes burning a hole in my pocket. I would challenge people on certain holes, and tell them that if they did better than me, I would give them a 2-for-1 pass. The only problem was, when I first started, I pretty much sucked the big one when it came to mini-golf. I'm surprised I didn't single-handedly put Putting Edge out of business.

But my favorite duty of all was being the host for birthday parties. You got to spend the entire afternoon with the kids. Taking them on the course to golf, serving them pizza, entertaining them with games and such. Most people were not a fan of party hosting, but I loved it. I got tipped pretty well, too. The kids liked me, believe it or not. There are some people who can't believe how good I am with kids. But believe me I am. You'll learn more about that in Chapter 11, though.

The best party I ever hosted was for this kid who was turning 11. Actually, I have no idea how old he was turning, but ages 9-12 are pretty much the same thing to me. It was all boys, which is so much more fun than girls, because the boys like to compete and roughhouse and cause trouble in general. The girls on the other hand, reach their peak of excitement when picking out a ball color, and never seem to achieve that level of fun on the actual course. So I had these boys, all about 9-12 years old or so. And about halfway through the course, they decided that I was more fun than actually golfing. So they made it their priority to annoy, bother, entertain, mock and hurt me. Basically, anything that would get my attention, they would try. I can't say I didn't enjoy it. I mean, in order for them to get my full attention, they were giving me their full attention, and God knows how much the attention slut inside of me loves an audience. Maybe that's why I loved hosting parties so much. Sure, it was the birthday kid's big day, but I was in charge of everything. I was the fucking host. All eyes were on me. I was the Pied Piper of Putting Edge. I'm not even sure what the Pied Piper did, to be honest. Whatever. I was the Pied Piper, Peter Pan, and Papa Smurf all rolled into one. Okay, Papa Smurf makes no sense, but alliteration is a very effective literary device.

The boys in the party took to asking me every question they could think of. Including, but not limited to:

"Are you the boss?"
"Is your dad the boss?"
"Do you get paid?"
"Are you in college?"
"Are you gay?"
"Is your dad gay?"
"Is the boss gay?"
"When is your birthday?"
"Can I kick you in the crotch?"
"Do you like cake?"
"Is the cake gay?"

These questions and more were fired at me like spit-balls in a rapid succession. The answers were, in this order: Yes, no, yes, yes, no, no, yes, May 19, no, it's ok, queer as shit. An added bonus to party hosting was that you got first dibs on leftover pizza. Which many times became the highlight of my day.

The manager at Putting Edge was Craig. Craig did not get me. I often wondered if he hated me. He did not seem to appreciate my wry humor or my sarcastic ways. But he did appreciate that I was a damn good employee, which is why he had me go with him to the Novi Town Center Cinema on opening night of Terminator 3 to play games with people and promote PE. Unfortunately, nobody goes to the Town Center Cinema, so about 7 people were actually informed about our new glow-in-the-dark mini-golf funtown.

On the other side of the Fountain Walk, Coldstone Creamery's popularity was snowballing at an alarming rate. Alarming only to those of us who worked there, since it meant an extremely long line that took an extra 45 minutes after closing time to serve. At times people would have to wait an hour for ice cream. I've never understood people's urge to wait in line for so long for something so inconsequential. It's ice cream, for crying out loud. Sure, you can get fresh sponge cake or a Twix bar mashed in it, but it's still just ice cream. And it's not cheap. Someone who was more economically minded (aka my Dad) would skip the Coldstone line and go buy a gallon for the same price at the grocery store.

The singing at Coldstone was not bad. I would usually try to find reasons to not sing. Like act as if I was concentrating really hard on making a waffle cone, or pretending there were dishes that needed to be done in the back. Of course these little tricks didn't work all of the time. I sang my share. I refused to sing for less than a quarter though. That bullshit of dropping a penny in the tip jar just to get us to sing didn't fly with me, and I refused to acknowledge any coin other than a quarter. Even a quarter only warrented a half-assed rendition of "She'll Be Comin' Round The Mountain." If you wanted the real gold, if you wanted the Addams Family song or "That's Amore" you had to break out the George Washingtons.

Coldstone was a franchise store. It was run by Kevin and Michelle, a married couple with an adorable little girl. They named the ice cream maker Aunt Bea. They put their blood, sweat, and tears into that place. I found it hard to slack off when working there, because Kevin and Michelle were literally always around. You really don't want to be cutting corners when working with the people who just spent crap upon craploads of money to open the store they are paying you to work at. It's bad form.

I left both Coldstone and Putting Edge at the end of August when it was time to go back to school. Around September or October I found out that Kevin had died. A bunch of crew members from Coldstone went to the funeral, but I wasn't able to make it out there. I did send Michelle a sympathy card, and a teddy bear for their little girl. Sometimes I wonder how Michelle and her daughter are. I'd like to go back to Coldstone and see. Hopefully she wouldn't be there. If she wasn't there, it would mean she could afford to hire more shift managers. And if she could hire more shift managers, it would mean the store was doing well. And if the store was doing well, then Michelle and Kevin's dream of owning an ice cream parlor was a success.

I did go back to work at both places during the Fall semester. I went back to PE for just one weekend. Despite my greatest efforts to work there in the month between leaving WMU and moving to Florida, Craig insisted that they were fully staffed and couldn't use me. Coldstone, on the other hand, always found a little bit of room on the schedule for a few hours. It was never the same though. The old summer crew was gone. I was working with new kids I didn't know, and white trash supervisors who listened to Nickelback on repeat. Plus it was winter, so nobody really wanted to come try the ice cream. Which meant less work for me.

I've noticed that I didn't mention my coworkers this time around. I probably should. At Putting Edge, it was Scott and Jennifer than I remember having the most fun with. Scott was just as offbeat and sarcastic as me, and Jennifer had crazy energy and made every shift exciting. Also, there was Kerry, who was another fun person to hang out with. The Coldstone Crew definitely gelled more than the PE people. We all went out after work together every night. Me, Arlie, Mark, Greg, and all the other people would spend all of our tip money (and seeing as how we embarrassed ourselves constantly, there was always quite a bit of tips) at Buffalo Wild Wings. Not only that, whoever got off work early would even drive back to the Fountain Walk late at night to hang out with everyone. Arlie and I even started the first Coldstone romance when we used my free movie passes to see Uptown Girls. Her choice, not mine.

Putting Edge and Coldstone were the perfect summer jobs. Easy and carefree. Fun people to hang out with. When compared to my other friends, like Todd, who was standing at Sam's Club all day trying to sell Empire Carpet, it sure was a plum gig.