I recently read "And Then There Were None" by Agatha Christie. Relax, I did it as research because I want to write a murder mystery. As the characters are killed off one by one, I couldn't help but feel a parallel between that novel and my Rescue Ranger experience. Now, we clearly weren't a bunch of strangers mysteriously invited to an island where were are ultimately punished for sins committed, so to speak. We were, however, a group of unsuspecting travelers watching each other drop like flies, one by one, and living with an extreme paranoia that we may be next. Also, like the characters in the book, none of us were that innocent.
40 Rescue Rangers came down to Orlando at the same time as me. While some of them were only signed up to stay until May, a majority of us were in the "Spring Advantage" program, which ended in August. "Spring Advantage" is a little bit misleading, as there was little benefit to staying that extra three months. I think a more accurate term would have been the "Spring, Then-Get-Taken-Advantage-Of" program. Disney is smooth like that. Spin something a little bit, give it a positive-sounding name, and there you go. People will eat it up. They could probably get all of their cast members to contract the AIDS virus if they called it "Enchantment Sharing."
Anyway, most of us were Spring Advantage. Yet, of the 40 people I went to Orlando with, I'd say I graduated with less than a dozen. Not an exaggeration. It was hard to stay employed there. It's not like a normal job where you just show up, work, don't fuck up or act like an idiot, and go home. You had to put such an extreme amount of effort into not getting fired that you were constantly living in a state of fear that something you were doing was against the rules and you were unknowingly signing your own termination letter, licking the envelope, and sending it to HR. Because of this, a Disney cast member can never truly "give 100%." They can only give 50%, because the other half goes to actively and vigilantly browsing in your head through the thousands of pages worth or employee manuals to make sure you aren't inadvertently breaking some obscure rule like counting back change the wrong way or forgetting to point with two fingers instead of one and will therefore be packing for home by the end of the week. That pointing with two fingers thing, by the way? It's real. It's called the "Disney Point." Pointing with one finger can look like you are pointing at some one. Now, one can logically come to the conclusion that the mere addition of another finger to this gesture will help to ensure that someone doesn't think that they are being pointed at, therefore giving them a moment of confusion, therefore ruining their. Entire. Freaking. Vacation.
Jenette was the first victim in all of this. Not because of the pointing. She was good with the Disney point. Most likely because any time she wasn't on stage (working in a place where you are visible to "guests" of the park) she had a cigarette in her hand, so her index and middle finger were in, in a sense, already conditioned to the Disney Point. Poor Jenette didn't understand CDS.
CDS - The Cast Deployment System. It's actually pretty neat. Before every shift you clock in on a computer and it prints up a little receipt and tells you what your duty is. Say I am working at Mouse Gear, a gift shop. I clock in, and the paper says "Take over register 2 from Sheila. Shelia clocks out for the day." So I go over to register 2 and give Sheila the best news since finding out that mole was not malignant. Sometimes CDS would give you completely senseless and ultimately frustrating things to do. For instance, you could be told to play at the Build-A-Mr-Potato-Head station for fifteen minutes, then check back in with CDS. After coming back, CDS could tell you to go "Make Magical Moments" for another fifteen and come back. Then maybe "Organize bobbleheads" for fifteen minutes. This great big cycle of "fuck-me-why-did-I-come-in-to-work-today" was referred to ask "tasking." Essentially, there are more than enough employees working right now and they just don't have anything for you to do at the moment. The main thing I will always remember about CDS is how whenever I would see a person walking towards, or even just near, me with a piece of receipt paper, I would pray to God that it was either my lunch break, my fifteen minute break, or time for me to clock out. To this day, I still have some sort of weird complex about receipt paper. Now you know why.
Another nice thing about CDS was that if you wanted to go home early, you needn't ask a manager (they were nearly impossible to track down anyway). You could just log in and request an ER (Early Release). Remember about seven tangents ago when I mentioned Jenette? This is where she comes in. You see training/orientation at Disney World is a lot of information for someone to handle. And that's just someone with a normal position, at say...a gift shop or a ride or something. For us Rangers, it was 3-4 times worse. We had to attend eight-hour training sessions in every line of business, then complete on-the-job training at locations all over the park. It took not less than a month to "earn our ears" and finally be considered a full fledged Rescue Ranger. For other people, it took less than a week before they could remove the "Earning My Ears!" badge from their name tag. But not us Rangers. We got to be treated like newbies for weeks. Which, incidentally, wasn't so bad because it was a catch-all excuse for getting out of anything. "Sorry, I don't know how to do that," was the motto of our squad. Clean up puke? Sorry. I'm a Rescue Ranger, I've never done it before. Stay late to close the store and organize the stock room? Would if I could, but I'm just a Rescue Ranger, oh I simply wouldn't know where to begin!
So yeah, a lot of information. Hard to handle. Nobody suffered from that worse than Jenette. On her first day of work at a merch location (merch is "merchandise." Ergo, a merch location is a store), Jenette wasn't feeling well (Note: I don't know how Jenette was feeling that afternoon, but my story packs more of an emotional punch if I say she was under the weather) and logged into CDS to leave a little bit early. For all of the intense training and immersions into every possible scenario that could possibly happen on the job (we spent about an hour learning ergonomic exercises during custodial training), we were never really taught how to use CDS. Jenette thought that requesting to leave early meant you could leave early. Dumb thing to think? Yes. But grounds for termination on a brand new employee who hasn't even finished unpacking her bags yet? Really? I know some Disney freak somewhere is reading this right now and is saying "She broke the rule! It's that simple! The rules are there for a reason! She had to leave!" To any person like that, I'd like to say this:
You pin-collecting, embroidered Mouse Ear wearing loser. Did working for Disney take away your ability to show normal human compassion and recognize that not everything is that simple and innocent people who make simple mistakes deserve a second chance, or have you always had a stick up your ass?
Leaving work, or not showing up to work, without notifying your boss is heavy stuff. I'll admit it. But firing a brand new employee for not feeling well and misunderstanding a somewhat complex computer system that you never bothered to train her on to begin with? After Jenette left, I thought of her often. Mostly on the shitty days when I was cleaning ash trays or standing in the blistering sun trying to sell squeeze-breezes or getting written up for wearing black shoes with khaki shorts. I would wonder to myself if maybe messing up and getting fired was a blessing in disguise for her. She didn't have to suffer through this. Like one of those old snapping mouse-traps. Jenette's neck got crushed and she died before she knew what happened. The rest of us were stuck in the glue motels just waiting for death. I remember taking a walk with her on one of our first days. She told me how she was really exciting for this opportunity, and really scared that she would do something stupid and get fired. Self-fulfilling prophecy, or bureaucratic bullshit?
Sorry, Jenette. I still think about you from time to time.
Honestly. I talk a lot of shit about Disney. But it wasn't the worst thing that ever happened to me. It changed my life. That's for sure. It made my resume look amazing, which helped me get jobs. It introduced me to friends from all over the country whom I still keep in touch with today. It gives me a permanent excuse for openly admitting that I love Disney Parks ("What? I used to work here!") There were good moments, but as it so often goes with life, those aren't always the most interesting points of discussion. Lest I seem like a Disney-hating, bitter CP alumni, I will leave you with some of my favorite memories.
Days when they had nowhere to deploy us, so they sent us out to the park to play with kids, armed with Mickey stickers, bubbles, Magical Moment certificates, and a jump rope for "Chip N' Dale's Jump Rope Challenge."
Meeting a guy who had just come back from Iraq and his girlfriend. They were having a hard time getting around because he had injured his leg overseas, and they barely had enough money to afford admission, let alone a wheelchair. I ran to the front, explained the situation, and came back with a complimentary one for them
Stories from other Rangers...
Dustin:
Opening the wrong door and accidentally causing an attraction to get shut down for an hour.
Emily A:
The times we LEFT property to eat DURING our shift and Deployment Managers walked in.
Emily R:
Hooking up in the showers at Mickey's Retreat.
Twigger:
Ingesting chemicals on purpose so that I could get sick. Hospital is still better than Custodial work.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Saturday, July 12, 2008
true stories
So I just watched (shamefully, might I add) the Real World Awards show. Basically it is two hours of paying tribute to the TV show that not only represents everything wrong with television, but with society in general.
As gut-wrenchingly awful as they were, I couldn't help but feel nostalgic. First and foremost, we sometimes forget that The Real World started as not only valid television, but a valid social experiment. It was quite awkward the way MTV tried to play that card in addition to glorifying the later seasons for their threesomes, arrests, and all around bad taste. The same show that contains a a 5 minute tribute to Pedro, who went on the The Real World San Franciscoto spread AIDS awareness, also awards Colie from Real World Denver for being the "Biggest Playa," AKA having the most sex with the most amount of partners. I kept thinking of Newton Minow saying that "television is a vast wasteland" as MTV honors Brynn, Trishelle, and Steven from Las Vegas for having sex in a bath tub. My personal favorite moment was when Coral from New York won "Person We Love To Hate" and threw the award in the pool, saying that it is nothing to be proud of.
And yet...I watched the whole thing. From beginning to end. And more than feeling disgusted...I felt strangely nostalgic. For as ridiculous as the show has gotten, for as pathetic as the new castmembers may appear to be, we've grown up with this show. Mock me all you want, but I can attribute any season of the The Real World to a specific time in my life.
I remember watching the Real World Boston in 7th grade, being in love with Elka, and enthralled by Genesis, partly because she was a lesbian, and partly because her name was Genesis.
I remember watching Stephen slap Irene in Seattle. When it originally aired.
I remember watching Hawaii the summer after Freshman year religiously because I quit band and had no friends. Colin and Amaya got together before it was standard for all roommates to hook up. Ruthie almost died on the first night.
I remember flying to Australia after junior year, being terrified of the flight, and reading an issue of TV Guide where the cover story was The Real World New Orleans about five times, just to keep myself distracted.
I remember the 9/11 episode of Real World Chicago, thinking the producers handled it quite well, then felt sick to my stomach when the next episode went right back to them bitching at each other for talking on the phone too long and hooking up in the hot tub.
I remember going to Alicia and Jared's apartment freshman year, for the first episode of Las Vegas. I remember saying "Palms spelled backwards is SMLAP!" and laughing hysterically because none of us were of sound mind. I remember all of us coming to the unanimous conclusion that this show was really starting to suck. Still...Tuesday nights at 10 was appointment television as everyone in the Garneau/Harvey dorm at WMU would watch it. Oh yes. The fork throw.
I remember living in a house in Kalamazoo, having digital cable, and reading the description of one Real World Paris episode as "Ace has a friend visit. Christena gets drunk" and thinking "Wow...this show isn't gonna last much longer." Note: That was 8 seasons ago.
Also, I remember auditioning for Real World Paris.
I remember living in Florida and watching a marathon of The Real World San Diego when I had gotten second degree burns all over my face and couldn't work. I also remember that the last episode of the season coincided with the time I was leaving Florida. I remember being strangely affected by the finale...and being embarrassed.
I remember living in the frat house at University of Chicago, flipping through channels, and thinking "What the fuck? They're in Austin now? Since when?" Also, discovered they were in Philadelphia before that.
Most recently...I remember watching The Real World Hollywood and being thoroughly entertained by the way MTV portrayed Hollywood. Just so you know, Hollywood is nowhere near the beach. And it is twenty minutes from Downtown....yet they always use Downtown for establishing shots. Also, none of the places they go are walking distance from the house, yet we always see them walking home.
Annnyway, you can make fun of me all you want. Yes. I know way too much about these people. Yes. I know why they call her Paula Walnuts. Yes. I remember Tonya's blood clot in a cup. Yes. I have a man-crush on Cohutta. But I'm not ashamed of any of it. While it may not be the socially relevant, dinner-table-discussion invoking program it once was, it's nice to know that whenever I'm bored on a Saturday, there will probably be a marathon of the latest season, and I can get caught up in the inconsequential, downright laughable hijinx of seven ridiculously good looking, morally bankrupt, soon-to-be has-beens.
As gut-wrenchingly awful as they were, I couldn't help but feel nostalgic. First and foremost, we sometimes forget that The Real World started as not only valid television, but a valid social experiment. It was quite awkward the way MTV tried to play that card in addition to glorifying the later seasons for their threesomes, arrests, and all around bad taste. The same show that contains a a 5 minute tribute to Pedro, who went on the The Real World San Franciscoto spread AIDS awareness, also awards Colie from Real World Denver for being the "Biggest Playa," AKA having the most sex with the most amount of partners. I kept thinking of Newton Minow saying that "television is a vast wasteland" as MTV honors Brynn, Trishelle, and Steven from Las Vegas for having sex in a bath tub. My personal favorite moment was when Coral from New York won "Person We Love To Hate" and threw the award in the pool, saying that it is nothing to be proud of.
And yet...I watched the whole thing. From beginning to end. And more than feeling disgusted...I felt strangely nostalgic. For as ridiculous as the show has gotten, for as pathetic as the new castmembers may appear to be, we've grown up with this show. Mock me all you want, but I can attribute any season of the The Real World to a specific time in my life.
I remember watching the Real World Boston in 7th grade, being in love with Elka, and enthralled by Genesis, partly because she was a lesbian, and partly because her name was Genesis.
I remember watching Stephen slap Irene in Seattle. When it originally aired.
I remember watching Hawaii the summer after Freshman year religiously because I quit band and had no friends. Colin and Amaya got together before it was standard for all roommates to hook up. Ruthie almost died on the first night.
I remember flying to Australia after junior year, being terrified of the flight, and reading an issue of TV Guide where the cover story was The Real World New Orleans about five times, just to keep myself distracted.
I remember the 9/11 episode of Real World Chicago, thinking the producers handled it quite well, then felt sick to my stomach when the next episode went right back to them bitching at each other for talking on the phone too long and hooking up in the hot tub.
I remember going to Alicia and Jared's apartment freshman year, for the first episode of Las Vegas. I remember saying "Palms spelled backwards is SMLAP!" and laughing hysterically because none of us were of sound mind. I remember all of us coming to the unanimous conclusion that this show was really starting to suck. Still...Tuesday nights at 10 was appointment television as everyone in the Garneau/Harvey dorm at WMU would watch it. Oh yes. The fork throw.
I remember living in a house in Kalamazoo, having digital cable, and reading the description of one Real World Paris episode as "Ace has a friend visit. Christena gets drunk" and thinking "Wow...this show isn't gonna last much longer." Note: That was 8 seasons ago.
Also, I remember auditioning for Real World Paris.
I remember living in Florida and watching a marathon of The Real World San Diego when I had gotten second degree burns all over my face and couldn't work. I also remember that the last episode of the season coincided with the time I was leaving Florida. I remember being strangely affected by the finale...and being embarrassed.
I remember living in the frat house at University of Chicago, flipping through channels, and thinking "What the fuck? They're in Austin now? Since when?" Also, discovered they were in Philadelphia before that.
Most recently...I remember watching The Real World Hollywood and being thoroughly entertained by the way MTV portrayed Hollywood. Just so you know, Hollywood is nowhere near the beach. And it is twenty minutes from Downtown....yet they always use Downtown for establishing shots. Also, none of the places they go are walking distance from the house, yet we always see them walking home.
Annnyway, you can make fun of me all you want. Yes. I know way too much about these people. Yes. I know why they call her Paula Walnuts. Yes. I remember Tonya's blood clot in a cup. Yes. I have a man-crush on Cohutta. But I'm not ashamed of any of it. While it may not be the socially relevant, dinner-table-discussion invoking program it once was, it's nice to know that whenever I'm bored on a Saturday, there will probably be a marathon of the latest season, and I can get caught up in the inconsequential, downright laughable hijinx of seven ridiculously good looking, morally bankrupt, soon-to-be has-beens.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Holiday Weekend
Thursday - Went to a Groundlings show with Jason. Seth Green performed. It was fun. Went to Cat & Fiddle. Parked my car at work. Later when I returned to my car, it was locked up, as the lot had closed early for the holiday weekend. Jason offered to take me home, but on the way we decided to stop at a dive bar and get drunk instead.
Friday - Happy 4th. Drank whiskey and Kool-Aid at the pool. Fireworks. Grill. Hung out with Jason, Megan, the neighbors, and some new LA friends. Passed out, living up to the promise I made to people to get really drunk for the first time since Marathon training.
Saturday - I was in a girl from works digital short. Actually, I was just in the background of two scenes but it still required being at the bar for 4 hours. It wasn't bad, but 4th of July wrecked me so I slept on a table for most of the shoot. Saw Wall-E. Love it a lot. GOT MY CAR BACK. Met people for drinks. Mike had a friend staying over. Jason stayed over. Jason's friend, this awful awful shrew of a bitch who I hope to never see again, also stayed over.
Sunday - Beach. Watched I Love Money. After my run Mike and I decided to go to Mexicali for margaritas. It was a Sunday night so we figured it would stay relatively calm. Well, on the way back from Margaritas we got win. Then we drank leftover long island iced tea out of plastic bowls. Then we ate taquitos and played basketball with them. Then we watched music videos. Then we drank more. Then we threw lots of stuff off the balcony. Fruit, bottles, syrup, Sidney Poitier movies...you name it. Went to bed completely trashed. It was very, very fun.
Friday - Happy 4th. Drank whiskey and Kool-Aid at the pool. Fireworks. Grill. Hung out with Jason, Megan, the neighbors, and some new LA friends. Passed out, living up to the promise I made to people to get really drunk for the first time since Marathon training.
Saturday - I was in a girl from works digital short. Actually, I was just in the background of two scenes but it still required being at the bar for 4 hours. It wasn't bad, but 4th of July wrecked me so I slept on a table for most of the shoot. Saw Wall-E. Love it a lot. GOT MY CAR BACK. Met people for drinks. Mike had a friend staying over. Jason stayed over. Jason's friend, this awful awful shrew of a bitch who I hope to never see again, also stayed over.
Sunday - Beach. Watched I Love Money. After my run Mike and I decided to go to Mexicali for margaritas. It was a Sunday night so we figured it would stay relatively calm. Well, on the way back from Margaritas we got win. Then we drank leftover long island iced tea out of plastic bowls. Then we ate taquitos and played basketball with them. Then we watched music videos. Then we drank more. Then we threw lots of stuff off the balcony. Fruit, bottles, syrup, Sidney Poitier movies...you name it. Went to bed completely trashed. It was very, very fun.
Friday, July 04, 2008
And all this sort of business...
Grandpa Ochoa taught me how to shoot a straw wrapper at unsuspecting victims.
When we would go out to dinner, he would tell me to get the attention of our waitress by snapping my finger and shouting “YO BETTY!”
He would tell my sister things like “You’re pretty. Pretty ugly.” And whenever I did something dumb he would ask “Yeesh! They got any more like you at home?”
Because of him, every time I am near an impressionable young child my first instinct is to encourage harmless yet inappropriate mischief.
50% of my smart-assery was inherited from him. The other 50% was from my other Grandpa. I had some damn funny grandpas.
One year ago today, my aunt called me to tell me that Grandpa Ochoa passed away. It was unexpected, so none of us got to say goodbye.
While most people are celebrating a three-day weekend and “our nation’s independence,” I am celebrating the life of one of the most charming, influential, and loving people in my life.
S’okay? S’aright.
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
I believe the buzz term is "microblogging"
I have a tumblr now too. For your convenience, you can access and view it on that orange iPod-looking piece to the left.
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