Winter Wonderland
Part 2 of 3
[If you haven't already, get up to speed with Winter Wonderland, Part 1]
Tuesday, December 16 2003:
Alcohol
is a wonderful socialization drug. A heart to heart with Santa over
schnapps has proven more than informative. In the stuff I should have
already figured out column: This operation was FUBAR well before I was
hired on. The other guy bailed because he was looking down the nasty
end of some possible statutory rape charges, and that, my friends, also
explains his hiring practices. I knew something was off, but I
suspected Fatman because, well come on, how could I not? In the stuff I
had no way of knowing column: Santa started talking about some guys he
ran with back in the late sixties. One name stuck out: Sonny Barger.
For those of you who aren't up on your sixties acid wave lore, if it's
true this means Santa ran with the Hell's Angels when that meant
something. He ate acid with the Merry Pranksters, went to parties with
Hunter Thomson and Allen Ginsberg, and unquestionably has a rap sheet
thicker than War and Peace. I don't know, I freely admit the old guy
could be fucking with my mind, but he's about the right age and he does
ride a motorcycle. He also has a few obscene tattoos, although you
can't see them when he wears long sleeves. His veins are also fucked
all to hell, but he assures me the recent trace marks are from donating
plasma. All in all I'm not even too sure the mall went through one of
those Santa agencies. Seems like they just grabbed the first beardy guy
they came across. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to have met Santa, but I
doubt any of the customers would be pleased if they knew who's lap they
just sat their children in.
Wednesday, December 17 2003:
What
the fuck is wrong with these people? I watched as one of the fucking
hellspawn TOOK A SHIT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE LINE. He just squatted down
and took a shit on the floor. He was like six or seven, and his mother
was standing right there. Then she had the nerve to get in a shouting
match with me about it. I'm not too sure if you're aware of this, but
"YOUR KID JUST TOOK A SHIT ON THE FLOOR" is the all purpose rebuttal of
all time:
"I'm not cleaning it up!"
"YOUR KID JUST TOOK A SHIT ON THE FLOOR."
"Can I talk to your manager?!"
"YOUR KID JUST TOOK A SHIT ON THE FLOOR."
"Fine, you just lost a customer!"
"YOUR KID JUST TOOK A SHIT ON THE FLOOR."
Repeat
until security drags them off. And then comes the matter of cleaning it
up. I tried to delegate. I tried my hardest to delegate. The blur of
sixteen-year-old girls all said they would quit. Photo Joe and Santa
were still working because people in the line would just step over it.
So I grabbed a bag and took care of it reverse Ziploc style, flushed
the whole damn mess (bag and all), and then single handedly set the
ozone back a few decades with the canned pine tree smell. Take that,
environment.
Friday, December 19 2003:
All my elves
have either quit or expressed their intention to quit on the 23rd. I
don't know if it was the shit on the floor, but now I'm pretty fucking
sure I should have made someone else clean it up. The customers have
become increasingly abusive as well. Photo Joe has joined Santa and
myself in the Cottage during breaks, and that means the only three
adults working here are all drinking throughout the day. Photo Joe was
in the Peace Corps. I kinda feel bad. These guys have done shit I have
only read about in books (literally, I have read books about stuff
they've done), and I'm the snot-nosed college kid who gets put in
charge of them. We've got a cabinet sort of locked up filled with a
large booze collection and a huge bottle of peppermint mouthwash. I
bought the mouthwash for purpose of masking the whole crew's
aforementioned clandestine drinking, but the fuck if I know where the
rest of all that alcohol came from. It's sort of like the
multiplication of the loaves and fish except with booze, also Jesus is
probably not involved. As for the coming personnel crisis, there's not
all that much I can do about it. I could probably swing by that
itinerant work agency thing and pick up an assemblage of undocumented
workers. I really just don't know what to do.
Sunday, December 21 2003:
Busy.
Snookered. And now apparently on my own. A day ago the Fatman swung by
at 11:00 am. I thought we were canned for sure, but when we went into
my office (Read: The Cottage) it became quite clear he was jacked up on
something nasty. His pupils were the size of dinner plates, and he kept
asking if people had come by looking for him. He kept asking over and
over and over again, while frequently muttering something that I
couldn't manage to make out under his breath. It was like someone fed a
hummingbird with paranoid schizophrenia a whole bottle of reds. I
actually offered him a drink just to calm him down. He took our cashbox
with whatever we'd made at that point during the day and left. I knew I
wasn't going to see him again. I've seen this type of thing before. My
first job was closing at Little Caesars Pizza, and one night I watched
our head managers come in and clean out the safe right out of the blue.
When the morning crew showed up the next day the doors were locked. All
the Little Caesars in the entire area were locked. The local Little
Caesars franchise company I worked for went tits-up. Most of their old
buildings are hole-in-the-wall Mexican dives now, and I never got my
final check. None of us did. So right after Fatman had bailed I made a
new rule: Cash only. My people are getting paid.