The Road Thus Far

Two movie theaters… usually concessions, but once or twice the ticket booth. Which is WILD let me tell you! Lines like you wouldn’t believe. At least, that’s how it was before streaming took a big bite out of theaters. I’m not sure if box office gets that crazy anymore?

I actually went through a phase where I couldn’t stand the taste or smell of popcorn, from having spent SO much time shoveling it into bags.

Fear not. I have long since made my peace with popcorn. Actually just bought some.

We had to say “butter-flavored topping” or “topping” because it isn’t butter.

I think the manager at the first theater was a lot pickier about that.

It is, nonetheless, incredibly delicious, when added to the seasoning that goes on the kernels. So please, don’t let that revelation stop you from enjoying it. They do say everything in moderation.

Movie theater jobs were AMAZING for free tickets, and meeting people. Both coworkers and customers. I made a lot of friends among my coworkers at both of those jobs. Weirdly started dating a blonde coworker at each of them, too. Two different theaters, in different states.

I joked a few times that if I ever worked at a third theater, I would likely find a blonde girlfriend there, too. The second one might have naturally been closer to brunette? She colored a lot. But I loved her platinum, so she bleached for me.

Met my first official Wisco boyfriend at the second theater, when he’d stopped in to see a movie. He was mostly an exercise in revenge against the musician guy who had been conspicuously absent for some time. Met him there, too.

Originally, it was musician guy’s buddy who caught my eye in the lobby in between rushes, on his way out of the restroom headed back to the auditorium. Out in the parking lot, where I was getting ready to drive my girlfriend home, musician guy (in the role of wingman, for the time being), stared me down long enough that I felt his eyes on me and looked up. As soon as I saw him, the other guy never stood a chance. And I guess musician guy caught hell for that the whole way home.

I think the main highlight of the second movie theater job was the projectionist sometimes running movies for staff after hours. That was a lot of fun. Not always even something we would have for the public. Often not, I think. Some B movies and such. Good times! And we could help ourselves to soda and popcorn those nights.

Free soda when you were working, too. Or slushies.

Also, two video stores, both of which went under. Didn’t work at both simultaneously, obviously. But I think I remember my fave coworker from the first one, coming into the second one to rent and seeing me and saying “hey, I see you’re working in the movie business again.”

He was a ton of fun.

Everyone knew we had such a good time working together that at least once, when “the boss” was leaving for the day and placing him in charge, with just the two of us alone for the rest of the night, he questioned if it was safe for him to leave us to our own devices.

We still got our work done.

This was during the height of my Ryan Reynolds obsession. Dude and I started calling him R-squared. I think that was Dude’s idea.

Not sure if I already mentioned this here, but that job happened in the fallout of a very rocky five year on-again, off-again thing, once a guy drifted and eventually moved overseas. I’m not sure if video store dude did it because I had told him once how much I liked being held by someone who was 6’5…” The night I dropped him off at his swanky apartment complex, he stood up on a curb, while I was still standing on the asphalt, and gave me a hug. Gave me a little taste of that former comfort of having someone’s whole torso to myself to hug, without a face in the way.

First movie theater was my very first job, at 16. And I once rode my bike the whole way to the mall with my best friend’s boyfriend and treated him to a movie. I nearly died. He was in much, much better shape.

AND I got to see The Crow on opening weekend. But that, I think I did mention, talking about Justin, and spirit guides, etc.

I even voluntarily cleaned the grease trap at the first theater. It had to be done.

After that, I was in California and worked at a copy center. Incredibly stressful job, because I found the pricing breakdowns SO confusing and often underquoted, then we had to comp what I had said.

And we would have things that had to be copied and collated, which for whatever reason, our machines couldn’t do automatically. So we would have to set down however so many copies of each page at a round table and all walk around it in circles and pick one sheet from each stack as we went. Somehow, it seemed I almost always grabbed two of one stack of printouts, and we would end up one short.

And the one of the frats who was hazing in our building had prospective members pulling fire alarms at all hours. So it often happened that we would have to evacuate our building sometimes multiple times a night. Once or twice I had to call in. I sometimes had really bad insomnia to begin with, and that didn’t help AT all. My boss at least once asked, “Can’t you just get some coffee?” But it was often beyond the help of caffeine.

She was a force to be reckoned with! When I put in my notice, she said I really shouldn’t have been working and going to my classes, because I was working so hard on those. But I think she also said I could come back any time. Apparently, she’d liked me the whole time, and I just hadn’t realized it.

I’ve had a lot of amazing female supervisors over my lifetime, many of whom provided some mentoring, and maybe even a touch of mothering. One brought me a fresh long-stem red rose, when I was struggling.

My male supervisors by and large were also incredible people. I received a lot of support on the occasions when my mental health precluded me from working, for a time. One boss asked if I would like anything brought to the facility, in the way of outside food, and gave me a gift card, and a cute little toy, and a card, when I got out.

Jumping back in time… after the copy center, it was movie theater number two, after another move, and a change of college plans. No more film school, and hello English major, with plans to teach. I needed to work a year to qualify for in-state tuition, so I did that first.

Met my kiddo’s dad at that job, when I was out and about waiting to see if the guy I was actually into (another coworker there) would be free from hitting the bars with his roommate, in time to hang out with me that night. Spoiler: he wasn’t. And so, kiddo’s dad.

The other guy, my coworker, attended the wedding, I think as one of my witnesses. He was always super nice to me and bought me SO much T-Bell drive thru, and gave me many rides home when I needed them. I tried leaving money in his locker once, to pay him back for all the food, when he wasn’t looking, and he put it back in mine, when I wasn’t paying attention.

We went to the grocery store together late one night. It felt so domestic. AND he is the only human being I have ever completed a difficult crossword with, because our collective knowledge in different areas of expertise covered all the bases. I thought it seemed meant to be. He turned me down when I asked him out.

By far, I think my favorite memory of him… I had been out to eat with my mom. The restaurant had white paper stretched over all the tables and gave you crayons to draw with, while you waited for your food. I made something abstract that the server liked so much, he shifted where my plate would go so as not to cover it up. We ripped that part of the paper free, after, and I brought it over to K’s place, later.

He was so in love with the design that I had to give it to him. I don’t know if he asked if he could have it, or if he just assumed I was offering. We spend a LOT of time turning it around and around, and finding different things in its patterns, our faces kissing-close the whole time. It was a great night.

Eventually, I was dating kiddo’s dad, instead. Musician guy was thrown in there too… even came back once after I had started dating kiddo’s dad, but I friend-zoned him then. But he and I chased each other down off and on for many, many years after that, once kiddo’s dad and I were done.

Moving on… I was a keyholder three times. Once at a jewelry store, where I got to pierce ears, which I LOVED! SO, so fun. The other was an upscale clothing store, same store twice, different points of my life. In between, I dabbled in education. College level.

Thrift store cashier/sales floor/production worker…So thrilling seeing all the oddities that would come in, like the “mermaid sequin” pillow that had Nicholas Cage’s face on it. Those are interestingly also available online, for the curious.

Customer Service/Payment Processing at a call center, where we sold athletic apparel. I liked Payment Processing better because especially just after Christmas, Customer Service… you’d get yelled at for like 5/6 hours straight, however long your shift was, by all the people who didn’t get their orders on time.

Payment Processing, they needed you to verify their identity and billing, if they wanted to get their stuff. So you had a little more control of the call.

And I liked investigating the orders. Felt like detective work.

Briefly, I worked in a portrait studio.

Taking portraits of my family for practice with the equipment at the studio, though I was much more comfortable working behind the scenes and “romancing the images” to encourage customers to buy more prints, than in telling people how to pose. But we got to bring in the family dog, on practice day, and I still have the photos from that session. I didn’t have anyone to invite in besides my parents, my kiddo, and the dog, but I did my best to learn, with them.

Would my lack of confidence behind a camera have been an issue had I been accepted to film school? I did make an experimental film for a film class in high school. That was fun. And I liked photography at that age, as well. There was occasional posing of people with that. I don’t remember any of that stressing me. Maybe there was more familiarity there. The film project was with a friend, and the photography stuff was mostly with classmates, and friends and family.

More retail.

OH… game store employee. That was a fun one. Board games and trading card games and such. No video games. Occasionally things that bordered on being toys. Still in touch with some people from there. I loved learning to play new games, and the holiday discounts for employees, and some of the special events where there would be food served to customers that we would get to enjoy, as well. Turkey legs, pie, etc. And a Thanksgiving meal for employees only.

I even scored several games free, at a work social event. We all did.

Some of my former coworkers from that job, and I, have a group chat where we’ll still occasionally share great deals on ice cream. Just because.

AND… a seasonal position at a Halloween store. It took me forever to memorize the layout of which costumes were where, and people would come up and ask you all the time, where can I find this or that theme or item? By the time I had the store mapped out, the season was almost over.

I remember “Royals” by Lorde playing on our speakers a lot at the Halloween store job. Love that song. And it was fun being around all the Halloween stuff, since it’s pretty much my favorite holiday. We got some deep discounts after the season. I got a few accessory purses that I used as bar purses, for fun.

That’s also where I met another good friend, who I still adventure with on a regular basis.

That memorization of store layout trouble may have also been an issue at one of the video store jobs. I seem to remember my work bestie there telling me I must not have any muscle memory if I couldn’t just pop movies back where they went without having to consciously search.

Sometimes, at the game store, we’d have to look for one particular game or other that someone wanted. With only one copy SOMEWHERE in the store, that could be challenging. I think most of the time we found it in time. There was a general categorical organization system, and smaller games eventually were alphabetized, which helped A LOT. But some areas were more miscellaneous.

BUT… free movie tickets, free video rentals, discounts on jewelry and clothing… my heyday of having my ears pierced all the way up on both sides, when I worked at the jewelry store…

Oh, I just remembered… I did very briefly just before I had kiddo, work for a website that was comparable to imdb.com only less famous, that also covered gaming, not just movies. I was told when I applied that I could take my time putting together projects, that it would be at my own pace. That wasn’t quite the case once I started. And when I later visited the site to see my work, it had been folded into someone else’s article, uncredited.

Very scattered entry, I know.

All out of order.

But, those are the highlights.

Maybe it’s having worked in the sorts of industries I was in, and everything going to streaming and online versus brick-and-mortar, and malls phasing out in a lot of cases, but an awful lot of the businesses where I used to work aren’t there anymore. Either something else is in its place, or the building has been completely torn down.

I hope the shift to online won’t make me obsolete, and I hope I’m not cosmically some “kiss of death” to my employers. I’ve joked about that before, too, because it seems so many of them, I was working for, just as they reached their end, or that I had left just before they closed permanently (without my knowing that was around the bend).

Would I stay home and write and make art full-time if that was an option? Maybe. I told my mom today I’m not sure where the royalties had come from, but that I’d recently gotten 9 cents from Amazon. “Wow,” she said, “If that keeps up, you can get another car.” That time, I laughed, even if in the past, her stating, “Well, you’re no author” had rankled.

I will say that when I was doing nothing BUT writing during the covid shutdown, I was pretty miserable, being vastly undersocialized. Maybe that’s the aspect of retail I love the most. Sure, it’s no guarantee that you will have a great experience with all your customers, but sometimes, you get to help make someone’s day.

Today, we had someone who had received someone else’s online order. It had her own name on the package but someone else’s name on the enclosed invoice, and someone else’s items.

I called online customer service on her behalf, got both customers refunded, and reordered with her, helping her find substitute colors for what was now out of stock, and price-matching what she’d originally paid. She had said repeatedly that she “wouldn’t know where to start” about calling them, herself, when someone else there was telling her that would be what she’d have to do. So, I stepped up and took care of it. That was very satisfying.

But yes, I need socialization AND solitude to function properly. Maybe without a pandemic shutdown, I’d be able to find that in other ways, apart from working away from home. I’m not certain. I had considered remote work, as well, and was hired on by a tutoring company, but they never matched me with any students who needed what expertise I would be able to provide.

We’ll see where the road leads from here.

I’m thankful for all of those experiences, and the ways they helped shape who I am today.

I’ve also sincerely loved at least something about virtually every job I’ve ever had, in spite of any challenges. And I have made many, many friends along the way. That might be the best part, whether we’ve stayed in touch to this day or not.

Someone somewhere said something about people appearing for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. I suppose that’s true. I firmly believe connections are no less sincere, even if they’re temporary. The lingering lessons and growth are, after all, still permanent.

And let me close with a Wednesday Addams-inspired photo from Pexels, that perhaps captures the vibe I wish I had at my PC, writing. I’d like to be darker and more mysterious, but I think my hippie side is too prominent for my inner goth to ever fully take over. Still a very cool photo!

Peace!