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My First Cheesy Job - Junior High Math Tutor

11/29/2011

.Korvettes, where I spent my paycheck.

My first cheesy job was as a summer school math tutor to junior high kids. The whole thing was pretty ironic, considering I was dumped from the honors program at my junior high because I did so poorly in algebra. I scored in the top 2 percent of students in the country on my English exams, but they insisted I had to be enrolled in advanced placement math and advanced placement English to be considered an "honor" student. It was all or nothing, so in the eighth grade I was back in class with all the stoners and future sluts of America. Yeah, I know, back where I belonged. Ha, ha!

I was 15 so my Dad had to get me a work permit. He sprung the job on me because it was there, not because we particularly needed extra money. I wanted more money to buy albums. Even at 3 for $12 at Korvettes I always left out a few favorites every week. Being a studious, fledgling writer, I asked if I could tutor an English class instead, but apparently the only summer school classes were for math dummies.

My job was eight a.m to noon Monday through Friday for all of July and a few weeks in August. I wasn't thrilled about getting up early in the summer. Even at 10, 11 years old I was notorious for staying up til the wee hours of the morning listening to talk radio. Yes, they had even it in the '70s. Since my Dad worked as an engineer at the same school, I had a ride to and from the job every day.

The math teacher was a dry, boring woman with short blonde hair. She taught the algebra class that I had failed. (Does this make any sense? ) I brought a book or magazine with me everyday and sat at the back of the classroom, reading, for four hours. I think I tutored one student the whole summer. A few times a week a cute blonde kid would feign integer ignorance so he could sit in the back and gab with me. We'd talk about music or the articles in the Time or Newsweek or whatever magazine I was reading that day. I think he was 13. He kinda had a crush on me--see, younger men have always liked me! Eventually, the teacher figured out we were just goofing around and forbade him from sitting in the back of the room.

I got paid $2.10 hour. I think it rounded off to $40.00 a week after taxes. All in all, not a bad first job. Didn't have to do much, could sit around and read for a few hours and get paid for it. Little did I know that my life as a peon worker would get more lurid and ridiculous with each new job.

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Souvenir Shops from Hell

11/23/2011

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Originally published in the print zine "McJob" in 1997.

I lived in New Orleans from October 1994 to July 1995. After living in New York and Chicago and working cushy office jobs in bustling high-rises, I was now confronted with a job market that consisted of service jobs, stripping in sleazy dives and cashiering at Woolworth's. I considered waitressing, but the restaurant managers I talked to questioned me with a suspicious vigor usually reserved for aspiring brain surgeons and CIA agents. Pouring beers in a Bourbon Street bar didn't interest me - the promise of being puked on by college kids from Iowa wasn't high on my "to-do" list. And I wasn't vapid or conservative enough to work for a hotel chain. So, I figured, "Well, I'm not going to be here forever. I'll work at a store for a few months - how hard can that be?" HA!!!!

On a whim, I walked into a cheesy sliver of a storefront on Bourbon Street, and asked the heavyset woman behind the counter if they had any job openings. "Honey, we're always hiring," she laughed, a little too convincingly. A few days later, I was hawking T-shirts and Mardi Gras beads at a store across the street, one of over a dozen owned by a notoriously cheap and cruel family of indeterminate ethnic descent. Now after a few days working in shops on Bourbon and Canal streets, it was apparent to me that the customers, all tourists, were friendly, my fellow cashiers were punk rock girls with nose rings, beer drinkin' transients, or chirpy Dominican women. The display cases were crammed with fake fur covered handcuffs, dildos and talking plastic vaginas. So, what was the problem, beside earning minimum wage? Those polyester-wearing, perpetually angry owners, who I nicknamed the "Mads."

The Mads rarely allowed employees to take breaks or lunch hours off premises. Some of the non-English speaking employees were so terrified of their bosses catching them away from their registers they peed in plastic bags behind the counter. The Mads consisted of the Dad, who had video cameras in the main store to spy on his employees as intently as he spied on potential shoplifters, and his two sons, "Kenny", the nice one, and "Dan", the hothead. "Kenny" (the nice one, mind you), constantly harassed one female employee, a perky Hispanic woman with big hair and orange vinyl high heels, telling her how he wanted to get in her pants. Despite this, the woman worked for the Mads for years. The other brother, who was partial to green polyester pants and print shirts, circa 1974, would swear openly in front of employees and customers alike. "Dan" would stand in front of the register, scooping up rain ponchos displayed on the counter, and toss them behind the register. "You keep behind counter! Customers are motherfuckers! They steal.," while perplexed shoppers stood in line. I never knew chewing gum could melt til I worked in a Canal Street store without air conditioning. Customers would walk in and then walk right out. I wanted to tell the ones who stayed not to buy any snacks, and go to another store for munchies, but it wouldn't have made a difference - the Mads owned all the souvenir/convenience stores in the area! That was soon to change, though. Rumors spread that the Mads were about to lose their empire. It seemed the NLRB had (not surprisingly) received complaints from employees and former employees about back pay, working conditions, etc. And the Mads had allegedly neglected to pay taxes for several years.

A year after I left New Orleans, most of the stores had been sold to legitimate businesspeople, and all but the most loyal (read: desperate) people had left the Mads employ. The Mads had paid a huge fine, and were adhering to federal rules about breaks, lunch hours, and working conditions. Working for them was like running away to join the circus - especially when I worked in the porno shops they owned - tourists bought risqué T-shirts and wind-up plastic penises while the leather hoods, body glitter, and anal love beads gathered dust on the shelves. Needless to say, my stint with the Mads has not been included on my résumé.

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Sweet Memories of the '60s - Retro Candy and Other Treats

11/19/2011

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The band took its name from this peanut butter & caramel concoction and/or a type of moonshine liquor.

Not named after the Kelis song.

1960s Grab Bag from GroovyCandies.com

After perusing the candy & snack foods section of Walgreens on a lunch hour last week, bombarded by breath mints, sugarless gum, and rice cakes, I started thinking about all the sugar-saturated goodies from my childhood, I won't - or in some cases, can't, eat anymore. Candy necklaces are now replaced by Fruit Roll-Ups, healthy cereals and vegan bouillon cubes shaped like Angry Birds. (Only kidding about the bouillon cubes.)

When I e-mailed my 30 and 40 -something friends about their most beloved childhood candies, I received such non-commercial replies as "Remember those sugar dots on paper and you'd rip 'em off and there'd be paper on the bottom of em (Yummy!)" or "I used to love those wax sticks with extra sugary liquid inside." Occasionally, you see mock versions of these favorites in 59 cent packs by the check-outs of small supermarkets, along with other 60's standards. There are knock-off versions of chocolate wrapped like gold coins, candy and bubble gum cigarettes, Bazooka and Blackjack gum, and Chiclet gum in tiny burlap bags hovering near check-out counters of Bodegas and 7-11s nationwide.

Trading candy was a subculture among kids in the 1960s. We swapped Slo-pokes and Milk Duds like teeny-bop magazines and baseball cards. Cartoon characters were devised to sell sugary cereals, not vice versa. TV commercials introduced us to Quisp and Quake, the twerpy alien figure and the brawny he-man, not to mention Boo Berry and Count Chocula. Growing up in the 1960s, even some of the "bad" food we enjoyed had historical significance. For example, astronauts were a big thing, moon walks and all. Once my friends and I tried to emulate them by eating a lunch of Space Food Sticks and Tang...the only space-walking we did was to the bathroom.

Or how about the do it yourself treats? Incredible Edibles consisted of a mold and some gooey liquid- you'd pour it in, plug the contraption in and -waa-laa- an hour later- tooth decay!! Also on the must-have list - Easy Bake Ovens, as well as cotton candy makers featured in the back pages of the Sears Christmas Catalog. All of this punctuated by the smell of Crackerjack being created as we drove past the Crackerjack factory on on the way to Cubs games. But there was a definite and painful price for candy binges. I once ate a six pack or regular size Hershey bars in one sitting. A week later I was at the dentist for five fillings. Not to be outdone, my brother ate a whole pack of Baby Ruths one Halloween and was sick for a week. Aah, the days of sugar overload -a bonding experience for kids who grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

I worked in the candy section of a Montgomery Wards in high school. Along with my co-workers, an aspiring actress and amateur filmmaker, I sprinted back and forth in the cubicle on nights and weekends. We must have run a marathon each by the end of the week, serving up Sno-Cones, butter-slathered popcorn and peanut-filled chocolate wedges that weighed a pound each. We scooped up bags of miniature Heath bars, jelly rings, peanut butter cups and Jolly Ranchers to polyester-clad housewives, Little Leaguers and scores of our Monkee Wards co-workers. The other store clerks loved to spend their break time getting a sugar rush and kibitzing with us about our creative projects. We were quite the store celebrities. (So, a writer, an actress and a filmmaker walk into a bar…) My co-workers and I pilfered a few candies here and there, but we didn't gain any weight. Running back and forth fetching candy that would render the customers hefty pared the weight off us.

Now candy is a kitsch thing, (there's a Pez museum in California), a snob thing (tangerines dipped in gourmet chocolate and such), or totally verboten by politically correct lawmakers and rice cake toting Super Moms. It’s interesting to note that most kids growing up in the 1960s and 1970s – even ‘80s kids who occasionally devoured Dweebs candies and Bar-None chocolate- didn’t become obese, develop ADHD or fall prey to other health problems like today’s kids. Kids back then played outside after school, riding bikes or walking to the mall instead of texting or sitting at a computer. Yeah, they watched lots of TV, but playing outside counteracted a lot of that inactivity.

Indulging in candy used to be a fun thing, a secret society for kids. I guess you might call the “sugar high” from candy a prelude to the “highs” we got from other things once adolescence hit. Sweets were a rite of passage, at least until the purchase of that first Tiger Beat made the candy counter at Wards passé.

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My First Cheesy Job - Junior High Math Tutor

Souvenir Shops from Hell

Sweet Memories of the '60s - Retro Candy and Other Treats

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