What do you do for work?

Here's another "weird job" story:

For a couple of years in the early '90s my buddy had a part time side gig with a marketing company who sent him to malls, store openings, etc. in various character costumes.

One time he was hired to march in a parade in Paterson, NJ in a big, inflatable Kool-Aid Man suit. They also "hired" me and another friend to march alongside him (wearing matching Kool-Aid t-shirts) as Kool-Aid Man's "wing men," because the costume was so big and bulky that our pal could only see straight ahead when he was inside it. Me and the other guy were there basically to "guide" him around corners, make sure nothing came at him from the side or behind and tipped him over, etc. -- since he was essentially wearing a giant balloon (inflated by an onboard fan and power pack), if he fell over he wouldn't have been able to get back up by himself.

We had a stack of Kool-Aid Man comic books and little sample size packets of Kool-Aid mix to hand out to kids whenever we came to a stop, and we happened to be marching right behind a car that carrying local TV personality "Uncle Floyd" Vivino and the then-current Miss New Jersey, which was kinda cool, haha.

Paterson is/was pretty ghetto, so we were a little worried about kids messing with Kool-Aid Man, but the worst that happened was a kid who sprayed the front of the suit with Silly String. I just said "Come on man, that's not cool," peeled it off and threw it back at him!

At the end of the parade we had to help my buddy get out of the suit and I will never forget the blast of hot air and B.O. stank that rushed out at us when we unzipped the back of it. Our friend was soaked in sweat and he looked like he'd lost about ten pounds. He'd been stewing in his own juices for the entire parade route.

Best thread ever.

Back when I worked in a supermarket, I was on the registers one hot summer day. I rang up the customer's order and as she counted out her money, she was a dollar short. So she reached into her, ahem, ample bosom, dug around and pulled out a soggy, moist dollar and handed it to me.

I felt bad for the next customer in line that got that dollar back in their change.

MetalGuy71 wrote:

Back when I worked in a supermarket, I was on the registers one hot summer day. I rang up the customer's order and as she counted out her money, she was a dollar short. So she reached into her, ahem, ample bosom, dug around and pulled out a soggy, moist dollar and handed it to me.

I felt bad for the next customer in line that got that dollar back in their change.

That used to happen to me at the game stand constantly. I worked at the game where you knock over the fuzzy dummies on a hinge for about 7 summers at an amusement park. I absolutely hated handling those dollar bills drenched in boob sweat.

^^ During the summer one of our local convenience stores puts a sign on their front register that says they will not accept "soggy bra money."

tohostudios wrote:

MetalGuy71 wrote:

Back when I worked in a supermarket, I was on the registers one hot summer day. I rang up the customer's order and as she counted out her money, she was a dollar short. So she reached into her, ahem, ample bosom, dug around and pulled out a soggy, moist dollar and handed it to me.

I felt bad for the next customer in line that got that dollar back in their change.

That used to happen to me at the game stand constantly.  I worked at the game where you knock over the fuzzy dummies on a hinge for about 7 summers at an amusement park.  I absolutely hated handling those dollar bills drenched in boob sweat.

Or when kids pulled money from their socks or sneakers. Ewwww.

Here's a question for all of you former cashiers:

What was your weirdest interaction with a custoner, or the weirdest combination of items a customer brought to your register lane?

Many years ago when I worked for K-Mart (see my previous job-history post), a shifty looking, visibly nervous and twitchy dude came thru my register with only two items in his basket: A bottle of baby oil and a single pair of womens'  panties.

I am not making this up.

I did not make eye contact with the guy, and I tried not to touch his hand when I gave him back his change. Once he was out the door I damn near laughed till I pee'd.

MetalGuy71 wrote:

Back when I worked in a supermarket, I was on the registers one hot summer day. I rang up the customer's order and as she counted out her money, she was a dollar short. So she reached into her, ahem, ample bosom, dug around and pulled out a soggy, moist dollar and handed it to me.

I felt bad for the next customer in line that got that dollar back in their change.

It could’ve been even worse if she fished out the money from “downstairs”.

MetalGuy71 wrote:

Back when I worked in a supermarket, I was on the registers one hot summer day. I rang up the customer's order and as she counted out her money, she was a dollar short. So she reached into her, ahem, ample bosom, dug around and pulled out a soggy, moist dollar and handed it to me.

I felt bad for the next customer in line that got that dollar back in their change.

I got you beat by a mile. I used to work at a pawn shop. One day a regular comes in and asks if we buy dental gold. This woman, just so you get a picture of what I was dealing with, looked like that actress that played the evil mother from the movie The Goonies, only this customer was older and was also a raging alcoholic. So, I tell her yes we buy dental gold. She says hold on and I'll go get it. So she goes out to her car, and is out there for at least thirty minutes. She finally comes back in, and holds out her hand and dumps this pile of bloody wet nasty yellowish brown teeth right in my hand roots and all. I about threw them at her I was so pissed. If she wasn't such a good customer I probably would have.

She sat out in her car with a pair of pliers and ripped out her teeth. I've bought tons of dental gold through the years, and she was the only one that ever thought it was okay to bring it in with roots still attached. So disgusting, I couldn't believe what she did that night.

I don't have many weird stories about my time working retail as stockboy/cashier but man, did I love the hot weather months. Short-shorts! I had a manager (a young guy recently out of college) that had me use certain code words over the intercom to alert him whenever a hottie was around. It's amazing what some women would ( or wouldn't) wear to the store.

Wrecked Neck - That's amazing!

I did get to tackle a young shoplifter one rainy night across the street in a recently plowed field. Dipstick was stealing baseball cards. Back then our loss prevention people also had code words to alert all males associates to gather near the front when a shoplifter was suspected. Often times they ran, and the chase was on.

scottmitchell74 wrote:

I don't have many weird stories about my time working retail as stockboy/cashier but man, did I love the hot weather months. Short-shorts! I had a manager (a young guy recently out of college) that had me use certain code words over the intercom to alert him whenever a hottie was around. It's amazing what some women would ( or wouldn't) wear to the store.

Wrecked Neck - That's amazing!

I did get to tackle a young shoplifter one rainy night across the street in a recently plowed field. Dipstick was stealing baseball cards. Back then our loss prevention people also had code words to alert all males associates to gather near the front when a shoplifter was suspected. Often times they ran, and the chase was on.

When I worked at Kmart in high school you literally waited for the front desk to say "Code 1 and a half!". You knew it was time to rush the front door and chase a shoplifter.

In our Kmart the code for a shoplifter was "Caroline." If you heard "Caroline to the South door" over the loudspeaker it meant "all able bodied male employees haul ass up front, we got a runner!"

I never tackled anyone, but a few times the loss prevention guy had me sit with him and a "capture" in the store security office to wait for the cops to pick the guy up. I assume he needed "back up" in case any s*** went down, and since I happen to be 6 foot 6, I imagine just having me in the room added some intimidation factor.

I did get to help escort an angry customer out the door once, after he made a scene at the front desk and threatened to kick the store manager's ass. Me and three other dudes were told "please take this gentleman outside," so we did, two of us on each side. He was kickin' and flailin' the whole way and screaming that he was gonna call Corporate and get us all fired. I was like, "Go right ahead. I hate this f***ing job."

We were never really encouraged to stop or confront shoplifters. We had security, but even when there was noone on duty, management didn't want employees stepping in. They didn't want us getting hurt or potentially opening themselves up to a lawsuit I guess.

Which was fine by me. I wasn't going to get shanked by some crackhead swiping a pair of flip flops.

Lol I too have a shoplifting story. Nothing as exciting as chasing them down, mine was more of a covert operation.

I was outside taking a smoke break when I was working at my uncle's jewelry store. Across the street was your typical strip mall. Three guys were coming from there, heading towards me. They cross and start cutting through our parking lot, and one pulls a pair of shoes out of his pants. They all start laughing and high giving him. So I'm like hmmmm.....

I let them go, and start following them. They are walking towards the bus stop about a quarter mile down the road. I call 911 to report the possible theft. I'm walking behind them giving dispatch a very accurate description of the three young thieves. They then get on a bus, and at this time I tell the cops I'm done following them. I give her the bus number and tell her where I work if she needed a written statement.

So about an hour later I get a call from the cops. They  pulled over the bus, and dragged all three off the bus. Turned out they had a bunch of stolen shit from other stores too. Felt good to know I got them busted, just wish I could have seen the looks on their faces when the cops walked onto that bus lol

Fat Freddy wrote:

Here's a question for all of you former cashiers:

What was your weirdest interaction with a custoner, or the weirdest combination of items a customer brought to your register lane?

I work for Dollar General, and I got all kinds of stories. Like the time when a 10-12 year old boy came in by himself wearing high heel shoes. Or the time when this chick who was coked out of her mind dumped her makeup bag at one of the cash registers and stared in her compact. Or the jackass who decided that the toilet wasn't good enough for him so he took it upon himself to shit in the trash can in the men's bathroom.

What we lack in ghetto, we more than make up for with tweekers, drunks, and full blown wack-a-loons.

I remember one time at Kmart we had a shoplifter and he was pretty busy (meaning he was taking his time in the store). Enough time that where security actually locked the front doors. Then they went after him. He went running as fast as he could and BAM! knocked out by the front door being locked. It was pretty awesome, they didn't have cameras at the time (this was the 80's) but it was always fun to get the Code One and a Half (which like Freddy said meant all able males in the store run to the front because we got a runner).

We had security booths with blacked out windows. One was in the shoe department. I remember a girl who worked in shoes ended up stealing something and putting it in her purse right UNDER the security booth not knowing the guy was sitting in there. He caught her red handed. She didn't resist but I wondered what was up when I saw her crying and he was escorting her to the front. Later on he told me what happened.

I love reading all these stories!

This sure has been a great thread.

I've got several slightly gross stories from the 3 months I spent working at a Holly Farms chicken packing plant in Virginia after I graduated from college but still had a few months left on a duplex my roommates and I had leased the final year. Not nearly as gross as scooping up road kill, handling boob-sweat dollar bills or freshly-pulled teeth but here goes. 

This plant was strictly for packaging and storing the chicken; by the time it got to us the birds had already been slaughtered and plucked.

What an operation this was:  whole chickens were hung up by the legs on overhead hooks on a conveyor belt in the ceiling.  Then there was a line of men and women with long sharp knives and each was assigned a specific piece of the bird to slice off as the birds came by overhead.  The pieces dropped into trays on a conveyor belt on the floor and moved to the people at my section.  These people picked up the pieces and put them in Styrofoam trays and fed them into a shrinkwrap machine.  Then the spit out into crates and it was my job to scoop up the now "ready for sale" product load them into racks to go back on another conveyor belt into the freezer.  

Now keep in mind this whole process was moving at "impulse-engine speed"; so "stuff happened".  Like the cutter line.  These people wore chain mail guards on their non-cutting hand but hey, stuff happens so yeah, some people got cut doing their jobs.  Blood on the chicken parts?  Keep hacking away; unless you were bleeding profusely.  Then "Ronnie" the huge, redneck security guard who looked like a burly ZZ Top member would escort you to the nurse.  Ronnie was from Georgia and one time he brought us back some real, live Georgia moonshine - mason jars and all.  OH MY GOD!!!  That stuff probably removes paint since it tasted like paint thinner.

And then there was the time I got a shrinkwrapped package of chicken, loaded it into the rack to go to the freezer when I noticed a fly crawling around inside the shrink wrap.  When I pointed it out to the old hag who was running that particular shrink wrap machine she simply cackled "RACK!" which is what she always said when the next freezer rack wasn't in front of her machine in a split second.  So off that package went to the freezer, fly and all.  

And that's not even counting the numerous times the conveyor belt to the freezer went down so we had to stack the packaged raw chicken on the floor.  In August.  In a plant with no A/C.  

And while all this was going on the USDA inspector sat on a stool in a far corner of the plant reading a newspaper.

Since those days in the early 80s Holly Farms has become part of Tyson chicken and I'm sure things are the same at any and all meat packing plants but ever since then I have never bought HollyFarms or Tyson chicken because I've seen that with my own eyes.

Weirdest stuff in any job I had was working as a server in a pizza buffet while in college. People would steal food like crazy and sadly, the old ladies were the worst, they'd line their purses with plastic and fill them with the fried chicken we also had. Or the 40 year old gals would drink a couple glasses of wine and ask me out. And not to be racist but the gypsies were the worst and our cute girls servers would get fondled.

I have a friend who worked at Tyson Chicken and his story was much like yours. So much so that he says he has never eaten chicken since! Said he knew too much!

Man, I've never worked at Tyson chicken, but I used to make deliveries to one of their warehouses in Seattle. Every time I had to go there, they were assholes. Very rarely did they even know where the freight was they were s supposed to be shipping. That, or they had the paperwork wrong. It was always something no matter what. Just because of that, I swore never to give them a dime of my money. Now after hearing that story, I feel like burning their damn warehouse to the ground lol

My brother worked at a Popeye's Fried Chicken for a few months when we were in high school. He didn't eat chicken for a couple of years after that.

My grandmother used to tell a story about working in the Heinz factory. She would pull bad tomatoes from the conveyor belt before they went into a giant masher to make ketchup.

One day a mouse ran down the belt and all the women on the line just shrieked and screamed as they watched the mouse go down the line into the masher.

Took her many years before she'd eat ketchup again.

Like I said, I'm sure all food plants have the same horror stories.

It's like they always say, you can eat sausage but you don't want to see how it's made. That's probably true of most food unless you grew and/or raised and slaughtered it yourself.

I had to pepper spray a lunatic turkey one time. Bastard is still looking for me.

I had a gun stuck in my face.

Got beat up by a chiropractor.

Mauled by 4 dogs [that was the day I almost left my industry for good].

Had plenty of scantily-clad ladies open the door at various times.

Served many celebs and sports figures.

Nailed a member of a famous Iranian DJ team in the chest with papers that then fell on his turntable and skipped his record all over the place making the entire club stop dancing.

Stake outs upon stake outs, car chases, foot chases, escorted out by cops many times, etc, etc.

I honestly can say I now love my drama-free life.