hile working at the stadium in San Diego for much of my teens and twenties, vending various unhealthy food items, I saw a great deal that I wish I could forget. While I worked there I didn't dare write too much about it, in case my words ever got back to management, but once I was nearly fired for very little cause in 2002 I began to care about that less, and once I quit the job in July 2003 to move up north and live with Malaya, I became totally free to write anything I wanted to about the old job.

Unfortunately for this article page, once I was no longer there I wasn't observing any fresh material for blogging, and since I hadn't enjoyed much about the job and was very, very glad to no longer work at it, I didn't spend much time thinking about it.  As a result, the frightening bounty of potential blog stuff I once gathered from that job has never really been transferred to the digital page. What I have written is frequently amusing, however.

More recent additions are added on top of this page.

May 18, 2003

One of the amusements of working at the stadium (or in pretty much any food service place) is that we have industrial stuff lying around.  Compressed air tanks, for one thing.  These things are used for powering all of the keg taps in the beer carts, as well as soda machines.  So there are always a bunch of air bottles sitting around. They are about hip high to a standing adult human, and are heavy and battered from years of use, and have a round grippy wheel handle on top, like something you'd have on a garden hose switch in your back yard.

When you turn the wheel you move the blocking nozzle, and out comes highly-compressed air with a very loud whistle.  This air is moving extremely rapidly, which is the whole point.  It can, of course, be misused, with a bit of ingenuity.

The latest activity, which I have never taken part in other than as a spectator, is to shoot stuff with the air.  You put a water bottle cap or something like that on it, lean the bottle back and bit, and with a quick twist of the wheel, blast the cap across the room.  You could, of course, just throw it, but what fun would that be?

That was fun for a while, but it got boring so now they have moved up to the actual bottles, soda or water.  They fit better over the air bottle nozzle, and with aim and a quick twist, you can shoot a bottle about 30 feet.  Plastic bottles are of course rather lacking in aerodynamics in flight, which makes them fun to try and catch, or better yet fun to hit with a makeshift bat.  Our bat is generally a long aluminum tube stolen from an outdoor umbrella pole, or else the broken handle from a mop. Broken in some other past destructive orgy.

So the sport is to get a pitcher at one end of the stand, and the batter by the front door with the desk pushed back, and shoot the bottle over while the batter tries to hit it.  Great exultation erupts when someone strikes out, or better yet makes solid contact and blasts the bottle across the stand, ideally knocking down something valuable and potentially fragile.

And it's not like this goes on all night; just at the start when there's nothing critically needing to be done yet.

Saturday night there were plans being made to create a more reliable launching system, like by cutting the base off of a bottle, getting a gasket snugly connect the neck of the bottle to the air tank, and getting a racquetball, or something like that to stuff into the bottom of the bottle and fire across the room towards the batter.

If you think about that, it's a rather ridiculous amount of effort to expend to shoot a ball that could just as easily be thrown, but working there on slow nights is a lot like high school study hall.  Everyone is so bored that they have to dream up stuff to keep themselves occupied, and doodling on scrap paper only takes you so far. And when there's all this equipment around that you don't have at home, the stand help can't help but play with it.  Especially when the manager is leading the games.

I had another story I was going to tell, but it involved someone getting fired just a couple of days ago, and it's a bit suspect, since I don't know the whole tale.

So for a replacement, I'll talk briefly about dry ice.

That stuff is fun, and most people have seen it boiling away in a tub of hot water, creating huge amounts of smoke and foam.  More fun that just water is to get a cup of soda, sprite works nicely, since it'll bubble up hugely, with the carbonation being activated by the dry ice.  Better yet is to put a bunch of soap into the cup; that blows big hovering soap bubbles full of the carbon dioxide smoke, which float up until they pop and release a puff of smoke, as well as making like a cup of rabies and drooling soap bubbles over the side pretty much forever.  Or until the remaining soap/water is all frozen into a sludge.

If you want to get really destructive, you can put chips of dry ice and some water into a plastic bottle, seal it tightly, throw it, and run.  It will explode in 30 seconds or so.  And I mean explode, we're talking grenade-like.  Do not put this anywhere a person might be near it when it goes off, it could easily put out an eye.

The fun at work is to chip up some dry ice, put it in a bottle, and throw that into the big walk in and slam the door. It rattles around in there by the kegs, and after a indeterminate wait, there comes a massive boom.  And I mean massive, it sounds like a small bomb or a very high caliber gun shot.  Generally we'll find tiny chips of bottle, or most of the neck, etc.  The rest is just obliterated.

How long the fuse runs for depends on how much water and how much ice, so there is some variability in the construction of such devices.  I've never made one, but I've seen/head a dozen or more over the years I've worked at the stadium.  It's not like it's hard to make, it's just that more water and more dry ice = faster explosion.  Filling the bottle too full could definitely result in an explosion in your hand, which would be bad, so err to the side of caution. Not that I'm recommending you engage in such activities.

Especially not at work.

May 1, 2003

At work, my home stand makes cotton candy, the only place they make it in the stadium, and in addition to that we have peanuts and cracker jacks, bottled water and lemonade.  After years of not having a freezer [just a big walk in fridge that is mostly used for dozens of kegs of beer, which is where the stadium (and most restaurants, bars, etc) makes their real money] they put a small freezer in this year, so we could keep various types of ice cream and vend those on warm days.  It went well the first home stand, but the second one we noticed that nothing was staying cold enough, and the freezer couldn't go below 28 or so.  Which is fine for a fridge, but not cold enough for ice cream, which was slowly melting.  Forcing us to eat a bunch since it wasn't quite good enough to sell.  What a pity. *cough*

However, at some point in the last few weeks, when there weren't any events, the power was turned off and then back on, since when we looked in the freezer yesterday and today, everything had clearly thawed and then refrozen.  That doesn't sound so bad, but it was way too thawed, and for way too long.  All these cups of ice cream malts were either half empty, like evaporated, or else full of green and white mold.  Very icky.

There were three full cardboard cartons of them, 12 in each, and the outsides of the cartons were literally green with the mold, and the bottom of the freezer had about an inch of green goo.  Now crystallized by the once-again cold freezer.

In addition, the cold element on top of the freezer was covered in like 6 inches of frost, but very light fluffy stuff, almost like snow.  It was sort of pretty, and yes, snowballs were fashioned and tossed. As was about $300 worth of ice cream, at least going by the prices we'd charge to sell it.  I'm sure you could get it at a store for about $75, and buying it wholesale the stadium probably paid $25. But it was funny to see so much going to waste due to someone turning off the power, probably to save a few bucks on electricity.  Good call there.

The worse part was that we threw it all in the trash can before the game, and by about the 4th inning it was all thawed out, and as it was mostly mold, it was reeking.  They dragged the can outside the stand where they couldn't smell it, but then every time I walked up to get more cotton candy to smell, I was literally holding my breath as I passed it.

This segues into the second work story.  One of the guys there (naming no names, for obvious reasons) actually works.  I mean like voluntarily; when there is stuff that needs doing, he does it.  So most of the time while the other guys are sitting around doing nothing, or eating nachos or Cracker Jacks or whatever, he's making cotton candy, or cleaning up a machine, or mixing up 100lbs of sugar with the cotton candy mix stuff, etc.

It all seems very common sense, I mean it all needs to be done at some point, so why not just do it and get it over with?  I assume people do that in their own lives, even the lazy type of people who work at the stadium. But they sure as hell don't do it at work, unless/until they absolutely have to, or a manager or level supervisor orders them do to so.

So this guy who does work did all the clean up of the freezer once the ice cream was trashed, including hosing it out, washing off all of the racks, etc.  He was just finishing that up as I was about to leave, and as he finished that he left.  The other two stand help guys, who were getting paid just the same money and had done approximately nothing all night, as far as I could tell, (and that's how it always is on slow nights there) were marveling at how the other guy actually did work.

"Damn, that fool be working!" was one quote.  And "fool" isn't anything pejorative, it's just slang, same as saying "nigga" or "man" or "guy" or "motherfucker".  Select the one that's most appropriate for your work environment.  At my work "motherfucker" is probably the most often used, though "fool" or "bitch" would be a close second, with "nigga" not that popular since there's usually just one black guy working in my area.  Lots of black guys it would be the default (for them to use, anyway) and with none of them it would be an occasional option for the Whites/Mexican/Asians who were there.

Anyway, I said, somewhat hypothetically and philosophically, "Well, he gets bored just sitting around doing nothing, and the work needs to be done at some point, so I guess he'd rather just do it and have it done."

Both of the other guys just shook their heads in amazement at this pronouncement, as if it was something they had never and could never imagine. Like I'd suggested something utterly improbable; say that he was doing the work in order to build up good karma so he would be reincarnated as a wildebeest.

This sort of attitude is the expected in menial type jobs, as far as I've ever seen.  And the stadium work is very easy, not tiring or awful, there is almost no boss supervision, and pays a lot more than minimum wage. Imagine what it's like at a fast food restaurant or Wal-Mart or record store, for example.  Remind me to never own or run any business that depends upon the hard work and competency of people who don't want to be working there, and aren't paid directly based on how much work they do.  I'd go crazy in a month, trying to motivate such people. Or keep myself from killing them and using their body parts in tomorrow's chili.

November 10, 2002

The event began inauspiciously, when it turned out that I was one of only two vendors in the entire stadium.  A Chargers game has 80+ vendors, and used to have 150+ when they could get that many people to work at them. While a good sign for the amount of competition I'd have, one is simultaneously left wondering if everyone else knows something you don't.

I've never bothered to work at this event in past years, since the crowd is very small, like 7000 (compared to about 20k for a normal college f'ball game, or 60k for a small football game) but any crowd under 10,000 looks tiny; a scattering of isolated people in the massive stadium.

But this year I need the money, and I'm trying to get enough events to qualify for vacation and medical, so off I went.  Game time was 3pm, check in was 1:30, and by 2:30 there were probably 50 fans in the entire stadium.  Being as I can't really count on everyone to buy 3 or 4 things from me each, we'd like to see a slightly larger crowd. The weather was not helping, ugly, drizzling all day, though it wasn't cold.  And still isn't; 74 in my living room at 2am, with two windows open wide about 4 feet from the thermometer, and 87% humidity, which makes it feel warmer.  So just enough rain and clouds to make it dark and gloomy, but not actually cold.

As expected, the crowd was almost entirely black.  Probably 98%, with a few scattered white people, interracial couples or friends.  I didn't see any white people who were there in a group other than a bunch of sailors, who were a mixed batch, race and gender.  Many free tickets were given out to the military, and very few of them were used.

So a football game with two small black colleges, and almost entirely black fans.  It must have been fights and riots galore, right?  You racist pig.  There were zero problems.  No heckling drunks, no angry rival fan taunting, no pushing or shoving, nothing.  Very calm crowd, at least partially since it was wet and there weren't any sections more than 50% full, so everyone had elbow room and wasn't crowded in together.  Probably the calmest crowd I've ever seen for a football game. Lots of families, lots of kids, and I sold quite a bit of cotton candy. I got almost zero tips, less than usual, but you can't have everything.

One thing I can now safely report is that black people wear a lot of leather.  At least when attending an evening football game in the light rain.  At least 2/3 of the adults were in black leather coats, and often pants as well.  Not any weird styles of leather, no red or white or fringes or tassels or designer name jackets with logos or anything like that.  Just plain black leather.

White people do wear leather somewhat, but if this had been a white college crowd there would have been mostly wind breakers, ski jackets, cloth overcoats, sweaters, parkas, etc.  At most 5 or 10% leather, while it was 70% or more yesterday.  I guess team jackets are out of style, since I saw a few Chargers jackets, but no others anywhere.  Every team sells various leather jackets in their team style, but no one in the crowd last night had one, at least that I saw.

One other thing on leather jackets.  I'm sure designers spend days slaving over exactly where the lines go and individual pieces are joined together, and if the side should be one piece or a ribbed sort of thing, but I doubt anyone else notices.  At one point late in the game I saw a guy in a big black leather trenchcoat that had a little ledge half way down the back, like below the shoulder blades, and then the piece below it had a seam in the middle, running down the spine, while the sides were one long piece from shoulder to legs.  As I noticed that, solely because I was right behind him as he walked up the steps and I was waiting for someone to dig out $2.75, I noticed that I hadn't noticed it on anyone else.  I'd seen 500 or more leather jackets at point blank range by then, and couldn't have told you one detail of any of them.  High collar or low, thick or thin lapels, etc.  You begin to understand how I wear the same t-shirts and jeans for 5 years and never give a thought to upgrading.

The game itself was pretty boring, and the players looked like participants in a high school all star game. Not as big or fast as major college players, and far smaller and slower than the pros; you can really tell the difference in size/speed when you see them all in person.  Not that San Diego's major college football team is really any better; they laid another egg against an inferior team, managing just 2 field goals and a safety and losing 15-8.  They aren't 3-7 by accident, I assure you.  Horrible coaching and play-calling, as always.  At least in the last minute I saw.  The other team blitzes up the middle on every single play, and SDSU does a long, slow, involved pass pattern on every single play, SDSU gets sacked or the quarterback killed every single play. They are like some sort of physical simulation of a computer football game.  One with bad AI.  You just have to find the one defensive play that works 99% of the time, and then ride that horse to market.

The really inexplicable thing is that early in the year, when they were losing every game, they had these huge offensive outbursts.  Their QB threw for over 500 years two games in a row, and they still have the #1 and #3 receivers in the country, based almost entirely on their obscenely-large stats from a few early games.  And those were against better teams than they've lost miserably to the last two games.

This sort of thing is why I don't gamble.

September 23, 2002

As for work, it was profitable, at least. As they usually are on Sundays, there were a ton of marines, fresh from basic training at the game.  Around 600 of them, enough to fill 3 full sections in Loge, with 5 rows of spill over to a 4th section.  And as always they were starving for anything to eat, after nothing but basic army chow for the last 11 weeks, and loaded with money, after 11 weeks of having nothing to spend a penny on.  I always feel sort of guilty selling them such an absurd amount of crap, but if I don't someone else will, and they are certainly eager to buy.

I sold 28 loads of frozen lemonade, 12 cups per load, $3.25 per cup.  Of that total, probably 25 loads were to the Marines, so that's around 300 of them actually sold there, or basically one for every other guy.

Not that all they bought was that, they go through 300 boxes of donuts, hundreds of ice cream sammiches, hundreds of slices of pizza, nachos, hot dogs, soda, water, Dove bars, etc, etc.  Usually about half the vendors in the stadium are bivouacked around them.  Today was odd since there weren't that many vendors, and lots of them weren't at the marines.  For a while around the 4th inning I and one other guy selling ice cream were the only two up there, and we were selling so fast we didn't even move.  I'd run up with 5 loads of frozen lemonade, sit it down front and center, and deal 30 or 40 of them as fast as I could take money and make change.

I'm always amazed at how dumb most of the other vendors are.  There were 5 or 6 guys selling frozen lemonade, same as me, and they were all elsewhere for most of the day.  I ran down to get more in the 5th inning and one guy was checking out having sold 8 total loads.  I was buying 5 at that one time, and had sold 18 or so already, and I actually went up, sold all 5 loads in about 20 minutes, ran back down, and the guy was just checking out, since he'd had to wait for some other stuff before the manager had time to get to him.

Other vendors there are always amazed how much more than them I sell, but to me it's just common sense.  I've come to work, I'm making money, so I'm going to work hard and make more.  I mean what's the point in showing up and just dicking around?  You've got all day for that, when you're not losing money by not working.  Most of the kids there are happy to make $70 or $100 on a good day, and will check out in the 6th inning and sit around talking to friends or watching the end of the game.  I'm unhappy if I don't clear $150, I'll work until the 9th inning if it's still selling, and then I get out ASAP, to beat traffic.  True, I need the money now, but I was like this 10 years ago when I was first working there, and still in high school.  I don't understand the lack of work ethic, when being lazy is coming directly out of your pocket.  The whole pay there for what I do is commission; it's not like you're getting paid $8 an hour just to be there, and it doesn't matter if you work or not (which is the case for most jobs).

One odd thing about me there is that my satisfaction with my job performance isn't really tied to money.  I can make $150 and be really pissed off, or make $70 and be happy.  What determines it for me is how much I sold compared to how much I could have sold.  If there is ample product and not a disproportionate amount of vendors selling it, I'm satisfied, even if the total sales aren't that good.  Conversely, if the sales are great and I make $140, but the stuff I'm selling runs out in the 5th inning, the stand is out of quarters one time I come back, there are more vendors than there should be on the item, etc, I tend to be angry about it.

Sunday was awesome for money, but the game went really fast, and I was sort of angry about that.  If there had been a big long inning or two I could have sold literally 10 more loads in 30 minutes.  The day was hotter at 4 than at 1, the marines were all dying for dessert, most of the other vendors had checked out... but the game was in the 9th inning at just over two hours.   That annoys me for the money I didn't make, but mostly it's just the lost sales opportunity.  If sales had been dead by the time I quit, I wouldn't have given selling 10 more loads a thought.

Anyway, that's it for baseball games.  A week off now, and I don't work (at the stadium) more than twice a week until April, and usually work just once a week, and then about once a month from Jan-March.  The Superbowl is here this year, and it'll be the second time I've worked at one of those, which is sort of cool.  I mean people pay $1000+ a ticket from scalpers to be there, so I should be happy being there for free, right?  The last time the Superbowl was here was in 1998, I believe, and my main memories are of blisters.  I had new shoes and due to the enormous traffic crunch I had to park way up a hill from the stadium, and walk down.  It was about 90 degrees that day, and I was stuck selling pizza, rather than soda which guys made a fortune on.  My feet were killing me, the pizza ran totally out by halftime, and I just left, trudging back up the hill with a double-legged limp and going home to take a cold bath and soak my feet.

I hope to improve upon that memory this year...

May 4, 2002

Sports fans are insane, at times.  Adults get these problems with anger issues, especially when their kids are involved, and like they'll go insane on total strangers in a second, if the alternative is to discipline or control their child, or just wait their turn.

Guy tonight was over in the middle of a row, and said he wanted 1 item (I was selling cotton candy, AKA fairy floss in certain convict-spawned countries.) when I had 3 left.  As he dug for his money (no one EVER has their money ready to speed things up) other people approached me and wanted to buy my poison.  I'd already passed the one over to the first guy, so I sold the last 2 I had on that board and could have sold 4 or 5 more right then.  That always happens, BTW.  The customers work in secret teams, and if you have 5 left no one buys one.  But when you have 3 left, you always get like 7 people who want, who must have, who demand you sell to them!  I'm not sure how they arrange that, but they do it almost every time.  I figure it's some sort of ballpark customer ability, like how fish in a school all swerve the same direction at the same time.

Anyway, the guy who wanted one gets it, and passes over a $20.  So I make change and pass it back, and as it gets near him he goes, "I wanted 3."  I say, "Sorry, you said 1 and I sold the rest." Which he could easily see while I was doing it, since I made sure he only wanted one, and he saw my finger and nodded when I said $2.25 was the price.

He suddenly starts to yell how he wants 3, and how he's not buying just one, etc.  He's maybe a dozen people over, in a totally full section, so easily 100 people are within a 15 foot radius, and probably 300 can hear him yelling, since it's between innings and there's no (other) crowd noise.  Some guy near him goes, "I think you said 1, Bob."

Not surprisingly, Bob begs to differ, stands up and starts shouting.  "You goddamn motherfucker!  I said 3!  Fuck!" Yelling at me, not the other guy.   And he grabs the cotton candy from his kid, and hurls it at me.  Which is never a good idea, since they weigh like 2 ounces and are large and un-aerodynamic. It's like throwing a tissue.  It goes about 5 feet, or approximately 2 feet from the end of his arm, and partially disintegrates in the process, since they aren't exactly built for speed.

Given my recent issues at work, AKA being fired, I would probably have given the idiot his money back and taken the mangled CC with me, but his wife or mistress or something calms him down, after he screams a few more times.

Now you'll note that this is in front of his kid(s), and about 200 total strangers, and he's screaming and throwing (literally) a tantrum over not being able to buy as many cotton candies as he wants, when I'm saying sorry and that I'll be back in 3 minutes with a full load.

That sort of thing happens at least once a game, on average.  And 95% of the time it's a man (of course) and he's freaking out because of his kids, or because he can't buy enough for his kids, or because he'll never get an erection again and can't have any more kids, or something.  No one ever gets angry buying peanuts or water or ice cream, things I sell sometimes.  It's always a dad about something to do with his kids.

Just one more reason men shouldn't be allowed near children, IMHO.

Another type of annoying customer I encounter on occasion at work is the angry old man.  These aren't all that common, I only run into one every month or two, so probably 3 or 4 all year.  They are invariably 60+, sitting in good seats, and probably perpetually pissed off.

What distinguishes them from just any generic asshole is that they always pitch a fit about having their view blocked for any amount of time, regardless of what's happening on the field.  Generally when selling stuff, I stop in the aisle and pass it over to people.  If there are open seats I might walk over in front of them, and duck down, or if it's between innings, during a TV timeout, pitcher change, etc, I'll move over and block someone's view for a minute, since they aren't missing anything anyway.

No one ever objects, but the angry old man.  Literally, I can't ever recall anyone being bitchy about very temporary view obstruction, but old white guys.  Normal people will yell "Down in front!" but I'm never in the way like that, I move on quickly.

Last night I was on field level near home plate, and was waiting for some kid to dig out a quarter, between innings.  Nothing was happening on the field, TV was in commercial, but after about 8 seconds here comes some gravely voice, "Hey, you're blocking my view!"

It's always to tempting to pop off at old guys like that, since they're such easy targets.  I generally resist the urge though, and certainly did last night, what with recent events (being fired) attesting to the overblown importance management places on any idiot fan's complaint about any idiot thing.

So, "Sorry pops, you miss a pitch?" didn't pass my lips, nor did, "My tax dollars pay the Social Security you used to buy that ticket, gramps."  Though I did amuse myself for about the next half an hour by thinking up other snappy retorts.  The first one listed here was really about halfway out my mouth before I controlled it.

In the past, when I've known for sure nothing was happening, I've been known to slowly pivot around to look at the field, then pivot back and move away with a smile.  Hopefully that pisses them off.

Of course the worst thing you can do is wave at a vendor to move, if you want them to move.  All the time I'll go up some steps, looking to see if anyone will raise their hand to flag me down.  If someone starts waving at me to move, which I was going to do in three seconds anyway, I have to stop and look more closely to see if they want to make a purchase, which of course results in their view being blocked for longer than it would have been otherwise.  Call it poetic justice if you are of a literary bent.

All this aside, I'm getting depressed more often at work these days.  Mostly when I see people years younger than me with the money to buy whatever overpriced garbage I'm selling.  I certainly can't afford to go to a game and buy the junk vendors sell.  Well I could, but it's by just never spending any money on anything that I'm able to live in a decent apartment with a decent car while not having a real job.  It's sort of a shame I'm not more motivated to be a good little consumer, since I'd certainly be unable to stand my income, and would have a real job so I could spend all my time at that, and then my limited free time spending the work money on worthless, instant-gratification crap that momentarily enlivened my soulless, grinding existence.

Or maybe I'd just do fun things like this blog anyway, and sock the money away in savings, with a slightly-higher DVD purchase rate my only real lifestyle change.

And more whores.

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