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Dumb Jobs I Have Had: Vol. 1
By briantologist | April 23, 2005
also known as “All the Jobs I Have Had, Almost.”
1. Mall Puppeteer.
My very first job ever. I got this job the way almost everybody gets every job they ever get: I knew somebody. In this case I knew my friend Justin, who knew his sister Mary, who worked at the puppet theater at the Tulsa Promenade, which in 1987 was one hell of a mall, let me just tell you. Today it’s carpeted. I don’t know exactly what the prescription is to save a floundering mall, but installing wall-to-wall is tantamount to wearing sweatpants in public: By doing so you’re essentially admitting defeat.
Back then, though … oh, man. It wasn’t just the fact that I was 14 that made the mall a magical place, except that it was. Now I find the mall magical entirely for reasons I should probably feel bad about, though I can’t help but think if you were averse to mocking the afflicted, you wouldn’t be reading a blog entry about some 14-year-old fatass “working” as a mall puppeteer. Anyway. Justin’s sister slung puppets, and soon after, so did Justin, and soon after that, so did I.
The deal was this: Once every weeknight, at I think 6:30 or so (except for the coveted Saturday shift, which included like five shows; and the slightly less coveted though still slightly more lucrative Sunday shift, which included two), two puppeteers — both early- to mid-teenage kids — would show up, arrange the puppets at either stage left or stage right, and press play on the cassette deck, and a recording would play of maybe two voice actors, one male and one female, acting out some goddamn fairy tale script or another. And of course since the same lousy studio churned out every single show we’d perform, we quickly came to recognize the voice actors from one show to the next: The witch voice from “Hansel & Gretel” was the same as the stepmother’s voice from “Cinderella,” which was actually a lot like Geppeto’s wife’s voice in “Pinocchio,” only for some reason she wasn’t evil. (I can’t imagine how this must’ve fucked with the heads of the kids at the show, blurring their otherwise childlike lines between good and evil, but fuck, I guess the sooner they learn, the better.) In retrospect, I actually envy the schmucks who cut these tapes, as I imagine they were A) laughing their asses off, and (or because of being) B) drunk/high off said asses.
And so we’d get these marionettes onstage at the appropriate times and sort of shake them and crudely jerk their arm strings when it was their turn to say their line, and between zero and 317 small to medium to teenage kids would gather and watch, mouths sort of slack, as we clocked our $4.25 an hour. (I started like the day after the minimum wage got bumped up from $3.75, and baby, was I a rich motherfucker.)
At first I worked with Justin and his older sister and a bunch of fucking weirdos I’d never met. One was a really fat, kind of bitchy girl named Tennille. She had kind of an authoritarian air about her, perhaps since she’d worked there for longer than I had, and perhaps if I’d ever had a job before, I’d have figured out sooner that she was a lot of talk and a badge. But then a few of things happened: Justin’s sister graduated and went to college, Justin got a driver’s license, and Justin took up smoking.
This changed many things, most notably the working populace of the Promenade Puppet Theater: Over the course of perhaps six months (heady months of puberty, I might add), the staff turned from generally nonthreatening unclassified weirdos to Justin’s friends who smoked, and friends of friends, who also smoked, all of whom were basically looking for an excuse to get to the mall, where you could smoke. Let me emphasize this: They went to the mall to smoke, because at that time you could smoke at the fucking mall. At times I point the exact moment society began to slide downhill to the day they banned smoking at the mall.
And so, a question: What do you think happens when a bunch of dumbass boys in their early teens get a bunch of marionettes, minimum wage, and a goddamn stage all to themselves? Allow me to slip this hint to you, gentle reader: Most of the puppets had strings attached the backs of their pelvises. Another: Pinocchio had a string that extended his (flesh-colored, cylindrical) nose the puppet equivalent of like, three feet. In short, a seemingly minor staffing change turned the Tulsa Promenade puppet show into the Tulsa Promenade donkey show. Especially when we were doing the show that actually had the donkey in it.
I worked this job far longer than anyone should have; I was probably 16 or 17 when I either quit or just stopped showing up. It was a combination of several factors: I knew, naive though I was, that there was just something fundamentally pathetic about a long-haired, tubby 17-year-old in a black nylon trench coat claiming he had a job, when in actuality he was making puppets hump for sixteen dollars a week. Though Gregger and I spent, god, so many Saturdays at that mall — getting beaten at “Street Fighter II” by some fucking eight-year-old savant, milling around the record store not buying anything, gazing wistfully at the Metallica “METAL UP YOUR ASS!” t-shirts at the Mark-It, and spending one magical three-hour stretch seeing exactly how free and exactly how unlimited the iced tea refills were at China Express* — eventually even we had to admit it was time to move on. To other places where we wouldn’t make out with girls. Or, in my case, even, how you say, “talk” to them.
Next: “The Bakery,” or “Lousy Cappucino is grounds for termination.”
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* — They’re unlimited up to 19, as I recall, or else up to the point when the old guy who runs China Express bangs the empty iced tea urn on the counter and screams “NO MORE FOR YOU BIG BOY!!!” at Greg.
Topics: Unnatural History | 11 Comments »
April 23rd, 2005 at 8:24 am
…you were one of the puppet guys.
I’m sorry, I’m just kind of in shock.
Is Southroads Mall still sitting abandoned? They still left the doors open for the longest time and you could roam around in mall darkness. That was pretty awesome.
April 23rd, 2005 at 9:46 am
“that she was a lot of talk and a badge.”
This made me laugh for a long time. I love The Untouchables!
Also, puppets are freaky. They are up there slightly below clowns and mimes for ookiness, in my opinion.
April 23rd, 2005 at 11:35 am
Oh man, they totally redid Southroads. Now it’s the strip mall area in every city, the one with the Barnes & Noble, Just For Feet, and Old Navy in it. Even though the Just For Feet’s been closed for some time now. It’s got a pretty excellent movie theater at it, though; it’s an AMC multiplex, but the manager there is constantly getting quality independent movies in. End of commercial. But I totally remember when the only things open there were Piccadilly Cafeteria (because old people would walk the mall for exercise, then eat there) and a fucking Spenser Gifts, presumably because the old people bought lots of naked woman playing cards when they were done with their laps.
These puppets were plenty fucking creepy.
April 23rd, 2005 at 11:59 am
I made fun of you for like three years, you and your puppets. It’s a small world.
Has anyone been to Eastland Mall lately? I think they finally got desperate and carpeted that bitch. I’m sure that the power of that many mullets gathered in one place was too powerful a force.
April 23rd, 2005 at 4:46 pm
They probably got sick of sweeping up mullet sheddings, and carpeted so they could start vacuuming. Christ, if ever there was a weird fucking mall, it’s Eastland. That sucker is RIPE for a photo essay.
April 23rd, 2005 at 5:37 pm
I went to Eastland Mall today for the first time in years. It is totally abandoned! Maybe a total of 5 stores open in the whole mall, not joking! The movie theater is still open along with a whopping 2 eateries in the food court. I could not believe it! I don’t know how and why they stay open. Yes, perfect photo essay opportunity!
April 23rd, 2005 at 5:44 pm
That’s fucking AWESOME. I am so there.
April 24th, 2005 at 6:27 pm
The “METAL UP YOUR ASS” t-shirt that featured the hand with knife emerging from the toilet?!
April 24th, 2005 at 7:28 pm
The one and only.
April 25th, 2005 at 5:03 pm
This was awesome. So awesome.
I’ve been meaning to write about some of my more spectacular employment experiences for sometime now (Hello, video dating service!), but then reality tv comes on and I forget all about it.
Also, as of 1997 when I visited Winston-Salem, NC you could still smoke in the malls. At the time I still smoked and I was pretty sure that I had finally found heaven.
April 28th, 2005 at 10:05 am
you can still smoke in the mall in Winston-Salem, I believe. They don’t call it Winston.Salem. for nothing.