Most of you have seen this and it's badly in need of a rewrite, but I'm way too lazy for that.
I can barley breathe in this thing, my field of vision is limited to a few inches around my feet. The sweat is pouring out of me, I suppose it’s a good thing I’m too young to be concerned with things like heat exhaustion, because it would only add to my sense of panic and I would be no closer to getting out of this suit anyway. I’m breathing in the hot humid air inside this thing, and it’s more than a little disgusting that it’s my own bodily fluids that make up this humidity. The ice pack was a well meaning but misguided attempt at making this a more comfortable situation, but wearing a freezing belt in an otherwise sweltering environment offers little relief, in fact it’s so cold against my skin that I’m in pain. I am the Pizza restaurant mascot, I’m given this job largely because I have no skills, and that’s exactly what this position requires. A higher tolerance for abuse would’ve helped, but nobody’s perfect. When Meg the Manager whom I have only just met, but will soon grow to hate more than anyone on this earth, introduces me to the costume I thought it would be fun. Who wouldn’t want to be loved by kids, I thought it would sure beat working.
I wasn’t born to dress as a giant mouse, but here I am dressed like America’s favorite pizza mascot in a costume made of a material that has a lot in common with carpet, though I can honestly say I don’t recall a rug that smelled this bad. It’s the middle 80’s and I’m one of the millions of high school students who will spend the summer exposed to the worst job they will likely ever hold. I’m not sure I’ll ever forget the experience. I went in with the best of intentions, Chuck E. Cheese is a party place, and I was a party person right?… It took me about five minutes on the job to realise the party was for paying customers only. There was a tremendous amount of unpleasant grunt work that we grunts had to perform to make the magic happen. No, my party would involve me wearing brown polyester, and a red plastic derby style hat while busing tables.
I’d swear that kid is trying to rack me, this gig should come with hazard pay. I really should consider wearing a cup for this weekend’s shift. Saturday’s were the worst, and in bad weather impossible. The children of the suburbs chased from the soccer fields and running straight for my private parts. It’s difficult to keep your jewels guarded when your job responsibility is to shake hands using both hands, and when not otherwise occupied to wave like a beauty contestant in a parade. Talking is prohibited whilst in the mouse suit, apparently the mouse is cuter when he remains mute. There were times when this vow of silence proved to be very difficult, get away from me kid you bother me was never far from my lips. Stepping out of the suit I felt the rush of cold air over my soaking wet body, and I immediately felt empathy for whoever the poor sap is who’s going to wear that suit next, since it would without a doubt still be wet from my sweat. Little did I know, I would be the sap who next put on the wet costume, I was given a few breaks from the suit in an effort to keep me alive. “Kinda hot huh?” Meg asked “yeah, I got kinda sweaty there” I said “you shouldda seen it before we had the ice pack, it was a lot worse” Meg offered “yeah that helps a lot” I lied.
There were times, though all to infrequent, when someone else had to be the mascot, and I was usually spelled by my good friend Kevin, or at least he was a good friend before he got me this job. I’m was then, and still am very tall, so when I was dressed as the mouse he became very tall indeed over seven feet, and was in serious danger of running into doorways. Then ten minutes later Chuck E would be played by Kevin, and be nearly two feet shorter, this was an inconsistency I fully expected kids to call us on, but they never did. Restaurant mascots in my experience aren’t viewed with the same critical eye as other characters, kids aren’t constantly scrutinizing your every move for inconsistency, they can tell you’re not worthy of such consideration. I expect Santa could never get away with as much, but we were no Santa Clauses, and even very small kids were on to us. Once when my friend Kevin was in the mouse suit, I had the unfortunate opportunity to see a giant lovable mouse push a kid out of his way in a fashion that could only be called violent. I instantly knew the kid had it coming, and had the misfortune of starting something in one of the restaurant’s blind spots. To the kid’s credit he was a good soldier and kept his mouth shut, which furthered my belief that Chuck E was acting in self-defense. Kids didn’t communicate the way they do nowadays, so the message wasn’t really received. If this incident happened today, I’m sure the six year old would contact his attorney via Blackberry within minutes of the incident. For a moment I had envisioned the kids being a bit more considerate for fear of further reprisals, but it wasn’t to be, and I didn’t have the heart to play the enforcer when I was in costume so any street cred. we may have momentarily earned was soon lost.
It was always better to be asked to dress as Jasper the dog, this costume was much lighter weight and was usually assigned only in times of over staffing. Drawing the Jasper assignment most often meant being asked to stand on the street corner and wave at passing cars. It’s surprising how much hostility there is out there, what had I done to any of these people? Wasn’t it enough to be dressed in this humiliating costume, and to be paid the minimum the state would allow? There they were shouting profanities, throwing beer cans, and the most common response was of course the finger. What had Jasper done to them? I knew the truth was they had no issue with Jasper, no it was me they hated, and with good reason. I mean look at me, some gangly asshole waving at cars, I’d flip me off too.
The minds at Corporate wanted us to feel as though all the restaurants a stage, and we are the players, so all announcements and memorandum were addressed to “All cast members”. We may have been cast members, but my ability to improvise was not the sort of performance they had in mind, I soon learned that I was to stick to the script. Though I did witness a number of performances that I’m quite sure were not on the script. The kitchen guys would put game tokens through the oven and then using tongs would strategically place these hot tokens on the game room floor. It sounds cruel, but no permanent damage was done from what I could tell, in fact the gag had very little payoff as most kids would drop the hot token and shrug and keep playing seemingly without a second thought. Once in while an adult would find the token, and spend a few minutes trying to pick it up as if in some sort of denial that it would actually be too hot to handle. Once the token had cooled sufficiently, or been picked up with the aid of a napkin, the incident was reported to the incredulous manager, who would literally have no idea what the customer was talking about. The manager would assume the customer was either insane or had a very low threshold for temperature since most of the tokens were merely warm from hot little hands, or overworked video games. Pac Man took the fall for many a prank that summer, and once was even unplugged to “let it rest”. I kept my mouth shut, I was being humiliated daily, why not take a few people or machines with me? In truth the only crimes I committed while on the job was eating crackers, and pickles and drinking root beer in the walk in refrigerator. I had to steal crackers and root beer to survive, what little money I was paid had to be used to pay for gas, acne medicine, new wave records and countless other essentials that place higher than food and water on one’s list of teenage priorities.
The music was no help at all, in the main dinning room there was the terrible mechanized band, whose clicking chatter of their robot movements was often heard over the music they were “performing”. To this day I can’t hear “Bus Stop” by the Hollies without hearing the silly cartoon voices signing it. The game room offered little relief, if you listened closely you could over the sound of a hundred video games you could hear the soundtrack from “Footloose” or “Against All Odds” or if you were really living right you would hear the entire Lionel Ritchie Can’t Slow Down album over and over, all night long indeed. Suddenly my friend who planned on attending a hippie college in Petaluma CA made perfect sense to me, they would never listen to Lionel Richie in Berkley, or if they did it would be of the classic Commodores variety.
As I changed out of the suit for what I knew was the last time that day, I was feeling a bit sorry for those guys in the kitchen, they must have to do a tremendous amount of dishes after a busy Saturday night. As I closed the costume closet my mind was focused on how quickly a carpet dries when hanging in a dark closet, and what sort of mildew would grow in that environment. I was certainly hopeful that the suit would dry enough to spare the morning mouse an even worse fate than I had suffered. Meg had one more thing for me to do and then I could go home, sounds reasonable one more little thing and then I’m outta here. It was at this time that Meg introduced me to the dish room. Yes there had been a tremendous amount of dishes pile up over the course of a Saturday night, and no, no one had done much with the mess. It turns out that in addition to my fine performance as a giant plush punching bag, I was also the dishwasher. I would spend the final hour of every shift slaving over steaming dishes, blasting all the gunk off of each plate and then sending them through the sanitizer, which looked for all the world like an industrial strength dishwasher but I soon learned through trial and error that it wouldn’t budge the slightest of food particles from a dish. The dishes would need to be completely washed by me before going into the machine. “but I’ve already been Chuck E all night” I pleaded, certain that there must be some sort of mix up, “this is part of the deal” Meg insisted. You can’t do this to me I’m an actor! I thought to myself, but Meg was gone in a flash and only a mountain of dishes remained.
Some of the older guys would ensure that we had plenty of beer to drink after work. When the manager on duty would go in to the office to count down the register drawers, theses brave souls would fill several pitchers with cold beer, and place them in their cars knowing that in just a few short minutes it would be Miller time. Beer sold on tap was a surprising easy thing for under age kids to steal and drink, we certainly couldn’t have done nearly so well had tokens or free pizza been our aim. In truth I ran a much greater risk of being caught with the contraband crackers then ever being busted on a beer charge. It was as if the managers had never been teenagers, or as I suspected they had been the kind of teenagers for whom the plethora of rules and regulations a corporate restaurant job affords you is something they saw as a positive. There was a procedure for everything, how to restock the walk in, packing ice in the salad bar, when and how to empty the trash containers, and on and on. There was indeed a procedure for everything except how not to hate every minute of your shift.
Eventually I had the good sense to quit, and not look back. It’s hard to believe now, but at the time I was actually worried I might regret leaving such a good opportunity behind. I had been the star mascot of one of the busiest restaurants in town, and I was just going to walk away? I’ve since learned that every job requires a certain amount of acting, acting like you give a shit, acting like you’re listening etc, but I would never again wear the carpet.
R
