Even though it's been almost 20 years since I donned the stained white shirt with the cow on it, any time I walk into a UDF (it's a convenience store in Ohio for you out-of-staters), my skin crawls.
Since the days of mowing lawns for little old ladies in Carrollton, I've held almost every demeaning, bottom rung of the ladder crap job you could hold. The summer after my freshman year in college I worked at the Ohio State University laundry. It was so hot that when the temperature outside went above 90 degrees, bosses were required by law to give us a 10 minute break each hour. This job also included a weekly stint sorting used hospital (and I mean used) hospital sheets. Nothing like wearing yellow rubber glove in 100 degree heat and handling bags marked "TOXIC." Well worth my $5.15 an hour.
But none of these jobs were as amusing or horrifying as my stint working third shift at a UDF on the corner of Indianola and Hudson for three months in the summer of 1992. To start, I was in desperate need of cash since a job I had lined up for the summer fell through. UDF was hiring. UDF is always hiring. There's a reason for this.
There was training, of course. You were sent to an office park and were taught how to make a milkshake (look ma, no milk!) and how to add and subtract and how to put the money in the safe. That lasted something like six hours before I was dispatched to be UDFer.
In 1992 the corner of Indianola and Hudson was kind of the hub of what the city police described as 'oh christ.' It wasn't that the people were all in gangs or anything, it's just that you never know who was walking through that door. between midnight and 6 a.m.
My coworkers on the night shift were usually of no help. UDF always tried to have three people on at night although it was never clear why. I always assumed some corporate attorney somewhere had calculated the odds on a armed robber gunning down three people was much worse than just two. The third, still living employee would be able to hoard the ice cream and lock themselves in the cooler.
There was Abe, who was a nice enough guy - mostly cause he smoked weed in the cooler while he stocked milk. Abe really didn't care what was going on. Just don't make him interact with customers. Their lizard tongues and hooves would freak him out at about 4 a.m.
Crew member No. 2 was named Kim or Lynn or something mono-syllabic like that. She was a bit moody and couldn't work on weekends because of her other job as a stripper. Not to be shallow, but she might have been the world's first stripper to get tips for her personality. Kim was not attractive and her body was bizarrely disproportionate in various ways, but she apparently had an uncanny ability to apply glitter and dance sluttily to Motley Crue songs. Hey, we've all got a gift.
Kim's biggest problem with the rather large man who identified himself as her boyfriend. It was unclear whether she agreed with this assessment as she spent most of her time cursing at him. He would come into the store at about 3 a.m. after getting ripped with his buddies, sit at one of the tables in our quaint ice cream section and become outraged every time Kim "flirted' with one of the customers. (In this case, flirting would be defined by doing such things as giving them change or making them an ice cream cone.) Eventually, at about 4 a.m. he would drive off in a drunken rage to continue drinking with his friends and repeatedly call the store to talk to "fucking Kim." Oddly, Kim told me he would come to the strip club and not be jealous at all because "that's work."
Rounding out the crew during the nights Kim was too busy rubbing up against strange men, was Wendy. Wendy was a big woman. She went about 6 foot, 300+ and did not have a driver's license. She would walk from her house five miles away. This required to leave THREE HOURS before her shift began. Wendy did not move quickly.
Did I mention she was legally blind? She had glass that appeared to be carved from her basement windows on her face. One of our duties, that occurred quite frequently, was to let people pump gas. People would take the gas pump off the hook which made a little machine inside start beeping. I recall once being in the back and hearing the beeping going off repeatedly. I walked to the front:
"Wendy, why does that keep beeping?"
"I don't know. I think it's broken."
"Well, did you push the button so that guy can get his gas?"
"What guy?"
"The guy at the pump."
"What guy at the pump?"
"The guy at the pump right there?"
Peers out the window, squints. "There's a guy there?"
"Yes, there's a guy. WITH A CAR, WENDY. DO YOU NOT SEE A CAR?"
Squints.
"Oh yeah, I guess so."
"Wendy, why don't you got stock the milk?"
Amazingly, we never got robbed. Well, not really robbed. We got shoplifted a lot. And we got lots of people who filled up with gas then took off. Once saw a guy get his ass beat in the parking lot.
I think my favorites were the four or five people would come in at 4:55 a.m. and stand in line by the beer coolers and wait for me to unlock them at 5 a.m. Most of them were driving to work.
