Menial labor? Not with these hands.

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . July 9, 2009 . 10:39AM

Once upon a time, in a life far away, this princess was a high schooler who worked some seriously cruddy jobs to pay her bills. No, I didn’t slop fish guts in Alaska, nor did I pick up elephant waste at the zoo. But I did work in a paint factory putting the little handles on paint cans and hot gluing on labels. The former gave you blisters on your fingers and the latter gave you blisters from burns anywhere and everywhere careless workers hit you with the dumb gun. And I worked with some careless people. Who were also perverts, but that’s another story.

Oh, and I worked at Wal-mart for 4 years doing various things, but mainly cashiering. I still have vivid nightmares of working at Wal-mart and of managers screaming at me for daring to have food poisoning and telling me I was a slacker for calling in sick when I couldn’t get off the couch without hurling. Screw you, Wal-Mart, for traumatizing me with that nonsense.

Whew. Off of that particular neurosis, I had a decent work experience at a health spa. It wasn’t a typical “health spa,” and I hesitate to even call it that, but it was the name that the owners called it and so it is what it is. It was located within a hotel and one person was in charge of cleaning and taking care of the area the size of a large house and…you guessed it, cleaning up after birthday parties.

Parents, let me tell you something, if you have your kids birthday party some place where one person is in charge of cleaning up and you let your kids trash the place, smooshing cake into the carpet, throwing party favors into a pool that the workers can’t swim in to clean and screaming enough to upset hotel guests, please find the nearest person and ask them to hit you soundly in your noggin. It’s a gift from me.

My time at the “health spa” is one of the reasons A.J. doesn’t do big parties. I have very little control over someone else’s child and I’m not going to spend the day I use to celebrate pushing his big head out of my body screaming at someone else’s child to eat the cake instead of smooshing it. Other parents have more patience than I do, bless their hearts, and are probably not as irritated as I am by the antics of poorly trained children.

Every time I see tile that reminds me of the pool tile at the “health spa,” I am thrown back to long nights of picking up soggy cake and wiping down bathrooms after little boys who don’t know how to aim or adults who think it’s funny to leave a “gift” for the teenage girl who has to clean the toilets. I think I’m still angry about it. What do you think?

You know what’s really funny?

My school has the same tile in the women’s bathroom so every time I have to go there, I get a nice little reminder of the “good ole days.” 3 nights a week this summer, I have classes from 5-9. I get nice little reminders quite often. Ah, the good ole days. May they rest in peace.