The Right and Left Field Pavilions are the names of the outfield bleachers at Dodger Stadium. I was familiar with them before I started selling concessions. This is because the Pavilions were the only seats that I could afford when I went to see a game. I don’t know why I’m speaking in past tense here. Shit has not changed.
The Pavilion seats generally provide a lot of bang for the buck, however, because the fans in that section really know how to have a good time. In addition to endlessly enjoying the wave, fans in the pavilion like to play the beach ball game. The object of the beach ball game is to keep a beach ball aloft in the stands for as long as possible without allowing it to fall onto the field or get confiscated by security. Most people in the Pavilion believe that the beach ball game is the game they paid $11 to see.
If I seem to be a little snarky here, let me explain. I learned to watch baseball at Fenway Park. And anyone loony enough to bring a beach ball to Fenway will find himself hanging from a gibbet over Lansdowne Street. Maybe this is because the fans at Fenway paid a great deal more than $11 for their outfield seats. In any case, they aren’t in any sense confused about which game they came to see.
However, if all of the ballparks in America were just like Fenway, the game of baseball would suffer; the unique character of each park is part of the beauty of the game. I personally think anyone going to a Dodgers game for the first time should sit in the Pavilion and experience the park from there. I did, and I wouldn’t trade that particular experience for anything. Not even seats at Fenway. (Except Monster seats, maybe. No, not even that. Not that it's worth debating anyway, since trading experience for baseball tickets is about as possible as trading thumbs for a writing career. )
The first time I went to Dodger Stadium and sat in the Pavilion, I was surprised to hear that the people sitting in the Pavilion would be invited out onto the field to watch the fireworks after the game. That’s right…the field. You don’t even have to stay on the warning track. They let you out onto the grass. Just about everyone who walked out onto that grass that night either bent over and touched it with their fingers or took off a shoe to feel it with their toes. I was no exception. I felt it with both my fingers and my toes.
After admiring the springy turf, I scampered over to the baseline between second and third and took a seat, considering that I might bend a blade of grass upon which Nomar himself had trod not five minutes before. Then there were fireworks. I watched the fireworks, sitting on the field, while the stadium speakers played Ray Charles’s, “America the Beautiful.” Just like in “Sandlot.” I’m pretty young, and there are a lot of pitches that I haven’t seen yet. But for my money, it doesn’t get much better than that.
As much as I recommend the Pavilion for spectators, I don’t recommend it for anyone peddling ice cream.
Tickets in the Pavilion, as I have mentioned already, cost only $11. The ice cream that the vendors sell at Dodger Stadium costs $6.50 per pint. The value-seekers among us will already know that most people don’t want to pay 60% of the price of the entire ticket for a single, non-alcoholic, not-so traditional baseball snack that’s only available in one flavor. I could have guessed that too, but I was told that I could sell less but make more, and that made mathematical sense.
But after seven innings of not selling very much, I learned one of the basic axioms of hawking: not selling is a lot more work than selling. Put another way, selling concessions at a ballgame is one of the rare jobs in which earning more money is a result of less effort. Consider the following scenarios:
A. If you don’t sell anything, you have to keep carrying your product around with you, which is heavy, and you have to keep walking up and down stairs from section to section, which is tiring, and you have to keep shouting, which is embarrassing for people with little voice boxes.
B. If you’re selling, you get to stand still, put your bag down, hand out product, and rake in money. You’re taking on cash, which is paper, and unloading ice cream, which is ice cream. One of these is much nicer to carry in a bag around your neck than the other.
Selling is Easy. Not selling is Hard. That’s why “sell less but make more” is bullshit. To that end, it’s probably a bad idea to sell something as expensive as ice cream anywhere, but it’s especially stupid to sell it in the Pavilions.
At the end of the night, I returned my unsold product, insulated bag, carrying strap, uniform, and cash (including the borrowed bank) to the commissary. Instead of having my commission parceled out to me in cash and deposited directly into my sad little empty pocket, I was given a receipt for my earnings. $48.04 was not quite the $100-$150 range that the ad on craigslist had boasted, but I was happy to have earned even that. Plus there was the parking and the free meal to remember. But I asked the Permanently Displeased Troll Woman if I should keep the receipt. All she replied was, “around here?” and shrugged. I decided to file it away in a safe place, especially since I had no idea when or how I would be paid.
I did have enough faith to return for the next game of the homestand, but vowed to avoid ice cream unto eternity.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Bought and Sold
When I entered the cave of the Troll-Woman, I had two decisions to make: how much product to buy, and how much to take with me at one time. These seemed like tricky things to gauge. But in the end it didn’t make a damn bit of difference.
The Troll Woman “sold” me the product on credit, which was lucky for me since I didn’t even have enough money of my own to withdraw a whole twenty-dollar bill to use for bank. She also gave me a receipt for what I “bought.” This receipt was broken up into units, like coupons or vouchers, one for each package of the product that I had bought. I could cash these coupons in at the commissary throughout the night and get more product any time I wanted to. I could just hand my coupon to the Igor who attended to the Troll Woman, and he would fetch the ice cream or malts or cotton candy or whatever from the freezer or appropriate box. And if I ever ran out of vouchers and still wanted to sell, I could “buy” more from the Troll lady any time.
At the end of the night, I needed to be able to return to the Troll Woman the total amount that I owed to her, but this could be done through a combination of currencies: money, unsold product, or the coupons I hadn’t turned over to her Igor. Hopefully, I was able to do this mostly with money, because I got a cut of anything I sold. But if not, there was no penalty. As long as it all added up, I was fine. So it really didn’t matter how much I bought at the beginning.
What’s much more of a quandary is deciding how much to carry at one time. Ice cream comes in packages of six, so you might want to take three of them at a time. But that gets heavy. Especially with the dry ice added in. So be careful. Malts come eight in a pack, and so do frozen lemonades. Three of those might be too many. Other products, even the lighter ones, have similar considerations. For example, if you take too many Dodger Dogs at one time, the ones on the bottom will be smashed flat and people will not want to pay full price for them. However, you also don’t want to waste too much time going back and forth to the commissary to get more. Also, the commissary is just plain unpleasant, even when dealing only with the Igor, and should be avoided as much as possible.
What I learned pretty quick was that you don’t have to be too worried about frozen stuff melting, especially with the dry ice in the thermal bag. What you do have to worry about is burning the tips of your fingers off while you put the dry ice in your bag.
The dry ice is in an unmarked, unlocked cooler that just sits in the hallway on the field level concourse. There aren’t any tongs or gloves or anything. Like most lessons learned at Dodger Stadium, getting the dry ice into my thermal bag to keep the ice cream frozen was one that I had to teach myself. Each brick of dry ice is in its own plastic bag. If you’re lucky, there will be an open bag with a previously smashed up brick in it, and you can just dump the bag onto the ice cream. If not, you must smash up the brick inside the bag first, then open it, then dump a portion of the bag onto your ice cream. Never just start picking up bricks of dry ice and putting it in your thermal bag. This could result in a burning sensation and a patch of dead skin on your thumb. This I learned my first night.
In addition to learning the innings and outs of the stadium itself, I generally learned a new lesson about selling stuff every time I worked at Dodger Stadium.
My first lesson: Never, ever sell ice cream in the Pavilion.
The Troll Woman “sold” me the product on credit, which was lucky for me since I didn’t even have enough money of my own to withdraw a whole twenty-dollar bill to use for bank. She also gave me a receipt for what I “bought.” This receipt was broken up into units, like coupons or vouchers, one for each package of the product that I had bought. I could cash these coupons in at the commissary throughout the night and get more product any time I wanted to. I could just hand my coupon to the Igor who attended to the Troll Woman, and he would fetch the ice cream or malts or cotton candy or whatever from the freezer or appropriate box. And if I ever ran out of vouchers and still wanted to sell, I could “buy” more from the Troll lady any time.
At the end of the night, I needed to be able to return to the Troll Woman the total amount that I owed to her, but this could be done through a combination of currencies: money, unsold product, or the coupons I hadn’t turned over to her Igor. Hopefully, I was able to do this mostly with money, because I got a cut of anything I sold. But if not, there was no penalty. As long as it all added up, I was fine. So it really didn’t matter how much I bought at the beginning.
What’s much more of a quandary is deciding how much to carry at one time. Ice cream comes in packages of six, so you might want to take three of them at a time. But that gets heavy. Especially with the dry ice added in. So be careful. Malts come eight in a pack, and so do frozen lemonades. Three of those might be too many. Other products, even the lighter ones, have similar considerations. For example, if you take too many Dodger Dogs at one time, the ones on the bottom will be smashed flat and people will not want to pay full price for them. However, you also don’t want to waste too much time going back and forth to the commissary to get more. Also, the commissary is just plain unpleasant, even when dealing only with the Igor, and should be avoided as much as possible.
What I learned pretty quick was that you don’t have to be too worried about frozen stuff melting, especially with the dry ice in the thermal bag. What you do have to worry about is burning the tips of your fingers off while you put the dry ice in your bag.
The dry ice is in an unmarked, unlocked cooler that just sits in the hallway on the field level concourse. There aren’t any tongs or gloves or anything. Like most lessons learned at Dodger Stadium, getting the dry ice into my thermal bag to keep the ice cream frozen was one that I had to teach myself. Each brick of dry ice is in its own plastic bag. If you’re lucky, there will be an open bag with a previously smashed up brick in it, and you can just dump the bag onto the ice cream. If not, you must smash up the brick inside the bag first, then open it, then dump a portion of the bag onto your ice cream. Never just start picking up bricks of dry ice and putting it in your thermal bag. This could result in a burning sensation and a patch of dead skin on your thumb. This I learned my first night.
In addition to learning the innings and outs of the stadium itself, I generally learned a new lesson about selling stuff every time I worked at Dodger Stadium.
My first lesson: Never, ever sell ice cream in the Pavilion.
Friday, May 22, 2009
The Troll in the Field Level Commissary
After scarfing down my free concessions, I went to the commissary to get my product.
I didn’t know what the commissary was, or where. But I found a bunch of guys in red shirts standing around outside a closet door and asked them what was up. They were in line, they said, to get their product.
This line was not ordered by seniority, but regular old first-come, first-served. So I took my place in line and waited to enter the secret closet. It was not a fast line, and it took ten or fifteen minutes to find out what was behind the closed door.
Inside this unmarked door is a Cranky Troll-Woman and her Flunky. The Cranky Troll-Woman was consistently and completely unhappy, for reasons I could not identify. She wore a button with a picture of what must have been her grandson, which indicated to me that she had family. So her deep and unquenchable dissatisfaction with life, I figured, could not be due to a fear of dying alone. She was not disfigured or crippled and certainly wasn’t overworked, and honestly had no excuse for acting so much like a troll.
However, on my first day I tried to put myself in her Troll-Woman shoes. She had to deal with a bunch of untrained newbies who were, no doubt, taxing her patience and wasting her time. She probably wasn’t paid enough to take on the responsibility of shepherding all these fools into their new role at Dodger Stadium, and resented her superiors for putting her in this position. I thought I understood her situation completely, and decided to work extra hard to ask all the right questions and learn all the concession-selling techniques with outstanding alacrity. I congratulated myself on my depth of empathy and knew that before the end of the regular season I would kill the Troll-Woman with sunshiny kindness.
Or not.
I learned quickly. I never again came to a game without my own bank. I usually even brought my own quarters for change. I always decided ahead of time how much product I wanted to buy, and how much I would move at one time. At the end of the night, I counted my money with all the bills facing the same way. I broke down empty boxes, even those that weren’t mine. I always dumped out my dry ice before returning my cold bag. I never put my water bottle on her desk. I smiled at her Flunky. I was the most obsequious little twerp that the Dodger Stadium field level commissary had ever seen. All to no avail.
My empathy soon ran out. This is not a surprise. I am not the most patient of people. In fact, I have a tendency to get rather cranky myself. But this is almost always solved with the timely application of a cheeseburger (or beer). Why the Cranky Troll-Woman didn’t just eat a cheeseburger, which was available to us for free at the Carl’s Junior stand, was a mystery that utterly baffles me to this day. The fact that I had very recently been fed for free or expected to be very soon was the only thing that kept my own crankiness at bay and allowed me to persist with my sunniness.
Until one particular playoff game when several circumstances converged: there was a ridiculous line outside the commissary, I had a ticket for a free meal, and a postseason Red Sox game was on the television in the break room. I got my meal and watched the end of my game instead of getting in line for my daily dose of coworker abuse. If you can criticize me for this, you are a fascist.
When I got to the commissary after the end of the Red Sox game (they lost, I was not happy), there was no more line. I went into the Troll cave to buy my product, which forced the poor overworked Cranky Troll-Woman to put down her crossword and vociferate that I was the last seller to check in.
She demanded to know why. I told her that I had chosen to eat before getting my product. I knew better than to mention that I had also watched at least an inning of a game on TV. She bellowed that I should eat after checking in, and marked down on her sheet when I had arrived. I knew for a fact that I was well within the appropriate time frame to get my product and start selling, and rolled my eyes at her inanity. I spoke nothing but monosyllables for the rest of our transaction.
I finally had to admit that the Cranky Troll-Woman had killed my kindness, and not the other way around. Sometimes, friends, a Troll is just a Troll, and you definitely don’t bother putting on her Troll shoes a second time.
I didn’t know what the commissary was, or where. But I found a bunch of guys in red shirts standing around outside a closet door and asked them what was up. They were in line, they said, to get their product.
This line was not ordered by seniority, but regular old first-come, first-served. So I took my place in line and waited to enter the secret closet. It was not a fast line, and it took ten or fifteen minutes to find out what was behind the closed door.
Inside this unmarked door is a Cranky Troll-Woman and her Flunky. The Cranky Troll-Woman was consistently and completely unhappy, for reasons I could not identify. She wore a button with a picture of what must have been her grandson, which indicated to me that she had family. So her deep and unquenchable dissatisfaction with life, I figured, could not be due to a fear of dying alone. She was not disfigured or crippled and certainly wasn’t overworked, and honestly had no excuse for acting so much like a troll.
However, on my first day I tried to put myself in her Troll-Woman shoes. She had to deal with a bunch of untrained newbies who were, no doubt, taxing her patience and wasting her time. She probably wasn’t paid enough to take on the responsibility of shepherding all these fools into their new role at Dodger Stadium, and resented her superiors for putting her in this position. I thought I understood her situation completely, and decided to work extra hard to ask all the right questions and learn all the concession-selling techniques with outstanding alacrity. I congratulated myself on my depth of empathy and knew that before the end of the regular season I would kill the Troll-Woman with sunshiny kindness.
Or not.
I learned quickly. I never again came to a game without my own bank. I usually even brought my own quarters for change. I always decided ahead of time how much product I wanted to buy, and how much I would move at one time. At the end of the night, I counted my money with all the bills facing the same way. I broke down empty boxes, even those that weren’t mine. I always dumped out my dry ice before returning my cold bag. I never put my water bottle on her desk. I smiled at her Flunky. I was the most obsequious little twerp that the Dodger Stadium field level commissary had ever seen. All to no avail.
My empathy soon ran out. This is not a surprise. I am not the most patient of people. In fact, I have a tendency to get rather cranky myself. But this is almost always solved with the timely application of a cheeseburger (or beer). Why the Cranky Troll-Woman didn’t just eat a cheeseburger, which was available to us for free at the Carl’s Junior stand, was a mystery that utterly baffles me to this day. The fact that I had very recently been fed for free or expected to be very soon was the only thing that kept my own crankiness at bay and allowed me to persist with my sunniness.
Until one particular playoff game when several circumstances converged: there was a ridiculous line outside the commissary, I had a ticket for a free meal, and a postseason Red Sox game was on the television in the break room. I got my meal and watched the end of my game instead of getting in line for my daily dose of coworker abuse. If you can criticize me for this, you are a fascist.
When I got to the commissary after the end of the Red Sox game (they lost, I was not happy), there was no more line. I went into the Troll cave to buy my product, which forced the poor overworked Cranky Troll-Woman to put down her crossword and vociferate that I was the last seller to check in.
She demanded to know why. I told her that I had chosen to eat before getting my product. I knew better than to mention that I had also watched at least an inning of a game on TV. She bellowed that I should eat after checking in, and marked down on her sheet when I had arrived. I knew for a fact that I was well within the appropriate time frame to get my product and start selling, and rolled my eyes at her inanity. I spoke nothing but monosyllables for the rest of our transaction.
I finally had to admit that the Cranky Troll-Woman had killed my kindness, and not the other way around. Sometimes, friends, a Troll is just a Troll, and you definitely don’t bother putting on her Troll shoes a second time.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Port of Entry
I walked out of the employee shuttle with a group of obvious Newbies who were just like me: wide-eyed, confused, and sans uniform. Which isn’t to say that we weren’t completely unprepared. The Mysteriously Absent Concessions Company that had sent us to the Stadium told us to wear black pants and black shoes. There was no mention of socks. Mine were black, just in case.
The Regular Guys were already lined up in front of the stadium, right in front of the gates. They were all wearing red shirts, and carrying a heavy duty strap, like a disembodied seatbelt, over their shoulders. (Many Dodgers fans like to harass the hawkers for their red shirts, particularly when the Diamondbacks are in town. Well, you know what? Can it, jerks. We wear red because the poor suckers who work at the concession stands wear blue. We need to be differentiated because we’re badasses. Never mind. You wouldn’t understand. You’re not badass enough.)
We Newbies were scolded for not arriving at the stadium two hours before game time, even though the Head Honchos knew that the Mysteriously Absent Concessions Company had failed to tell us that we needed to. Then we each received a red shirt and a seat-belt strap and were told to line up behind the Regular Guys. This was the extent of my training.
The Newbies and the Regular Guys then commenced to talking, and I found out a little bit more about my job, and the company that had hired me. The Mysteriously Absent Concessions Company, which, you may have inferred, was mysteriously absent from the stadium, was apparently famous for being indifferent to its employees. Most commonly, the company hired too many candy sellers for events, and each seller’s sales were therefore limited. Many of the people who had worked for them before had made as little as ten or twenty dollars in commission at some events. Since the job didn’t pay anything besides commission, the company’s bottom line was not affected by hiring too many people, unless it actually increased their total sales.
Dodger Stadium, bless their Manny-loving souls, does things differently. They assign the products and the sections so that no one ever has to compete against another seller with the same product. “How clever!” we Newbies exclaimed. “How thoughtful, how neat!” We were immediately told that the union probably wouldn’t allow them to do otherwise.
Union? Yep. They even pay dues.
I made a mental note of this, and decided that I would only work for the Mysteriously Absent company when they had contracts at Dodger Stadium. I also secretly decided that if the night didn’t go well, I could ditch my uniform and watch a free ball game. The idea of a free ball game warmed my heart. The recollection of free parking sent me nearly into a state of euphoria.
But first, I had to get to the front of the line. Which was moving very slowly. And mysteriously. What was going on in this line, anyway? The Head Honchos were up at the front at a podium, and they were speaking to each hawker two at a time and letting them walk into the stadium.
After a few minutes, though, the constantly revolving conversations answered my questions. At the front of the line, you would choose your product and section from what was still available. The line was ordered by seniority; the guys who had worked the most games got the first pick of product and section.
The guys who have worked the most games at Dodger Stadium have worked almost every game at Dodger Stadium since it was built in 1962. Seriously. One of the Old Guys says he came to Los Angeles with the Dodgers, as though part of Walter O’Malleys infamous move. I kind of believe he did.
The Old Guys always sell peanuts. Coincidentally, peanuts are both the lightest product and the biggest sellers, so the seniority system works out pretty well for the Old Guys. I was also told, while waiting in line, that the worst sellers were Cracker Jacks. This surprised me, since Cracker Jacks have peanuts in them, and are sort of old-timey like peanuts, and I said as much. This set off a great deal of grumbling about the poor state of modern Cracker Jacks; too much popcorn, not enough peanuts, and jerk-off prizes that no one wants, it’s no wonder that they don’t sell.
“Cotton Candy does all right, but the board that they have them on is awkward and you need to be kind of tall to keep from smacking people upside the head.” “
“Water or soda is always a good seller, but I don’t know about any girls selling it. How much do you weigh? You know a good chiropractor?”
“Ice cream is all right, but best for a day game.”
“Do Ice Cream, it’s six dollars, so you can sell less of them and make more.”
“Malts are better than Ice Cream.”
“Malts are cheap.”
“Malts are gross.”
“Malts have the tradition factor. Guy takes his kid to a game, he gets two dodger dogs, a beer for him, a malt for the kid. Do malts.”
“Then there’s Lemonade.”
“Better for a day game.”
“Sure, but still. There’s always Lemonade.”
“What’s malts?” was on the tip of my tongue, but the two guys in front of me had just reached the top of the line and walked up to the Head Honchos before I could ask. And then it was my turn.
The Head Honchos had a diagram of the stadium spread out before them, with products listed in each section. This whole operation felt a lot like a test, but mostly like one that I knew I’d already failed. All I wanted to do was walk through that open door and into the stadium. But first I had to get past this Head Honcho who was guarding the entrance like a red-shirted St. Peter.
“What do I do?” I said.
“How do you want your stairs?”
“Stairs?”
“Not too steep, yeah?”
“Yeah, medium stairs.”
“Ice cream, maybe, that be good?”
“I don’t know, isn’t it expensive?”
“Yeah, so you sell less and make more. Do ice cream.”
“Okay.”
“Ice Cream. You’re in the pavilion, right and left. You go down to the field level to get your product, okay?”
“Uh…”
“You got your bank, right?”
There was a lot of groaning when the Head Honchos realized that the Mysteriously Absent Concessions Company had not told us to bring our own bank, which is really more like a cash register than a bank, because you’re meant to make change from it. Since I had no cash on me, and not enough money to withdraw from my own bank account (I know, isn’t that sad. Woeful, even.), they would have to front me the money for my bank.
Finally, I was dismissed, and sent to the door of the stadium. I was so excited to finally go in that I almost didn’t hear one of the Head Honchos hollering after me. He was chasing me down with a little ticket that looked like a raffle ticket. He handed it to me.
“Your meal.”
I looked at it. It was a voucher for two Dodger Dogs and large drink, $15 worth of Dodgers concessions.
“Do NOT ask for peanuts. They’ll kill us.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t ask. Okay kid?”
I wasn’t going to ask. I could go without peanuts, for whatever strange reason they were off limits.
I didn’t pay to park, I didn’t pay to get in, and I was handed a free meal. And there was a chance, if all went well, that I’d get a paycheck, too. Never, ever, has any door felt more like a set of Pearly Gates than the entrance to Dodger Stadium that day.
The Regular Guys were already lined up in front of the stadium, right in front of the gates. They were all wearing red shirts, and carrying a heavy duty strap, like a disembodied seatbelt, over their shoulders. (Many Dodgers fans like to harass the hawkers for their red shirts, particularly when the Diamondbacks are in town. Well, you know what? Can it, jerks. We wear red because the poor suckers who work at the concession stands wear blue. We need to be differentiated because we’re badasses. Never mind. You wouldn’t understand. You’re not badass enough.)
We Newbies were scolded for not arriving at the stadium two hours before game time, even though the Head Honchos knew that the Mysteriously Absent Concessions Company had failed to tell us that we needed to. Then we each received a red shirt and a seat-belt strap and were told to line up behind the Regular Guys. This was the extent of my training.
The Newbies and the Regular Guys then commenced to talking, and I found out a little bit more about my job, and the company that had hired me. The Mysteriously Absent Concessions Company, which, you may have inferred, was mysteriously absent from the stadium, was apparently famous for being indifferent to its employees. Most commonly, the company hired too many candy sellers for events, and each seller’s sales were therefore limited. Many of the people who had worked for them before had made as little as ten or twenty dollars in commission at some events. Since the job didn’t pay anything besides commission, the company’s bottom line was not affected by hiring too many people, unless it actually increased their total sales.
Dodger Stadium, bless their Manny-loving souls, does things differently. They assign the products and the sections so that no one ever has to compete against another seller with the same product. “How clever!” we Newbies exclaimed. “How thoughtful, how neat!” We were immediately told that the union probably wouldn’t allow them to do otherwise.
Union? Yep. They even pay dues.
I made a mental note of this, and decided that I would only work for the Mysteriously Absent company when they had contracts at Dodger Stadium. I also secretly decided that if the night didn’t go well, I could ditch my uniform and watch a free ball game. The idea of a free ball game warmed my heart. The recollection of free parking sent me nearly into a state of euphoria.
But first, I had to get to the front of the line. Which was moving very slowly. And mysteriously. What was going on in this line, anyway? The Head Honchos were up at the front at a podium, and they were speaking to each hawker two at a time and letting them walk into the stadium.
After a few minutes, though, the constantly revolving conversations answered my questions. At the front of the line, you would choose your product and section from what was still available. The line was ordered by seniority; the guys who had worked the most games got the first pick of product and section.
The guys who have worked the most games at Dodger Stadium have worked almost every game at Dodger Stadium since it was built in 1962. Seriously. One of the Old Guys says he came to Los Angeles with the Dodgers, as though part of Walter O’Malleys infamous move. I kind of believe he did.
The Old Guys always sell peanuts. Coincidentally, peanuts are both the lightest product and the biggest sellers, so the seniority system works out pretty well for the Old Guys. I was also told, while waiting in line, that the worst sellers were Cracker Jacks. This surprised me, since Cracker Jacks have peanuts in them, and are sort of old-timey like peanuts, and I said as much. This set off a great deal of grumbling about the poor state of modern Cracker Jacks; too much popcorn, not enough peanuts, and jerk-off prizes that no one wants, it’s no wonder that they don’t sell.
“Cotton Candy does all right, but the board that they have them on is awkward and you need to be kind of tall to keep from smacking people upside the head.” “
“Water or soda is always a good seller, but I don’t know about any girls selling it. How much do you weigh? You know a good chiropractor?”
“Ice cream is all right, but best for a day game.”
“Do Ice Cream, it’s six dollars, so you can sell less of them and make more.”
“Malts are better than Ice Cream.”
“Malts are cheap.”
“Malts are gross.”
“Malts have the tradition factor. Guy takes his kid to a game, he gets two dodger dogs, a beer for him, a malt for the kid. Do malts.”
“Then there’s Lemonade.”
“Better for a day game.”
“Sure, but still. There’s always Lemonade.”
“What’s malts?” was on the tip of my tongue, but the two guys in front of me had just reached the top of the line and walked up to the Head Honchos before I could ask. And then it was my turn.
The Head Honchos had a diagram of the stadium spread out before them, with products listed in each section. This whole operation felt a lot like a test, but mostly like one that I knew I’d already failed. All I wanted to do was walk through that open door and into the stadium. But first I had to get past this Head Honcho who was guarding the entrance like a red-shirted St. Peter.
“What do I do?” I said.
“How do you want your stairs?”
“Stairs?”
“Not too steep, yeah?”
“Yeah, medium stairs.”
“Ice cream, maybe, that be good?”
“I don’t know, isn’t it expensive?”
“Yeah, so you sell less and make more. Do ice cream.”
“Okay.”
“Ice Cream. You’re in the pavilion, right and left. You go down to the field level to get your product, okay?”
“Uh…”
“You got your bank, right?”
There was a lot of groaning when the Head Honchos realized that the Mysteriously Absent Concessions Company had not told us to bring our own bank, which is really more like a cash register than a bank, because you’re meant to make change from it. Since I had no cash on me, and not enough money to withdraw from my own bank account (I know, isn’t that sad. Woeful, even.), they would have to front me the money for my bank.
Finally, I was dismissed, and sent to the door of the stadium. I was so excited to finally go in that I almost didn’t hear one of the Head Honchos hollering after me. He was chasing me down with a little ticket that looked like a raffle ticket. He handed it to me.
“Your meal.”
I looked at it. It was a voucher for two Dodger Dogs and large drink, $15 worth of Dodgers concessions.
“Do NOT ask for peanuts. They’ll kill us.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t ask. Okay kid?”
I wasn’t going to ask. I could go without peanuts, for whatever strange reason they were off limits.
I didn’t pay to park, I didn’t pay to get in, and I was handed a free meal. And there was a chance, if all went well, that I’d get a paycheck, too. Never, ever, has any door felt more like a set of Pearly Gates than the entrance to Dodger Stadium that day.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Free Parking Is The Luckiest Space On The Board
It’s always a little scary starting an odd job. Not only are they typically a little odd, but you’re also never entirely sure that you will be paid.
I have taken a few babysitting or catering jobs in the past without knowing exactly what or how I will get paid, causing me to wonder each time if I am a fool. But one must decide in these situations that the only way to be sure you won’t get paid is not to show up at all. This is what I told myself as I prepared for my first Dodgers game.
The Terse Woman who responded to my email sent me the appropriate tax forms and told me to bring them to the Stadium. She also told me to park in lot 13. So I went to the Dodger Stadium website and tried to figure out which lot was 13.
I was particularly anxious about parking. This is normal. I live in LA.
When I worked in film marketing in Boston, I helped to maintain all the paid movie clocks in the country for Loews Theatres. When Loews Universal City Walk temporarily decided to reimburse for parking, my boss wanted to be absolutely sure that the Los Angeles Times movie clock advertised the offer. I was pretty indifferent about the news itself, and she felt it was necessary to tell me that, “parking is a big deal in LA.”
No shit.
As a little girl, I once asked my mother why people in movies that were set in New York always took cabs. She explained that no one owned a car in New York because there was nowhere to park one. (I believe I may have asked her where, if that was the case, they parked all their cabs. I was in impertinent child.) If that were true, no one would own a car in Los Angeles, either. Which is, of course, not the case. You absolutely must own a car here, and there’s never any parking.
It’s also necessary to own a car in Texas, and you must drive your car from one store to another within the same shopping center because there’s too damn much parking and you’ll get dehydrated trying to walk across the lot. Los Angeles, when it comes to driving, gets the short end of every damn stick.
After several digressions, I return to the topic at hand. Lot 13.
Lot 13 was not on the parking map, and the Terse Woman was not responding to my questions. So I decided to wing it, and just drove to Dodger Stadium and went right up to the Sunset Gates. I was told to U turn just inside the gate, go back out, and turn left on Stadium Way. There’s a parking lot on the left, and it’s the employee overflow lot—otherwise known as lot 13.
No one stopped me or insisted on seeing ID. I just parked, and followed the other people weaving their way to the employee shuttle. I climbed aboard, again without any credentials, and rode in comfort all the way up to the Reserve Level entrance.
I could not believe my luck. Free parking! Free Ballgame! I didn’t think it could get any better, whether I got paid or not.
I have taken a few babysitting or catering jobs in the past without knowing exactly what or how I will get paid, causing me to wonder each time if I am a fool. But one must decide in these situations that the only way to be sure you won’t get paid is not to show up at all. This is what I told myself as I prepared for my first Dodgers game.
The Terse Woman who responded to my email sent me the appropriate tax forms and told me to bring them to the Stadium. She also told me to park in lot 13. So I went to the Dodger Stadium website and tried to figure out which lot was 13.
I was particularly anxious about parking. This is normal. I live in LA.
When I worked in film marketing in Boston, I helped to maintain all the paid movie clocks in the country for Loews Theatres. When Loews Universal City Walk temporarily decided to reimburse for parking, my boss wanted to be absolutely sure that the Los Angeles Times movie clock advertised the offer. I was pretty indifferent about the news itself, and she felt it was necessary to tell me that, “parking is a big deal in LA.”
No shit.
As a little girl, I once asked my mother why people in movies that were set in New York always took cabs. She explained that no one owned a car in New York because there was nowhere to park one. (I believe I may have asked her where, if that was the case, they parked all their cabs. I was in impertinent child.) If that were true, no one would own a car in Los Angeles, either. Which is, of course, not the case. You absolutely must own a car here, and there’s never any parking.
It’s also necessary to own a car in Texas, and you must drive your car from one store to another within the same shopping center because there’s too damn much parking and you’ll get dehydrated trying to walk across the lot. Los Angeles, when it comes to driving, gets the short end of every damn stick.
After several digressions, I return to the topic at hand. Lot 13.
Lot 13 was not on the parking map, and the Terse Woman was not responding to my questions. So I decided to wing it, and just drove to Dodger Stadium and went right up to the Sunset Gates. I was told to U turn just inside the gate, go back out, and turn left on Stadium Way. There’s a parking lot on the left, and it’s the employee overflow lot—otherwise known as lot 13.
No one stopped me or insisted on seeing ID. I just parked, and followed the other people weaving their way to the employee shuttle. I climbed aboard, again without any credentials, and rode in comfort all the way up to the Reserve Level entrance.
I could not believe my luck. Free parking! Free Ballgame! I didn’t think it could get any better, whether I got paid or not.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Called up to the Majors
The days ahead were filled with craigslist.
I have been reading a great deal lately about the dangerous of craigslist.org, and have even seen some tips on how to use the website safely. Let me say for the record that I am a fan of craigslist. I have found each of my apartments and roommates since college on craigslist. And I have had a string of uncommonly fantastic roommates. I have bought no less than three beds on craigslist, none of which had bugs. I have bought a room divider, a futon, and two bicycles. Craigslist even helped me find a local band to transport a new-to-me bed to my house with their van. They were nice guys. They gave me their demo cd and only smacked one of the door frames.
I have sold two of the three beds, and I’m still sleeping on the third. I have sold a microwave, television, and scores of desks and bookshelves. And the room divider, and the futon. The only issue I had with any of these experiences was getting the futon up two flights of stairs; it was difficult because I couldn’t figure out how to get it apart. When I sold it, the gentlemen who bought it had no problem prying apart and toting it back down without so much as a grunt. While I feel that I got the raw end of this deal, there’s no arguing that I haven't had a lot of luck on craigslist.
I’m sure you’re all dying to know my secrets to safely using craigslist. Well here they are: I don’t offer up any sexual favors on craigslist and meet the men who say they want to pay, and I refuse to meet anyone who responds to my emails with less than adequate skill in both composition and punctuation. So far, I have not regretted it.
And I even, once up on a time, found a job on craigslist that was nothing short of a dream come true.
One day in September of 2008, I found a post on craigslist that advertised an opportunity to hawk concessions at Dodger Stadium.
There were two reasons that I flipped completely out. One, the ad said that the job could pay as much as $150 in one night. Two, it was peripherally related to baseball. I love baseball. It’s a simple statement, but my reasons are complex, and probably a little odd.
A lot of people like to say that baseball is a game of inches: out by an inch, out by a mile. I don’t know that this statement is any less true for football, though, in which the entire objective is to move the ball a number of inches down the field. I like to say that baseball is a game of moments; the game breaks down into segments which are measured by achievement, and not by time. Games are divided by innings, which are divided by outs, also called plays or at-bats, which can often divide further into strikes.
All of these moments happen in threes. The home team gets three times three chances to beat the visiting team in the bottom of each inning. The batter gets three swings before he has wasted his chance to run the bases; the pitcher can send the batter three bad throws before he owes the batter something he can hit. The defending team must stop three men before they can return to offense, and each man scoring a run has already touched three bags, three gauntlets on the field.
To a storyteller’s mind, this means that each at-bat, each half-inning, and each game, has a beginning, middle, and end.
This is why extra innings make me very upset; they destroy the Aristotelian structure of the game. But at least there isn’t a clock ticking somewhere, and the game continues to play, moment by moment, achievement by achievement.
Even more storylike, each moment, however small in itself, can have a huge impact on the rest of the game.
Consider a game in June of 2007 in which Kurt Schilling was an out away from pitching his only no-hitter and allowed the first hit. Perhaps baseball is a game of inches, because pitching an inch away from a no-hitter results in just another game. But look back in the scorecard and see that Schilling also had a perfect game until Julio Lugo committed an error in the fifth, allowing a man on base. An error removed the possibility of a perfect game, but the possibility of throwing a no-hitter was still there. But when Lugo made the error, he made it possible for another player came up to bat. If there had been no error, Schilling would have pitched to only 27 men. Instead, he pitched to 28, and allowed the only hit to the 28th.
There are no unnecessary moments in baseball, and nothing is too small to be insignificant. This is why statistics play such an important role in baseball. People even more obsessive than I am record each of these tiny moments, and nothing is ever forgotten or lost. This is so that every moment of every game can be measured against those that came before, and we can all understand its significance in the greater story.
All I really mean to say is, I love baseball. And when I got a chance to work at Dodger Stadium, I jumped all over it. I replied to the email, and received a quick reply. I was told to grab my gear and head over to Dodger Stadium. They’d have a uniform for me when I got there.
I have been reading a great deal lately about the dangerous of craigslist.org, and have even seen some tips on how to use the website safely. Let me say for the record that I am a fan of craigslist. I have found each of my apartments and roommates since college on craigslist. And I have had a string of uncommonly fantastic roommates. I have bought no less than three beds on craigslist, none of which had bugs. I have bought a room divider, a futon, and two bicycles. Craigslist even helped me find a local band to transport a new-to-me bed to my house with their van. They were nice guys. They gave me their demo cd and only smacked one of the door frames.
I have sold two of the three beds, and I’m still sleeping on the third. I have sold a microwave, television, and scores of desks and bookshelves. And the room divider, and the futon. The only issue I had with any of these experiences was getting the futon up two flights of stairs; it was difficult because I couldn’t figure out how to get it apart. When I sold it, the gentlemen who bought it had no problem prying apart and toting it back down without so much as a grunt. While I feel that I got the raw end of this deal, there’s no arguing that I haven't had a lot of luck on craigslist.
I’m sure you’re all dying to know my secrets to safely using craigslist. Well here they are: I don’t offer up any sexual favors on craigslist and meet the men who say they want to pay, and I refuse to meet anyone who responds to my emails with less than adequate skill in both composition and punctuation. So far, I have not regretted it.
And I even, once up on a time, found a job on craigslist that was nothing short of a dream come true.
One day in September of 2008, I found a post on craigslist that advertised an opportunity to hawk concessions at Dodger Stadium.
There were two reasons that I flipped completely out. One, the ad said that the job could pay as much as $150 in one night. Two, it was peripherally related to baseball. I love baseball. It’s a simple statement, but my reasons are complex, and probably a little odd.
A lot of people like to say that baseball is a game of inches: out by an inch, out by a mile. I don’t know that this statement is any less true for football, though, in which the entire objective is to move the ball a number of inches down the field. I like to say that baseball is a game of moments; the game breaks down into segments which are measured by achievement, and not by time. Games are divided by innings, which are divided by outs, also called plays or at-bats, which can often divide further into strikes.
All of these moments happen in threes. The home team gets three times three chances to beat the visiting team in the bottom of each inning. The batter gets three swings before he has wasted his chance to run the bases; the pitcher can send the batter three bad throws before he owes the batter something he can hit. The defending team must stop three men before they can return to offense, and each man scoring a run has already touched three bags, three gauntlets on the field.
To a storyteller’s mind, this means that each at-bat, each half-inning, and each game, has a beginning, middle, and end.
This is why extra innings make me very upset; they destroy the Aristotelian structure of the game. But at least there isn’t a clock ticking somewhere, and the game continues to play, moment by moment, achievement by achievement.
Even more storylike, each moment, however small in itself, can have a huge impact on the rest of the game.
Consider a game in June of 2007 in which Kurt Schilling was an out away from pitching his only no-hitter and allowed the first hit. Perhaps baseball is a game of inches, because pitching an inch away from a no-hitter results in just another game. But look back in the scorecard and see that Schilling also had a perfect game until Julio Lugo committed an error in the fifth, allowing a man on base. An error removed the possibility of a perfect game, but the possibility of throwing a no-hitter was still there. But when Lugo made the error, he made it possible for another player came up to bat. If there had been no error, Schilling would have pitched to only 27 men. Instead, he pitched to 28, and allowed the only hit to the 28th.
There are no unnecessary moments in baseball, and nothing is too small to be insignificant. This is why statistics play such an important role in baseball. People even more obsessive than I am record each of these tiny moments, and nothing is ever forgotten or lost. This is so that every moment of every game can be measured against those that came before, and we can all understand its significance in the greater story.
All I really mean to say is, I love baseball. And when I got a chance to work at Dodger Stadium, I jumped all over it. I replied to the email, and received a quick reply. I was told to grab my gear and head over to Dodger Stadium. They’d have a uniform for me when I got there.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Let me give you a tip
As the night began to grow chill, and the Subway wrappers were all thrown away, the Boss of the Outfit started prepping us for the pick-ups.
Over eight-hundred cars had been parked before the show. The garage itself had been mapped out on a grid, so that each row of cars was assigned an alphabetical letter, and each space in that row was numbered from left to right. Each car was in a space, with the letter and number of the space written on the ground in chalk. And each set of car keys was labeled with a letter and number to match the space.
The full-time drivers for this company had been busy at work labeling the car keys while the rest of us were eating sandwiches and staring at the wall, and now all the keys were hanging on one of several boards, all of which were set up on a horseshoe-shaped set of folding tables. The same full-time employees were now inside that ring of tables and boards, all of those keys hanging before them with their neat little tags.
As the guests came out of the auditorium, they handed their ticket to the hot-shots behind the table. The hot-shot matched the ticket to a set of keys, and handed those keys to the first driver standing in a long line. The driver then reads the location of the car, and starts running.
I remembered wondering what the Boss of the Outfit was talking about when he said we’d be running. Now it all made sense.
As you may have already realized, these cars were not the shiny black limos and sedans that brought the famous people to the red carpet. The cars we had parked were driven by regular people, people who were neither famous nor beautiful. But this was entirely irrelevant, as even people who drive their own cars to the Emmys have cash in their pockets. And getting that cash into our own pockets was the single objective of the next several hours.
The key to tips is turnover, I discovered. I probably would have already known this if, like the rest of the world, I had ever waitressed. The point is to run as quickly as possible to the car, drive the car as quickly as possible to the owner, collect the fat tip waiting for you, and run back to the line to fetch the next car.
Obviously, the more cars one gets, the more money one earns, but there is another reason for all this running. It’s important to get as many cars as possible because it helps to make up for the jackasses who don’t tip their valet driver at the Emmys.
I’ll admit it. I have failed to tip the valet driver at Mexican restaurants when I was unable to find street parking and felt that tipping the valet a dollar was too much to pay when the price of parking alone cost twice as much as the happy hour margaritas. I feel a little bad about this. But lets be honest. Happy hour at El Torito just isn’t at all like going to the Emmys. That’s because one is happy hour, and the other is THE EMMYS.
It’s difficult to decide whether or not the type of car has anything to do with the type of tip one will receive. I personally, don’t think it does, not most of the time. It also doesn’t matter whether or not the owner is male or female, not in my experience. However you slice it, though, there are plenty of people who don’t tip.
Towards the end of the evening, after most of the cars were gone and it was therefore much easier to find the cars, I was sprinting towards row P, space 17, and couldn’t find my car until I almost tripped on it. It was European, of course, and had a standard transmission. Not a car for someone who gets confused by a Prius’s power switch. I hollered for help, and traded keys with another driver who had no problem contorting himself into a pretzel and driving the itty bitty vehicle with a toothpick-sized shift.
I looked at the keys in my hand, noted the location of my new car, and sprinted towards it. Like I said, my experience had not convinced me that ugly cars meant bad tips, but this car immediately made me check my faith. It was a late-nineties Chevy Malibu that hadn’t been washed since the summer of 2007, and the interior was entirely covered in dirt. But the worst, the absolute worst, was the smell. This car had recently transported a wet dog. For many, many, poorly-ventilated hours.
I drove the car around to the curb, and as soon as I spotted my owner I felt bad about judging him for his car. It clearly belonged to his parents, who had only loaned it to him for the night. Of course he didn’t tip me, but who could blame him? His mind was on other things, since he must have been terrified of missing his curfew. I mean, cripes! He could be grounded for being a minute late with the car! My only question was why someone who isn’t old enough to shave should be invited to the Emmys.
Dear Academy of Television Arts and Sciences: Can you please explain to your seat-fillers that valet drivers should be tipped, even if said seat-filler has to sacrifice a portion of his or her Clearasil budget in order to do so? Thanks.
That was the last car of the night. Gritting my teeth, I shut the door of the Malibu and trudged back to the garage. I counted my money; I had earned $70 in tips.
While I turned in my tie and vest, I finally found the Random College Student who had recruited me. She asked me how she could get my wages to me, which would be paid to me in cash, but through her. After running through the list of our acquaintance and discovering that we shared no one, she asked me where I lived. She said she went to CalState, Fullerton. I blankly stared at her, only relatively certain that Fullerton was not a place in the Valley.
We decided we would be in touch about the money. I hoped that I could trust her, but figured that I at least had $70 more than before, and went home happy.
Over eight-hundred cars had been parked before the show. The garage itself had been mapped out on a grid, so that each row of cars was assigned an alphabetical letter, and each space in that row was numbered from left to right. Each car was in a space, with the letter and number of the space written on the ground in chalk. And each set of car keys was labeled with a letter and number to match the space.
The full-time drivers for this company had been busy at work labeling the car keys while the rest of us were eating sandwiches and staring at the wall, and now all the keys were hanging on one of several boards, all of which were set up on a horseshoe-shaped set of folding tables. The same full-time employees were now inside that ring of tables and boards, all of those keys hanging before them with their neat little tags.
As the guests came out of the auditorium, they handed their ticket to the hot-shots behind the table. The hot-shot matched the ticket to a set of keys, and handed those keys to the first driver standing in a long line. The driver then reads the location of the car, and starts running.
I remembered wondering what the Boss of the Outfit was talking about when he said we’d be running. Now it all made sense.
As you may have already realized, these cars were not the shiny black limos and sedans that brought the famous people to the red carpet. The cars we had parked were driven by regular people, people who were neither famous nor beautiful. But this was entirely irrelevant, as even people who drive their own cars to the Emmys have cash in their pockets. And getting that cash into our own pockets was the single objective of the next several hours.
The key to tips is turnover, I discovered. I probably would have already known this if, like the rest of the world, I had ever waitressed. The point is to run as quickly as possible to the car, drive the car as quickly as possible to the owner, collect the fat tip waiting for you, and run back to the line to fetch the next car.
Obviously, the more cars one gets, the more money one earns, but there is another reason for all this running. It’s important to get as many cars as possible because it helps to make up for the jackasses who don’t tip their valet driver at the Emmys.
I’ll admit it. I have failed to tip the valet driver at Mexican restaurants when I was unable to find street parking and felt that tipping the valet a dollar was too much to pay when the price of parking alone cost twice as much as the happy hour margaritas. I feel a little bad about this. But lets be honest. Happy hour at El Torito just isn’t at all like going to the Emmys. That’s because one is happy hour, and the other is THE EMMYS.
It’s difficult to decide whether or not the type of car has anything to do with the type of tip one will receive. I personally, don’t think it does, not most of the time. It also doesn’t matter whether or not the owner is male or female, not in my experience. However you slice it, though, there are plenty of people who don’t tip.
Towards the end of the evening, after most of the cars were gone and it was therefore much easier to find the cars, I was sprinting towards row P, space 17, and couldn’t find my car until I almost tripped on it. It was European, of course, and had a standard transmission. Not a car for someone who gets confused by a Prius’s power switch. I hollered for help, and traded keys with another driver who had no problem contorting himself into a pretzel and driving the itty bitty vehicle with a toothpick-sized shift.
I looked at the keys in my hand, noted the location of my new car, and sprinted towards it. Like I said, my experience had not convinced me that ugly cars meant bad tips, but this car immediately made me check my faith. It was a late-nineties Chevy Malibu that hadn’t been washed since the summer of 2007, and the interior was entirely covered in dirt. But the worst, the absolute worst, was the smell. This car had recently transported a wet dog. For many, many, poorly-ventilated hours.
I drove the car around to the curb, and as soon as I spotted my owner I felt bad about judging him for his car. It clearly belonged to his parents, who had only loaned it to him for the night. Of course he didn’t tip me, but who could blame him? His mind was on other things, since he must have been terrified of missing his curfew. I mean, cripes! He could be grounded for being a minute late with the car! My only question was why someone who isn’t old enough to shave should be invited to the Emmys.
Dear Academy of Television Arts and Sciences: Can you please explain to your seat-fillers that valet drivers should be tipped, even if said seat-filler has to sacrifice a portion of his or her Clearasil budget in order to do so? Thanks.
That was the last car of the night. Gritting my teeth, I shut the door of the Malibu and trudged back to the garage. I counted my money; I had earned $70 in tips.
While I turned in my tie and vest, I finally found the Random College Student who had recruited me. She asked me how she could get my wages to me, which would be paid to me in cash, but through her. After running through the list of our acquaintance and discovering that we shared no one, she asked me where I lived. She said she went to CalState, Fullerton. I blankly stared at her, only relatively certain that Fullerton was not a place in the Valley.
We decided we would be in touch about the money. I hoped that I could trust her, but figured that I at least had $70 more than before, and went home happy.
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