Tag Archives: youngdon

Toys “R” Us in the 1980s

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Being under the gun on project deadlines at work, I have been feeling like I don’t want to “adult” much lately. When I am like this, the old Toys “R” Us jingle runs through my head – “I don’t want to grow up, I’m a Toys R Us kid….” and this has gotten me thinking about that store in the 80s.

Toys “R” Us was the Mecca of all kids in the 80s. Until Toys “R” Us opened near our house (the store in Auburn, Massachusetts, right across the street from the Auburn Mall, probably opened in 1978 or so), the only real toy stores were KB Hobby in the malls and of course, the famous Child World located somewhere in Worcester but that was too far for us to travel. Of course, other department stores carried toys but that was just one small part of the whole store. Toys “R” Us was, as its name implies, just about toys which made it a real destination for kids.

I can recall going there and always being excited. Even the façade of the store looked like it was build just for kids with its crazy, multicolored wooden paneling and giant logo with Geoffrey the giraffe prominently displayed.

TRU front
This is how all TRUs looked in the 80s

I can remember walking into the store (before they built that dumb shopping cart collection area!) and seeing the aisles full of colorful toy boxes stacked from floor to ceiling! Even today, I can remember the smell of the store – plastic and rubber. Over the years, the store changed its layout several times but while I was a kid in the 80s, it was pretty much the same. First you would go through all of the sale items so, depending on what time of the year it was, you might be seeing stuffed animals or video games or board games or candy. Then, as you walked through that section, you would be come to the educational toys with things like microscopes and number puzzles and things like that. There were a million different board games lined up on the left side. My child-mind was torn in so many different directions!

Of course, once we had an Atari 2600 or our Commodore 64, I always walked a bit further and went to the video game section!

TRU video games
TRU video game section

The video game layout was interesting. The systems themselves were displayed in plastic cases so no one would steal them. Then the games for each system were displayed on boards with their cover art and the description of the game and each one would have a bunch of price tags below it. If you wanted that game, you would pull off one of the tags and bring that to the desk at the front of the store where they would retrieve your game and then you would take that to the cashier to check out. It was always exciting to see what new games were available! Once we got our commodore 64, things became a little more complex because some games would come on cassette while others came on floppy disk.

One more block of aisles further into the store were the “boy” toys and action figures. Of course, there were sections with dolls and stuffed animals but I didn’t spend any time there! I probably spent most of my time in the Star Wars aisle with my neck craning up to look at the wall of Star Wars action figures, ships, guns and the hundreds of other different items that were being produced.

star wars toys
Kenner’s Empire Strikes Back lineup in 1980

In my pre-teens, I would also spend a lot of time in the Dungeons and Dragons section which had all of the rule books, modules and most intriguing to me, the little lead figurines which always looked so cool. In fact, they looked so cool that I couldn’t resist looking in the boxes that had already been opened and, after seeing that some had already been taken, even sticking a few in my pockets to take home! This was the only stealing that I ever did!

When I got a bit older, GI Joe toys replaced Star Wars and my love for Toys R Us waned a bit as I fell in love with role-playing games, comics and books which were tough to find at TRU. For me, there were a few years where that store really captured my imagination. Some of the most memorable toys that I got at Toys “R” Us were the Star Wars Death Star playset (I think I got this for my 9th birthday after begging for weeks), my Star Wars stormtrooper and Han Solo guns, the original D&D basic set, the Big Trak, and a microscope set that came with a bunch of premade slides and an insect kit which let you look up close at the bees and other bugs that were included.

Microscope
Death Star
Big Trak

Of course, over the years I’m sure there were hundreds of toys and games that we got there that I cannot remember at all. Even though it was relatively close by, Toys “R” Us was an amazing destination for kids.

First Day of Summer

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Today is the first day of summer for 2011. The neighborhood kids are done with school and the weather has been beautiful. I was reminded of my summer routine when I was about 13 or 14 years old before I began working at Ed & Art’s Video and my days were totally free to do whatever I wanted.

My mom worked at the Cozy Nook restaurant (or whatever it was called at that time) and she used to wake up really early to leave the house by 5am to open the restaurant and get things moving for the other early risers who needed their coffee and breakfast. My sister, if she had stayed at home, was also out of the house long before I woke up around 8 or 9 o’clock so the house was quiet and I pretty much had it to myself. I read whatever it was that I was reading (most likely a Stephen King novel or an Elfquest comic) for a while while laying in bed. Then I would get up and take a “shower”. I have that in quotes because our showers were taken in our bathtub that didn’t have a shower head. Instead, we connected a hose that ended in a sprinkler head to the shower faucet. In order to make this work, we would have to kneel in the tub and spray ourselves with the hose. I didn’t think it was odd at the time….

After I showered, I would usually take the dog for a walk and then go back to the house and watch TV for a while. Re-runs of “Alice“, “One Day at a Time” and game shows were my favorites at that time. For a while, my mom ended her workday at 11am so she would often come home with breakfast for me. This is probably where my love for corn muffins came from. There was something special about one of those rectangular muffins, sliced in half and cooked on a greasy diner grill and loaded with butter. Mmmmmm. My other favorite was a “Western” sandwich with no green peppers. Both of these foods probably contributed to my unhealthy weight but they were delicious.

Now that breakfast was done the whole day lay before me like an open book. Most days probably consisted of hanging out with my friend Christian and/or my cousin Scott depending on who was around. Bike riding, playing “army”, playing Dungeons & Dragons, going to the movies, swimming, hanging around with the other kids in the neighborhood…whatever kept us busy in the days before video games and cell phones ruled teens’ lives. We would often go outside at lunch time and not come back into the house until after dark. Man, those were the days!

A Memory Bubbles to the Surface

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While sitting on my hammock this evening watching Chloe and Gabriel chase each other around our lightly leaf-strewn back yard, an often-revisited memory dragged itself back to the surface of my consciousness. In the months following my father’s death, my mom made every effort to sort of bring the family together. There were gifts and trips that I remember. My brothers were old enough that they decided not to participate, but my sisters were up for it. My mom decided that the big family trip that summer was going to be a vacation to [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebago_Lake]Sebago Lake[/url] in Maine with several stops along the way.

My mom, my two sisters, aged 10 and 15 and my cousin Melody who was about the same age as my oldest sister set out in the family station wagon and headed north. I don’t remember much of the trip. I do remember pulling into the campground and playing with my Matchbox cars and watching while everyone else set up the tent (I was only about 5 at the time). The first night of our stay, the weather was threatening but my mother sent us kids down to the bandstand of the campground where there was some kind of show or concert or something going on. At some point, the rain began and the skies opened up with lightning and thunder and buckets of rain. The four of us started running back to our campsite – my oldest sister practically dragging me along as I frantically trying to keep up. I’m sure she would have picked me up in her arms to make the trip faster if I hadn’t been such a fat little kid.

As I watched my children running after one another, dragging their toy lawnmowers behind them and screaming with joy with the slowly darkening sky overhead, their shrieks melded with the ones ringing in my head as my memory played out. I was a timid child and probably moreso after my father’s untimely and sudden death a few short months before. There wasn’t much that scared me more at the age of five than lightning and the crashes of thunder that followed during a strong summer storm. I was undoubtedly out of my mind with fear as we ran back along the dark, wet paths to our campsite. My memories are jumbled – a snapshot of my sister’s face looking back at me frozen by a flash of lightning, feeling lost and confused about where to go…. When we finally reached our destination, we piled into the station wagon where my mom was waiting. I don’t remember if she was getting ready to drive down to pick us up or if she was just waiting out the thunderstorm. In any case, I can imagine that I clung to her as we watched the rain drops slide down the windows of the car and the lightning became less and less frequent and the thunder quieter as the storm moved away.

That’s the memory that sticks with me most strongly from that time in my life. Sure, I remember some other things about the trip -the girl who drowned at the lake a day or two later and stopping at [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Knox_(Maine)]Fort Knox[/url] to “explore” the historic site, but none comes back to me so clearly or as often as that one.

On Easter

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So, not much going on in the life of Don. We continue to get snow on a regular basis here in lovely NJ. In fact, we got a few inches of heavy, wet snow on Wednesday. I’m looking forward to the steadily warming weather.

East is this Sunday. Whenever I think of Easter, two mental images are conjured up from my subconscious. The first is one beautiful Easter day many years ago. I must have been about 9 or 10 years old. I think it was one of the years that my birthday and the holiday ended up on the same day – or it may not have been. I received [url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0810909650/bujinkanmartia0b/]The Book of Gnomes[/url] from my grandmother as a birthday gift. Perhaps my grandmother didn’t get to see me on my birthday and she gave me the gift when she came to our house for Easter dinner. In any case, I was captivated by the beautiful artwork and the interesting story of these little beings. The matter-of-fact tone of the book and it’s format lead me to question whether gnomes really existed. Anyway, the weather that day was perfect for early spring. The snow had melted and the cold New England wind was replaced by a warm breeze out of the south that carried the fragrance of new life. The sun had begun to coax blossoms out from hiding on the tree branches around our house. It was a perfect day to be 9 years old (or 11 or whatever – I will have to check the inscription on the inside cover of the book to see just how old I was) with nothing to do all day except enjoy the outdoors and my new book.

The next memory that comes to light was also on my birthday, but it is a bit less happy. My father’s mother – who we called Meme – and I shared the same birthday. I am 90% sure that this WAS Easter sunday. My mother and grandmother had gone to Meme’s house to visit and celebrate the holidays. As we were enjoying the day, my grandmother suddenly became very ill and went to lay down on the sofa in her living room. Most of my memories from that day are jumbled, but I remember that she continued to be ill and my aunts and uncles decided to call an ambulance because she was now having chest pains as well. The paramedics arrived and took Meme to the hospital where, we soon learned, she died. It was quite a traumatic day – having gone from enjoying the birthdays to the passing of my grandmother.

It’s interesting how two such drastically different memories can exist side by side in our brains. It’s also interesting that the happier one surfaces first and only by really “digging” below the surface of the darker one can I remember the details of that day.

Ass Pictures

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I used to hang around in a basement…a lot! In fact, I practically lived in my friends’ basement for about a year. We used to call ourselves “The Cellar Dwellers”. It was my friends Chris and Shannon’s parents’ basement. We set it up to make it fairly live-able – heat, seating, fridge.

This was during a time in my life when I had no direction. I had planned to go to college after high school. In fact, I was the recipient of the “Oxford High School Janitorial Scholarship”. No, I didn’t want to be a janitor and I didn’t hang out with the janitors – they just put together some sort of scholarship and gave it to someone who was deserving. Based on what criteria, I have no idea, but I got it. Little did I know it would barely cover 1 semester at any of the state schools in Massachusetts. I had applied and been accepted to Fitchburg State College. I have no idea why I wanted to go there – I honestly do not recall what I wanted to do. Now, I needed to make some money.

So, after graduation, I got a job working in the warehouse of Millbrook Distributors. Fine purveyors of just about anything you could purchase at your local CVS – shampoo, skin care, makeup, condoms – you name it. So, I worked at this place for almost the whole summer. Five days a week from 6:30 am to 4 pm. I had to get up so early that I found myself going to bed at about 9 o’clock most nights. Yeah, that summer was a blast! It got so hot in the warehouse that walking in from the break room was like walking straight into Hell. It was hot, smelly and dark. Flashing lights from the forklifts assaulted your eyes while the sound of pallets crashing and conveyor belt motors blasted your ears. Anyway, I worked there most of the summer. From June until late August.

The slacker in me took over. I started calling out sick – a lot. Eventually, I just stopped going in to work so I could spend more time goofing off with my friends. Luckily, I had saved a fair amount of Millbrook money – enough to keep my car running. The date for scheduling classes at Fitchburg State came and went. Soon, I found myself just hanging out. With no job and nothing to do but have fun. It was no fun going back home. I felt like a bit of a failure and I didn’t want my mom asking me about school. So, I started to stay in my friends’ basement more and more. It got to the point when I was only going home once every few days. When I did go home, my mom didn’t hassle me because she was just happy that I was back!

So, what does this have to do with ass photography?

Well, one day, Chris and I were hanging out alone in the basement. We were probably just acting stupid and drinking cool-aid when we saw George’s camera laying around. We thought it would be funny to take some humorous shots and surprise George when he got the film developed. There was the obligatory facial close up. The ubiquitous Chris-making-faces-at-the-camera shot. Then Chris bends over and moons the camera. Not just a normal moon, mind you. Chris actually spread his butt cheeks for the camera. I quickly snapped the shutter and we laughed about how there was no way that one was going to come out since his ass was so close to the lens.

About a week later, George shows up at another mutual friends’ house. He was a bit angry. It seems the roll of film in his camera was for some important event – maybe our high school graduation – I don’t exactly recall. Having completed the roll, George gave it to his mom to get developed. She picked up the developed images and proudly showed them to her coworkers without having looked through the whole roll first. Mixed in with photos of smiling graduates and family snapshots, she was stunned to find a crystal clear, textbook quality photograph of Chris’s anus staring her in the face!

Oh, lest you think I have the picture displayed somewhere on my site – I can assure you that it was destroyed, negative and all. Right along with George’s mom’s opinion of Chris and I!

On Belay!

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As I was telling you last week, my friends and I used to undertake a lot of covert “missions” while we were growing up. These missions usually consisted of dressing up in military BDU fatigues or black ninja-esque outfits and sneaking into places or onto land where we weren’t supposed to be.

One particular night stands out in my mind because of how silly the whole thing was in hindsight and how it could have cost my cousin Scott his future unborn children!

One Friday night (I am pretty sure it was a Friday because Scott would come to stay at my house almost every Friday evening), we decided we would plan a mission around the highway bridge that was about a half mile from my house. The bridge spanned I-395. The cool thing about this area and the reason we spent a lot of time down there was that the median strip, which is usually just a small strip of land or concrete barriers separating the highway lanes was a sort of bluff 40 feet high and about 75 feet across in this area. The median made for great climbing once you crossed one of the highway lanes. Anyway, we donned whatever clothes we were wearing and Scott grabbed the 100 foot length of climbing rope that I had bought earlier that year. I had no idea what he had planned for it, but I thought it was cool.

We trekked down to the bridge using fields and the woods to stay off the roads. Once we got to the bridge, we moved over towards it. Scott clambered up the side of the bridge (it was a simple climb) and ran out from the edge about 30 feet. Here, he secured (and I use that word loosely!) the rope to the railing and tosed the rest over the side. I sat hunched in the brush at the side of the highway, wondering what he had planned as he hopped the rail and leaped back down to where I was.

“What’s the plan?” I whispered as he came running towards me.

“I learned how to belay this week at school.”

Scott and I didn’t attend the same school, but most of the high schools in my area seemed to have Outward Bound-type courses as part of their curriculum during the 80s. I guess it was part of their character building plan. Regardless of the reason, we were all required to take these courses as part of our phys-ed classes. They consisted of team building activities, ropes courses, problem solving and CPR training. I enjoyed it, but I never remembered the details of the knots and things that we learned to the point where I would have tried this stuff outside of the supervision of our instructors! Apparently, Scott felt compelled to try what he had learned at school.

“We learned to make a rope harness and a simple belay.”

I knew this was going to be ugly as Scott pulled out a length of cotton cord from his pocket and proceeded to tie it around his waist and crotch like the familiar web-sling climbing harnesses we used at our high school. When he finished tying the knots and turned around to show off his work, the sling looked pretty good.

“I’m going to belay down from the top of the bridge.” he said as he gestured over towards the highway. “I need you to stay near me down here in case I need help.”

We both ran over to the bridge. Scott climbed back up the side and I sat with my back to the concrete footing on the side of the highway. Scott had tied the rope about 25 feet from the beginning of the overpass. At that point, the drop to the ground was about 35 feet and he would still be mostly concealed from oncoming highway traffic by the concrete footing. He attached his harness to the climbing rope (I have no idea how he did this – I think you need a carabiner to do this, but I could be wrong!) and hopped over the railing – luckily there was very little traffic on my road so his chances of being seen atop the bridge we pretty low. He stood on the edge of the bridge testing the ropes. Everything seemed tight and he whispered “On belay!” to no one in particular. Technically, this was not belaying because there was no safety rope and he had no spotter actually belaying his fall, but this didn’t appear to bother my cousin.

Scott slowly leaned back and away from the bridge and began moving foot over foot down the side. At the point where the bridge girders ended and open air began, he seemed to hesitate and his descent slowed a little, but all looked good. Stepping off into open air, I heard Scott grunt a little as his homemade harness tightened around his thighs, but the descent continued.

It continued until his combat boots hung about 8 feet from the ground!

Scott, just dangled in mid air. “The harness is getting really tight and the rope won’t slide anymore!” he whispered. I detected some desperation in his voice so I came over from my hiding spot and looked up at him. “Can you loosen it?” I asked.

“I’m trying. You’re going to have to stand under me and let me stand on your shoulders so I can relieve some of the tension on the harness.”

I moved over to stand below Scott’s legs, but they were still about 3 feet above my shoulders. I raised my arms and pushed up on my cousin’s feet to lift him a bit. This didn’t do much because it was hard for Scott to keep his balance in this position.

After about 5 minutes of this, Scott was still unable to continue his descent.

“You’re going to have to cut the harness!” I suggested. I didn’t want my precious climbing rope cut!

Scott pulled out his survival knife and began trying to figure out what rope to cut. He was probably also mentally preparing for the fall. A few seconds later he told me to get out of the way and he made the last few cuts.

He tumbled to the ground, landing in a heap at the edge of the highway. As we both stood, I noticed that Scott was holding his balls and rubbing the insides of his legs.

“That was really tight! I was starting to lose feeling in my feet!”

Needless to say, we never tried anything quite like that again….

Here are some shots of the overpass as it looks today.

[img]http://don.oninohana.com/images/bios/overpass.d.jpg[/img]

[img]http://don.oninohana.com/images/bios/overpass.b.jpg[/img]

[img]http://don.oninohana.com/images/bios/overpass.c.jpg[/img]

Will you do me a favor? – part 3

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Okay, well here it is. The reason this series of stories was called “Will you do me a favor?” So, I was talking about working as a long distance operator and how we used to get some unusual customers.

Well, one night I was working the late shift – probably 11pm-7am or something like that and I got a call from this dude that would occasionally call, always from a payphone and ask us to do him a favor. The funny thing about this guy was that he would whisper “Will you do me a favor?” and we would always say no. That night I was feeling pretty funny so I figured I would see what it is that he wanted. Here’s the exchange that followed as best I can remember it:

[b]Weird Guy:[/b] Will you do me a favor?
[b]Don:[/b] Sure, what can I do for you?
[b]WG:[/b] You’ll help me?
[b]Don:[/b] Yeah, what do you want me to do?
[b]WG:[/b] Okay, is there a girl near you?
[b]Don:[/b] Uh, yeah.
[b]WG:[/b] Is she pretty?
[b]Don:[/b] Yeah, she’s attractive.
[b]WG:[/b] Okay. Go over to her.
[b]Don:[/b] (still sitting in his seat) Okay, I am walking over to her.
[b]WG:[/b] Is she there?
[b]Don:[/b] Yeah, she’s right in front of me.
[b]WG:[/b] Okay, take her shirt off (at this point Weird Guy’s voice is really beginning to betray his mental instability!)
[b]Don:[/b] Okay, her shirt’s off. Now what?
[b]WG:[/b] (breathing is getting heavy) Now rub your hands up and down her.
[b]Don:[/b] You got it (I can’t imagine the kind of guy who would really think that I was doing this at work!).
[b]WG:[/b] Now…uh…take her pants off…uh…uuuh
[b]Don:[/b] No, I can’t do that (completely breaking the illusion).
[b]WG:[/b] What? You have to! You said you would help me.
[b]Don:[/b] I can’t do that here! I’ll get fired!
[b]WG:[/b] (sounding very over-the-edge)P…Please! Please. I will give you a million dollars! Please. I will give you a million dollars!
[b]Don:[/b] Okay, but we’re going to be here for a long time. Please deposit the first $3 in coins now.
[b]WG:[/b] (click….)

The funny thing about this to me is picturing this guy in a phone booth somewhere with his pants around his knees, severely abusing his member with one hand and digging for change with the other!

Well, there you have it. Probably a little anticlimactic (no pun intended) but I hope it was worth the wait.

Will you do me a favor? – part 2 (Jan 2000)

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Last month I said that I would say a little more about working as an AT&T long distance operator. Well, December is nearly over and you’re probably wondering where part 2 is…here it is. And you will find out why I called this “Will you do me a favor?”

We used to get calls from all kinds of people. Since we were one of only two call centers in New England, there were several prisons that we serviced. Prisoners were only allowed to make collect calls so we talked to almost every prisoner who was making a long-distance drug deal or just trying to talk to his wife who’s cheating with his best friend while he’s in the clink. Some of these guys were okay, others would try to get you to put calls through for free or to connect them to 800 numbers and the like in order to pull off some scam. Some of the younger women we worked with were caught chatting with the prisoners from time to time and they were reprimanded. I guess it was the ‘danger’ that was the attraction – who knows?

There was also this other guy – not a prisoner – who we called Mr. Miller. This guy was a wacko who had had a legal problem with AT&T somewhere along the line and he was no longer allowed to have phone service at his home. I don’t know exactly what the problem was, but he had been calling and berating the operators on a regular basis for many years before I began working there. I guess he now had some mail-order bride chick in Nicaragua. He would call every day and have us place a coin-paid, person to person call to his Nicaraguan sweetie for him. The funny thing about this was that she would always tell him that she was going to come to the States next month and he would send her airfare like every month! This happened for the whole 4 years I was there! No doubt she was livin’ large on his cash!

Here’s a typical conversation with Mr. Miller.

[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] Hello operator.
[b]Op:[/b] Hello, Mr. Miller.
[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] Operator, coin paid person to person call to Lea in Nicaragua, please.
[b]Op:[/b] Okay Mr. Miller, please deposit $3.25
[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] Okay. [sound of depositing coins] Make sure I don’t get cut off this time, operator.
[b]Op:[/b] Don’t worry, I will make sure you get connected, Mr. Miller.
[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] Okay, that’s $3.25.
[b]Op:[/b] [hearing only $2.00 drop] No, Mr. Miller, that is only $2.00. Please deposit $1.25 more.
[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] Okay [deposits $1.25]
[b]Op:[/b] Okay, I will connect you now and after I get her on the phone, I will have you deposit $2.25 more. Okay?
[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] Yes operator. Make sure I get a clear connection this time. I couldn’t hear her last time.
[b]Op:[/b] I will.
[phone rings in Nicaragua, Lea’s mother answers. operator asks for Lea. Lea eventually comes to phone.]
[b]Op:[/b] Okay, please hold. Mr. Miller please deposit $2.25 for the first 3 minutes.
[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] I just did. The coins must be jammed.
[b]Op:[/b] No, you didn’t deposit anything. Please deposit the coins.
[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] [drops a few coins in] Okay.
[b]Op:[/b] That was only $.75
[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] Okay. [drops a few more coins in – eventually gets them all in]
[b]Op:[/b] Okay, I will stay with you to make sure you don’t get disconnected [note: this was not standard practice, but we did it with Mr. Miller because he was such a pain in the ass]
[b]Lea:[/b] Hello Lee [in thick accent][yes, their names were very close!]
[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] Hello Lea. How are you?
[b]Lea:[/b] Fine Lee. How are you?
[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] Good. I will send you the money next week. When are you coming here?
[b]Lea:[/b] Next month, Lee.
[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] Good. How is your mother?
[b]Lea:[/b] She is fine, Lee.
[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] Good. Operator, I can’t hear her well. Is there any way we can connect again?
[b]Op:[/b] The connection sounds fine, Mr. Miller….

This would go on for about 15 minutes. About every other day or so, we would get a call from Mr. Miller and he would say that he had been disconnected and that he needed a refund. We never allowed him a refund. Some days, he would be very nice and others you would have to take a break after you spoke with Mr. Miller because he would make you so tense.

Oh, look at that! Where did the time go? Looks like you will have to come back next month to see why this is called ‘Will you do me a favor?’. Sorry!

Will you do me a favor? – part 1(12/99)

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I used to work as a telephone operator when I began my career with AT&T. I was lucky enough to get a job with “the company” when I was pretty much right out of high school. My friend Chris’s grandmother worked for AT&T as a middle manager and she heard that the company was hiring in the Worcester, MA area. Chris and his sister and I went down and took this long test to get hired by AT&T. We weren’t 100% sure what the job was that they were hiring for, but I knew that whatever job I got, it beat the hell out of slaving away in the Millbrook warehouse or being a dishwasher and mopping floors in a nursing home! We took the test, aced the test (it was pretty simple – if you could do eighth grade math and could think logically, you would pass the thing), and got the whole orientation all in about 2 hours. We were hired on as “term” employees and told to come back next week for training as long distance operators.

Well, the training was pretty exciting, and for the actual job was pretty interesting for the first few months, but then Boredom – with a capital [size=22]B[/size] – set in. These were not the old cord-board days that most people picture when you think of a telephone operator – this was even less active than that. You sat at a terminal with a keyboard and monitor and a headset that you plugged into the outlet at your workstation. This job was really tedious and the “old school” supervisors made it even more difficult.

[b][u]Here were the rules[/u][/b] (in a nutshell):

[u]Be at work on time[/u] – anything over 30 seconds past your “plug-in” time was considered late and you would be talked to about it. There were large digital clocks mounted all over the building that showed the correct time so there “were no excuses for being late.” On top of this pressure, there was the problem that you hardly ever worked the same hours two days in a row. One day might be 10am-6pm, the next 2:30pm-10pm, the next would be a 7am-10am and then 2pm-6pm split shift. And you never knew what you would be working the following week until the hours were posted on Mondays. Oh, and unless you were really high up on the seniority food chain, you always worked weekends.

[u]Answer calls as they come in[/u] – you sat there with your headset on and calls would come in to you one after another, with only a beep and the callers information flashing up on the screen to let you know. The only way to stop them was to hit a button or unplug from the station.

[u]Take a break or lunch only at the scheduled time[/u] – watch those clocks! If you are on a call, finish it ASAP or turn it over to another operator, but just get “off the boards” at the scheduled time! The two breaks were each 15 minutes long and lunch was 30 minutes. Come back on time! And if you needed to go to the bathroom, you had to check the “Out-a-Minute” board to see if there was currently anyone out that that moment. Since only one agent was allowed out at a time, you would call the in-charge desk and ask if there was anyone at that time. If there was not, you were told to unplug and go. But, you had to first sign your name and the time you unplugged. Then, upon your return, you had to write that time down as well. The person in charge had to total up the OaM’s at the end of every hour. If you had excessive OaM’s you would be talked to about it.

[u]Be polite and offer good customer service[/u] – these were things that I thought would be easy, but it became increasingly difficult as you dealt with more and more morons who should not even be allowed to use a phone! All of the operators were monitored by managers on a regular basis and the results of their listens were revealed to you in a review session. There was also off-site monitoring done so that the second-level managers could also listen and see how we were treating our customers. There were several folks who were dismissed after being caught telling customers to “f**k off” or, better yet, people who were having “personal” conversations with the customers.

Lest you think that working as a long distance operator for AT&T was all bad, there were some good things about the job and many entertaining moments!

– We received lots of free training.

– The hours were variable and people were willing to exchange hours so you could often get the days off that you needed.

– The pay was great and you always got nice differentials for working Sundays, holidays and over-time.

– There was a lot of time to read (especially during those all night tours!).

– Days off during the week made avoiding weekend crowds much easier.

In the next About Me feature, I will cover some of the interesting things that happened and wackos…uh, people I spoke with.

The Shroom Experience

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This story was posted a LONG time ago, but it got lost in the redesign, I guess. Here’s almost the whole thing, for your reading pleasure.

[color=red][u]THIS IS IN NO WAY AN ENDORSEMENT FOR IMBIBING ANY ILLEGAL SUBSTANCE!!!![/u][/color]

I did mushrooms once. My mom would be really upset to hear that these aren’t the little canned mushrooms that you buy at the grocery store. These are the nasty little shit-tasting mushrooms that you buy from some wanna-be botanist with a very unprofessional lab in his basement. Anyway, I had never tried them and when the opportunity arose, I jumped at the chance. I had always been intrigued by the thought of taking acid, but I just couldn’t get up the cajones. I had heard a good deal of interesting, funny stories about people under the influence of acid, but I had also heard the typical horror stories of bad trips and long nights of drug-induced paranoia! I knew that usually, mushrooms were a bit more tame. A friend of a friend told us where we could get some so we hopped in the car one June day back in 1994 and drove over. The dudes who grew these ‘shrooms were chemical engineering students who were attending the local technical college so we were assured that what we were getting were top-notch.

We made “the buy” (sounds pretty serious, huh?) and stopped by Burger King before heading back home. When we got back to my buddy’s apartment, we plopped a generous helping of shrooms on our Whoppers and proceeded to chow. The nasty, dry, crappy tasting mushrooms were tough to get down, but the Whopper made it easier to take. After eating, we sat around watching some CNN and waiting for the cyllisybin (sp.?) to kick in. I decided to take a shower because the day had been particularly warm. Everything went normally in the shower until I began to dry off. As I wiped myself down (scary mental image, huh?) I looked over and watched a drop of water wiggle very un-drop-of-water-like down the side of the shower. That was my first strange experience.

After getting dressed, I joined the rest of my friends in the living room. Things proceeded to get more and more strange from that point. Five of us had ingested the ‘shrooms – Pete, Hilary, Jamie, Kathy and myself – and it seemed that we sort of went about doing our own things for a bit. I remember talking to my friend Pete about what I was experiencing and he kept saying that I was looking at him “really strangely” and that I was staring at him. In actuality, I had to focus so intently on his mouth, that I probably looked like I was staring at him. I was also following him around the apartment “like a stalker.” When a friend of ours who was living in North Carolina called and asked to speak to me, I said “Why does he want to talk to me?” Can you sense that we were a bit paranoid at that point? Anyway, I finally decided to talk to him on the phone. We said our pleasantries and then he asked me to remember some important information. I was supposed to relay to Jamie when his plane would be arriving at the airport because Jamie was supposed to pick him up at that time. Well, needless to say, I could not seem to remember the details so Eli asked to talk to Jamie himself. In a sudden bout of paranoia, I said “Eli, I can’t talk to you anymore…” and put the phone down as I walked off to do something else. The phone sat there for about 10 minutes before anyone realized that Eli was still on the other end! Don’t worry, Jamie got Eli at the airport at the appropriate time.

At this point, it seemd that I could not remember ever being in a normal state of mind and I could think of nothing else but what my life would be like if I never came out of my present state of mind. I began to panic a bit. I was smart enough to just sit down and try to calm myself. I sat in an overstuffed chair in the living room and pulled my baseball cap down over my eyes as the party went on around me. I was hot and sweating like mad, so I sort of pulled into myself and closed my eyes. I began to see the most incredible colors and vivid images on the movie screen of my eyelids. I “came to” about 45 minutes later and I felt a LOT better – much less paranoid. It was as though I had passed the worst of it and I had found some kind of a shelter in the storm. I pulled my hat up and noticed that the front of the hat and the bill was soaked through with sweat. It was quite literally drenched with sweat. The rest of the night went pretty smoothly except for the neighbors pulling the fire alarm and the whole apartment building have to empty out into the parking lot for about an hour while the police and fire department made sure the place was safe. The lights of the emergency vehicles sure were pretty, though.