Not my usual content, but let me tell you about this weird job I had for a month when I was 23. I was a bartender at a community theater in Bucks County, PA. I’m actually not sure “community theater“ is the right term for this place—it was in a small town, but there were performances all year long. The actors did not have other jobs. They were housed in a nearby dormitory and spent their free time in the dressing room backstage, standing on the backs of sofas and yelling. Everyone who worked there was really into theater. The box office manager wore a flower crown and Hieronymus Bosch Dr. Martens. One time she drove me to Wawa and asked me a bunch of questions about my undercut.
Even the job interview was off. The woman conducting it was going through an especially vicious lesbian breakup, which involved financial abuse and a massive home renovation project. We discussed it at-length in my interview. The next day, she called and told me I got the job. I was ecstatic to learn that it paid weekly. It sounds like small thing, but I really was that broke. I had 8 roommates and lived in North Philly, steps from the York-Dauphin subway stop. I was always zipping around on SEPTA, going to far-flung places and using my transit pass as a bookmark. To get to work, I took the subway to Market East Station where I bought a five dollar footlong to eat on the next leg of my journey, the regional rail train towards Trenton. The stop where I disembarked was overgrown with trees and big, prickly weeds. Next, I walked a solid mile past vacant lots and a neighborhood of modest Victorian houses before arriving at the theater. I rarely saw other people on the train platform or walk to work. It was always spooky, even during the day.
The bar was small and off to the side of the lobby. My job was to open bottles of beer and pour wine into cups before the show and during intermission. I also sold coffee and a modest selection of candy bars. I was there for two performances on Saturday and one on Sunday. In between shows, I cleaned the bathrooms and emptied the trash cans. My lunch breaks were unpaid, so was the gap between Saturday performances.
I reported to a man we’ll call Mark. Mark was gay and he did not trust me. When it came time to restock the bar, I would knock on his office door and wait for him to accompany me to a distant corner of the mezzanine. Then he would unlock the closet where beverages and candy were kept and supervise as I counted out my inventory for the show. The cups were also locked in the closet. Mark would count out 25 and at the end of the night, count the till against the number of cups and candy bars. The count was always a little off, usually because someone opted to drink their beer from the bottle. I was allowed one personal-use candy bar on Saturday and another on Sunday— my one fringe benefit, besides stealing toilet paper. I always picked a Reeses.
The theater had a volunteer program where residents of a local retirement community could sell gelato or work as ushers in exchange for free tickets. It should have been a harmonious arrangement—the theater needed to fill seats and the elderly had time to burn, but not a lot of money to spend on tickets. Mark hated the volunteers. “God, these people,“ he would seethe when they shuffled in late to the gelato booth. He would shout at them to pay attention and work faster. He was constantly reminding them to push different flavor combinations i.e. a mocha gelato made from half a scoop of coffee and half a scoop of chocolate. The volunteers could barely scoop. A lot of them were hard of hearing and they never remembered about the flavor combinations. The best part of my job was watching Mark rage against the elderly. He would turn red with anger and they didn’t care at all. Plus, their cup count was always fucked.
Mark was always watching me. There was a large boombox behind the bar. If it wasn’t playing a CD of instrumental show tunes 10 minutes before the doors opened, he would cross the lobby and say, “I can’t hear the music!“
The job wasn’t all bad. I drank Folgers from the Mr. Coffee machine and accidentally sold wine to teenagers. I talked to a lot of people who were seeing musicals alone, including someone whose wig and black sequined dress were attracting all kinds of stares and whispers. I met one of the actor’s parents. They had travelled from Scotland to see him perform and asked if I had seen the show. I said no, even though I had tried and left after one act.
Sometimes Mark would start talking in a Count Chocula voice and do a whole bit where he was like, “Mark? I am not Mark. I am Mark’s evil twin brother.“ The evil twin had a name, but I can’t remember.
After a few weeks, I got a better job closer to home and quit via text message. I left Mark in a lurch, but I don’t know how me being there made sense to any of us. I made $12 an hour and never sold more than $80 worth of stuff. I did a lot of cleaning, I suppose. I spent over an hour on transit each way. It was a bad job and I needed to not do it anymore.
This was unsettling in a seasonally appropriate way, thank u for sharing.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who has worked these jobs. I once worked a beer sampling gig where I would randomly have to pack a knife and pickup a citrus fruit to accompany my samples before arriving. It also involved an elaborate transit situation.
I've now worked in a unionized office position for six years, and when anyone complains about the minutiae I'm like...bruh...