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xaaraI started work at the National Zoo today, the hot, sticky, overpopulated place where I will be serving annoying, stupid, and ungrateful people until school starts again at the tail end of August. What's kind of funny? I love it there.
I'm apparently the only white kid working for the entire zoo, so I got some strange looks when I showed up in my little "ZOO STAFF" polo and visor, but since then I've apparently proved savvy and down-to-earth enough to fit in with the workers. My day started at about nine, when I showed up to work, collected my uniform, and changed before waiting for my manager to show up and train me. He arrived at nine-thirty and showed me the basics of collecting my money, setting up my stand, and working the cash register, before introducing me to Regina, my partner.
For the first hour or so after we opened, no one bought anything. Gina and I spent the time chatting about why we had chosen to work at the zoo. It turned out that she was working her way through college as the single mother of a 19-month-old girl. She of course loved my Italy stories and wanted to hear all about living in a foreign country. Then, once she found out that I had graduated from School Without Walls, she wanted to know all about what getting an education there entailed. I tried to answer her questions as best I could--I usually have to field quite a few questions whenever I represent my former (wow, I still can't get over that) school. Sometime around eleven, I took my break and wandered around the park a little, reacquainting myself with the layout. I hadn't really been there since I left DC a while ago, so some of the newer trails were, well, new to me. After avoiding visitors because they all wanted to ask me obscure questions I couldn't answer, like "How old are the seals?", I retreated to the relative safety of my stand for another hour or so of boredom.
And then came the Boy Scouts. My God, it was as if every single Boy Scout troop in the entire US picked this one day to come to the Zoo. You'd think that they, being Boy Scouts, would be, y'know, Boy Scout-ish. Oh, no. There was no helping of little old ladies. There wasn't even any getting out of the way of little old ladies. They came, they crowded, they bought Souvenir Cups of Coke.
The groups of people tended to come all at once for some reason; I don't understand exactly why. The fact remains, however, that we would have no business for a quarter- or half-hour, and would subsequently be inundated by customers whose purpose in life seemed to run along the lines of, "Let's see how long we can stand in line staring at what they sell here before arriving at the window without having made up our minds."
By the end of the day, I had been standing for eight hours and could barely make it to the bus stop or from the bus stop home. As I write this, I can barely force my eyes to focus on the screen--the letters keep going fuzzy, disappearing, reappearing. I want nothing more than to curl up and sleep deeply, but I can't do that yet. If I sleep now, my sleep cycle will be messed up for the next few days, which is all kinds of uncool.
Oh, and while I was waiting at the bus stop for the H2 homeward, I met a man from El Salvador who asked me if I went to church. "Sometimes," I said.
"I go from three months ago," he said with a heavy accent. "I don't like this DC. Too much violence, and the men with the guns and attacking the women. My friends tell me, 'José, come to our party on Sunday,' and I tell them, 'No, I have to go to church.'
"They all, 'Church, man, why you go to church?' And I tell them, because He," and here he pointed toward the sky, "He keep me from need. I give him this," he laid a hand over his heart, "and he tell me I don't need nothing."
"That's interesting," I said, hoping he would continue to talk. I love meeting strange people at bus stops and Metro stations.
"Three months ago," he said, "my ex-girlfriend learn from someone that I seen another girl. I said, 'I didn't see no other girl--where you hear this rumors? You my girl--no other girl.' But she kick me out of the house, so I call my cousin and I'm like, 'Hey man, can I stay with you?' and he said, 'Sure.'
"So I walk to his place, but on the way, two men attack me and punch me in the face and in the side," he continued, reenacting the beating in case I wasn't quite forming a picture in my head. "They beat me and I ask them what they want and they's like, 'We want your wallet, man' and I had $200 in my wallet but I give it to them."
He went on to explain how the beating had shown him that only the church could save the evil ways of DC and the Hispanic men therein. I kept waiting for the point, for the moment where he'd sum it all up with a, "And this is why you should give me money," but that end never appeared. Instead, he chattered at me until my bus came, then waved at me, hopped on his bicycle, and pedaled off down the street.
On another (random) note, my relatively recent love for 70s and early 80s punk disturbs me. I'm the least punk-ish person you'll ever meet, but I can't stop listening to these bands. And I've been researching. Me + Research = Badness. But seriously, I'd give anything to have experienced the punk movement as it was actually happening. The slightly more than a decade-and-a-half that I've lived has been uninteresting musically. Of course, there are huge exceptions to that rule, but most of the bands I listen to now existed only before I was born or were formed at some point in the last few years of the 80s.
I'm apparently the only white kid working for the entire zoo, so I got some strange looks when I showed up in my little "ZOO STAFF" polo and visor, but since then I've apparently proved savvy and down-to-earth enough to fit in with the workers. My day started at about nine, when I showed up to work, collected my uniform, and changed before waiting for my manager to show up and train me. He arrived at nine-thirty and showed me the basics of collecting my money, setting up my stand, and working the cash register, before introducing me to Regina, my partner.
For the first hour or so after we opened, no one bought anything. Gina and I spent the time chatting about why we had chosen to work at the zoo. It turned out that she was working her way through college as the single mother of a 19-month-old girl. She of course loved my Italy stories and wanted to hear all about living in a foreign country. Then, once she found out that I had graduated from School Without Walls, she wanted to know all about what getting an education there entailed. I tried to answer her questions as best I could--I usually have to field quite a few questions whenever I represent my former (wow, I still can't get over that) school. Sometime around eleven, I took my break and wandered around the park a little, reacquainting myself with the layout. I hadn't really been there since I left DC a while ago, so some of the newer trails were, well, new to me. After avoiding visitors because they all wanted to ask me obscure questions I couldn't answer, like "How old are the seals?", I retreated to the relative safety of my stand for another hour or so of boredom.
And then came the Boy Scouts. My God, it was as if every single Boy Scout troop in the entire US picked this one day to come to the Zoo. You'd think that they, being Boy Scouts, would be, y'know, Boy Scout-ish. Oh, no. There was no helping of little old ladies. There wasn't even any getting out of the way of little old ladies. They came, they crowded, they bought Souvenir Cups of Coke.
The groups of people tended to come all at once for some reason; I don't understand exactly why. The fact remains, however, that we would have no business for a quarter- or half-hour, and would subsequently be inundated by customers whose purpose in life seemed to run along the lines of, "Let's see how long we can stand in line staring at what they sell here before arriving at the window without having made up our minds."
By the end of the day, I had been standing for eight hours and could barely make it to the bus stop or from the bus stop home. As I write this, I can barely force my eyes to focus on the screen--the letters keep going fuzzy, disappearing, reappearing. I want nothing more than to curl up and sleep deeply, but I can't do that yet. If I sleep now, my sleep cycle will be messed up for the next few days, which is all kinds of uncool.
Oh, and while I was waiting at the bus stop for the H2 homeward, I met a man from El Salvador who asked me if I went to church. "Sometimes," I said.
"I go from three months ago," he said with a heavy accent. "I don't like this DC. Too much violence, and the men with the guns and attacking the women. My friends tell me, 'José, come to our party on Sunday,' and I tell them, 'No, I have to go to church.'
"They all, 'Church, man, why you go to church?' And I tell them, because He," and here he pointed toward the sky, "He keep me from need. I give him this," he laid a hand over his heart, "and he tell me I don't need nothing."
"That's interesting," I said, hoping he would continue to talk. I love meeting strange people at bus stops and Metro stations.
"Three months ago," he said, "my ex-girlfriend learn from someone that I seen another girl. I said, 'I didn't see no other girl--where you hear this rumors? You my girl--no other girl.' But she kick me out of the house, so I call my cousin and I'm like, 'Hey man, can I stay with you?' and he said, 'Sure.'
"So I walk to his place, but on the way, two men attack me and punch me in the face and in the side," he continued, reenacting the beating in case I wasn't quite forming a picture in my head. "They beat me and I ask them what they want and they's like, 'We want your wallet, man' and I had $200 in my wallet but I give it to them."
He went on to explain how the beating had shown him that only the church could save the evil ways of DC and the Hispanic men therein. I kept waiting for the point, for the moment where he'd sum it all up with a, "And this is why you should give me money," but that end never appeared. Instead, he chattered at me until my bus came, then waved at me, hopped on his bicycle, and pedaled off down the street.
On another (random) note, my relatively recent love for 70s and early 80s punk disturbs me. I'm the least punk-ish person you'll ever meet, but I can't stop listening to these bands. And I've been researching. Me + Research = Badness. But seriously, I'd give anything to have experienced the punk movement as it was actually happening. The slightly more than a decade-and-a-half that I've lived has been uninteresting musically. Of course, there are huge exceptions to that rule, but most of the bands I listen to now existed only before I was born or were formed at some point in the last few years of the 80s.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-23 08:27 pm (UTC)