I remember back to my 16th summer, and my first summer job. I had officially joined the work force. I, like most of my friends , was thrilled to have been hired to work full time for the summer. dreams of a car, new clothes, and the latest in rock albums danced in my head. Of course I was making the grand sum of $1.60 an hour, but that was a buck sixty more then I would have had otherwise.
My grand entrance into the world of the employed took place at our local Woolworth's 5 &10. We had a dress code that consisted of either a dress or skirt, and an aqua colored smock/jacket, complete with name tag. Jeans were strictly verboten! My first day on the job, I learned how to make keys and cut shades to order. Life skills! The old cash registers were nothing more than glorified adding machines, so any sales tax (5% back then) had to be calculated in your head, and added to the total. Once the total was figured, you would mentally "count up" the change due back to your customer. Mental math gymnastics.
A few weeks into my "career", the older lady who ran the pet department was taking her vacation, and I was transferred to that department for the week. I lasted one day, and it is a day that will go down in infamy. The pet department didn't carry dogs or cats, however they did a thriving trade in the birds, fish, and hamster department. My first morning on the job, I was informed by my boss, mean old Mr. D., that all the cages needed to be cleaned out. One glance was enough to convince me that this was obviously an annual event , and would take place the one day a year, when the "new Kid" filled in for summer vacations. I was looking at 5 cages of year old bird poop!
Well a job is a job, and I got to it. Unfortunately one bird, a blue parakeet, made a break for the border and escaped. Oops! There wasn't much I could do, as the ceilings in the store were easily over 25 feet high, and my personal ability to fly was non-existent. Oh well, I thought and continued on scrubbing cages. Shortly thereafter, there seemed to be quite the commotion coming from the front of the store. The snack counter to be exact. Apparently, as was related to me by mean ole Mr. D. (who was now sporting a pulsing blood vessel on his forehead) my "Free" bird, had decided to try log walking on the hot dogs that were spinning on the hot rollers. Needless to say the patrons and waitresses were not impressed. I mean lighten up, this was decades before we even heard of bird flu! I was told in no uncertain terms, that I had to recapture that bird before the close of business. I was armed with a 5 inch net used for scooping fish, and as I mentioned earlier, the ceilings were at least 25 feet high. In other words, Mission Impossible.
As I was pondering my predicament, we received a fish delivery. When the fish guy comes, he tosses plastic bags containing water and fish, into the large aquariums. I finished up cage detail, and started dumping the fish out of their bags into their respective tanks. I was almost finished, when a blood curdling shriek erupted at the Hamster pen. It seems that one of the hamsters had given birth, and her cell mates were engaging in baby hamstercide in full view of customers. People came running, as I bravely scooped the new mother and children to safety in a separate pen. Mean ole Mr. D. was not impressed.
After all the hoopla died down, I returned to my fish duties, when uh-oh.....all the fish I had previously dumped into their new home, were doing a particularly gruesome back float. I learned later, that the fish delivery guy was not being lazy when he didn't dump the fish into the aquariums, rather he was letting the water in the bags acclimate to the water in the tanks. In this way the fish would not be shocked to death when undergoing a significant temperature change. Mean ole Mr. D. explained this to me, as I watched not only his pulsing blood vessel, but his face turn a bright magenta.
Well the cages were clean, the fish (or what was left of them) were fed, and the Hamster situation resolved. My only problem was my run away bird. I came up with, what I thought was a very crafty solution. Back then, some birds had clipped wings. They were kept in a chicken wire enclosure, with a screen window placed on top. Luckily the pen was deep enough, that none of the "clippies" could hop out. I removed the top screen, and walked to the back of the department. Sure enough my little runaway came sailing in for a quick snack. It seems that hot dogs weren't cutting it. I quickly replaced the top. Victory was mine! I thought Mean ole Mr. D. would be happy, but all he could sputter in my direction, was "that bird is a $5.00 bird, and you have him in the $1.00 pen!" " Get him where he belongs, before someone tries to buy him for a buck!"
Finally my day in the pet department came to a close. Mean ole Mr. D. transferred me back to house wares where I spent the remainder of my summer making keys and cutting shades, grateful I didn't lose my job after "Nightmare in Petville." You know, maybe he wasn't that mean after all.