Page 108 - MN

108
The job was interesting because we'd work late and people would come in for pizza after the bars closed. I guess it was my destiny to work with drunks. One night a man and a woman came in yelling at each other. They argued all the time we made their pizza and then then took it outside and other customers came in saying they were having a huge argument outside. Then the woman came back in and we were horrified. It looked like blood all over her face and we thought he'd beaten her up. Then she got closer and we realized it was pizza sauce and anchovies. He'd thrown the pie in her face. We helped her as best we could.
I did just fine at Pizza Pete's until a new manager came in. He realized it didn't take three of us to run the place, so we'd take turns heading out for an hour or two while the other guys covered. He also introduced us to moose milk, a glass of milk with a couple shots of scotch in it. We were fucking up. One night I went to get a pizza out of the oven but missed. The paddle slipped over the crust and shoved all the topping into the back of the oven. It was a huge, smoking mess.
What we didn't know was that Pete, the owner, would send in spotters. These were people who acted like customers but reported back to him on what the employees were doing. Oh oh.
One night he came in with a new crew and fired us. He was right to do so but I blame the moose milk.
One of my parent's friends worked at Union Oil and one summer he got me a job in their warehouse. On the first day the foreman, who was 50 years old and weighed about 160 pounds, tipped a full barrel of oil on edge and rolled it on the rim over to a bunch of other barrels. Then he told me to do it and I noticed the other workers glancing over. No big deal, I thought, and tried to tip the barrel on edge. Not a chance. It was like trying to move a post. Guys were laughing and I heard remarks about smart young college kids. I kept yanking on that thing to no avail until the foreman took pity and showed me how to do it. You have to grab it on top, put your foot against the bottom and then throw all your weight backwards. Also, you have to stop it from tipping completely over, which would be really embarrassing. I got the hang of it after awhile.
I also learned to drive a fork lift. Did you know you can duplicate a bad pizza error with a forklift and a pallet full of cases of oil? Here's how. First you get overconfident and drive too fast. Then you lift up the pallet full of cases of oil and zip over to the truck that's backed up to the loading dock. You blithely speed up to the truck, not noticing that your forks are a little low and prang them into the back of the truck. You then watch with horror as all those cases of oil fly into the truck and the cans burst open.
There is no good way to clean up oil. You just get lots of rags and spend a day mopping it up. Once again there were murmurs about smart college kids.