Teenagers Are Mean Jerks
In a high profile customer service job like I have workin’ the “Whack ‘em Cats” booth at Badger Boy Carnival Extravaganza and Hootenanny I gets many types of customers. Most rubes are of the garden verity middle class zombie with the 3.2 young’uns, vacant stare and the glorious perpetual open wallet.
Then we’ve got the old codgers gimping after the grandson/daughter and spoiling Bobby/Mary rotten to make up for the horrible joke of parenting they did on their own ankle-biters, but that’s a story for a much later time.
But Mother Mary beans on toast, the one “customer” that’ll strike fear inta’ the most seasoned carnie is the rowdy teenager.
The typical scenario starts with three to four teenage boys and the occasional token female for the alpha-teen to molest while tormenting good honest carnie folk. So the three to four nazi rejects converge on the “Whack ‘em Cats” bellowing over emphasizing grunts of “Whack ‘em” while violently making jerking motions with their hands. Once they’ve finish congratulatin’ each other about how witty they are they slowly turn their slanted brows and dim eyes to me signaling the real torment is about to begin.
I’ved learned a long ago to ditch my usually caller pitch of “try your luck and whack a cat”. As it usually lead to an oversized Garfield crammed down my gullet, so I’ve adopted a much safer approach. Before the hairy knuckled teen can utter his first insult, which in all cases is “So, you like to whack cats huh.”, I look ‘em straight in the eye, puff out my chest and cry like a little girl who just found out her cat got hit by a car. I bawl so whimperingly pathetic that dogs howl to it. A hissy fit any four year old would be proud of and with that the teenagers slink away in such obvious disgust as to never return again.
Now I know it’s down right cowardly and painfully pathetic to pitch a fit of such magnitude to get out of a beatin’, but you didn’t see what they did to Mel when they caught him in his little cowboy outfit.
Then we’ve got the old codgers gimping after the grandson/daughter and spoiling Bobby/Mary rotten to make up for the horrible joke of parenting they did on their own ankle-biters, but that’s a story for a much later time.
But Mother Mary beans on toast, the one “customer” that’ll strike fear inta’ the most seasoned carnie is the rowdy teenager.
The typical scenario starts with three to four teenage boys and the occasional token female for the alpha-teen to molest while tormenting good honest carnie folk. So the three to four nazi rejects converge on the “Whack ‘em Cats” bellowing over emphasizing grunts of “Whack ‘em” while violently making jerking motions with their hands. Once they’ve finish congratulatin’ each other about how witty they are they slowly turn their slanted brows and dim eyes to me signaling the real torment is about to begin.
I’ved learned a long ago to ditch my usually caller pitch of “try your luck and whack a cat”. As it usually lead to an oversized Garfield crammed down my gullet, so I’ve adopted a much safer approach. Before the hairy knuckled teen can utter his first insult, which in all cases is “So, you like to whack cats huh.”, I look ‘em straight in the eye, puff out my chest and cry like a little girl who just found out her cat got hit by a car. I bawl so whimperingly pathetic that dogs howl to it. A hissy fit any four year old would be proud of and with that the teenagers slink away in such obvious disgust as to never return again.
Now I know it’s down right cowardly and painfully pathetic to pitch a fit of such magnitude to get out of a beatin’, but you didn’t see what they did to Mel when they caught him in his little cowboy outfit.
posted by Captain Mog at 10:35 AM
2 Comments:
Wow... well that certainly is one way to go. And I say kudos to you for being so dang forthcoming about it. It's clear you are one exceedingly truthful carnie.
It's the carnie way, gunslinger. That and if I told it different Mel would call me out and post his own blog about when wet mysel... erp. Nevermind, it's the carnie way.
Post a Comment
<< Home