Saturday Diary / Welcome to my summer job! Have a great day!
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Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome aboard the SeaWorld Sky Tower ...
More than 30 years later, I can still recite the spiel I memorized for my high school summer job at SeaWorld Orlando.
It's a rite of passage for many teens, that summer job dishwashing, camp counseling, retailing, ice cream scooping, lifeguarding, hamburger flipping, waitressing, babysitting, butt-sweeping, dog walking or lawn mowing.
The pay is low, the hours long and the tasks mind-numbing, but these jobs provide valuable lessons in work ethic, time management and human behavior.
And the most important lesson: That you never want to do that kind of job again.
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As we ascend to 400 feet above sea level you can see to the east, the Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral, one of the largest buildings in the world ...
I got the job at SeaWorld in the mid-'70s, just after the park had opened. For the first summer, I was assigned to the information desk, handing out maps, renting strollers, giving directions and answering every question under the hot sun. ("Where's the beer?" "Can I get a full refund if it rains?")
I learned quickly that people get grumpy when they're hot and standing in line. Which, at a park like that, was all day, every day. Didn't they come to have fun?
My most dreaded task was Stroller Czar. I'd stand at the bottom of the Shamu Stadium and tell guests -- politely -- that "for safety reasons" they were not allowed to take their strollers up the steep concrete ramps into the stadium.
The guests were not as polite. "What do ya mean? Someone will steal it!" Many families had rented Shamu strollers for their kids. For any stadium show, there'd be 200 such identical strollers lined up in front, so I could understand their concerns. But those were the rules.
As showtime neared, I felt like Lucy on the assembly line at the chocolate factory. Strollers were coming fast from every direction and I couldn't let any up the ramp. My job depended on it!
The next summer I worked at the Sky Tower. The park charged an additional fee for a six-minute ride on the two-level, rotating capsule. I think it was 75 cents on top of something like a $6.75 full-day park admission.
People were angry that they had to pay extra. They grumbled, they snarled, they cursed, but they paid anyway.
Then they had to wait -- sometimes an hour or more in the heat -- for their turn on the ride. Talk about boredom. Talk about watching the clock. Talk about aching legs. We held a hand counter -- 29 guest seats on each level. Pity the guests who missed getting in by one or two clicks. Pity us who then faced their wrath.
First Published June 11, 2011 12:00 am
