Worker Bee

Bee Pollen increases your sex drive and is supposed to make you energetic all around. That is what I used to tell my customers at Frozen Fusion. Along with Echinacea, ginseng, calcium, astragalus, ginkgo baloba and a host of other powdered vitamins to excite the frozen fruit drinks, I was forced to explain the various powers of our boosts to the patrons of an independent smoothie shop on Telegraph.

Curiously enough, when I informed the smoothie buyers of the various benefits of Bee Pollen, the male patrons tended to opt for other dietary supplements, while the female smoothie drinkers would often perk up and request a heaping spoon full of arousing pollination. That was probably the only interesting event that took place during my time at that little hellhole. I used to stand there for eight hours without a break while my supervisor and coworker got stoned in the stock room.

I did time at the fast fruit shop on the weekends of my senior year in High School. The manager was such a pot head that he did not even know that I was 16 and not a student at UC Berkeley. “Dude, so like, what’s your major?” He asked me one day and when I told him high schools were majorless, he said, “Oh man, I totally thought you were, like, a student at CAL, and stuff.”

A few weeks into my life as a slave to frozen fruit drinks, I got jobs at the City library and at the City Fire Station and left the now defunct, Frozen Fusion. Going to school full time and working two part time jobs was, as I soon learned, slightly impossible for people who have to sleep, so after a few weeks I quit my job at the Fire Station and worked as a teen intern at the North Branch of the Berkeley Public Library.

I was used to working and never imagined what life would be like without a job. One time, when I was 12 I asked my mom for some money and she told me to get a job. So, the next day I went to school and checked the student newspaper for openings. I got a job cleaning the lawns of my junior high for $4.60 on Mondays at 7 a.m. I later earned an extra $2.00 a week cleaning the crock pots for nacho lunch sales. Although the economy was better then, seven bucks a week only got a girl so far in the mid-90’s.

The next year, when I was 13 I lied and said I was 14 and got a job selling newspapers for the San Francisco Chronicle. One did not earn money by the hour, one had to walk door to door and sell subscriptions to the Bay’s famous periodical. After 40 hours of work I had clocked an astonishing $32 in commission and thus ended my brief interlude as a sucker for the Chronicle. About seven years later I won a first class trip to Hawaii through the SF Chronicle, so now I call it even.

In high school I had all kinds of jobs. There were the steady ones: working at Vista Community College. This money never seemed to be enough for me and so I got gigs working in the catering industry. Truthfully, I hate catering with a bloody passion, but it’s an easy way to rack in some dough.

It’s not the catering that I hate per se, it’s serving people. Mainly in concession stands this does not irritate me as much as banquets. During basketball and baseball seasons, I would go after school and work the stands at Haas Pavilion at UC Berkeley and at the New Pacbell park in San Francisco. These jobs were annoying but they motivated me to want more.

The worse gig I ever had was as a server for a 3000 guest reunion at Stanford. I had to wear a white tuxedo and bowtie. In addition to this, I was ordered to carry trays of flaming cakes and almost caught my hair on fire. When I blew out of the flames in fear of igniting my tresses, the Stanford alumni yelled at me, and asked, “Do you know how much we paid for this dinner? Why are our candles not lit? ” Luckily for them I needed that money for the prom, otherwise I would have told them what they could have done with those candles.

In 2000 when I graduated from high school I got a career position at the library and worked there until I left for grad school at UCLA. When I used to tell people that I worked at the library, they often asked, “Is it boring and quiet?” It is often difficult to sum up the experiences at my branch but boring and quiet are two adjectives that most definitely do not apply. My seven years as a worker at North Branch is a story in and of itself. In addition to the interesting people employed in the library industry, are the very curious characters who frequent public libraries. I will tell you more about that later.

Whenever I get a new job, I like to track down a smoothie with bee pollen to celebrate for old times sake. This libation helps me remember that no matter how irritating a job may be, it could always get worse. Luckily, now that I’m teaching again this quarter, I have yet another reason to jump up and down and thank Deus that I don’t have to ever serve another smoothie in my life.