king asshole, or how i learned to stop hating my boss and love my job
(revised on 5.10.08 @ 2:09am)
miller (fourth sean) was going behind my back and changing the letters around on the outside sign, without telling me that he was doing it, that i wasn’t doing it properly, or etc. this had been going on for awhile, i finally found out it was him, and i got pissy and called him on it in what must have been an aggro and unprofessional way.
he mentioned in the managers log that i had done that. the next night, while i’m at box office (front of the front counter, just inches behind where the metal grate rolled out at night to seal us off from the building proper, essentially the very frontlines of the establishment, the first thing a customer in general and the few we had at the time in specific, would see), the g-force rumbles out from the back, and looms next to me, and starts berating me like a child for getting all uppity with the assistant manager the previous evening.
now, at the time, i hadn’t even realized that miller had been upset by what i’d said, so at first i had no idea what the hell the g-man was talking about. he said something smarmy about being disrespectful to miller, i asked him what he was referring to, he replied ‘oh, so we’re going to play that game, are we?’, i locked up, he berated me in front of the rest of the staff and several customers for berating miller in front of the staff and several customers, and i went home early so that i wouldn’t cry or break his face.
ah, hypocritical behaviour coupled with treating your employees like you treat your children. good times. one wonders why i stayed at that job as long as i did, and then i remember. free movies, cool people and hot girls to work with, easy work, and i had low standards. also, i was 18-22.
honestly, i was really upset by this. thankfully, again because i was 20 at the time, therapy consisted of staying up late watching pokemon and playing half life. burninating the tri-tentacle thing in the rocket core. oh yes. slaughtering zombies. good times.
best part was that friday i apologized to miller (fourth sean) and he said he hadn’t been upset about it at all, so either he was just being polite to me, or g-man completely over-reacted. either way, i felt a lot better. which was good, because the old bastard didn’t seem to have caught that i left early because i was enraged, and not because, you know, we were overstaffed. i knew better than to bring it up. (but not to look for a better job?)
first sean was sean berry, who’s brother ian was projectionist for a long ass time. nice guy, we have pictures of him inside one of the cabinets, probably left to get a real job. second sean, simultaneously and lasting him out, was sean (possibly shaun) porter, who quickly just became porter, or portaaahhh!! and for awhile just ‘tiiieeeght!!’. porter was 17-19, rave-happy, big headphones and a silver jacket, got on well with hunter rose. also nice guy. (95% of the staff the entire time i was there were nice people, it was an extraordinarily satisfying place to work in that regard). third sean was me, and aside from the occasional ‘brother of bread’ because rye bread had worked there for a year before i started, i was mostly sean patrick (middle name), and that was fine.
eventually porter left too and i was the only sean, and just became sean. that was nice, until sean miller, fourth sean, showed up as assistant manager. the first three of us had all been vest monkeys running conc and box, and porter did some proj as well, but miller wore a suit and worked in the office and was a chump. he was a big beefy frat kid and he drunk himself to oblivion with startling regularity and he was loads of fun to work with most of the time. some memorable miller moments off the top of my head.
miller - when’s that polock movie coming out?
cheyne - i assume you mean pollack, as in jackson pollack, and not polock as in the racial slur?
miller - … what?
miller - hey everybody! (obviously drunk, swinging by afterhours while several of us vest monkeys were hanging out outside on thursday, doing the letters, smoking, flirting, and just generally being young)
all - hey, miller.
miller - man, i gotta get going.
miller (the next day) - what are you talking about, i didn’t come by last night.
(four people) - yeah you did, you were totally wasted.
miller - no, man, you’re making that up.
he also told the g-force one time that the heavy bandages on his forearm were due to a cut from broken glass, then revealed to several of us that he’d been at a bar with some friends, supported them in a bar fight, they all ran off, and then noticed the knife in his arm and took him to the hospital, and he missed a week of work.
don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t a bad guy, just bad at life, as it were, as such people frequently are. anyways, lots of fun to work with, not least of which because he HATED that we all called him miller.
miller - no, look, i’ve been with the company for like eight years.
me - no, man, i’ve been here at the koin for two or three years (i forget when this was). you’ve been here for like six months. i have seniority at this location.
miller - but i’ve been with the company longer. that trumps you.
cheyne - no, man, it’s local first. no-one here cares how long you worked at some other theater. dude’s been here longer, he gets to be just sean. you’re miller.
miller - dammit!
at that point, being just sean was like tenure.
cheyne complicated matters by nearly being fifth sean, but it was okay, because he had both professional competence AND human decency. a rare combination, apparently.
i worked concessions for the first year, and then ‘upgraded’ to box. it was easier in that you moved around less. we were all lazy college-aged kids so that counted? at first we could all keep our sketchbooks at the ready, and kill any minutes that came along, but after awhile, management started making noise about ‘professionalism’ and that had to cut back. mostly we just stowed them under the counter and waited for the hour-plus breaks between sets. good LORD, was that nice, having a job where you busted ass for an hour and a half, then did nothing for another hour and half, then repeat. it was like we were all in the same classes and hung out between, every day, only instead of learning anything useful we just hustled popcorn.
so i’m working concessions, not that bad actually. slow night. second meghan told me that nathaniel’s band samizdat was playing at disjecta, which turned out to be fifteen blocks from my (parents) house, so i scrapped my original plan of heading over to billy’s concrete box in the ondine and watching him and joe smoke pot for two hours. the show was going to be absurdly late, but since i could just walk home in fifteen minutes, i went for it.
honestly, it was almost entirely because of meghan. actually, it was probably entirely because i just wanted to hang out with her. there was a horrible pattern on my part of crushing hopelessly on the girls at the koin who were completely taken or out of my league/age range. meghan was eighteen, and had that kind of preppy hipster retro sex kitten look, with the horned rim glasses and the vintage sweaters and the musical knowledge, and it was completely working on me. of course, she was dating a guy in a band, and i was a pudgy 20yo stereotype who lived in the basement, but a man can dream, god damnit.
amber was my first koin crush, and basically everyone who worked there was also crushing on her. she was bubbly and infectiously happy and adorable and had thick puffy strawberry blonde curls. there was actually a time when six of us were all riding home in orlando’s van, and we all insisted that amber be dropped off first, so that none of us would miss any time with her. god.
there was also first megan who was the worldly wiseass, mel who was cool and tough, alicia who was tiny and cute and dating a punk rocker, christine who always seemed to be wearing a white buttondown a couple sizes too small and who went away to college after three months, and jess who was 24 and too cool for any of us. several other girls i can’t remember specifically, and then another girl who i really really liked, who was in the process of become a guy. so that was awkward all around.
and then there was second meghan’s friend christine, who worked at elephants delicatessen, and supplemented the most absurdly lax period in my koin career by bringing gigantic bags of sandwiches and cookies and other deli goods over on thursday nights. good lord. brandon, our evening manager at the time, was completely cool if the entire staff, which on thursday evenings was me on box, nathaniel or nate rispler or r2k on proj, and second meghan on conc, went downstairs to the picnic tablesout front, as long as we took the handset and he could page it, and thereby us, when he needed us.
otherwise, he’d just sit at the counter reading, while we’d be cool and hang out and play chess and talk about the dune books, which we were all reading as a kind of book club, for hours between sets. christine showed up with grub, and frequently some extra employees who weren’t working that night would show up and chillax, as well as the extra projectionist to help with changeout. it was a regular affair for probably six months. god. the best times.
anyways, christine was second meghan’s school chum, and she’d spent time living in south america and spoke portuguese. i wanted badly to sex them both. at the time, i was fairly well 99% confident that i had no chance with any girl, least of all the girls i liked. in retrospect, i imagine my chances were much greater, but hindsight is only good for feeling bad about yourself after the fact.
right. so second meghan, who i was totally crushing on, was going to nathaniel’s show right in my neighborhood, therefore i was going to nathaniel’s show. ironically this was not the only exciting thing to happen this evening. first, benicio del toro came into the koin and saw a movie.
now, all of portland was in love with benicio at this point. he and tommy lee jones were filming the hunted, and they’d been spotted all over town. the mercury put out a glorious benicio as jesus cover. we’d been hoping for one or the other to swing through for the entire shoot, and thing were winding down. we’d missed the sublime concept of benicio coming in while we were playing two benicio movies, snatch and traffic. but still. the concept appealed to our base natures.
see, i think i had four real celebrity encounters at the koin.
koin six news people - hey, i work downstairs. i’m on local television.
koin kids - whatever, dude. little man (actual nickname) who’s dad drops him off here as daycare, and we’re okay with that because we let him watch foreign films and art movies, gets more of our respect than you. and the guy in a wheelchair who lives a block away and sees everything we play. that guy’s rad.
country stars visiting the country station across the lobby - hello.
koin kids - who are you again? shirley manson was in once. i only heard about that, but it was awesome by proxy.
danny glover - hey, two for something or other.
koin kid 1 - … holy crap, you’re danny glover!
koin kids 2+ - oh wow dude, danny glover! i loved you in lethal weapon(s)!
danny glover - can’t i just watch a movie with my wife without being famous for one night?
koin kid 1 - … no?
danny glover - dammit!
mrs. glover - don’t mind him, he’s just feeling a little famous tonight.
porter - dude, is that the guy from viper?
me - i think that is the guy from viper!
joe aster from viper - can i get some popcorn and a soda or whatever i ordered that night?
me - sure.
porter - excuse me, but are you an actor?
joe aster from viper (perks up noticably) - i am! (walks smiling into theater)
me - wow. kevin is a huge viper fan. i should call him.
porter - or not.
me - yeah, maybe i’ll just get an autograph instead. that’d be wierd, wouldn’t it? ‘hi, i don’t work here, but i heard you were here and i love your show.’
me (after the show) - excuse me, i was wondering if i could get an autograph for my friend? he’s a big fan of the show.
joe aster from viper - sure! no problem. (he maybe doesn’t get this that often? he hadn’t actually been on viper in a couple of years…)
gus van sant - can i get a ticket to whatever, all the time?
koin kid 1 - sure.
koin kid 2 - that guy looked awful gus-van-santy to me.
koin kid 1 - well yeah. dude’s in all the time.
koin kid 2 - oh. i think i’ve seen him in before.
koin kid 1 - nice guy. love his work.
meanwhile, benicio had been filming on the hawthorne bridge, just up the street from us, and at a fountain literally across the street from us. it was more suprising that he hadn’t shown up yet. so then he did. and it was wild, because none of us said anything, we all just quietly looked up at box office and noticed who was standing there, all at once. and it was like, hey, that guy looks like benicio del toro. then he spoke and bam. it took all our efforts not to freak out. or call cheyne, a huge benicio fan, and rub it in his face.
benicio was well prepared, with a gorgeous girl on his arm. he saw calle 54, a documentary about cuban jazz we’d been trying to get people to watch all week. he ordered movie bites, without having to ask me ‘what kind of ice cream do you have’ like all the normal people. he got a pepsi, she got a diet, and away they went. and we were all giddy for hours. it was ridiculously awesome.
In retrospect, he probably saw the shock in our eyes, and is probably used to it, but to ME it was a pretty cool thing. Now when people ask about Calle 54, I say: ‘it’s a documentary about cuban jazz. Benicio Del Toro saw it the other night.’
anywho. called billy to let him know i wasn’t stopping by, he didn’t care that benicio had been in, joe was already there, i knew he was already stoned. no big. he reminded me that scifi was doing a farscape ‘chain reaction!’ that night that i’d forgotten to set a tape for, but i decided not to care about four glorious episodes of farscape back to back. (i did care, but there was nothing to be done.)
the ironic thing about working at the koin wasn’t that i didn’t smoke, it was that i didn’t start. everyone else did, they went on flagrant smoke breaks between sets, leaving me guarding the counter and having to pee, almost instantly, every time. it wasn’t until brandon started working evenings that i was able to go on mass breaks with the rest of the crew, and even though we were in the ridiculously plush koin tower smoking lounge (red carpeted walls, red ultrastuffed couches) or outside and everyone was smoking constantly, i still didn’t. i blame my parents.
at the time, i did, at least. they were hippies, they didn’t lie about it, they discouraged drugs. dad had been an alcoholic, he stopped drinking and started smoking. smoking was never cool. of course, that’s also, and probably primarily, because i was a gigantic nerd in high school. if none of your friends smoke or drink or do drugs, there’s no peer pressure to avoid in the first place. then you get to college or a downtown arthouse movie theater job and everybody smokes and drinks and most smoke pot as well, but you just choose not to.
surrounded by smokers but i never started. built up enough tolerance to sit in the lounge or at the table, but never started.
so. second meghan and i closed up and caught tri-met over to the club. thankfully i went with her or i’d never have found the place, or had the nerve to go in. did i mention that at 20, i’d never been to a show before, or that the only other show i’ve been to since (just turned 27) was also a friend of mine playing at a noise show, in the exact same venue, their last night before shutting down? (actually, i’ve seen darby o’gill a couple times as well.)
wasn’t my scene, but that wasn’t why i was there. i wanted to see nathaniel rock, because meghan was there. wasn’t what i was expecting either. we walked in and the first band was already doing their thing, it was so loud nobody could talk, and there was no dancing, just rows of crap metal chairs. whatever. sat down behind jess and wrote in my pocket notebook that benicio had been in. she wrote back ‘you’re shitting me’. cheyne wasn’t there to brag at, he bailed out early because he was like 30 and old. no other koin kids had turned up.
i didn’t mind no dancing but couple that with no talking and i didn’t know what to do. thankfully, orlando had told us the story of what happened when we went with alicia to see her boyfriend’s punk band. here’s orlando, the nicest guy in the world, surrounded by people in leather and studs and loud punk rock and it’s awkward across the board. until he pulls out his sketchbook and starts drawing people and that breaks the ice, and suddenly people are like ‘wow, that’s amazing’ and he’s his usual ‘no, it is no good for looking at’. dude went to art school for months, bailed, came back with nothing. he thought it was all crap. ah well.
i spent most of the show on a couch in the back sketching ideas for my crappy webcomics i was plotting at the time that were crap and i’m glad i never did and thereby don’t have to own up to. (i guess that worked out in the long run?) actually, reviewing old notes, i’m surprised at how many good bits i had that i forgot about. if i’d started, it would have become good eventually, etc. no more hindsight.
nathaniel’s band samizdat came on and he’s all bono, strutting, playing the audience of like 20 people. there’d been nearly 30 for the previous act but seven of them were actually in samizdat, so that dwindled things. it was totally rad. it was interesting because nathaniel and his buddy, who worked at excalibur for awhile, and the drummer kept switching instruments around between songs. also, one of the keyboardists was distractingly hot. i tried not to stare at her the whole show and largely failed.
i tried to sketch her, but orlando and i realized in comparing sketchbooks at the time that while he was amazing at drawing what he sees, i was crap at that. conversely, i spent all my time imagining stuff and drawing robots and spaceships and such, and orlando wasn’t as comfortable with that. so i tried, and failed, where orlando would have nailed it.
half the crowd left, but second meghan, who lived only three blocks away, and i stayed, and nathaniel stayed, and then nice nice came on and rocked some more, basically for samizdat and friends. oh well.
they finished up at 2am, worried about waking the neighbors, and we all ended up just hanging around out front for a couple of hours. watched a couple of guys attempt to remove a girls arm cast with tin snips and a rusty hacksaw. no blood was spilled, after twenty minutes and much cursing and effort, she revealed a pale pale wrist. the whole ordeal was almost worth the price of admission itself.
spent an hour or so talking to second meghan about working at the koin, the horrors of the g-man, family life, and so on. this was around the time i was starting to realize that having both parents, happily married, and all my aunts and uncles the same, was and is fairly unusual. it was also strange working with such a spread of ages, when i’d spent all of high school hanging out with my classmates and a couple of underclassmen. i was 20, half the staff was 18, half was 24+, management ranged from that up to g-man at 60ish.
in the original post, here i commented on the contrast between miller, a 22ish frat drunk, and second meghan, ‘who’s 18 but WAY more mature than that. I talk to her and she’s not like all the girls I knew in high school; she’s smart and worldly and smokes but knows better anyways: lives life, has fun, but she’s responsible and doesn’t get all manic depressive’ and good god was i lame back then. this is why i’m rewriting my old posts.
she did have a solid head on her shoulders, actually, it’s what i found so attractive about her. that, and she was hot. i can appreciate both. i always felt underqualified to be her friend though, since she was only 18 and more worldly than i at the ripe age of 20.
then i gushed about all the girls i’d worked with, bemoaned that none of them were single, wah wah, i’ll spare you that.
Christine was just insanely beautiful: it was hard not to just watch her all shift. But she moved away to college after working at the KOIN for like three months.
i stand by that though. she was distractingly cute. i felt like a complete ass every time i worked with her. i probably was.
Oh well. I just need to get out more and fscking meet people. But it’s nearly impossible to meet people at college unless you live on campus, and if you’re not 21, you can’t get into the cool shows. (the show at Disjecta was all ages, but they had beer: is that legal? Whatever…) And even when I do turn 21, am I gonna go to bars and not drink?
youth angst oh noes! 19/20 is a wierd age to be. you can’t drink, unless you want to, and then you can acquire the stuff. but you shouldn’t. and you can’t see shows, if you’re into that, unless you want to, and then you can fake it. but you shouldn’t. it’s like, the restrictions aren’t stopping the people you want them to restrict. i digress. wasn’t my scene, so my angst was different. ‘how am i going to meet girls if i’m never going to hang out in singles bars because i don’t drink’ which sound ridiculous on it’s face, but not in a way i could appreciate then.
also, i was only barely ‘in college’ at the time, i was taking either one class or i was on hiatus for the first time.
But that’s life. I shouldn’t end this on a down note, it was really a good good night. Got things patched up at work, sort of met Benicio Del Toro, went to my first club, and saw a friend’s band play. Plus I hung out with Meghan for a couple hours, and sure, there’s no romantic potential, but she’s still awesome so no loss. And it’s better than watching Billy get stoned.
god, i was an idiot. ‘there’s no romantic potential’. not with that attitude, you dipstick! at least i didn’t mind just being friends?
then i closed out on a space ghost quote.
space ghost - I think you forgot to pack something.
zorak - what?
sg - this destructo ray.
zorak - erm…I don’t want it.
sg - oh, I think you need this destructo ray.
and that was my first post on this blog. a rambly, embarrassingly frank, stream of consciousness jumble posted at 8 in the morning the following monday.
i was on a really sweet schedule at the time, working evenings from around five to ten, staying up all night, going to bed at six in the morning, getting up at three or four and going to work. i wouldn’t mind switching to a night schedule, but i doubt i’ll get a job again where i can work four to six hours a day and earn enough to get by, until i’m too old to enjoy it. still, i had a good run.
when i’m a professional writer i’ll be able to declare my own schedule.
