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When I was seventeen years old, I got my first "real" job. I became an activities counsellor for Mactaquac Provincial Park. Despite what was told to me during training, I was a babysitter. It was my responsibility to keep kids occupied while their parents played golf, communed with nature, or had wild and kinky tent sex.
One of my supervisors was a power-tripping, vindictive, self-centred, and abusive woman named Mary. If anyone did anything without her express permission, they were punished. However, if they didn't do something that needed to be done because she wasn't there to give permission, they were punished for that, too. It was a lose-lose situation.
Mary had some very strange ideas about me. The strangest was her belief that I was an alcoholic who drank on the job. Considering that at that point, I'd had maybe two or three boozey drinks in my entire life, and none of them at work, I was and still am curious as to where she'd ever picked up that idea.
The campground was home to many longterm campers. One of the regulars was a boy not much younger than me. He was going through his angsty years, and coped with rage by punching walls. One day, after hitting the wall especially hard, he approached me with a sheepish expression. "I, uh, kinda banged my hand up good. Can you bandage it?"
After looking at his bleeding scraped-up knuckles and making sure he could still move everything all right, I got out the first aid kit. I poured on the peroxide, watched it fizz for a while, then put on a cotton pad and bandaged the whole thing up with a breathable wrap tape. It wasn't the prettiest bandage job, but it kept the dirt out.
Later on, Mary somehow found out I'd wrapped his hand and chewed me out. "Don't you know you can be SUED for doing that? You don't have first aid certification! What if his hand gets infected? Don't you know you could be causing more damage than he had in the first place?"
I told her that washing and wrapping a bleeding hand was the right thing to do, first aid certification or no, and that if someone asked me to bandage a cut in the future, that I'd do it again.
She ordered me not to do such a thing, and reluctantly, I agreed.
A few days later, a little girl fell and cut her leg. When she asked me to fix it, I told her I couldn't, but said she should wash it off, and then I'd give her a bandaid.
Mary found out about that, and ragged me out for not taking care of the little girl.
Sigh....
Mactaquac Park had a leash law, as in all dogs had to be kept on leashes. Except for Mary's, of course. Some people know nothing about animal behaviour, and Mary was one of them.
Her half-grown pup was the opposite of her. It was friendly, goofy, and playful. On many occasions, I reminded her of the leash law, but Mary glared at me and pretended she didn't hear. One day, I looked outside to see her pup loping around as usual. A man was walking a Great Dane puppy on a leash. Mary's dog ran straight up to it, which made the Great Dane put its tail between its legs and back up. It was obviously very nervous, and I ran out of the activity building to grab Mary's dog. But it was too late. It could tell the pup was nervous, and ran forward full steam ahead, and before I could do anything about it, the Great Dane pup bit its foot.
Mary came storming out of the building and freaked out. "Your Doberman attacked my dog! How can you have such a dangerous animal on public property!" And so on....
The only thing that came out of this incident was that Mary started occasionally leashing her dog.
Now, each employee at the park had to purchase tshirts to wear as part of our uniform. It was a white tshirt with the name of the park written on it. I kept a spare with me since I was regularly embroiled in some sort of water activity which would leave me soaked. One day, Mary commandeered one of my tshirts for her dog. I told her that I didn't want the dog to wear my shirt, as it would doubtlessly get filthy, or even ripped while the dog ran around doing dog things. But Mary won out and the shirt was soiled and permanently stained. Yay.
We often had theme parties at the park, and one of them was multicultural weekend. Mary stopped by work with a pinata, and told me I was to arrange a pinata party at noon that day. And then she tore off in her car.
I'd never used a pinata before. All I knew is that you hoisted them up in the air and had a blindfolded kid beat at it until the candy fell out. It seemed to me that this was a very dangerous thing to do, as the only thing we had that could be used as a stick were field hockey sticks. But I decided that if I worked very hard, I could keep all the crazy kids safe.
And so I set up the pinata party. One lucky kid was chosen to be the blind wielder of the stolid field hockey stick. He swung it around with great violence, and I sweat bullets while making sure all the eager children stood well back from the action. Just as he swung the winning hit, Mary returned and watched in horror. The candy spilled out of the pinata, and I screamed at the children to stay back, while I carefully took the stick from the blind kid with the wildly swinging stick.
She chewed me out for that, too.
Mary kept strange hours. Theoretically, she worked forty hours a week, but in practice, worked only about thirty. She regularly came in an hour or two late, and came and went whenever she felt like it. Being without a car, I was reliant on rides from my parents. Although work never began until 8:30 am, and sometimes my shift didn't start until 2, I was at work each morning at 6.
The first thing I had to do in the morning was set up the "goofy golf" course. Goofy golf was a thoroughly stupid game which I refuse to believe anyone enjoyed. It was a golf game smaller than regular golf, but on a much larger course than mini golf. It was played with bright orange balls and field hockey sticks. I had to traipse around the field to put up the hole markers.
One particular morning, Mary and I were to have opened the centre together. When I started my shift, Mary was nowhere to be seen, so I set up the goofy golf, opened the centre, and did all my usual duties. She strolled in around 11 and said, "I hope you didn't mark yourself down as arriving on time this morning."
"Excuse me?" I said.
"You weren't on time this morning."
"Er, yes, I was. I was here early."
"Well, you didn't answer the phone, so that means you're lying."
"No, that means I was setting up the goofy golf and couldn't answer the phone. It also means that YOU were late. Did you mark yourself down as late for today? Or yesterday? Or all of last week?"
No wonder she didn't like me.
One of my supervisors was a power-tripping, vindictive, self-centred, and abusive woman named Mary. If anyone did anything without her express permission, they were punished. However, if they didn't do something that needed to be done because she wasn't there to give permission, they were punished for that, too. It was a lose-lose situation.
Mary had some very strange ideas about me. The strangest was her belief that I was an alcoholic who drank on the job. Considering that at that point, I'd had maybe two or three boozey drinks in my entire life, and none of them at work, I was and still am curious as to where she'd ever picked up that idea.
The campground was home to many longterm campers. One of the regulars was a boy not much younger than me. He was going through his angsty years, and coped with rage by punching walls. One day, after hitting the wall especially hard, he approached me with a sheepish expression. "I, uh, kinda banged my hand up good. Can you bandage it?"
After looking at his bleeding scraped-up knuckles and making sure he could still move everything all right, I got out the first aid kit. I poured on the peroxide, watched it fizz for a while, then put on a cotton pad and bandaged the whole thing up with a breathable wrap tape. It wasn't the prettiest bandage job, but it kept the dirt out.
Later on, Mary somehow found out I'd wrapped his hand and chewed me out. "Don't you know you can be SUED for doing that? You don't have first aid certification! What if his hand gets infected? Don't you know you could be causing more damage than he had in the first place?"
I told her that washing and wrapping a bleeding hand was the right thing to do, first aid certification or no, and that if someone asked me to bandage a cut in the future, that I'd do it again.
She ordered me not to do such a thing, and reluctantly, I agreed.
A few days later, a little girl fell and cut her leg. When she asked me to fix it, I told her I couldn't, but said she should wash it off, and then I'd give her a bandaid.
Mary found out about that, and ragged me out for not taking care of the little girl.
Sigh....
Mactaquac Park had a leash law, as in all dogs had to be kept on leashes. Except for Mary's, of course. Some people know nothing about animal behaviour, and Mary was one of them.
Her half-grown pup was the opposite of her. It was friendly, goofy, and playful. On many occasions, I reminded her of the leash law, but Mary glared at me and pretended she didn't hear. One day, I looked outside to see her pup loping around as usual. A man was walking a Great Dane puppy on a leash. Mary's dog ran straight up to it, which made the Great Dane put its tail between its legs and back up. It was obviously very nervous, and I ran out of the activity building to grab Mary's dog. But it was too late. It could tell the pup was nervous, and ran forward full steam ahead, and before I could do anything about it, the Great Dane pup bit its foot.
Mary came storming out of the building and freaked out. "Your Doberman attacked my dog! How can you have such a dangerous animal on public property!" And so on....
The only thing that came out of this incident was that Mary started occasionally leashing her dog.
Now, each employee at the park had to purchase tshirts to wear as part of our uniform. It was a white tshirt with the name of the park written on it. I kept a spare with me since I was regularly embroiled in some sort of water activity which would leave me soaked. One day, Mary commandeered one of my tshirts for her dog. I told her that I didn't want the dog to wear my shirt, as it would doubtlessly get filthy, or even ripped while the dog ran around doing dog things. But Mary won out and the shirt was soiled and permanently stained. Yay.
We often had theme parties at the park, and one of them was multicultural weekend. Mary stopped by work with a pinata, and told me I was to arrange a pinata party at noon that day. And then she tore off in her car.
I'd never used a pinata before. All I knew is that you hoisted them up in the air and had a blindfolded kid beat at it until the candy fell out. It seemed to me that this was a very dangerous thing to do, as the only thing we had that could be used as a stick were field hockey sticks. But I decided that if I worked very hard, I could keep all the crazy kids safe.
And so I set up the pinata party. One lucky kid was chosen to be the blind wielder of the stolid field hockey stick. He swung it around with great violence, and I sweat bullets while making sure all the eager children stood well back from the action. Just as he swung the winning hit, Mary returned and watched in horror. The candy spilled out of the pinata, and I screamed at the children to stay back, while I carefully took the stick from the blind kid with the wildly swinging stick.
She chewed me out for that, too.
Mary kept strange hours. Theoretically, she worked forty hours a week, but in practice, worked only about thirty. She regularly came in an hour or two late, and came and went whenever she felt like it. Being without a car, I was reliant on rides from my parents. Although work never began until 8:30 am, and sometimes my shift didn't start until 2, I was at work each morning at 6.
The first thing I had to do in the morning was set up the "goofy golf" course. Goofy golf was a thoroughly stupid game which I refuse to believe anyone enjoyed. It was a golf game smaller than regular golf, but on a much larger course than mini golf. It was played with bright orange balls and field hockey sticks. I had to traipse around the field to put up the hole markers.
One particular morning, Mary and I were to have opened the centre together. When I started my shift, Mary was nowhere to be seen, so I set up the goofy golf, opened the centre, and did all my usual duties. She strolled in around 11 and said, "I hope you didn't mark yourself down as arriving on time this morning."
"Excuse me?" I said.
"You weren't on time this morning."
"Er, yes, I was. I was here early."
"Well, you didn't answer the phone, so that means you're lying."
"No, that means I was setting up the goofy golf and couldn't answer the phone. It also means that YOU were late. Did you mark yourself down as late for today? Or yesterday? Or all of last week?"
No wonder she didn't like me.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 04:19 pm (UTC)From:Did anyone like her!!!??? And how the heck did she keep her job!?
no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 04:25 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 04:24 pm (UTC)From:Just one more reason that no offspring of mine shall be punted off to camp!
How did you not go insane?!
no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 04:25 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 04:28 pm (UTC)From:Yeah, I've gone insane before...I'm still in recovery. I'm only now being allowed to use safety scissors.
Tee hee...it's be even funnier if I wasn't joking...
no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 05:10 pm (UTC)From:Reminds me of the crazy lady I worked under in the bookstore.
Thanks for the story!
no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 05:12 pm (UTC)From:Thinking about pinatas brought it all back.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 05:48 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 06:31 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 06:48 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2006-05-11 02:13 am (UTC)From: