There comes a time in every person's life when they say to themselves:
"Hey, I'm moving into a new house and the things that I need for that house cost money."
They may then say to themselves:
"Let's get a job!" (to collect money)

Like The Beatles said, "You know I work all day, to get the money, to buy you things."

Recetly, I said these things for myself and went in search of temporary employment. Hilarity ensued.

I found out through a friend of Jenn's that I could make some fast money by parking cars with a local Valt service. The pay supposedly good, and the people would not mind me working for only a month. I like cars. I like to drive cars. Ka-Pow! I thought. Instant job.

So I met with the manager guy on a Saturday to get my uniform and instructions on what to do and where to go. I was to park cars at a wedding reception at the Birmingham Museum of Art that night, and he gave me a shirt, a small carabeener with the company logo and the instructions "don't wreck any cars." Complete on the job training in less than two minutes. Quality.
When I got to the Museum I saw my co-workers. There were about ten guys, all arounf my age. They seemed nice enough. I say and talked the small talk with one of them, you know, stuff like "where do you go to school" and the like. I said I went to BSC. He looked at me, laughed, and said "you mus' beez a BrAINYack, man." Yes, the night was going to proceed like that.
Eventually some cars showed up, and I caught on fairly quickly. It was fun, almost. I drove some nice fancy cars that weren't mine, and was wearing a shirt with epilets even. I'd never done either before, really. So after about ten cars, they stopped coming. Then three huge charter buses rolled up, and all our potential customers jumped out. Every guy there, even me (it was that obvious) groaned as our tip money walked in the door, ready to get drunk and take the bus back. It ended up that about 30 cars came, and ten guys were there to park them. The more experienced guys just got up and left, not even really saying anything to our shift supervisor. After awhile it was just me, a nice guy that knoew alot about Diablo II, and the shift supervisor. We waited and waited and waited. We got there at 6pm. By 11pm I was getting tired of telling drunk girls that I didn't smoke and that they'd have to ask someone else for a light. Then, at about 11:30pm, folks atarted coming out. ALL AT ONCE. The ten guys that had parked 30 cars over a long period were now 3 trying to go get 30 all at once. We ran around like cartoons and fetched everything from BMWs to Merdedes to Volvos and every sort of SUV. You'd think that there would be some money involved with all those cars. Nope. Some people gave us nothing at all. And as I got out of one $80,000 Beamer I went for my phone in a momentary lull in the storm, to check messages. Not there. You guessed it, it fell out in the car. And the guy didn't even tip me.
So we finally got all the cars out, all the drunk people on buses, and all the sparklers (yes, a few hundred drunk people lit sparklers to send off the bride and groom in a TINY space. There was much burning.) cleaned up and were ready to split the tips and go home when we saw that the traffic cones were not picked up. The people that had set everything up had been allowed to go home earlier, and we were conned into the job. We cleaned up the cones. All of the heavy, in-the-middle-of-the-damn-street cones. Then we went and split our tips. It came out to about $25.00 per person for six hours of horrible work. Fast money. Geez.
I then walked wearily to my new car, Molly, who was parked in the middle of 19th North, all alone. All alone except for the crazy man that was jumping up and down like a monkey on my trunk. You read correctly. HE WAS JUMPING ON MY TRUNK LIKE A MONKEY. I don't know if her was trying to brake into it or if he was just crazy, but it was not good. I thought of something to say to make him stop. I finally yelled "HEY!" once I got about fifty feet from the car. He ran away. Instead of trying to call the police on the phone that was now in the front floorboard of the stingy man I had valeted earlier, I just twent back to Jennifer's house.
On the way there I enjoyed the responsiveness of the manual transmission. Random comment I know, but with no hidden meaning. I just really like my car.
When I got there Jenn was on the couch reading and I explained it all to her. Now you've heard it too. And I don't mean to be sappy or cliche or any of those things, but seeing her at the end of that day made things better.
Going back to The Beatles, "Money can't buy me love."

Such was my foray into the land of Valet parking.
I hope everyone is well (and is enjoying their jobs).

Peace,
Joe