The Good Day

As I sit here in full costume dress, waiting to dry off from the regimental sunscreen I slather on myself everyday before work, I thought it'd be a good time to update my blog.

A little behind, I know, so let's get started.

Today's the sixth day in a row I'm going to be working. Not terrible, but not great either considering Tuesday and Thursday were both ten hour days. It's a little...much, especially for someone new like me, whose training was...well I learned things, but when I officially started working, I had (and still have) a lot of questions.

But I wanted to write about yesterday, since yesterday was actually a (gasp) good day. Now, now, I don't mean to say that since I've arrived here it's been nothing but crappy days. More like really overwhelming days, as I try to grasp the way Disney's organized things while attempting to appear trained.

Yesterday, however, started off with my getting assigned to trash. Now, I know, this doesn't sound like a great way to start off a day, but you have to understand that besides the heat, the smell, and the trash factors, trash isn't necessarily a horrible thing. You get to be outside (which can be good or bad depending on the weather), you go at your own pace, unless there's a rush, and even then you can still take it a little slower, you get to wander both on-stage and off, and, perhaps one of my favorite aspects, you can have a little bit of guest interaction without them expecting food or drink or proper change from you.

So I got my trash assignment and headed out to take over from Cordelia, who was happily reassigned to Scooper at Hollywood Scoops. And then...well...I took out the trash. I noticed the park attendance seemed a little lighter. There were still plenty of people, and lines at all the food places, but the seating areas just didn't seem to overflow with people so much. Frankly, I was a bit happy, just a little bit. After a week or so of mass people wanting food and tossing trash, it was nice to have things let up just a little.

During my trash run, I happened upon an abandoned Guest bag. It was a tote bag (if that's the correct term for it), so basically an open rectangle with two large straps at the top to lift it (think vertical cloth grocery bag?). I could see it was jam-packed with all sorts of touristy park-visiting items, but "SafeD begins with Me" or so our little safety spiel goes, and I got Emilee (who was bussing and whose name I'm sure I'm spelling wrong) to look at it before she ran off to tell a manager. Word reported back to wait for about five minutes, and if nobody showed, they'd call security. After all, this innocent bag could be harboring something not so innocent.

No one showed up, and by this point Omar, who's from Mexico, had joined our little waiting party. He went to talk to a manager and returned saying that security had been called. Twenty minutes later, a guy finally showed up and proceeded to poke around in the bag and talk on a walkie talkie about heading to lost and found. I'm pretty sure they figured the bag wasn't a danger, otherwise I think they would've been there a lot sooner. I had seen one previous unattended bag left in the middle of the Tower-side eating area (as opposed to the Produce-side eating area), and security had acted a little faster and cleared more people away. But because this one was sitting on the little stone wall ledge near Fairfax Fare, I don't think they were as super concerned. While we were waiting, I happened to spot a pair of sunglasses someone had left on Fairfax's counter, and so before the security guy left, I handed them to him too. He thanked us for calling it in and went on his way. Emilee and Omar went back to bussing, I went back to trash duty, missing the shade of the bush I had been standing beneath while waiting.

Unfortunately, because of how long everything took, the trash had built up a little bit, so I spent the next little while trying to catch up. I nearly ran out of space in the garbage roller at one point, and at another time, had such a large bag of garbage I was pulling from a can, that when I tossed it into the rolling garbage holder, it proceeded to nearly tip over. I grabbed it at the last minute, but still, that's a lot of trash.

And, of course, sometimes bags are leaky. We actually put holes in them when we put them in the trashcans because it lets the air out and allows them to hold more. This does cause a little leak problem though, and the bottoms of the rolling holders sometimes end up with a puddle of soda and other garbage juices. This leads to lots of "fun" trying to hoist the bags out of the holder and into the trash compacter, especially with liquid flying everywhere and the bottoms of the bags begin soaked and not very fun to touch when they need that little extra push into the compactor.

One bag was particularly wet and I got juice backsplash. A little lot of liquid landed right on the corner of one of my lips. I finished the trash and rushed over to Rosie's/Eddies to get some water to wash my mouth out.

I did trash for a few hours, managing to get it under control and talking to a woman about her very nice-looking hat, which, it turns out, she got at Kmart. Then, just before I was going to make another round, Emilee found me and told me there had been a slight mix-up. Apparently I was supposed to be scooping ice cream, but the person who was supposed to bump me over there never did, so I had been working trash for a half-hour to an hour longer than I should have. In any case, now I was on break, so I rushed to the assigner's desk to be sure, and when he said it was okay, I ran to Take Five to wolf down a sandwich and some delicious grapes.

And that's where I have to end it for now, as it's time for me to head off to work again.