Hello. Welcome to my website. It started while I was in Europe for a semester, and I've kept it up since then. I'm now at the University of Chicago Law School, living in Hyde Park, and the story continues. If you want to say hi or visit me, email cfloyd at uchicago dot edu.
"Life is nothing if not the sum of your anecdotes." -Scotty The Body, on storytelling "But it ain't that bad, man. Just figure out the system before the system figures out you." -T. Matthew Smith, on the 1L year "The beer just doesn't taste as good when you're not drinking it with your buddies." -Anon., on being away from good friends "Somebody has to pay the rent around here. Why the hell not us?" -Cotton, on studying for exams
7/26/2004 Web programming is hard. There might be something new by September. So I'll start posting regularly again until then.
The job I've described in earlier posts is my day job. The only pay is the experience of working for a federal judge. Good times, and I'm learning plenty, but at the end of the day, resume padding doesn't buy you a sixer and a movie rental for the cold, lonely Tulsa nights.
So I've got a night job. I am a Stadium Vendor.
My employer is the Tulsa Drillers organization, the Double-A affiliate of the Colorado Rockies. They play at Driller's Stadium, 15th and Yale on the fairgrounds. 'Employ' may be the wrong term for the relationship. I am a contractor, not an employee. The contract is that I will show up and sell goods that I have purchased by the load from the wholesale distributor. I sell these goods at $0.25 more than their price at the food stands in the concourse below. and in exchange I get the quarter. For the fans, that quarter is the price of getting their corndog or sno-cone without getting up. For me, that twenty-five cents is profit, plus any tips I sweat out, and it's what I run up stadium stairs hauling tubs of Pepsi product for.
I never know what they'll have me selling until I show up at the stadium. It could be Pepsi and bottled water; peanuts, popcorn and cracker jacks; or hot dogs and corndogs. Or it could be kiddy stuff like cotton candy or chills and sno-cones. I prefer the less kiddy stuff. Beer is best, naturally. For two reasons: first of all, the tips on beer are excellent- averages out to almost a buck per, or more. And secondly, you get to be Beer Man. We all know of the legend of Beer Man, so I won't wax poetic, other than to say that I would consider giving up law altogether if I could support myself year-round in such an iconic position. Alas, selling beer comes only with seniority, and I haven't worked at the stadium regularly since 1999, so any built-up time is gone. My suds-pouring dreams are just that--dreams.
Longing aside, I show up with a job to do, and that is to get as many quarters as I can by selling as many items as I can. Vendors are on commission. So I hustle and holler and do everything I can to sell product. I hold up in the air whatever I'm selling, even if it means a melty sno-cone, and I yell out what I've got so that people will want to buy it. I scan the crowd for my target buyers. Target buyers being, kids if I've got kiddy stuff, or everybody. Pretty straightforward. But I've been doing this a while off and on since the 1998 season, so I have plenty of experience at it.
The entire evening is defined by attendance and what I'm selling. If it's a big crowd, I have the chance to make some semi-serious scratch, maybe $60, translating to over $20 an hour. So I go into ultra-competitive hyper-vendor mode. Taking your time counting out pennies? NO CORNDOG FOR YOU. Are you a small redneck child galavanting about the aisles? You get one chance to move, one. Then you get bumped out of the way by my fifty-pound tray of Pepsi that I don't feel like hoisting over your mullet. Are you a parent with 8 kids, each of who is whining for something, anything? You get royal treatment. I squat next to you so as not to obstruct your view of the action, sympathize with your agony at those damn whistles they gave free to all the 11-and-under children that came that day, and suggest that eight snocones will only amount to $12.00- $2.00 of which I keep- and then the runts will shut up. I wheel about, sprint up stairs, jump benches, toss bags of nuts, conduct multiple simultaneous transactions, and do everything I can to both draw attention to myself and my wares while selling as fast as I can get people to raise to their hands and shout, "Pepsi!" The next morning I feel like a truck hit me.
If the crowd is real thin, I have to scrape out my $14.25 the hard way. I hustle during the first inning, when folks are most willing to buy. I'll make half of my sales in that first half-hour. But I can't leave after that, so I switch to sloooow vending. I stroll. I chat. I cheer. I get to know the 1200 people in the 12,000-capacity stadium. There's almost always a little league team down in far box on the first-base line. You get close, shout out what you've got, dangle the cotton candy a little in front of the chubby catcher. Nobody bites? Don't move on just yet... hang out and pretend to just be pausing to watch the game... things are percolating... Chubby is tugging Mama's jersey, Mama is looking to Daddy, Daddy is pulling out his wallet... BAM! I've got one! Now Chubby gets his cotton candy and Billy and Chucky and Timmy and Timmy's little sister Sally all are whining. Chucky's stepdad raises the back of his hand and threatens Chucky's life for even asking, but the other three get their way, and I've just made a cool buck, maybe two if I evoke sympathy and a tip. Don't worry, if Chucky's stepdad's backhand ever came down, I'd bring mine down on Chucky's stepdad's head. But threatened abuse isn't abuse - that's just life at the Tulsa ballpark.
Games can be hazardous. I've had two narrow misses from foul balls, and they always seem to come near me. The first narrow miss flew down the chairs as I was coming up. It would have taken out my knee and sent me tumbling. The second one, I was making a sale, looked up just in time to duck, but it would have knocked me cold. Maybe I should carry a glove and wear a helmet. Once game, I made several visits to a beer-soaked group of rowdy Mexican guys who kept buying corn dogs. As I paused there to catch my breath, Carlos and Rex introduced themselves, and then said their cousin Juanita wanted to meet me. Juanita batted her contact-lens-blue eyes at me but didn't say anything. Carlos says, "We call her J-Lo because of her great booty!" Rex smiles and nods, asks when I was getting off and says I should come hang out. I said I might be busy but I'd try to make time. They were gone after the seventh. I never talked to Juanita. Hazardous, indeed.
There is a great cast of regulars at the games too, most of whom don't buy. The aforementioned Beer Men mostly hang out at the horse track across Expo Square before games. They're rough on the edges and highly competitive with each other, but, as you'd expect of a Beer Man, really nice guys. In the stands, there's old Mumbly, who sits in Box on the third-base line, and asks me whether he might have a career available as a paralegal. I tell him to drop by the community college and see. Thirsty Thursdays, with dollar beer, bring the college-age set, and if I've got dogs or snacks I do well. If I have cotton candy I just get made fun of. On the lower box concourse there's always Star Trek Guy--about five feet tall and four feet wide, all chub, stuffed into a spandex-tight Star Fleet Ensign's uniform. Seriously. He just jaws with the ushers and smokers and whoever else will listen. It's not always Star Trek --he'll usually dress the theme, if there is one: Blues Brother, OU Sooner Night, Margaritaville night, whatever.
There are several attractive women with babies and diamond rings seated behind home plate, and several kind-of-hot, kind-of-trashy women without diamond rings seated behind the dugouts. The latter are the players' wives. The former are the aspiring players' wives and groupies. They look bored, and the only hot dogs they want are on the field. Also behind home plate are the statisticians and scouts. They don't ever look up to consider getting peanuts; they're too busy watching the games. Once I paused to watch an at-bat, and the pitcher threw to first three times while behind in the count 3-1. I told the stat guys next to me, "The meat is scared...his stuff's gone...watch, this one's going out." Sure enough, a weak slider comes down the pipe and the hitter belts it about 410 feet over the fence to 15th Street. The stat guys look at me and knod their heads, impressed.
