Tattletale Saturdays
Saturday
and Sunday the office was closed but the box office was opened. The pages worked the box office giving out
tickets. The majority of those week’s
tickets were distributed to tourists who walked in on Saturday/Sunday looking
for tickets later in the week. These
were the worst working days because they were 8 hour-long days coupled with
hours of downtime. A busy workday goes
fast, a slow workday sucks. We couldn’t
stand outside and solicit people to see the show because remember we wanted
genuine fans. So we sat around waiting
for potential audience members (PAMs) to come in.
What’s
ironic is when they were low on ticket distributions The Late Show would send
audience coordinators out during the weekdays to solicit people to see the
show. A page could not do the same type
of promoting in front of the box office though.
I
would work either a Saturday or a Sunday but never both days. If I was a millionaire I’d have requested to
only work during the actual tapings because these days were truly brutal. Unfortunately the bulk of my paycheck
resulted from working these days and I needed money for beer and I guess
college books. They’d assign 4 Late Show pages to
work the day and 2 audience coordinators to run their assessment mojo. The
doors opened at 9am and closed at 5pm.
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| Angelo's pizza opened in 2004/2005. The double Monday pizza was from Luigi's. |
Remember
I was in college at the time so I was usually hung over those mornings. Starting out I was usually paired up with a
rotating roster of uhh Megan, Mario, Elmer, and Eric (I really suck at making
up fake names for people). They were
such a pain in the ass when it came to closing up shop. They would never close before the 5-o-clock
whistle. The audience coordinators would
take off at 4:45pm or sooner if they hit their required audience numbers for
the week. Without the coordinators there
would be no one to screen these PAMs.
The pages would insist on sucking every last minute out of keeping that
door open. I wasn’t saying close-up shot
at 3pm, but 4:55pm wouldn’t have killed anyone.
Well
it turns out they had good reason to run the clock out to the last possible
second. Prior to my working weekends, Megan and Eric held a competition to see
who can keep their arms above their heads the longest. It got rather comical when PAMs came in. Megan and Eric had to come up with creative
ways to hand out Late Show ticket applications.
The PAMs thought it was amusing that people were having fun at work,
which fit with the overall theme the pages were supposed to be selling the
audience on in the first place. An audience
coordinator by the name of Han Solo (I named her Han Solo because she dressed
like the renegade during Halloween) complained to the higher ups that the pages
were not being professional. This
trickled down the chain of command and caused a bit of paranoia and tension
between the pages and the coordinators.
Megan
and Mario were the senior pages working the weekends and had an understanding
with me. I let them know Sundays were
difficult for me to arrive on time. My
bus and train ran less frequent and much slower on Sunday. In fact the F train made local stops on Sunday
that added an extra half hour onto my commute.
Even though I was leaving an hour earlier and walking to a different bus
stop to do what I could to get there on-time I could be anywhere from 5-15
minutes late. I’d usually cut my lunch
short or work through it completely to make-up the time. The mornings were slow and all I missed
helping out with was set-up. On
Saturdays when I got there early, I wouldn’t wait for the pay clock to start, I
would just set-up.
After
Megan and Mario completed the program they created a new position called Key
Page. It was basically putting someone
in charge to make sure everything ran smoothly.
Rather then put the most senior page in charge, which would have been
Elmer they decided to assign it to David Letterman’s biggest fan. We’ll call him Roger. Roger was a former intern and graduate of
Ball State University. The same college
Letterman went to. Roger would
constantly talk about how he created a show just like The Late Show in college
and he was a bit of a celebrity on his campus.
I never had the heart to tell him no one watched college TV. I knew this because at the time I was taking classes at the TV studio in my college, and no one watched.
Roger’s
dream was to work for Letterman, and my guess is have his love child. He was exactly where he wanted to be. That was all cool stuff, that he was on track
to accomplish his goals in life. I gave
him “mad props yo” for pulling that off.
What was fucking annoying, was how overly serious he took his
position. When PAMs walked in he’d be
the first one up to pass out that ticket application. A page would have to compete against him to
get down there and help the person. The
applications were further back in the lobby and he’d grab the materials and
rush to the front of the entrance. It
clogged up the line for people coming in behind them. If he was patient and waited for the PAMs to
approach the table where all the paperwork and pages were standing around it
would have allowed other PAMs to enter with ease. It was a constant cluster-fuck if we got flooded
with ticket seekers. Luckily weekends
were about 2-4 people an hour so it wasn’t usually an issue. But he made it impossible for anyone else to
step up and assist PAMs because he had to be the first one up to help
them. I love keeping busy at work but he
seemed like he really wanted to be the guy who spoke with everyone and I just
let him. It was less work for me.
Roger
became the guy checking audience members in at the door before tapings. Sadly, I was the guy sending people to
him. Roger moved a bit too fast with the
check in process. The point of the line
process wasn’t to rush people in. You
were supposed to move efficiently but also make small talk so the audience so
as to keep their spirits up. He’d
constantly rush them into the lobby and overfill it. It would clear the line outside too quick and
audience members who had notices telling them to lineup outside were lost on
where to go because the outside line disappear inside. This was because they couldn't find people on line outside. They were all crammed inside already.
It was utter confusion when he pulled this crap. I would try to slow the line down just so
people arriving later would know where to hop on the line. Roger would constantly complain to me that
the line is moving too slow. He’d balk
that Bob was yelling at him to move the line.
One, Bob never yelled. Two, I could see into the lobby and knew exactly
how well the lineup process was going.
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| Thank you Roger sunny person. |
His
other malfunction had to do with IDs.
Audience members were instructed on their paperwork to have IDs ready when
they arrived for check in. They were
reminded by every single page they spoke with while lined up outside. I personally told each one of them as they
passed me and walked up to Roger they needed their IDs out. Roger still insisted on yelling as loud as
possible that IDs needed to be out when they arrived at his post. What was really insulting was he made certain
to do it every time Bob was outside or within ear distance so as to make it
look like I was not informing the audience of the line-up process.
I
never could understand how anyone could stand to listen to him talk about how
great of an employee he was and that’s why they made him Key Page. I’m sure his Key Page title got him a few
extra cents an hour, and he certainly needed it. He was living with his girlfriend Linda and
another college friend of theirs, Jen.
All of them were pages at The Late Show.
They shared a two-bedroom apartment and his dad had to give him money to
help make the rent. Growing up in the
Midwest his parents were divorced and his father wasn’t really in his
life. He’d talk about his mom with a lot
of pride and she seemed like a really cool lady. He mentioned how she led a movement to educate
women on the importance of breast-feeding.
He insisted that she contained vast knowledge about marriage and divorce
through her direct working something or other.
He was also a Mets fan and would constantly syphon off their player
roster when his spoke sports, as if it would help them win more games. If I had a nickel for every time he talked
about how the Mets had Carlos Beltran and how he was their best player, I’d
have a lot of nickels. I never met a
person that could be such a jerk and so boring at the same time.
His
conversion to jerk was at the flip of a switch too. One moment you’d have a pleasant conversation
and the next he’d just snap, raise his voice, and box you out. The Britney Spears Vegas wedding scandal
broke during our tenure together and we were discussing it. He said he didn’t understand how she could
have gotten the marriage annulled. I
tried to explain it was a legal annulment and not a religious one but he
started flipping out saying I was wrong and he knows this because his mother
worked on these things. Since he was
yelling at me I decided to get a little snarky back and told him his mom might
know what she’s doing but that doesn’t qualify him as an expert. He whatevered me and declared that I knew
everything. Which was the only correct
statement he managed to make in that conversation.
The
dude wanted to be a comedy writer but I never heard him tell a joke. His girlfriend was also a Ball State Graduate
and former intern. They were this
dynamic duo of bland. I tried my best to
not talk around or to them but also not be rude and ignore them. I wanted to focus on the job, but 8 hours days with minimal audience traffic made it really hard. When Megan was running the show she
complained to me saying that I was too quiet during the weekend shifts. I was usually hung-over but I tried to put in
an effort to be more personable.
Whatever I did was no win. If I
kept quiet they complained to me and if I spoke they were attitude-y about it.
One
particular Saturday I was exceptionally hung-over, I mean sick. I called the box office and informed Linda I
wasn’t coming in because I was sick. She
actually sounded caring and concerned.
I’d never seen that side of her.
My usual interactions with her were a monotone voice and what may have
been jokes or mean comments made at my expense.
I’d really like to think she was joking.
The
following Monday, I informed Bob that I called out sick on the weekend
shift. Bob wasn’t aware I was out, he
thanked me and adjusted my hours so I didn’t get paid for time I didn’t work. What happened afterwards is all speculation
on my part. Bob must have went to Roger
and told him about how I was sick and Roger needs to send that up the
ladder. Roger then must have thought he
was getting in trouble decided to narc on me.
Roger had expressed his dislike to me that I was late on Sundays and
then passed it along to Bob. I think
Roger said I was not talking to the PAMs that entered the box office, which was
an impossible feat considering that Roger was dry humping their leg the moment
they came through the door.
What
I do know is that I get a message on my machine from Bob about an adjusted
schedule and a really pleasant and professional message telling me that it’s
important that I get there on time because he’d heard I was slacking off a
bit. That was not the case at all
though. I was commuting to Manhattan
from Queens on a Sunday morning. It
wasn’t impossible but it was a pain. I
did not have the luxury of living in a studio apartment in Manhattan with 5
other people and being able to hop on one train and be there in 5 minutes. I also didn’t live a few blocks away from the
Ed Sullivan Theater; Roger didn’t see it that way. He must have felt it was a blight on The Late
Show institution that he so loved. I
know I was doing a good job because even the Han Solo audience coordinator
complimented my work ethic. She
appreciated how on point I was with everything.
I guess I just wasn’t as on point as Roger was.
So
my solution was to wake up super early and arrive at the theater hours before I
needed to be there. Sometimes the
building wasn’t even open when I got there so I had to wander around Manhattan
killing time. I know midtown really well
because of it. Then during the actual
shift I grabbed a clipboard with the ticket application and hung out upfront
talking with the security guards most of the day. This way I could beat Roger to all the PAMs
that wandered in. This is how I ran out
the weekend clock for the remainder of my tenure there. The very first weekend after his voicemail
Bob told me he heard I did a really good job.
I debated telling him how I always do a good job and even Han Solo can
attest to it and that Roger made it impossible to help anyone because he was so
overzealous but no one wants to waste his or her time with this petty bullshit
so I just thanked him. What pissed me
off about the compliment was that someone was reporting back to him about my
progress. I could see Linda eyeballing
me every weekend we ended up working together from that day forward. But I couldn’t tell if Linda or Roger or both
were informing on me.
I
did get to know security really well.
They were cool people. I learned
that the security company was not affiliated with the Late Show. They were affiliated with an outside company
affiliated with the building. The
security people were some of the coolest people working there and I related to
them much easier than Roger and friends.
There was Jimmy who was from British Guiana and explained how Social
Security worked. We had a man named Leo
who constantly told a story about how he gave a homeless woman a dollar
everyday and when she died it turned out she had 8 million dollars in cash in
her smelly shopping carts. One of the
more interesting guys was Jack, a retired army sergeant who did security, ran a
dog walking business and was trying to convince me to join the army and work in
their USO program. I was really close to
graduation so I was open to career options at that point. I became really close with Carlton who was
only a year younger than myself; we hit it off really well. He’s another person I wish I’d kept in touch
with. All the guards there had a sense
of humor and laughed at my lame jokes and I never felt boxed out or not
included by them even though they were security and I was a page. I don’t think I had a single life experience
similar to any of them but it was never a factor.
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| They were super awesome! |
"I Like To Play With Toys" Productions®
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