The Dumbest Kid in Gifted Class

by Dan Ryckert

  No one would expect you to just abandon your post as a supervisor. If a supervisor wasn’t visibly doing something in the stand, it was usually a safe assumption that they were off doing Important Things somewhere in the back or with management. I knew that everyone would assume that of me (although any of them who actually knew me shouldn’t have), so I used my supervisor’s key to escape into the stockroom. This was my favorite place to go AWOL, as the standard employees had no access to it and therefore could never discover me. Second on the list was the tool closet, which also required a key. It was a fantastic place to just lie flat on your back for 30 to 45 minutes while actual work was being done outside of this mop- and hammer-filled sanctuary.

  My coworkers would constantly steal hot dogs and nachos for lunch and never get busted for it. I was too mortified of the potential consequences to even try. Cameras were everywhere, so I was happy with paying my $2 employee price for our concession items. The stockroom was a different story, as it was easy to snag a quick bag of candy or bottle of soda without any prying eyes catching you in the act. During the Great Toy Story 2 Rush of 1999, I holed up in the hot dog freezer with three bags of Sour Patch Kids and several bottles of Fruitopia to weather the storm.

  When things got too chilly, I moved to another safe haven: the soda syrup room. This area was open to all employees, but no one would catch me slacking off, thanks to the insane rush keeping them busy out front. A few of the syrup boxes were low, so I justified my existence back there for a minute and replaced them with fresh supplies. As I was carrying a box of Mr. Pibb into the closet-sized room, I estimated that it probably weighed a solid 50 pounds or so. Behind “Video Game Journalist” and “Hollywood Director” on my list of viable careers was “Professional Wrestler,” but I always doubted its likelihood based on my complete lack of strength or athletic ability. What better way to test my current strength than with a box that weighed about a fifth of an average professional wrestler?

  One of my favorite wrestlers as a kid was Kevin Nash (aka Diesel). His finishing move was the Jackknife Powerbomb, which involved lifting his opponent until he was horizontal at eye level, then slamming him down to the mat on his back. I guess if we’re being specific, a Kevin Nash powerbomb was more of a drop rather than a forceful slam, but that’s beside the point. It seemed like a natural move to attempt at the time, so I stood in the center of the syrup room with the Mr. Pibb box in position. I raised one fist into the air, surely looking as cool as Big Daddy Cool himself.

  As it turns out, it’s not all that hard to lift a 50-pound box to eye level even if you’re a scrawny teenager. Once it was there, I released it and took a step back before it hit the floor—I wouldn’t want to hurt my toes, after all. I’m not sure what I pictured happening at this point, but I didn’t expect the cardboard to split. More importantly, I didn’t expect the syrup bag to split. It wasn’t like I actively considered the possibility and determined that it was statistically unlikely; it was a matter of not putting any forethought into the situation at all. If someone had shoved a microphone in my face just before to ask my prediction, I probably would have said that the box would kinda thud on the ground and get dented at worst.

  It didn’t thud on the ground. Everything immediately split open, and viscous, delicious Pibb syrup crept out until it covered the entire floor. Panicking, I hopped out of the way and escaped the syrup room without any evidence slopping its way onto my uniform or shoes. A slight lip separated the syrup room from the rest of the area, so there was a well-defined stopping point to the goopy mess. Everything on my side of the line was pristine, and everything in the small room on the other side was wading in an inch of pure, sugary syrup.

  If this had happened in the supervisor-only stock room, the Pibb incident would clearly be on my hands. But thanks to the soda room’s accessibility to any employee, I had some plausible deniability. Sure, all of the concession workers were hawking Kids’ Packs at hundreds of screaming Toy Story fans at the time, but it was at least conceivable that one of them had found their way into the syrup room and done something stupid.

  If there were ever a time to put on the facade of a responsible, attentive AMC employee, it was now. I’d get out there and do my job with vigor, proving that I couldn’t have been the careless employee who royally mucked up the soda room. Fleeing the scene of the crime, I reemerged in the concession area and started working like I was gunning for another promotion. Need a new batch of popcorn over here? I’m on it. Hey, let me sweep up these kernels for you on the way. You guys can just focus on the registers; I’ll be back here filling your sodas so you don’t have to. Whoa, looks like you’re running low on Cookie Dough Bites! I’ll grab a few from the stockroom without even stopping for a quick Fruitopia.

  In my mind, I earned enough goodwill in the later stages of that rush to deflect any suspicion. People would hopefully remember only my most recent whereabouts, not the fact that I was wholly absent for the majority of the madness.

  “Oh, Dan?” I imagined my coworkers saying from an interrogation room later on, management shining a light in their faces. “He was right here on the front lines, keeping the customers moving swiftly along! He surely couldn’t have been performing powerbombs on any items in the back room, no sir.”

  Once the rush was over, I was in no rush of my own to “discover” the worsening mess behind the scenes. I was perfectly willing to let anyone else stumble upon that atrocity. When all four of our main theaters had moved into their runtime of the movie, the crowd naturally thinned out. A handful of patrons trickled out from time to time for refills, but this was our best chance to get the concession stand restored to 100 percent before the next wave hit. Everyone hustled around, stocking their registers with candy and making sure they had enough bills and coins for change.

  For reasons I don’t remember, everyone referred to one of my fellow 15-year-old employees as Roly Poly. It was probably me who came up with the nickname, but I’m unsure of my logic, considering that his spiky hair made him resemble a hedgehog more than those weird little ball-like insects. Roly Poly wasn’t particularly bright and didn’t have much in the way of personality, but he wasn’t a bad guy. I didn’t wish the Syrupocalypse upon him, but fate wasn’t kind to him that day.

  While everyone was performing their duties up front, Roly Poly approached the soda fountains to do a routine check of their levels. My eyes were frequently scanning this area, as I wanted to know who would have the ill fortune to venture toward the back. Pressing all of the soda buttons to check the color of the liquid, Roly Poly didn’t see anything immediately suspicious. To check the Sprite, he put a spritz into one of the courtesy cups that we gave to customers who wanted free water. When he raised it to his lips, I could tell by his face that he tasted carbonated water and was therefore destined to a really rough remainder of his shift.

  Roly Poly slowly waddled to the back, innocently expecting to swap out a quick box of Sprite and move on with his day. I stayed in the concession stand, mentally picturing him stumbling upon the goop and letting out a sad little sigh. Sure enough, he reemerged about a minute later and approached me.

  “Dan, there’s a really big mess back there.”

  “Oh yeah?” I feigned surprise. “What’s the matter?”

  “There’s syrup everywhere.”

  “Yikes, let me go take a look!”

  After going through the charade of walking to the back and pretending to see the mess for the first time, I approached Roly Poly in the stand.

  “Boy, you weren’t kidding! I hate to do this, but we’re gonna have to get that cleaned up ASAP. Why don’t you grab a mop and a bucket and start getting to work on that?”

  He seemed understandably bummed about his assignment. I unsuccessfully tried to make him feel better by telling him that he could stay on mopping duty rather than attend to customers for the next rush.

  “The next rush” turned into the rest of the day. Roly Poly had to go through cycle after cycle of mopping,
cleaning the syrup out of the mop, mopping some more, changing the water out of the bucket, and so on. With the rushes being so big, I couldn’t even put any additional employees on mop duty to help him out. After he spent six hours of his day mopping up sugar goo because I wanted to powerbomb a box, I don’t think any court in the country would convict him if he decided to murder me.

  It wouldn’t be the last time I broke something at AMC because of wrestling-related experiments. I once broke a table in the back because I wanted to see how much force it would take to get slammed through one. My research proved that a 15-year-old jumping up and landing butt-first on the middle is more than enough to permanently damage one, although the real deal never broke quite as cleanly as the ones on Monday Night Raw. Naturally, I told my manager that I had no idea which one of my mischievous employees would be so reckless as to break a table.

  My ability to slack off only intensified once I turned 16 and was allowed to work in different positions. Ushering was a mostly solitary job, and my supervisor status didn’t grant me as much authority there as it did behind the concession stand. Despite this, I was more than willing to sign up for these shifts, based on how easy they were. Instead of having to deal with lengthy rushes prior to a movie’s start, it was just a matter of working for quick bursts when movies let out.

  Cleaning the theaters was actually pretty relaxing. It required no interaction with the patrons and the dark theaters made it easy to seem like you were working. I didn’t forgo my duties entirely, as I found it pretty fun to sprint up and down the aisles with a wide pushbroom. Picking up people’s half-finished troughs of popcorn and buckets of soda wasn’t something I enjoyed, so I found a way to greatly cut down on how much of that was necessary. I found that if I wheeled trash cans into the theater and placed them by the exit just as the end credits started rolling, a large percentage of the audience would toss their own crap away instead of leaving it at their seats. It helped if I stood there facing the crowd, putting a face to the poor AMC employee that would have to handle their trash (aka “do my job”) if they didn’t do it themselves.

  Ushering was the only position in which I was able to watch movies while I was on the clock. Each of my shifts would naturally contain chunks of time in which no movies were letting out. This gave me a chance to step inside a theater and absorb whatever was playing for 20 or 30 minutes at a time. With 30 screens, there was never a lack of variety when it came to my options. This led to me seeing a lot of movies (or at least parts of movies) that I’d have zero interest in otherwise. I’m not gonna tell you that Held Up starring Jamie Foxx or Love Stinks starring French Stewart are excellent movies, but sitting in those theaters several times a day was still a better option than doing actual work.

  One aspect of my job as an usher was extremely tantalizing: I had the power to kick people out. This power was not to be wielded recklessly, as kicking a customer out without good reason could come back on me in a bad way. A few things were guaranteed grounds for ejection. Bringing alcohol into the theater, doing anything involving nudity, helping others get into the theater via exit doors, or being obnoxious after a warning could justifiably get someone kicked out.

  More than anything in the world, I wanted to kick rowdy teenagers out of movies. As a socially awkward kid who didn’t drink, I envied and somewhat resented my peers that were confident enough to bring booze into a theater or talk to the opposite sex. Naturally, this made me want to ruin their party by shining a flashlight in their face and telling them to get out. I imagined high school delinquents seeing my green epaulets, recognizing the vast authority that they represented, and begrudgingly grabbing their plastic bottles of vodka while leaving with their heads hung low.

  At the beginning of each usher shift, I’d scan the list of what was playing and single out the movies that would most likely draw teenage no-gooders. I’d stalk the aisles of Fight Club, South Park, Scream 3, and Final Destination just chomping at the bit for a chance to let out my best big-boy “hey!” and point at the culprits. After pointing, I imagined that I’d make a cool “get out of here” motion with my fist and thumb so they’d know I meant business.

  It never happened. Those kids surely existed, but they were probably savvy enough to tone things down and hide the drinks when they saw the 15-year-old in an AMC uniform—green epaulets or no—repeatedly prowling the staircases and scanning the audience with the focus of someone looking for a dropped contact lens.

  Whenever the week’s schedule was posted, I looked forward to usher shifts and dreaded the concession ones. A third option, the box office, started popping up more and more as my time at AMC went on, and my opinion on these shifts fell somewhere in the middle. Selling tickets in an air-conditioned box was certainly more comfortable than the hustle and bustle of the concession stand, but it didn’t allow for as much goofing off and movie-watching as an usher shift did.

  The box office certainly had some advantages. With a glass rectangle surrounding the employees, rushes didn’t come with the overwhelming roar of impatient customers that was par for the course in concession. It was also the best position for me at AMC from a social perspective. It allowed me to frequently work alongside two of my best friends at the time, Chris and Bryan. We were in video production classes together, and all of us were into video games and wrestling. Chris was the quietest of our trio, but had a goofy sense of humor that shined once you got to know him. Bryan was a mostly good-natured guy who would get irrationally angry back then whenever the topic of gay people came up. He’s now a happily married gay man.

  Repetition was the killer during box office shifts because there was no real variance in activity. Concession had a variety of duties and ushering allowed for some time to watch movies, but with box office it was only “keep selling tickets.” We did our best to remedy the boredom by being as stupid as possible.

  Customers seemed entirely unfazed no matter how ridiculous we got. Our box office was separated from the lines by a glass wall with embedded speakers, and the employee headsets were the only way to communicate between the two sides. For the duration of one shift, I had Chris wear a disconnected headset as I ducked out of view while wearing the one that spoke to the customers. When they approached Chris’s window, they’d see his lips move but hear my voice. On the customer’s side, it looked just like a badly dubbed Japanese movie with my words not at all matching Chris’s flapping mouth. The only reaction we’d get was some staring or pausing. If my head had sprouted wings, separated from my body, and flown around the line spitting tickets at customers, I bet they’d all just pick them up off the ground and head into their showing of Road Trip without batting an eye.

  Management was rarely seen in the box office, so I didn’t worry about getting in trouble there. My bosses could have been the least of my worries if I had followed an idea that I learned from a customer, however. At the end of one shift, we were closing our registers out when Bryan made a discovery. Somebody had bought a ticket to the Kirk Cameron vehicle Left Behind with what appeared to be a $100 bill, and thus received over ninety dollars in change. I don’t actually remember if this customer saw Left Behind, but it’s a safe bet because I feel like we sold at least four billion tickets to that movie. This was Kansas, after all. In the chaos of the rush, Bryan didn’t notice anything suspicious as he slipped the $100 bill under the plastic part of the drawer, as we were instructed to do with anything over a twenty.

  Once we were closing out and Bryan had a chance to actually inspect the bill, he realized that it was actually a $10 bill that someone had altered with a pen. In the most slapdash, broke-ass case of counterfeiting that I’ve ever heard of, the customer had simply separated the zeros in each “10” into what looked like two zeros. As easy as that, $10 had become $100. It was such a boneheaded attempt, but if it worked on Bryan, who’s to say it wouldn’t work elsewhere? Plus, I was just a teenager. If I tried the same trick and some cashier caught me in the act, I’d just act surprised and pretend like I hadn’t noti
ced it.

  I had pulled some dumb tricks in the past to save money, but I certainly never had the nerve to attempt straight-up counterfeiting. I’d buy a game at Walmart, beat it, delete the save file, then use the shrink wrap machine at FuncoLand to make it look new again before returning it, but never counterfeiting. I’d Photoshop a fake Circuit City ad for a video game that made it look like they charged $19.99 instead of the standard $49.99, then take that ad to Walmart for them to price-match, but never counterfeiting. I’d go to Walmart at 3:00am and get games prior to their release date by finding the most checked-out, uninformed employee there and saying that the new game that had arrived in their back room was already being sold nationwide, but never counterfeiting. I guess what I’m saying here is, if you want to do some shady-but-not-technically-illegal stuff to get games earlier or cheaper, go to a Kansas Walmart in the middle of the night in the early 2000s.

  I took my pen to a $10 bill the next day, telling myself that it probably wasn’t counterfeiting. After all, counterfeiting was all about printing your own money, right? I was just drawing some little lines! Surely the law would see this as no different than drawing a cigarette in Abe Lincoln’s mouth or sunglasses on George Washington. This was destined to go well, and I’d be paying for Skittles with a ten and getting $99 in change for the rest of my days.

  As I always did with things like this, I planned on attempting the transaction as late at night as possible and from the employee who looked the least invested in their job. I continued to overthink things like this years later once I was buying condoms in college. Buying them from an attractive girl who was close to my age seemed scary to me, as I was afraid it would come off as “boy, I can’t wait to put these condoms on my penis and have all sorts of sex!” bragging. As such, my condoms were always sold to me by self-serve Walmart robots or old men who seemed to be on the brink of death.