I work at a playground. Please let me vent.

The BBQ Pit
1

[sub]Note: Following not to be taken as evidence that I hate a) my job or b) children in general. I don’t.[/sub]

In no particular order:

Little red-haired boy: Stop farting. Seriously. Stop it. It is not “just a little gas”, no matter what your mother insists. The velocity and noxious capacity of your intestinal emissions could drop a charging water buffalo at 300 meters. Every time you let rip, I’m afraid the fire alarms will go off. At least have the good grace to go outside when you have to fart. I, for one, wouldn’t mind a few dead seagulls dropping out of the sky. Little bastards eat, attack of shit on anything they see.

Seagulls: Fuck off already.

Twins: Stop feeding the fucking seagulls and maybe they’ll go away.

Little white-tights-wearing girl: I know your bleeding-heart mother raised you according to the “Poor baby, have some ice cream” doctrine of child discipline. However, your mother does not work here, we do not have a limitless supply of ice cream, and we have 83 other children to supervise. Screaming bloody murder every time someone looks at you funny or accidentally brushes against you will not get you anything but a growing lack of interest from the workers. Ever read the story of the boy who kept crying wolf? Read it again and take heed.

Eine kleine attenzionwhore: As previously mentioned, there are 84 children at this playground every day. Most of the 83 others seem to get along just fine without the constant, undivided attention of all 5 playground workers. You do not have to be first in everything. You are no more entitled to the first place in the snack line than is anyone else. You do not have to be the one who decides every rule of every game. Your voice is sufficiently audible and extremely penetrating; you have no need to shout. And no, it is not “everybody else’s fault” all the time.

Mr. Co-worker: Note the lack of the “Reserved for Mr. Co-worker for the entire 7 hours of the working day” sign on the bathroom door. You either have severe intestinal problems or you are trying to avoid doing any work. Judging from your overall work ethics, it’s definitely the latter. Your job is not to mope around the yard like a four-toed sloth on Valium; you are here as a playground counselor. Please, please, please actually do something with the kids every now and then. Oh, and give your mother a break. No 22-year-old who doesn’t even live at home any more should insist that their mother make them a packed lunch for work every day.

Everyone else: You’re all right. Carry on.

Ah well, only until the end of the month.

2

This much stress coming from working at a frigging playground? Is there nowhere pleasant in the world??

3

No. There are annoying people everywhere.

I’m going to go UnaBomber pretty soon and get me a wired up cabin in the woods pretty soon.

eine kleine attenzionwhore… that’s funny!

4

Personally, I’d want to know what they’re feeding a child so that his farts are that bad.

5

The child is actually a Methane Cyborg who has been placed there to keep playground workers from smoking like chimney stacks about the children. The farts are highly flamable gaseous fuses that are designed to ignite around lit cigarette embers. He has been programmed to act like a child until the fuse is lit, and then run to the ignition cigarette and explode like a claymore mine. ( It was on your employment contract, third paragraph from the bottom on the back of page 2.)

6

Some economist/philosopher (Adam Smith?) used “the playground” as an example of a self-regulating society, where little disputes were successfully adjudicated directly, immediately and efficiently by the parties involved, without the need for outside, coercive intervention.

I’ve always thought it was full of shit.

7

I’m sorry - you work with someone who is 22 and wants his mother to pack a lunch for him?! Is he serious or just trying to get a reaction?

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If I may hijack this thread for a brief moment:

To the rectal fuckbombs on the ferry – please do not feed the pretty birdies. I know that in rural Nebraska, or whatever big rectangular flat fucking state you are from, seagulls are an oddity. Yeah, they look just like that bird on the cover of that Jonathan Livingston crap, but that in no way mandates that you feed them. Let’s see if I can explain why.

Lesson one, modern seagulls have a system much like our e-mail. If you feed one, he will automatically spam all of his feathered friends that free munchies are being offered on deck 2. Then they will spam their friends, and so on. Then every fucking gull on the eastern seaboard will gather around the ferry. And since they are flying critters, they usually gather above people.

Lesson two, gulls shit. And they really don’t care if they are above you – or me – when they do so. And when there are at least 79080904 of them above us, mathematically 435874 of them will need to take a dump before we reach the shore.

Now personally I don’t care if you get covered in bird crap. Personally I think it’s funny. It’s like a karma thing. But here’s the thing, you syphilitic hermaphrodite* – they shit on me too. And this is not the way I want to start my vacation.

So leave the bread cubes at home, Rowena.

Sorry, hijack over.
*This is in no way intended to offend the many wonderful and productive hermaphrodites in the lovely state of Nebraska.

9

Hey, when I worked summers during high school and college, I couldn’t stop my mother from making my lunch every day.

“Mom, seriously, I’ll get a burger at the concession stand. I’d rather do that. Please.”

“No, son, I know how much you like salads, so I made this extra-huge salad with whole carrots on it. And here’s a quart of sweet tea. Have a good day.”

Now, of course, there are times that I’d kill to have Mom make my lunch every day.

10

My mom just pointed out that Little red-haired boy may have a food allergy that is going unaddressed, which is causing his gas.

11

Wait for it… BAND NAME!

Great post tdn - funniest thing I’ve read all day. :smiley:

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"I know that in rural Nebraska, or whatever big rectangular flat fucking state you are from …"

wipes away tears and hoots

13

I agree. Unless the point was that self-regulating societies are Darwinian. That’s how I always saw it. The big kids push the little kids around.

And Sauron? I hear ya. My mother is the same way!

14

Yeah, but the OP said the guy insists that his mom make his lunch…

but you know, you do save money, bringing a lunch, regardless of who packs it

15

Could be, but I think the allergy situation of these kids is pretty well documented. We have a list with every child’s allergies on it, which is updated every spring and autumn by the parents. If anything, I think this mother would have not stopped at erring on the side of caution, but would have careened right into caution and out the other side, if the kid had any problems with food.

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During the summer, I work at a playground, as well. Well, its more of a “summer camp” type atmosphere, at a christian elementary school. You know, a pack of screaming children hell-bent on self-destruction
(No! Emma! Take that macaroni OUT of your nose! no No NO! You can’t smell it better up there. Who told you that!!!..Don’t push it up further… oh god. I have a bleeding child with farfalle wedged in her nose)
And the parents who love them.
(read: dump them on us at the earliest possible hour, and pick them back up at the latest.)

I remember one day, distinctly. We’re supposed to make a garden.
Har har, how cute. A widdle biddy garden for the widdle biddie kiddies!
Somewhere in this arrangement, someone forgot that making a valid garden usually requires sharp tools. . . and bags of manure.
And I had to explain that.
Child A: “What’s manure?”
Me: “Well, its phosphates and nitrates that help the plants grow.” (I usually practice the ‘confuse them enough, and they’ll go away’ form of child riot-control)
Child A looks at me quizzically…
Child B: “ITS SHIT MISS JENN ISN’T IT!”
Me: “Well, uh…”
Child A: “What’s shit?”
Child B: “What comes out your butt when you poop!”
Me: foreheadsmack

Needless to say, I was the one spreading the manure that afternoon.
Oh, and about the sharp tools? Well, they gave us the rockiest, shittiest piece of land to grow these damned plants in, so we had to till it all up ourselves… I took the 3rd grade group… thinking they’d be responsible (famous last words, eh?)
And wouldn’t it figure that a kid notices our plot of land is directly under a tree which houses a beehive?
So does he tell me? Noooo. Does he try to get his classmates away? Noooo.
He gets a bunch of them to stand near the trunk of the tree, and then whacks the hive with the shovel.
And that was when I discovered that 20 kids can run in approximately 68 directions at once.

17

Maybe he’s allergic to you?

18

True food allergies shouldn’t cause flatulence. They will cause skin rashes, itches, swelling, tearing, congestion and runny nose, wheezing, and in some cases, death.

Food intolerance, on the other hand, may make you break like the wind.