Best Job Ever

One summer when I was like 19, I lived down at the Jersey shore with some friends in a town called Brigantine. My job was valet parker and it probably was the best job ever for me. I parked cars with three other guys at a place called The Brigantine Inn which was right on the beach. The main attraction there was the beach bar so lots of cars would be pulling in and out all the time.

There were lots of perks to that job. First off, we drank beer from paper cups all day long (I know it's not the smartest thing in the world since we had to drive cars but the parking lot was pretty small and I was pretty stupid). And we didn't have to stand around in some monkey suit waiting for cars to pull up. We'd lay in beach chairs in the sun. We had no boss watching. There was just some manager guy in the hotel who didn't care what we did as long as we didn't drive the cars into the ocean. I got along well with all the other valet guys. By the end of the day we were all pretty drunk.

Sometimes we valet guys would goof around and spray mace around in the valet booth (for whatever reason alot of keychains had a small thing of mace attached) and we'd tell another valet to go in there for beer or whatever. The sucker would walk into a cloud of mace! I was that sucker alot. Man, that stuff burned like hell! It makes you sneeze alot! But that mace trick really kept us awake and sober-ish!

Also I was seeing a cute girl that summer who used to ride her bike around all over. She'd make me salami sandwiches with French's mustard. She'd peddle up and bring me lunch, hang out for a while, give me a kiss, then peddle off.

At some point, when the lot got pretty full but not totally full-- we'd close the parking lot with a big rope and one of us would sit at the 'gate' and take bribes. Cars would pull up and we'd apologize and tell them the lot was full. Most of the people coming to the beach bar were coming over from Atlantic City so they were used to bribing people. Cheesy guys in sports cars with bubble boobed chicks in the passenger seats would pull up-- and the guy would want to play the big shot. Which was fine with me! Here's how it went down:

Me: Sorry sir, the lot is full.

Cheesy Guy: Oh yeah? No spaces left? Not one?

Me: Yes sir. Sorry bout that.

Cheesy Guy: I can think of twenty reasons there's one more space...

(He'd flick up a twenty dollar bill. I'd take it.)

Me: You know what sir? I think a space just opened up. (and I'd open the rope).

Coolio! I loved taking bribes from the sports car guys. And I got to drive Lambourginis and Porsches and stuff which was fun. Even though it was just in the parking lot it was still fun to poke around in the fancy cars. Then go back and lay in a lounge chair and drink beer. I remember grinding the gears of Corvette once and the owner guy shot me a look that said one thing to me, "I will murder you dead if you do that again..."

One day I was taking out the garbage (usually had some broken beer bottles and stuff in it) and a shard of glass was sticking out of it and I slashed my leg open bad while walking with the bag. I had to get stitches and stuff. Whenever I look at the scar it reminds me of that easy feeling being half-drunk in a beach chair in the sun, eating a salami sandwich and recovering from being lightly maced while I waited to drive a Ferrari.

ok bye!

tOdd