Living at Cedar Point: A Tale of Debauchery and Depression

http://www.muzgrove.com/

Working at Cedar
So last time I set to put key to keyboard I was writing a rather detailed account of my time at cedar point. Sadly my previous writing machine has died; has passed on and its gizmos are hopefully whirling and turning in robot heaven.

Regardless, here I am restarting.

So working at cedar point you have several occupations to choose from. Maybe you are a French fry cooker, maybe you are a ride operator or in my case you are a game host. Game hosts are the scourge of overworked dads with too many kids and those who don’t want to be approached by strangers.

Game hosts to say it simply are people who yell and scream at you so that you give them money. They provide virtually no value to the public and if anything work to make your experience worse.

I decided to be a game host for several reasons, mostly because I like attention and all the other jobs seemed soul draining.

Being a game host however, had its own problems.

The Caste System

Being a game host basically made you a salesperson. But Instead of selling something someone might want, you convince them to buy a chance at winning something they don’t really want.

Being a game host you are more desperate, poor and over worked than your average used car sales man. And like any sales environment, there is an arbitrary hierarchy system to keep you selling and hustling hard for nothing. Your day to day existence as a game host is a constant state of war where you lived or died based on your “per caps”.

Per caps referred to your sales numbers, essentially per caps are some kind of equation that measures the amount of people in the park against your games performance on that day and the same day the year before. Regardless these numbers determined your livelihood and social capital. Absurdly no one other than management was allowed to know these numbers, even though these numbers caused some to crash violently into the ground while they elevated other to carney godliness.

While we were not allowed to know the numbers that determined our destiny, we could speculate on them based on the great and mysterious schedule board. The schedule board was a glass and wooden prophet that without empathy, laid down the rule of the land. Like apes waiting for feeding in a zoo, we would stand in suspense wondering if the wooden and glass prophet would reward us or arbitrarily take us to the morning shift.

The morning shift was the preverbal corner of misfits in the game department. Because of the nature of amusement parks in general, the morning shift was slow, tended to not make much money and required you to wake up very early. The worst part of the entire deal was that you also got much fewer hours than those who worked the afternoon shift.

It was an awful experience. You got paid less, couldn’t stay out at night and you probably did not have anything to do all afternoon. No one pitied the morning shifters because they had earned that spot, the great schedule board had declared them unworthy of the afternoon shift. So those on the top distanced themselves from those who were not considered worthy by the prophet.

Thankfully I only worked this shift for a single week. I pulled myself out of that hole fast.

The Amusement park is our Westeros and the different game zones can be thought of as the competing houses.

The park games department was ruled by the king who had his castle in zone one or kings landing. All of his managers and important operation people would reside here with him where they oversee the lesser lords. These lesser lords or supervisors controlled and maintained certain parts of the amusement park for the king.

Zone 1- kings Landing

Zone 2- Fle Bottom

Zone 3- The North

Millennium Games- Casterly Rock

Arcade- The Wall

The lockers- The Wildlings

From these brief descriptions you might have an Idea of what these places might be like. Zone 3 for example resides in the most northern part of the park and is far removed from the kings office in zone one

Zone one is located and named as such because it is located at the entrance of the park, the place customers are generally forced to enter and leave. So they have tons of games in this area arranged like towers in a tower defence game, trying not to let a single guest leave without bombarding them with offers to win assortments of colourful bears. This zone was filled with the strong performing game hosts who happened to be the most competitive and brutal.

Zone two is probably the worst of all the zones besides the arcade and the lockers. Amongst employees this zone would also be referred to as “the boxes”. Box games are the worst kind of game one could be assigned and zone two had more of them than any place in the park.

Where some games had 360 views or open air environments only one game in this area enjoyed that privilege and it wouldn’t be added until my second year. Typically you found the worst employees here because it was close enough to the capital that it could be managed and because it was such a large area it was easy to displace workers there. You would hear stories of workers going crazy in the boxes, particularly I recall an employee purposefully cutting himself inside one of these games out of boredom.

I once was told a tale about elephants and their domestication. Apparently, if you want to properly domesticate and train an elephant you need to get it as a baby and toss it in a dark box for an extended period of time. Then when the elephant gets out of the box you beat that elephant until it obeys you. I imagine working “The Boxes” did something very similar to those poor souls forced smile and be happy, day in and day out in area 2.

The Arcade was a place I nicknamed “The Island of misfit toys”. While working the outside games doesn’t necessarily require a surplus of skills or charm. It Doses however require some skill and charm, so if you didn’t have the skills you got sent to the arcade.

It’s important to note that I’m generalising here a lot; some people would also just get unlucky and be assigned to an awful area or the arcade only because of bad timing.

But back to generalising.

Generally the arcade was filled with underage employees and misfit toys. Like the wall in game of thrones these poor bastards worked in a dark and awful environment. The arcade was vast and expansive, like the place had to be at least a quarter mile long. It was Hell. The noises of a thousand video games bombarded the senses from all sides without escape. The only refuge available is a crowded and dirty public bathroom.

I worked in a unique area called the millennium games area. Technically we were included in area 2 so we sometimes called ourselves area 2.5. Ironically our work area couldn’t be any more different then area 2. For starters we didn’t have a single box games and for that matter we didn’t even have a supervisor. This meant we didn’t have the cumbersome cudgel of authority lingering over our heads and could work with peace of mind.

Being the supervisor was a very authoritarian position, as I guess any middle management position would be. But because of the proximity that most workers enjoyed with each other, in and outside work, this position of dominance became very noticeable. Supervisors had their own parties and cliques and typically did not associate with the normal help.

We did not have a supervisor, but we had a guy that I will only refer to as Prince Joffery or Joff for short. Joff was a blue tag or a team leader. The team leader promotion was the only chance of upward mobility we had at the park. I guess you could be a supervisor, but that’s a big climb. Usually having a blue tag entitled you to a 25 cent pay increase and a feeling of superiority. But in Joff’s case, it was something more, it was his identity.

Joff was made a team leader because he had too much enthusiasm. He was so dedicated to the job, that management knew they could get away with giving him lots of responsibility without having to pay him more. So it was that Joff felt like a king when he wasn’t really even a prince.

Everyone knew what the situation was, so when Joff told me to do something, I would decide if it was important or not. After all, he had no punishment power. Management was also aware, so they only stationed competent, self-motivated employees at casterly rock. So when people did not listen to Joff, it wasn’t like the area was going to burn down. Joff however, had no clue he was not the bad ass boss hustler he thought he was.

This was particularly good for me and probably the only reason I could stomach the place for as long as I did. Good for me because in my passionate attempts to sell crap to people trying to enjoy themselves. I would break every rule in the book. I would make fun of customers, be politically incorrect and I would wonder around my game area, sometimes to the point of trailing customers. Thus I enjoyed myself and contained working.

It’s important that I clarify that Joff doesn’t really deserve his name sake. For the most part Joff was a god guy, he just had a bundle of personality quirks that made him incredibly hard to deal with though.

For one, joff had the largest inferiority complex of anyone I think I have ever met. This being the reason he felt the need to “hustle” harder than everyone, all the time. While I was trying to just have fun at work and do my job, Joff was all job and no fun. Every day he had to know his games sales numbers and he had to tell everyone. He was like a mad man keeping up with the office politics, with detailed knowledge on everyone’s schedule and perceived value in the department.

He was one of those guys who worked out all the time, but doesn’t seem to play any sports. This was compounded by his obsession for basketball shoes, namely Jordan’s. Every week Joff would get himself a new pair of kicks. I would get into his truck after work to go get beer and every time without fail, he would pull out a pair of different coloured shoes and say something like “Look at that concrete strip, no m17 has those” knowing I knew nothing and did not care to know anything about basketball shoes. Then he would start to blast some kind of disgrace to music like “ bubble but” on max volume with the windows down, again knowing I hated it.

Joffs life goal it seemed was to become the games department head at cedar point. One thing you could never say about joff was that he didn’t have dedication to his job. Joff would come into work puking and put on a smile before going into the back room, to vomit over the side. Point is, he had un dying and unquestionable elegance to the park…..until the next year when the mall shoe store would pay him more. Then his quests become to become the regional manager of this shoe store.

Ironically the following year Joff would be banned from the park after several warnings for coming into the park and winning lots of prizes with employees . A big no, no.

Casterly rock or the millennium area was named such because everyone who worked there was 6 feet tall, blond and skinny.

Like the lannisters we also had a Tyrion, a great guy I’ll call T. T was no dwarf but he was shorter than the rest of us and much wiser than the rest of us. T knew and accepted his place as a slimy game sales person. He would later be promoted without breaking a sweat.

I worked next to a really cool guy, I’ll just call J on the ladders. J was 2 years older than me and really chilled out. He was one of those people that everyone liked and wanted to have around. He was always getting invited to parties and finding cool things for us to do after work. I looked up to j a lot.

This Post ended up being a lot longer than I had intended. So I’m going to stop here.

This blog is amazing...You turned a summer into a fun sort of disgruntled narrative...I just posted a ton of memes making fun of CP stuff lmao

Preach ON Brother!! It is unusual (but refreshing) to see an accurate portrayal of life as a Cedar Point seasonal inmate. Your reflections on the politics, ass-backwards policies and weird personalities is right on, regardless of if we are talking about games or any other in park area. Plus, I enjoy your writing style and use of metaphors. Please keep the blog coming!

Thanks, man! means a lot that you like my style. There is more to come. I'll make sure to post here.

If you ever want to do more then send meme's send me some stories and I will include them.

Entertaining read about a job I would hate and never do! I enjoyed my job in catering despite the long hours of physical work.

One reason I never wanted to work at cedar point is that cp is still a magical place in some ways to me, and I don't want to ruin that illusion. Yeah I know the place is staffed by college kids and run like any other business, and I see through some of the facade now as an adult. but having grown up going there, I like that it still makes me feel like a kid. I never wanted to ruin that by working there and seeing behind the scenes.

GL2CP said:

One reason I never wanted to work at cedar point is that cp is still a magical place in some ways to me, and I don't want to ruin that illusion.

Truth. I worked as a comic for years, then started working part time in a comedy club. Didn't take too long to break that magic spell and see the man behind the curtain. After some years, I quit doing comedy and now run the club lol.

Still waiting for the debauchery please!