Columbus Day

Five minutes left on my shift. I am totally exhausted. The kids are out of school for the most shamelessly fraudulent of our nation's many fraudulent holidays, so it's been busy. I have the ride full, checked and ready to go. I put the key in the ignition, hit the switch, and prepare for a blissfully customer-free three minutes (the length of the ride cycle).

The ride is supposed to go around seven times in each direction. On the second rotation, it stops. My attempts to start it again are in vain. The dreaded Red Light Of Doom (which signals a mechanical problem) comes on. Ughhh.

"All right folks, we're experiencing some technical difficulties. Those of you who used tickets [as opposed to the unlimited passes we also sell], please wait at the exit gate, and they'll be refunded in about two minutes."

A fat man with two little girls gets out of his seat and is immediately furious. "Ugh, God. I wait a half hour to find a ride I can go on with them, and then this shit happens." He continues to grumble over my attempts to apologize. People like this man are plain and simple the reason that my job sucks. I can understand why he's annoyed of course; I probably would be too in his place. But he's got no cause to swear at me about this, for one simple reason: it's not my fault. I didn't do anything to "break" the ride; hell, these things are designed specifically so that I can't. It's not like I hit the wrong button and the thing blew a gasket. It's a random mechanical failure, which could not have been predicted or prevented.

Now before you get on your high horse and start talking to me about how we should take better care of the machinery so it doesn't break down, consider this. This ride ran about 75 cycles without a hitch today, and it'll run that many again, without a hitch, before the day is over. In fact, this kind of thing only happens once every few thousand cycles (every few weeks). Also, even the simplest of kiddie rides (like this one) are built with very sophisticated on-board diagnostic fail-safes, which shut the ride down if they detect any abnormality anywhere in the system. Nine times out of ten, there's not even really a problem; the mechanic takes a look at the diagnostic readout, resets the ride, runs a test cycle, and voila! good as new. We very rarely have to actually shut rides down for any amount of time longer than fifteen minutes. Our rides run for ten to twelve hours a day, 364 days a year. Drive your car that much and see how long it lasts.

As my boss is writing out the paperwork (just routine stuff we keep on file: date, time, ride, problem, solution) I glance down at the sheet to see what the problem was. "Lap Bar Fault." The lap bars on this particular ride have two independent switches which tell the computer they're locked; if one is engaged and the other is not, the computer brings the ride down. This ensures that no bars are unlocked while the ride is in motion.

There is only one reason we ever see this fault: the bar was locked at the beginning of the ride, but enough pressure was applied to force it partway open and trip the safety switch. In English, that means someone was too big for the ride. This, of course, means that the whole ordeal was the Fat Bastard's fault to begin with.

He's gone by now; no matter. Since he didn't wait, I assume that his girls have all-day passes, until I see him at the Carousel, arguing with my colleague, and pointing angrily at me. He wants her to let them go for free because my ride broke down. She obviously can't just take his word for it so she looks over to me for confirmation.

"Dorothy," I yell over the din, "let him go, don't worry about it!" She looks confused. "Let them on, it's OK!" She does.

Ten minutes later my replacement arrives. I go over to the Carousel to offer condolences in regards to Fat Bastard's rage.

"Hey, sorry about the angry guy earlier," I say.

"Ugh, I do not need this right now, you can just..." I hear tears in her voice. I sense that she's angry at me as well as the asshole. Shit.

"Hey look, sorry I yelled, I just didn't think you'd be able to hear me over all this, I'm not mad or anything."

"He was yelling at me, you were yelling at me, it was just..." She trails off. Now I can see the tears in her eyes. She struggles to hold them back.

I've been in this business long enough that customer bullshit doesn't bother me anymore. I sometimes forget that this was not always the case: when I was a rookie like Dorothy, I was terrified of upsetting people, and took everything they said personally. It took me a while to be able to blow off assholes like Fat Bastard. My mild irritation at his senseless hostility flares into anger at his senseless abuse of my friend, and at myself for inadvertently making the whole situation worse.

For the last hour I've been looking at my watch every five minutes wishing for the time to go faster so I can get the hell out of here. But, I can see that the dam is about to break; I can't just walk away.

"Do you want to take a few minutes?" I ask.

"That would be fantastic." She hands me the key.

One cycle later she's back, still visibly shaken but no longer on the verge of tears. "Thank you," she mouths at me as I return the key and leave to punch out.

Eventually, experience will allow her to remain cool in the face of everything from nasty language to death threats. (That is not an exaggeration, I've seen it happen-over a kid being too small to ride a roller coaster, no less.) One day she'll be a cynical, grizzled veteran like me.

Most people would have just apologized and left her to her fate. I stay the extra ten minutes because there is no one else to help her. In my line of work, the only people you can count on are the people who suffer in the trenches with (and for) you every day. Our team leads, the people directly above me, are decent and well meaning but are overworked and stressed out as it is; they don't have time to pick up the pieces left by the world's Fat Bastards. In here, all we have is each other.

American Dream

I have looked America in the eye.

She's changed a lot since I was a kid; these days she wears a burqa. At least, she's wearing one when I run into her, sitting in the passenger seat of a bumper car in the theme park where I work. Her husband is driving and they are both laughing uncontrollably, just like the howling ten year olds they crash into. She shouts in Somali or Oromo into a cell phone (held to her ear by her head scarf.)

It's Eid ul-Fitr, the last night of Ramadan. It seems like the entire Muslim population of my state is here, finally letting loose after a month of fasting and prayer. Total chaos everywhere. Ride operators struggle to explain rules and policies to people who barely speak English; children run and shriek with the joy of adrenaline; everywhere friends meet unexpectedly with handshakes and smiles.

Most of the people I work with dread this night, and tell horror stories to anxious rookies. There is of course a fair amount of insanity; a friend of mine got a scalp full of saliva when a boy, eager to impress his friends, thought it would be hilarious to spit off the top of a large thrill ride she was operating. One year one of the custodians found a (dirty) diaper up a tree. Hanging in the branches, no joke. The crowd is the largest of the year (including Saturdays during summer) and many of the guests have a limited knowledge of English. We're short staffed. Everyone is on edge. In my line of work, this is the night when heroes are made and legends are born.

I don't mind too much though. Other people see foreigners who dress strangely, refuse to follow the rules, and leave trash everywhere. I see people integrating the culture of their home countries, out of which they were forced by famine and war, into the giant sauté pan that is our great country. I see people living the American Dream.

The transition is difficult at first, but immigrants are America's gasoline. My ancestors (and yours, unless you're Native American) were at one time just as foreign as the veiled women and robed men who walk the streets outside my apartment. They found a place here, they adapted, and then they built the greatest country in the world. Soon the loud unruly children will be college graduates, business owners, office workers, doctors, lawyers. I love my job, despite the sometimes-ludicrous amount of bullshit it entails, because it gives me the opportunity to see, firsthand, the process by which our nation grows and thrives.

I have looked America in the eye, and she is beautiful.