But I gots to get PAID, nigga.

My very first - and equally worst job ever - was working in the concession stand at the Birmingham Zoo. This was all so I could earn the money to put in alongside my mom to buying my very first car before I started my freshman year in college. This would not have been a bad summer job had it not been for one thing....

The main concession stand was in front of the Elephant Cages.

Whoever designed the layout for the zoo was a fucking MORON. Every day you'd leave the zoo smelling like rancid Dumbo shit. The people I worked with were no better - cream of the crop in high school immaturity. At the risk of sounding elitist and nasty they were exactly the type I avoided in high school seeing as I was pretty introverted at the time. There were two old ladies there who were really sweet though and made the job semi-tolerable.

The best story I have from that place though is the one I tell all my friends. A summer kindergarten day care had brought its kids for a trip to the zoo. Fluff stuff. So you have a tiny concession stand crammed to the hilt with about 20 4-5 year olds: when a peacock walks by the concession stand. At this point in time, the peacocks walked around the zoo freely and people often fed them peanuts and shit. Well, this peacock just so happened to see its reflection in the glass of the stand and decided it didn't like what it saw.

What occured next was a horrifying scene of an acerbic peacock screeching at and attacking its glass reflection to the point where its legs became a bloody mess and about 20 kindergartners in a tiny confined area, too afraid to leave with the chaperone, screaming and crying in terror every time the idiot thing attacked itself. When the blood started coming there was no refuge from the screams and panic in that place. ANYWHERE. The killing part about all this? It took the zoo about 15-20 minutes before somebody finally came to round up the durn fool thing.

From that day forward, I detested working at the zoo with every fiber of my being and I *STILL* hate going there.

Jam it back in, in the dark.