I’ve discovered over the years that I have a talent for being the precise kind of friendly and polite that works perfect in a retail/service environment. All you have to do is smile at strangers, usually for just a few seconds apiece, and even if they ask you something you can’t help them with or they’re really pissed off at you for something absurd, more often than not ratcheting the friendliness into the realm of mocking actually helps smooth things over (“I’m SOOOO sorry the air conditioning isn’t cold enough in here, we’re doing EVERYTHING we can to fix this problem, I put in a call to corporate and they’re sending someone over, we’ve got three of our best men in the ventilation shafts right now, I’m SOOOO embarrassed right now, I REEEEEALLY hope this isn’t just RUUUUUINING your day, why don’t you try taking off your parka and I’ll get RIGHT back to you in JUST a few moments”). It’s a horrible skill to have. I would much rather know carpentry or HTML. Instead I find myself taking jobs that have me tearing tickets at movie theaters, grinning at friendly and unfriendly patrons alike and flirting with grandmothers for no tips.

Taking tickets was about my favorite thing to do when I worked at the Angelika because it involved by far the least amount of responsibility. It’s not like I had any high-level security clearance when I was selling popcorn, but all the ticket guy had to do was tear off stubs, say something along the lines of “Theater number (number between one and eight) to your (left or right). Enjoy!” and try not to swear or fart too much. Also, the ticket podium was right next to the controls for the lobby soundsystem, and it was my prerogative to dock my iPod and play all manner of middling 90s indie rock and Italian disco over the loudspeakers. The managers were okay as long as they couldn’t hear any cusses, and my co-workers were okay as long as I played Animal Collective every once in awhile, or at least lied and said I had Animal Collective queued up after just one or two or seventeen more Guided by Voices songs.

So one day I made the mistake of showing some of the other employees some of the “deep cuts” on my iPod. Maybe 30% of my iPod is stuff I enjoy listening to at all times, while 50% is enjoyable enough stuff I feel is mostly good to have “just in case” (just in case somebody’s having a stroke and the only way to calm them down is playing the Talking Heads CBS demos from 1976, or just in case I’m on a date with a girl who will go to third base if I’ve got every single John Peel Festive 50 Countdown from 1987 to 1999). The remainder is stuff best left unexplained, like this “Mystery Song” version of Ray Parker Jr.’s theme from Ghostbusters.

It was decided by an ambitious (and poorly-supervised) co-worker of mine one Sunday to play this song on repeat for an entire afternoon. I had no real problem with this (as far as I’m concerned, this is the only version of the Ghostbusters song that exists), but the patrons of the Angelika that day had extraordinarily mixed reactions. Most were only in the lobby for a few minutes at a time; it was loads of fun watching to see recognition creep across people’s faces, followed swiftly by irritation. There were a few incredibly awkward cases of people showing up a half-hour early for movies where the previous screening hadn’t yet let out, leaving me no choice but to ask them to wait in the lobby and listen to a song that congress would forbid the military to use for interrogation.

I was asked a couple of times what the hell was going on. I couldn’t say “this one guy who works here thought it would be funny and I was okay with it,” so I just said “it’s a promotional thing for Ghostbusters 3. The studio is making us play it. I’m sorry, I would turn it off if I could.” This seemed to satisfy most people, inasmuch as they left me alone and went back to waiting for Rachel Getting Married or whatever.

I took this short video clip, trying for some reason to be surreptitious about it. I received a number of warnings about taking out my cell phone while on duty, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how that would be more distracting than five hours of Mystery Song Number Twelve.

You know what? Sometimes I really miss working there. No I don’t.