As I have alluded to before, I have had many jobs in my day. Flipping burgers, folding clothes, serving tables...basically, you name it, I've probably done it. But I have never actually gotten fired from any of these jobs...I did however come close one time.
I was working in a photo studio. Initially when I started the job, I was like,
this is going to be great, I get to use a camera, do some editing, which no. The only part of that thought that was true was, I get to use a camera. I did not take into consideration the camera breaking constantly, crying children, posing giant groups of people in a small studio, crazy parents and ummm crying children, oh and the whole trying to make children smile thing. I refused, like absolutely refused to do anything stupid to make a child smile. Like, I would pop out from behind the camera and play peek a boo, but that was pretty much my limit. Some of my co-workers would go in the studio and just go insane and be like, "lookie here, here's a puppet!! smile!!! here's a dog!! cootchie cootchie!!" all while jumping all over the place. To that I said,
no thanks. You may say that was part of my job, and I would probably say, you're right, but for the 8 dollars an hour I was getting, I sure wasn't willing to make an ass of myself. Most of the time I would tell the parents, "if you want your kid to laugh, you are going to have to go behind me and do something funny" because a) I've never met your child before and I have no idea what they find funny, and b) I really don't want to appear creepy. Most of them complied.
The props we had at this photo studio were hilarious. Giant bears, giant flowers, all sorts of randomness. On my very last day of work one of my coworkers and I got out every single prop, pulled down the christmas background, and set the timer on the camera and posed it up. Those pictures still make me laugh hysterically. Our friend in the photo lab developed them, and nobody was any the wiser.
I digress.
It wasn't all children whose photos I took. Sometimes it was awkward teenagers, and sometimes it was just awkward people. One time I took a photo of a man and his fiance, and the man had a huge growth covering one half of his face. As I was snapping pictures he said, "every time I look at a photo of myself, a bit of my soul dies", and I was just kind of like,
I am so not equipped to be handling this. Do I smile sympathetically, do I...what do I do?? Another time an old man came in with his daughters and his grandson to get their picture taken. I sat gramps on the stool in the middle. He was sitting there, legs apart, waiting for the camera to roll, hanging out. Literally. He had a huge hole in his pants and his penis was actually hanging out. Neither of his daughters noticed, and I was suddenly in an insanely awkward position. If the earth could have swallowed me up at that very moment, I probably would not have minded. Why, why did the man have a hole in his pants and no underwear? How could nobody notice this? Why was I suddenly the one who had to alert his daughters to this unfortunate incident? I'm pretty sure my face was bright red, and I was just like, "ermmmm, ummmm, ermm" gesturing towards the old man's crotch. The daughters eventually saw and obviously were extremely embarrassed. They started fighting about who was supposed to dress dad. I also need to add that grandpa had no idea what was going on the entire time. One of the daughters finally just decided that they would pose the grandson in between grandpas legs. Luckily this kid was little and will probably have no memory of this, otherwise it would likely scar him for life. I took those photos so fast, jumped up from the camera and was like, "ok, let's do this!". I am retroactively mortified when I think of that moment.
ANYWAY! So the time I almost got fired. One of the hardest parts of this job was not hysterically laughing when a photo popped up on the screen and the person just had a horrible look on their face; their eyes would be closed, smile would be dumb, something. You know the type of picture I'm talking about. I never quite mastered how to stifle this laughter, and on more than on occasion, I literally sat at the editing table with the family whose photos I had just taken, and laughed until tears were streaming down my face because of the way one of them looked. It was entirely inappropriate, but I seemed to have no control over it.
One day one of my coworkers and I decided we would go through all the old photos and pick out the worst ones and make a book. We entitled this project, "Ugly Baby Book". Personally, I found this hilarious. It wasn't really that the babies were ugly, it was just the facial expressions.
Anyways. This took place over several weeks. One day my boss found a copy of one of the photos in the garbage. She was like, "why did you order this?" Me "Ummmm"...I figured there was no point in lying, because I am one of the world's worst liars, so I just told her "I was making an ugly baby book". Her face actually twitched and I could tell she wanted to laugh, but at the same time she wanted to kill me. I got a warning, and she didn't speak to me for two weeks.
I still have the book. I must say, it's just as hilarious now. Totally would have been worth getting fired over. I quit about a month after this incident, because I just couldn't take it anymore. But looking back, it was an interesting 8 months.
