Spanning 3 years from 1997-2000, the Drive-In is my 4th job in this installment. What a doozy this one was. It was everything in one. Food, security, cleaning, sales, landscape, and so on. Basically, it was crappy. Sure, I got to see Austin Powers 2 at 4:00 in the morning with my brother the day it came out, but it was hardly worth the stress and horrifying job.

Firstly, there were no breaks. You could be there from 7:00pm to 3:00am with no break. The boss’ reasoning behind it was that the slow times were your break. The slow times are when you had to prepare for the busy times. We all sustained on popcorn for the time we were there.

I used to get to spool and change the movie film before and in between the movies. That was fun. I liked that. It was manual, quiet, and solitairy. Just me in the little booth listening to “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn” and “The Pianoman” on loop for three years took its toll on me, though. To this day, I can’t listen to those songs. It was a mix put together by the owner of the place that was eight songs long with ads in the middle, but the songs were terrible, and it was on loop. Terrible.

Since I was a guy, and a fantastic worker, I got crapped on every day. I used to have to come in Saturdays at 8 in the morning to weed wack and mow the golf course. I also had to paint all the poles in the whole drive in. That sucked. I think there was someone else there with me helping me keep my sanity.

My primary job there was security. At the time, I was 16-18 and weighed about 120lbs. Not very threatening. Either way, I would go around, direct traffic a little bit, tell people that they can’t park their monstrous trucks in front of little cars and then constantly get in fights with them. It was on the sheet that we provided and there was also a traffic kid that told them the same thing, but night after night, there they are. Front row, in front of everyone. Also, people after each movie would try to skip over to other movies which you couldn’t do. So you would have to watch about every car leave the area and make sure they didn’t go to another area and if they did, you would have to confront them about it. It wasn’t that bad. I got to watch movies all the time and for the most part, it was warm and I could just walk around and make sure everything was running well. I liked that, in retrospect.

The food service was pretty easy, too. It was hamburgers and hot dogs and then candy, popcorn, and pop. Simple. I remember the popcorn being amazing, too. I have gone back since I quit, but things have changed a lot. I remember getting to see a lot of people that I went to school with and their families and it was a good place to see tons of hot girls, too.

Speaking of hot girls, I did notice people having sex. It was really no big deal. I never say penetration of anything as the cars were pretty well steamed, but I saw some rocking cars and trucks and since they’re not bothering anyone, you just leave them alone. I saw cars and trucks get in accidents, people hit the poles that separate the parking spots, all sorts of stuff. Everything that you could imagine that would happen at a drive in.

My demise was all on the part of my boss. I did everything there, and for about $5/hr. I was the only one that would come in early, and sometimes twice a day, and nothing ever came back my way. I remember him saying that he made six digits and I might have made $5k a year. I don’t think that a little raise after three years would have hurt him, but he was a jerk so it’s fine. He asked me to come back in the summer, and I told him that I was going to Boston to go to school in the summer and couldn’t. He asked me if I would be interested again and I told him that I had just made up my mind and I wouldn’t be returning. He send me home and didn’t pay me for the time I had worked. I called him and argued with him about why I should be paid and about two weeks later, a check arrived and I wiped my bosses name from my resume as there was no way I would ever get a good recommendation from him again.