Six Flags Over Mid-America is an extention of high school in many ways, having its own employee sports leagues, pep rallies and the occasional overnight trip. But when Games employees run free, the outcomes range from mildly hilarious to criminally actionable.
On one trip to the Lake of the Ozarks, three employees, including at least one foreman, end up with theft charges for stealing letters from a portable arrow sign. We know it's more than a rumor because the bail bond forms are posted in the Britannia backroom for all to see. They make plea deals.
Another float trip rolls around. This time, nobody's sober.
Another girl fills me in on the alcoholic details. One black tag downs three-fifths of a peach Schnapps bottle. A foreman gets so skunked he has to be carried onto the raft the next day. Another co-worker smokes five cigars in 20 minutes. Shacking-up abounds. One forewoman surnamed King earns a title of "The Shacker Queen."
As the girl pours out every dirty secret, little and big, co-workers on break at a nearby table observe her talking and your humble servant casually cross-examining. They think we're flirting.
"So did you get her number?" one guy asks me later.
Some forepeople sponge up power, and when one of them made it to the level of full-time Games department head, his monarchal ego radiated outward like a bad smell. "Jack" (name changed) needed regular ego feedings, and he wasn't afraid to vent in all directions.
One Saturday, Jack shows up in the Britannia backroom about 15 minutes before my day shift begins. He immediately starts heaving weight as soon as a foreman starts clowning with a fellow orange tag's sizable till.
"Let's see how many of these we can break," he jokes, eyeing stacks of quarter rolls.
"Hey bucko!" Jack bellows. "Don't mess with people's tills!" He launches into a rundown of what he wants the other supervisors and forepeople to get done today, including improvements to the prize displays. While he's ticking off his list, the foreman he just scolded slinks into a chair.
Jack throws him a dirty eye. "Are you slacking?"
"Yeah."
"Get out there -- this is Saturday."
"So Saturday's slacker day."
Jack turns his attention to another foreman with attitude problems, griping about the "flashing" -- prize display on the walls, in Six Flags terminology -- redone at the long-range basketball. He walks around the back of several stands griping about a "major skunk invasion" and ragging on the backroom's cleanliness.
"This place looks like a hole!"
"It's not so bad," replies the slacking foreman.
I'm surprised the foreman doesn't get axed on the spot given what has just happened in the past week or so. We're hearing how he canned a girl in her stand for not showing him the proper respect. The topic comes up during a break, and several of us trade rumors.
"I'd like to clear her name," spits another guy sitting nearby, taking it all in.
He gives us the real story, saying this girl bought it for getting into an argument with Jack in front of a guest and two other black tags. Fair enough. But I gather it's mostly because of Jack's ego and not the argument.
Another girl tells me about a time where she was cleaning mildew from the pond where we keep the remote-controlled boats. Jack tells her she has to wear gloves and goggles while using Lime-A-Way. She tells him she doesn't have either, and Jack says, "We'll get you some." He doesn't. So this girl and a co-worker go on a long journey to find the necessities... in pouring rain.
Some time later, the aforementioned foreman with attitude gets a promotion to supervisor, but only after threatening to quit after being repeatedly passed over. No doubt Jack has a hand in it. What's that saying about birds and flocking?
My undisputed title as number-one spieler faces a serious challenger in the summer of 1992. "Robert" (name changed) joins the Games crew in the Old Chicago section. We work a shift together in the long-range basketball toss and he relentlessly pitches the game to every passerby.
"Hello, sir, would you like to try your luck?"
How can he run with that much energy for so long? He tells me he loves people, and this gig beats his previous jobs at Shoney's and McDonald's. I understand, but I want to see if a theorem from a foreman holds up: "After the first two weeks, your enthusiasm just dies."
A few days later, we work a racing game together. In a rare change of duties, I don't have to call the races because Robert is blowing everybody away with his relentless power spieling. A supervisor tells me I better start running if I don't want to get beaten for Spieler of the Year. I'm a bit envious. Robert finally lets me in on his secret to perpetual energy: one hour of sleep and one hour of sitting meditation. If somebody can get that pumped after only two hours of down time, he deserves some kind of award.
I step up my own game the next day, power spieling at Whack-A-Troll in Britannia and turning red in the face.
"Remember to breathe," a co-worker tells me.
"Take it easy," a foreman says. "You got eight hours to go."
About a week after Robert's debut, I hear scuttlebutt about a supervisor trying to set up a Spielers' Challenge. Robert and I would both work a double shift in Old Chicago on the same day, taking turns calling racing games and seeing who could make the most money for their stands. Nobody officially comes to me with the challenge, but I find Robert and we shake on it. Now we just have to set a date for the showdown.
But neither of us gets to rock the mic. Days later, Robert's sacked for being $10 over on his till, a day after ending $16 over. And I see some of his final hours.
It starts when I take a 15-minute break, authorized by one of the foremen late in the evening. I walk into the Old Chicago backroom, where a forewoman and a supervisor are talking business.
"Could you do me a favor?" the forewoman says immediately. "Could you go back into the section for a few minutes?"
"I'm taking my 15-minute break now," I reply as I fiddle with the lock on the slide-out basket where I'm storing my till.
"Oh, okay," she replies. "Here, I'll lock that up for you. Go ahead. Go on out."
Strange. I go down the path to one of the restaurants and grab a Mr. Pibb. I return to the backroom with it, so as not to sip in front of the guests -- one of the directives of Good Six Flags Guest Service. This time I see the supervisor taping together a ripped-up till audit sheet. As I sit in the room, I quietly hear the forewoman and her talking about where they are going to meet outside the Games office, that another worker is "out of his stand again," and something about a write-up. The worker they're talking about enters the backroom and the forewoman sends him down to Long Range, where Robert is working.
"I thought we closed Long Range," the worker puzzles.
"No," the forewoman replies. "We'll be down in a half-hour to close it."
Not soon after, the forewoman has some words for all the black tags in the backroom, including me. "Could you all wander around the section for awhile?"
"The only reason I'm here is because I don't want to sip in front of the guests," I say.
"Oh, well," the forewoman replies. "As long as you're on a bench, it doesn't matter."
I go to a smaller backroom behind one of the stands and sip there. When my break ends, I return to the main backroom and fetch my till apron. The foreman who had sent me on break is the only one in the room besides me, and I tell him the whole story.
"Sounds like you were about to hear something you weren't supposed to," he says.
"That's what I thought."
When I see Robert in Wardrobe at the end of my shift, he clarifies everything.
"Goodbye," he tells me. "I'm not going to be seeing you anymore."
"Huh?"
"I got fired today."
"For what?"
"Being $10 over."
He tells me the Games department head dropped the ax himself. But he doesn't tell me everything. I later learn he's dipping his hand in the till, just like so many black tags who think they can steal without getting caught. A co-worker who borrowed money from Robert tells me he saw no money in his wallet at the beginning of one shift. Afterward, he had $30.
If you've never had to deal with the sudden death of a co-worker, consider yourself extremely blessed.
At Six Flags Over Mid-America, the Britannia section of Games abruptly lost 16-year-old Stephanie Jolly in the summer of 1991. She had just gotten rid of her despised brown tag and was excited about getting a driver's license. She won several Mystery Guest awards, living up to her name, and she was a natural to make Service Superstar. I would've nominated her, if I could've found a way to keep that nomination out of the rumor machine.
One day, in the backroom, she told us she was going in for surgery. We knew she had something wrong with her brain, but she brushed it off as if it were a trip to the dentist. I heard she had a tumor, but later, I heard it was something a lot more precarious -- swelling of certain blood vessels in her head. It didn't cause her much pain, but she once had a seizure during a break.
During surgery, her brain swelled so much that it crushed her skull. She was gone.
The Games supervisors got the word first, and they had the biggest problem: how to break the news to everybody without plunging the entire section into grief. They decided to tell people once they got off shifts, but the news trickled back to people still working.
"We almost had to shut the section down," one co-worker recalled.
This same person had been going out with Stephanie for some time, and worse, the relationship had soured in the last few days. The co-worker was at one of the arcades when another worker with him got a call from management. A boss gave the word to her first with instructions not to tell her floormate until a replacement could arrive. But the news being what it was, her facial expressions gave away dire news.
"What's wrong?"
"I can't tell you."
"What's wrong?"
"I can't tell you until Jim (the supervisor) gets here. He told me not to tell."
"[Bleep] that. What's so [bleep]ing wrong?"
"Steph didn't make it!"
Instantly, the co-worker lost control of the rational forces within him. A guest walked up to him saying he'd just lost a quarter in a machine. The co-worker hurled the keys in his hand at him. "Fix it your [bleep]ing self!"
At that moment, Jim arrived with a replacement. He told the co-worker to take off his till and go up to the Games office, where some other sups were in mourning.
The co-worker declined an offer to be a pallbearer at Stephanie's funeral, noting he was still messed up. Jim took his place.
This all happened while I was away on vacation, and I'm glad I didn't have to see Brit reduced to grief.
"You gotta smile," Stephanie once said to me. "It's Saturday!"
She was born to work this job. Why her? In my scoundrel youth, it reinforced my flawed theory, adapted from Billy Joel, that only the good die young. If I had a relationship with GOD back then, I would've been able to explain it to people. I don't think I would've made a big dent in their grief, but at least I would've kept them from blaming THE LORD.
On break, I sit down with some girls from day shift. I instantly detect an uneasy silence accompanied by looks that signal, "There is an outcast in our presence." For what, I don't know. Yet those looks -- they're penetrating.
I play it cool. "Something tells me something isn't right," I say.
A few of them laugh. Psych-out move? Nah... too much cooperation for that.
Your humble servant doesn't date on the job. All right, I'll own it: I don't date, period. I have good reasons besides the obvious of being the square. I see too many relationships go bad on the job at Six Flags. But the park all but promotes on-the-job fraternization, holding socials every so often like it's an extension of high school.
A girl named "Tina" (name changed) asks me out to a "Turnabout" dance. Then I find I'm her second choice. She had asked some other guy first, who turned her down but changed his mind. Now she's engineering a way to go out with two men.
"Sounds kinda kinky," I tell her. I back out, not wanting to be the third wheel. I really didn't feel like going anyway, even stag.
Later in the summer of 1991, the Games department runs a "Data Match" dating game. It's a pencil-and-paper precursor to eHarmony.com, where people fill out a standardized survey of their interests and a computer matches them up to best matches from the opposite gender.
Here's my results. Click for a larger view:
Well, almost my results. (Finding decent scanning software and drivers for my old hardware for free is a vicious circle.)
Note my highest compatibility is 67 percent. I don't know if that's positive relationship material. I don't follow up on the results. Remember, I'm not dating.
I will give you the Standard Six Flags Guest Service Disclaimer: most of our patrons play honorably and responsibly. The one percent that don't are a pain for two reasons. First, it's hard to catch them in the act. Second, when you do, they'll find a way to claim that you didn't, and in the name of guest service, you'll have to politely give them a pass.
"Ring-A-Thing" is the easiest for cheaters. The perpetrator doesn't have to lean over very far to secretly plant a ring on top of a soda bottle employee and claim a gargantuan plush animal. It only takes a second.
A little kid tries it one day. He flags me down from another part of the stand, indicating he's a winner. But it doesn't feel right. He's done it with his very last ring, and it's on the front row.
I turn to a woman who has just walked over and ask, "Did he lay this ring on there?"
She nods yes.
"This woman says you laid this ring on there," I addressed.
The kid gives me a cute smile. "I did."
"Don't do that! We nail cheaters!"
He and his buddy run off after the tactful but first dress-down.
Another guest wins the grand prize at Highland Hoops. So far, no problem. But then he comes back later and tries to play again, violating our policy of one grand prize per guest per day. That's when he claims he's not the guy who won, but actually the guy's twin cousin. In the name of Guest Service, I can't call him out on it.
The foul line is supposed to keep some order in the universe. But if I enforce it, guests complain. At one of the ball-tossing games, I calmly remind him, "Make sure your hand doesn't go over the foul line."
"Man, gimme my money back."
"Because I told you can't go over the foul line?" I query.
"Because I can tell you aren't cool."
Aren't cool -- that's a code term for, "I'll turn my head the other way while you cheat." I give him his money back.
He later comes back and starts leaning again. When I call him on it, he hurls all the balls away in a huff.
"I'm only doing my job," I explain.
"Why don't you go on the other side?" he gripes, pointing to some guests standing in another line at the same stand.
I do, and a co-worker lets him play again. He wins and collects his prize. I find out he was leaning again, but the co-worker -- a green tag -- doesn't want to cause trouble. And we both think this guy's a jerk.
One guy isn't content to cheat; he just flat-out steals. We find him sitting on the counter at Highland Hoops and politely tell him to get up, because we don't allow people to sit on the game counters. Later, we learn he has been reaching behind him to grab stuffed bears out of the stand and pass them to his buddies. It took another guest to tip us off, long after the fact.
Occasionally, some people think we're the ones cheating. At "Spot Pitch," we require a tossed quarter to get completely inside one of the small circles on our game board to win a prize. One guest thinks he's entitled to something for making it half-way. We have the forepeople and supervisors eyeball it, but they won't give in.
The steamed patron goes down to Guest Relations to complain. They call us and tell us to send down a prize. We send him a gigantic plush Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle -- with a rip in it.
ADVISORY: This contains mature content. Read with caution!
Managers, as I understand and I believe, should not only lead but inspire. In the Games section of Six Flags Over Mid-America, many do lead and inspire. Many also denigrate and defile.
The phone rings in the Britannia backroom.
"Brit -- Chris speaking."
"Who the [bleep] are you?"
"Chris Francis."
"Well, get off you [bleep]head and get a [bleep]ing supervisor right [bleep]ing now!"
I get one. I should've just hung up.
Fast forward now to a sick joke from a foreman named "Cliff," the name changed to protect his identity.
Shortly after opening one day, he gives me a fake write-up for "not shaving face and legs. This is against the grooming code and uncool." If only I had my historical mindset then. I would've come to work in 18th Century knee breeches and stockings and told him they get girls. Cliff, meanwhile, has Ten O' Clock Shadow, stubble, and gorilla legs. So much for setting the standard.
Later, after I come back from break, Cliff throws me a question straight from left field.
"Can I see your wallet?"
He'd seen me locking it up.
"What, you wanna rip it off?" I jab.
"Nah, let me just see it."
So I let him have it. He flips through my numerous cards before spotting a circular bulge in the back, which may have been what raised his eyebrows. It turns out to be change, but Cliff has a dirty mind.
"You got a condom in your wallet?"
I spend the next few minutes fighting a losing battle as I try to convince everybody in the backroom that I don't carry birth control next to my bills. I keep cracking up, though, because every so often, somebody comes into the backroom, hears the conversation, and asks, "Who's got the condom?" Or they poke their head in the door and ask it. Then I can't stop laughing.
Another girl gets ticked because I make it clear I'm not going to use it on her.
Most Six Flags guests behave. A few complain. They take issue with the prizes, the rules or the foul line. As best we try to head off disagreements, some people are born disagreeable. Usually I can kick disputes up to a foreperson or even a supervisor. But even if we're in the right on the rules, the guest will often prevail out of the need for good PR. More than a few Games workers catch onto this and bring it up at a staff meeting.
"We know," a supervisor says. "But now that Time Warner owns us, they're really stressing guest service."
"So let's just get rid of the foul lines," I remark. "Because obviously they don't mean anything."
The foul lines stay. But we can't call a foul on a the problem guests unless they get flagged for unnecessary roughness.
One night around closing time, a stand worker in Britannia is giving a refund to a guest who had run into a machine malfunction. Another man walks over and snatches the money. Naturally that starts a ruckus. The second man gives back the money, but then a third man runs over, shouting "That's my money!" Fists fly into a three-man battle royale.
Soon the area is crawling with Security officers. They're still there a half-hour later when I go back to close up and count my till. An Eureka, Missouri police officer steps in takes a statement from the girl running the stand. It doesn't look like anybody is seriously hurt. At least I don't see any blood.
Sometimes fights break out at the basketball tosses. People make side bets on whether they'll hit a three-pointer from half-court or beyond. Some people try to shoplift, forgetting they're in a controlled area that can be closed down. It's like trying to rob a casino.
When the video arcades fill up, we send up the most irascible personality types to police the crowds -- which mostly means keeping girls and boys from hanging over each other and breaking up shoving matches. I once ask why everybody else seems to be working an arcade shift. A forewoman tells me it's because they need nasty, mean and tough people... and I'm not any of those. I don't know whether to be insulted or flattered.
As a Six Flags worker, I sometimes get caught in situations that leave me wondering whether I will have a job at the end of the day. These are cases where a small mistake creates a butterfly effect of consequences.
July 18, 1992: Britannia, day shift. I can't stuff dollar bills down the pipes at the Churchill Downs horse-race game. They won't slide down to the bottom like change. If you throw a wad down, it'll just stick in the pipe. So when I run out of change, I have to fold it into the top of the pipe, not shoving it down, until somebody gets around to sell me change. "Thor," a foreperson whose name I'm changing to protect his identity, arrives when I'm at least $6 over. He and I start fumbling around with my till while he's selling me change.
"How much are you over?" he queries.
"I dunno," I tell him. No way am I going to count the till in my stand -- a consistent no-no -- and risk more wrath.
Thor takes the wad from the top of the pipe along with the bills from my belt. I also have money from guests in my hand, as they try to talk to me in the middle of all this.
"Pull five from that," Thor directs, giving my till wad back. "Drop six." I do it, using change he's just sold me.
But what about the money in my hand? I didn't realize he had accounted for it. He asked me if I'd pulled the five, which I had, but with him fooling with my money and guests itching to play and interrupt my thoughts, I'm losing track of things. Thor hands over some rolls of change and collects some money from a few more guests.
"Drop this," he says, handing me a roll of quarters. I do it.
But afterwards, I have a feeling something isn't right. My till feels too light. I go on break a few minutes later, and after a backroom count, I find I'm $6 short. Time to tell Thor.
I go over to him and explain what I've done, according to his instructions. He puts his head in his hands when I tell him about the first drop in addition to the second one.
"I'm trying to do my job," I tell him. I've followed his orders and he has the audacity to get upset with them. Or maybe he's just realized he's messed up. But knowing Thor and his longtime reputation for being a posterior orifice, the former is more likely.
"Go on your break and I'll talk with [the supervisor]," he says.
When I come back from break, the sup has a solution: remain at $6 short. "I'll write it down in my book that you're excused. Obviously you misunderstood something he said."
That does little to comfort me as I fret over what Cash Control or somebody else can do to me as Six Flags deals with a wave of till thefts. My hands keep shaking, and another foreperson nearly scares the stuffing at me.
"Need money, Chris?" he says, coming up from behind.
I nearly leap a foot in the air.
As for Thor's attitude, the sup tells me not to worry. He's "having a bad day."
In the summer of 1992, Time Warner (before AOL) owned Six Flags Over Mid-America, and they made a generous proposal. They allowed McDonald's to take over three of the park's restaurants. An eatery in the center became a full-service Golden Arches. A burger joint on the east end transformed into "McDonald's Hamburger Express," and another one on the west end near Old Chicago transformed into "McDonald's Pizza Express" at a time when the burger behemoth was thinking outside the bun.
Immediately, the park's self-run hash houses felt the pressure. When kids had the choice of an unknown dive and the familiar happy meal, guess where they pulled their parents? Banners went up outside other Six Flags restaurants offering combo meals for supposedly competitive prices. Guests weren't swayed, and they packed the central McDonald's. Even park workers went there, snubbing the food at their private "All-Star Cafe" for Big Macs and the famous fries. Getting a 50 percent employee discount wasn't bad, either.
Two months later, McDonald's found out they were losing the two Express locations. Immediately, conspiracy theories emerged. Were they too successful for their own good? Had Time Warner, in a fit of corporate stupidity, set them up to fail to protect the park's own? The theory had legs. Food Service workers got an extra fifty cents an hour to sling the grub where grease was the word. Even so, it still wasn't much of an incentive, considering most Six Flags workers made less than minimum wage because they were technically part-timers: they worked a steady job during the summer, but only during the summer -- and weekends in the late spring and fall.
Further rumblings down the rumor wire revealed a contrary story. The express locations weren't pulling their weight in sales, especially compared to the central location. The park could support one Mickey D's, not three. Food Service took back their former territories, continuing to serve hamburgers and pizza -- just not from McDonalds.
The central location immediately boosted its staffing and raised prices, making the park's location more expensive than their outside stores. Six Flags axed the employee discount. McDonald's remained a few more years, outlasting my stint with the park.
Now, even the central location is gone, turned back into a Food Service location. This Google Maps photo from 2011 shows it:
Come to Six Flags Over-Mid America and enjoy all our rides and shows. Enjoy all our comfort food and ice cream. Try your skill in the Games sections. But don't ever, ever beat your children in front of me.
I see it more than once. And when I do see it, I see it egregiously.
Most of the time, parents just yell at their children. Or one parent yells, and then another parent yells at the other parent for yelling at their children in public, swearing at the other parent in the process.
One time, a child cries in front of a Skee-Ball ticket counter, and a parent lifts him up by one arm to swat his behind several times before letting him fall to the cement floor in a heap of agony. The parent does this over and over again until the child lies in a fetal position.
"Where's my camcorder?" I whisper to a co-worker. "I'm gonna bust these people for child abuse."
The irony is, there's no good way to do that. The park has lines for security and anonymous tips if we spot guests behaving badly, but suspected child abuse is touchy. If I falsely accuse a guest, it comes back to bite my behind, and then I'm open to legal or disciplinary action if I'm wrong.
I should've reported it to a foreperson, quietly. I didn't, and I still wish I had to this day. I really wanted to confront this parasite of a parent and bellow, "You are a guest in this park! That means we don't have to watch you exercise corporal punishment before a live audience! Beat that child one more time and I'll shove my quarter rolls down your throat!"
We are still years away from the see-something-say-something era of self-policing. I probably had the final mentality of "it's none of my business; it's a parent punishing a bratty kid."
Years later, in the news business, I'll hear about parents arrested for public spanking. Mom or Dad's charges go away, but the humiliation doesn't. Whether the kids straighten up or run wild is left to speculation.
Nowadays, I probably won't call the cops on you. But kindly beat your children someplace else.
On any given day, thousands of dollars pour into the Games section of Six Flags Over Mid-America, passing through the hands and till belts of dozens of young employees before ending up in the drop boxes of some two dozen games before ending in the vaults of Cash Control. But along the way, scores of dollars will end up in pockets and purses, skimmed from the operation to pad the pay of employees who think they can quietly rob their bosses.
It's officially called Till Mismanagement, and officially, it's a firing offense. It's a crime, too, but in my four-summer stint, I never heard of anybody going to jail for it. That's probably why it continued.
Till theft is treated as a fact of life by our department head. "We've said goodbye to a lot of you," he says at one employee meeting. "We'll probably say goodbye to a lot more of you before the summer's over."
It's easy because drops are made with each game, no security cameras are around to catch people on tape, and the sections have various nooks suitable for moving cash around in secret. The actual technique varies, but many will short-drop: taking a dollar bill but dropping 50 cents into the box. Some will take wads of money at a time at a group racing game, but only drop half that in change, instead of dropping each dollar in change as it's collected. Later, they'll duck into the hiding place and pocket the excess. A few bold quick-buck artists will slip a dollar into their own pockets every so often instead of the till belt. Remember, the amount of money in the till belt is not supposed to grow or contract at any time -- it's solely there for making change.
Forepeople figure out ways to skim, shorting stand workers a few dollars each while selling change. Each worker thinks they've just gone short of the $80 that's supposed to always remain in the till by making a mistake in dropping. Meanwhile, the excess dollars add up and end up in the foreperson's pocket.
Six Flags does have its own undercover detective agency, but Internal Investigations are only as effective as their anonymity and their technique. A rookie gumshoe will stare constantly at somebody in a stand, and it's an obvious tell. One employee I know confronts a girl with eagle eyes.
"Do you work for Internal?" he queries.
"Yes," she says, breaking down nearly into tears, cover blown.
Sometimes I notice people walking around with camcorders held in awkward positions. They pass through, wait a few minutes, and then they pass through again.
I nearly catch two people in the act while training as a foreman during the summer of 1991. "Jared" and "Scott," as I'll call them, already had a dodgy reputation because they always worked together and walked together, leading people to think they did other things together as well. Enough said about that part.
As I'm selling fresh change to my comrades, one of the forepeople takes me aside and tells me not to sell to the racing game where Jared and Scott are working. Another tells me to ask if people need change before selling it to them -- which I was already doing.
While I make my rounds, a foreperson and a supervisor meet privately in the Britannia backroom, presumably discussing something that didn't seem right or something they saw. The foreperson calls for me, and I cautiously knock on the door.
"Pull a guy quick from Fishin' Hole," she tells me, "and send them to Bedrock Bedlam."
"You didn't see any of this," the supervisor says as I'm walking out the door. She and the foreperson head straight to Jared and Scott's stand, have them take off their till belts, and escort them out of the section. I never see them again.
Most busts take place out of my sight, and out of the guests' sight. We hear about it later through the rumor pipelines, long after the guilty parties are gone.
One summer later, Six Flags decides to get tougher on the skimmers, and so they deploy a battalion of till auditors from Cash Control into Britannia. They come up the back way, from the Thunder River dock. They stand around, discuss some strategy and wait until the crowd of players has thinned out a tad.
"GO!" somebody shouts, and the swarm of auditors splits up and spreads out to each stand like an FBI raid. They order every employee to hand over their tills with their nametags. Some auditors nearly rip the tags off their targets. Everybody gets fresh tills, temporary nametags, and probably a few dirty looks. The same operation goes down in Old Chicago.
Forepeople aren't exempt. One auditor takes his $3000 change till and hands him an $80 black-tag till.
Hours later, when our shifts end, we're summoned to a mandatory meeting in the training center, where we're all debriefed by two full-time Games honchos, a security officer, and a Eureka Police Department detective who speaks of an "ongoing investigation."
He tells us they're building hard evidence on people, but nobody in the room is a "suspect." He reminds us till theft is a crime, but he offers us a deal: any skimmer can some to Security within 24 hours, fess up, and be terminated without prosecution. After that, skimmers face a crap shoot.
I voice a couple of thoughts about the way it all went down. "I'm concerned about people's civil rights being violated," given the way the auditors went about their business.
The department head empathizes, saying that these weren't the best people to have going out doing audits. He reminds us not to count our tills in our stands, as seen on some of the covert camcorder tape. The other honchos give us an opportunity to see whether we were over or short at the time we were shaken down, and I find I'm two bucks over, which management tells me is nothing to be concerned about.
I never hear if anybody takes a deal, although we joke about whether we're going to surrender or not the next day. The auditors don't return for the rest of the summer. The investigations continue.
Many workplaces have their employees of the week, month and year. At Six Flags Over Mid-America we have Service Superstars, those who perform at the proverbial mark way above the level. But in many ways, just like in many other workplaces, it's just another popularity contest cloaked as an incentive to work harder.
I learn the truth after a few weeks. And an incident in May 1991 further convinces me, just as I'm beginning my second summer in the Games section.
It starts after I get a coin box key meant for Skee-Ball accidentally stuck in a basketball-toss machine while trying to give a guest a free play for a lost coin. I get some guff about it, which I expect, but what gets me is the attitude of a supervisor, promoted to that rank out of foreperson: "Well, no Service Superstar for you."
He's probably playing with me. He probably knows I'm thinking about it because he's just asked me a few minutes earlier whether I got one last year. He and another sup were trying to figure it out, since the slate starts clean every season. Or maybe that's what they want me to believe. I can't trust anybody anymore. Nonetheless, I buy into the hunch that I might be getting it. Boy, am I young and gullible.
Yet in all this, the ironic twist is that the act was committed in the name of serving the guest. The guest had accidentally put his money into a machine that had no ball -- and was not marked "Out Of Order," either. I tried to fix the problem by giving him a free play. Yes, a key got stuck, but not out of malice. The Skee-Ball key works on the crane machine and Boom Ball, so maybe it should work on the hoops game too. One can't fault my logic.
And then come times when I want to help the guest, but regulations throw up a block. Many times a guest will win a stuffed animal but want it in a different color that what we have in stock behind the stand. They'll see the color they want with the numerous animals tacked up on the wall (known as "flash" in Six-Flags-speak), but I can't get it down for them. I need a foreperson's permission to do that because first, it will leave a gap they have to fill again with more plush. Second, they have to recount the plush on the wall again if you take something down, which they don't like to do. Third, much of the plush is dirty, dusty and deformed due to hanging on the wall for an extended period of time.
Guests don't buy this logic, and they shouldn't. You're there to serve them, not make excuses why you can't. Still, I have to explain all of this to them, because often a foreperson isn't around, and they often don't give permission to raid the wall.
"It's something you and I both have to live with," I tell one guest. Sometimes I can appease them by letting them trade in a big stuffed animal for several smaller ones, something I can do without anybody's permission.
I would never earn Service Superstar through four summers of Six Flags. No special luncheon. No letter of praise from the bosses. No gold engraved nametag.
If only I had a relationship with GOD during those years. I would've remembered Hebrews 6:10: "GOD is not unjust; HE will not forget your work and the love you have shown HIM as you have helped HIS people and continue to help them."
Without a permanent shift in any of the Games sections of Six Flags Over Mid-America, I worked in Pool, which some of us called "swimming." I had a lot of latitude to set my own hours. I would usually sign up to work extra open shifts in sections that needed them or fill in for others when they needed time off. Most of the time, it worked flawlessly, but I accidentally double-booked myself a couple of times and had to work it out with the office. One time, though, failing to handle things the right way the first time led to a lot of needless frustration.
Monday, June 24, 1991. I call into the office to scope out open shifts. The first time I get a lady who isn't even working the desk. She says somebody will call me back, and you can figure out what happened. I call back a second time, and I'm told to call back around noon, in the likelihood a night shift will pop up. I call again and come up dry.
But I have another issue to settle: Jody's shift. Her and I made a deal a month ago -- I'd work for her on a day shift from June 28 to July 14th. It sounded like a done deal, but not completely. I need her to get it on a form so I could sign off on it and put my Social Security number on it. Now time is running out, and it needs to get to the office to get processed so the forepeople are aware of the change. I'd had repeatedly asked her to get the paperwork to me, but she says no rush, she wants to wait until her time off got closer.
Now I'm getting annoyed. A day earlier, I'd put up a note on the Britannia bulletin board:
THE PERSON (BROWN TAG) WHO WANTED ME
TO WORK FOR HER JUNE 28 TO JULY 14
NEEDS TO GET THE PAPERWORK (TSC) TO ME
PRONTO OR ELSE THE DEAL IS NULL AND VOID!
--Chris Francis
MY NUMBER IS ON THE POOL LIST.
THIS MEANS YOU JODY [REDACTED]!
I shouldn't have done it. But I need to get it taken care of, and I'm getting desperate. My plan is to get the paperwork done today while working. But without a shift, I have to get it done another way. I talk to the desk girl and get her to verify Jody is working. I ask to have the call transferred to Britannia. That's when I hit another problem: the junky phone in my room accidentally cuts me off. I call back right away and Desk Girl tells me Jody will call back on her break.
Hours pass with no call. I get back on the phone and explain. The girl on the other end tells me she'll work on it be back with me in a few minutes. She calls back to later saying I don't need to do anything; Jodi will turn in the forms in on Thursday, and I don't need to put any of my information -- including my Social Security number -- on the paperwork. They can get it from the office files. I should've known, but I didn't think office managers could crib that information, even with my consent.
Jody calls back later and I apologize for the sign, explaining how hard it's been for me to get shifts lately because Six Flags is cutting back on extra workers. She's good about it, very good, but in a way that makes me feel worse.
Occasionally, men do fall victim to sexual harassment. Maybe that term is a little strong for what you're about to read, but it fits. Although what happened was done in fun, not spite, it ranks as my most memorable uncomfortable moment from my time at Six Flags Over Mid-America.
Quoting from my journal of July 15, 1991:
Midway through my stint [spieling at Ninja Invasion in Old Chicago] two girls who shall be known here as X and Y started giving me some problems. They were fellow employees, and they must have had nothing to do because they both entered the stand at the same time and started coming on to me -- right in front of the guests. All this time, I'm trying to keep my concentration and run the game. They'd back me into corners, asking me questions that girls usually don't ask boys:
"Have you gotten laid yet?"
And then they'd feel me up, right when I'd be trying to spiel the race. I'm lucky I didn't make a Freudian slip. I'd break up at times when they'd rub my legs, but at least I didn't say anything embarrassing. I was embarrassed, though. Guests shouldn't see [bleep] like this -- and that's just what it was, [bleep]. I know somebody put them up to this. [Redacted]? She's a sneaky little [bleep], I think. She was the one who was fondling me during the time I was giving out stands while working as a yellow tag [management trainee] in O.C. Both X and Y left the stand occasionally to gab with others around the way, perhaps to spread the world about what they were doing to me and how I was reacting to it.
The two left for awhile after nearly a half-hour of this nonsense, and then Y came back to send me on a break. She said X was waiting for me in the backroom. When I got there, she was waiting for me all right. She half-dragged me outside and made like she was going to rip my clothes off, starting with my till belt. This girl was crazy, gone with the wind and the wind wasn't even blowing. After doing that, she led me back into the backroom, and the next thing I know, we're both on the soft and she's pretending that she wants to do the wild thing. When the steam cleared, I lay spread out on the sofa with the top button on my shirt undone and one shocked expression on my face."
This backroom incident, by the way, took place in front of several other employees, including a foreperson, laughing all the way. For the record, nothing happened below the belt.
Back to my journal, where nothing shocking happened after that until the last 15 minutes of my shift:
That's when [redacted] came up to me like I was her boyfriend and nearly hugged me. A few minutes later, she told me my face looked swollen, and maybe it did. I wouldn't have been surprised after the hijinks of X and Y. She asked for a second opinion from Kurt [a foreperson]. He didn't agree. She told me I looked sexy though. I told her it must be the glasses. She told me she thought I looked better without the glasses. Anyway, she gave me her phone number on a piece of tape as I was leaving...
Or so I thought. It turned out to be one of the numbers for Six Flags. Later I confronted her, playing around.
"What are you trying to play me for, girl? I'm not going down as a sucker!"
She said she messed up and miswrote a digit, something she always did. Yeah, sure. How does a person continuously forget how to write their own phone number?
Yet there she goes, swearing to GOD she messed up. If I had been closer to GOD at that time, I would've told her to leave GOD out of it.
As many of you know, my high school years would pass by without any semblance of a dating life. I should've started wearing tricorns and knee breeches in high school and learned a minuet, staying true to what I would later liberate from my heart and mind. I'm not going to dive into the pity pool, but let me point towards a possible love connection from June of 1991.
Angie and I are working together at "Fishin' Hole," a stand we put in for little kids to win something with every play. The object is to drop a fishing line with a magnet into a pool and pick up a prize for fifty cents a drop. The kids get excited and swing their lines around, meaning we have to dodge flying magnets. You'll put somebody's eye out, kid!
During a break from rugrat infestation, she asks a jawdropper:
"Do you have a girlfriend?"
"No."
I ponder my next words for several seconds before finally letting them out of my mouth: "What, do you want to be mine?"
"How did you know?"
"Know what?"
"That I liked you?"
I pause again. "Wild guess."
As I read back over my journal, I'm still not sure why I asked that question, other than the moment was right and the words were right.
But I have to be careful. If this girl is playing me, I don't want to go down as a sucker. Teenage hearts break easier, and not just in the ladies. But Angie tells me she and another girl had talked about me earlier in the day. It sounds legit, but I don't let down my guard.
At the time, it doesn't seem right, anyway. Years later, I realize why: I'm 19 and she's 15. I'm in college, and she's in high school. It reeks of illegality, even if everything's above the belt. She's nearly the same age as my kid brother's girlfriend. I don't push the relationship.
A month later, Angie falls through the termination hole amid questionable circumstances. I hear she gave out the grand prize at the "Golden Grail" game for a ball that landed right next to the grand prize cup without it being a winner. I gather she took pity on somebody.
I did it once too, giving a little girl a small prize at another game when she was only a hair away from being a winner.
"You just saved me a lot of problems," her grateful father told me.
It's all fun and games until one of the Six Flags Games people breaks the rules, or they get on the wrong side of some foreperson's ego, or they become a target on somebody's list. Working in Games parallels what we would later call Survivor, where the object is to outwit, outplay and outlast, or just good-old-fashioned high-school politics. Get out of line, and you get "written up."
I quickly learn the regulations count for no more than 50 percent. When I work my first shifts in the Old Chicago section, I find out their forepeople have little margin for error, or a miniscule sense of humor. People get written up for taking the top off a water cooler to get some cold ice for their drinks. Maybe that explains why others are begging me to work their Old Chicago shifts.
At one point, I see this sign in Britannia's backroom:
DO YOU ENJOY BEING WRITTEN UP FOR:
--Taking the lid off the water cooler
--Talking to a fellow distressed employee
--Having any fun at all?
IF SO, TALK TO AN OLD CHICAGO PERSON ABOUT SWITCHING SHIFTS.
Later, when word gets around about O.C.'s reputation for write-ups, the forepeople try to write everybody up as a joke as their sense of humor finally emerges.
Some people get written up arbitrarily. Some people commit felonies under management's sight line or get a pass. It's life. It's Games.
In June 1992, I find out a newbie gets written up twice and chewed out once in the same day, at least one for questionable circumstances. The first is for a black shirt under a white uniform. That's understandable, even though one can hardly see the black shirt, anyway. The other is for throwing a wiffleball across the section from one stand to another, although nobody seemed to notice all the throwing going on between stands yesterday. The chew-out is for letting a non-Games employee shoot a basketball at long Range, never mind that Security officers do it all the time, along with forepeople.
"Start keeping book on people," I tell him.
He whips out a notebook. "I already am. I think that's why I'm getting all this [bleep]."
I advise him to wear a tape recorder, if he can.
About a month later, I talk to him again, and he opens up his notebook. What I read is detailed and damaging. More than anything, it documents the antics of one particular foreperson for:
Staging a "puppet show" behind a fence in Britannia using prize plush animals, and throwing ice and water over the fence to observe the reactions of guests standing in line for Thunder River
Yelling at a Green Tag for counting his till in the backroom without permission when he didn't need to ask for it, because he's out of sight of guests
Fortunately, he wouldn't have to be anybody's problem much longer, and I play a role in his downfall.
At the end of one shift, I'm counting some change, stacking those notorious Susan B. Anthony dollars into neat little pile. Along comes Mr. Foreperson, who starts messing them up, insisting on counting them himself. I insist he stop.
"Don't you trust me?" he says.
"I'll take the fifth," I reply as a joke.
"[Bleep] you," he spits back.
"You can dish it out, but you can't take it," I say, and I recount how he comes up to me at Ring-A-Thing one month ago, screaming in my ear as I was bent over, trying to pick some rings up off the floor.
"Achhhh... easy!" I groaned. "I have hearing loss in both ears!" (I'm not sure that I actually did, but days upon days of loud games, loud guests, this loud foreperson and the realization that other people can talk to each other clear across the section and understand each other while I can't led me to this conclusion.)
"Well, then it shouldn't have hurt you," he grinned.
"It sure doesn't help it!"
He still thinks it's funny, one month later, especially since I tell him I've documented it all in my journal.
This incident might've evaporated, had it not happened within the earshot of a supervisor. The loud-mouthed foreperson is canned within hours, if not minutes. Finally, justice prevails.
Mere days before I set foot in Six Flags as an employee, when I visit as a guest with my family, my aspirations locked in on the horse-racing game in the Britannia section. "Churchill Downs" features a dozen mechanical horses controlled by alleys of golf balls rolled into holes by contestants, similar to Skee-Ball, flanked by two vocal gamemasters calling the race at the same time in boisterous stereo.
"I want to do that," I told Dad.
It's called "spieling" in Six Flags terminology, and it's an art. I get to try it for myself on one of my first days on the job, when my trainer-buddy agrees to let me step up to the mic. He quizzes me on the rules.
"You need to have three balls in the tray," I ferret from my mind. "You need to remain seated at all times, and nobody starts rolling until I ring the bell."
He smiles as he ticks off the points on his hand. Grasshopper, you are ready.
I pull the battered gooseneck down to my level and let it fly.
"We just need three people to start this next game of Churchill Downs!"
VU needles on the backroom amplifier hit the red zone. People turn their heads.
"You can win yourself a little jockey monkey!"
Forepeople wonder, who's that guy?
"Just roll those balls up the tray and get your horse to the finish line! Only a dollar to play!"
And so begins a journey that becomes my trademark. By the time my Six Flags games career wraps up four years later, I will call more than one hundred races between "Churchill Downs" and its Old Chicago counterpart, "Ninja Invasion." Ring the bell, and we're off and running.
"Annnnd we're off! Out of the gate into the lead is Number Three, Number Three! Here comes Number Five out of the gate! Seven and Six now showing. Three makes a big move! It's Number Three, Number Three by a length!"
The key is to mention everybody's horse at some point in the race to make things sound competitive, even if some people just can't get their stallion surging.
"And it's Three and Four neck and neck as we come to the halfway point! Three and four! On the outside coming up, Number Five!"
If it's a weekend or a weeknight, and we've got people around, a crowd is drawing in. As I pump up the intensity, the guests are cheering the horses on, and it's truly turning into a day at the races. We just need the hats and mint juleps. The horses have names we can give to the guests, but it's easier and faster to call numbers.
"Coming down to the wire, Three and Five, we're gonna have a photo finish!"
People are going bananas behind the players, who are now nearly throwing their golf balls up the trays, despite my admonitions, trying to hit that big three-point hole that will put them over the line.
RINNNNNNNG!
"And it's Number Five! Number Five! Congratulations! The rest of you, we're getting another game together in just a minute, so stand by!"
I quickly hand out a prize to our champion of the moment. Hands with dollar bills jut out in front of me, and I hastily grab the money, activate the lanes, go through the rules again and hit the starting bell.
It's a grueling gig. More than once, I'll come into work hoarse because my voice is depleted from a spieling marathon. The forepeople -- at least the good ones -- take pity on your humble spieler and put him in a stand where he doesn't have to talk as much. Some days, I'll just don't have the energy for a four-hour talkathon. But one day, I'll have a mysterious excess of energy and need to burn it off.
It happens on August 11, 1992, when I work "Pork Chopper," a motorcycle-themed race game in Old Chicago which gives away Harley-Davidson swag. The crowds aren't enormous, but they pile up after I start rocking the mic. The stand sucks in money like a rampaging Hoover.
And on this night, it's not just the guests getting prizes. From my journal:
I'd just finished spieling a game when a guest suddenly got my attention.
"You're familiar with the Mystery Guest program, aren't you?"
"Yeah!" I replied.
And, boom, he handed me a pink mystery guest card. Just like that.
"Good job!"
Now Games people don't usually win Mystery Guest cards, so this was an honor indeed. And believe me, I was high as a kite.
I wasn't so high later on when I redeemed it in Personnel. All the good stuff, like the Best Buy and Music Vision certificates, were gone. I got two Wehrenberg movie passes. The trouble with those is that, for a lot of big name movies like Batman Returns, you can't get in with them all the time. But I guess I shouldn't complain. It's getting selected that counts, and I'm one of the chosen few.
I won "Spieler of the Year" for at least two years. The first award landed me a gigantic cigar, which I couldn't smoke, and I didn't even try until I was living in Texas many years later. It disintegrated, and I coughed all the way through nary a few puffs before putting it out and trashing it. I'm glad I got a plaque the next year.
I also got the opportunity to train the next generation of spielers. Our Games Guru invited me to write a guidebook. I called it "The Art Of The Spiel (or, How To Talk A Good Game)," for which I earned a few extra summer bucks. I'm not sure if some of that material is still in use, but I know it made it into the training materials for at least one year.
Last New Year's Eve, when I was at Disneyland with my family, we passed a horse-racing game, and I just couldn't resist having another crack at it, more than two decades leader, from behind the row of players and off the microphone, direct from the diaphragm.
"Annnnnnnd they're off! Coming out of the gate and into the lead..."
Weekends are the theme-park equivalent of prime time TV. Concert weekends are prime time juiced. Six Flags has to have at least 1,000 employees on any given summer weekend -- and still we're understaffed. Thus from time to time, a poster would go up in the backroom informing us of a "mandatory work day." That meant everybody was required to show up, including your humble servant, even though I didn't have an assigned section -- or shift.
I operated as a "swimmer," my unofficial slang for somebody working in Pool, where new hires went instead of a regular shift. I found it both lucrative and flexible. I could nearly set my own hours because several games sections were always looking for at least one or two workers on any given day. I usually got Britannia, but I could pull a few shifts in a stretch in Old Chicago, an occasional one by the Ninja rollercoaster, or in Spanish Backstreet babysitting arcades if I wanted a breather. And people always needed somebody to fill in for them. I could work for three or four different people over the course of one week.
On concert nights, guests would jam the games in lines multiple bodies deep and just keep on coming. At times I would have to remind myself of the appearance checklist outside wardrobe, which mandated clean grooming, no gum and at the bottom, in capital letters: "BIG SMILE!" I had trouble doing it when pushed to the max.
As I wrote in my journal on July 31, 1990:
Saturday was a pain in the rear. We had Belinda Carlisle out at SF and, as usual, it was a mandatory work day -- and also, as usual, it was crowded. The day didn't start off so bad (I was working 2-10) when I started at Ring-A-Thing, but when I came back from break and went to King's Knights -- whoa. People just kept buying balls -- and buying -- and winning -- and buying. I think I told Bones [one of the forepeople], "Get me out of here!" They did, but I went to Highland Hoops.
Highland Hoops was that game where people won more often than a lot of us thought they should. The premise was easy: throw a hula hoop around a stuffed bear on a raised platform that's only slightly smaller than the hoop. If the hoop lands flat on the table under the platform, you're a winner. The physics of the game were supposed to make it hard for the hoop to land flat, but I suspected the bears actually helped straighten out the hoop, cutting the house edge.
All three sides were open at once and people just kept on buying hoops and winning bears and buying more hoops -- ack! I was getting worn to a frazzle, and when that happens, I get plenty ticked off. I don't do a lot of things I should do, like telling people, "Thanks for playing," or "Sorry you didn't win," or the things you're supposed to say when running a game. I was talking, yes, but under my breath so at least I could say some of the things I wanted to say and release them from my lips.
Welcome back to the grit of my scoundrel youth. But I found guests would walk up to a game with giant stuffed animals ("plush" in Six-Flags-ese) hanging from any mountable position, and still they would ask, "What do I win?"
When the smoke cleared and the damage lay among us -- 10:00 pm -- people just didn't want to leave. [This was known as a "soft close".] And we had to still keep taking money and giving away bears. Strange. The park can close and some of the rides can close, but we can't. I kept telling people who came up to play we were closed (which I wasn't really supposed to do, but I was so tired) and wished everyone would just clear out so I could leave. I must've looked like a genuine jackass, but at that time I didn't really care. Service Superstar I'm not, but so is about 85% of SF's employees. They're mostly black tags like me or foremen (oops -- I mean forePEOPLE), and I feel fine with that.
The next day, after giving away about 260 bears at Highland Hoops, they modified the game to make it harder to win. They ditched the giant bears and replaced them with small tigers that wouldn't improve the flight path of the hoop. Problem solved -- until the next concert night.
Other workers told me about the worst-ever concert experience: New Kids on The Block. The park sold out and stopped admitting guests. Lines everywhere. Games constantly busy. Rides constantly busy. Hours to thin the crowds out after closing. And who knows how many bears given away.
It's time again for "The 30/30 Challenge," that bi-annual blog-a-thon where I give you 30 straight days of original content, whether you like it or not. For the summer edition, I'm rolling back to the early 1990's when I worked in the Games section of Six Flags Over Mid-America (Now Six Flags - St. Louis). It's located in Eureka, Missouri, about 30 miles southwest of St. Louis -- and not that far from the infamous toxic streets of Times Beach. In the summer of 1990, just before heading off to college for my freshman year, I finally got a job that did not involve some form of fast food. But it did involve some fast times...
It's my first day on the job, and I don't know where to start. Do I go to the front gate, or to the office at the top of the hill? As a teenager sans car, my parents drop me off in the lower lot for the "guests," -- customers in official Six Flags terminology -- and I scramble up to the office.
After asking a few more questions of a few more people, I finally get myself to the training room located in the center of the park. I have only set foot in this sprawling funland once before, just days ago when my family decided to take a Saturday outing with a 2-for-1 coupon. Before that, I am only familiar with what I have seen long ago on Captain Kangaroo, when the good Captain did a show or two on location from Six Flags over Texas, the granddaddy of the thrill-ride family, the one dating back to 1961, when Angus Wynne opened his own version of Disneyland with more of an emphasis on thrilling rides. Six Flags over Georgia followed in 1967. The park I'm now working for rolled its first coaster in 1971 -- the same year of my birth.
Our trainer, a rotund guy in his 40's with blond hair, passed out the boilerplate forms for us to sign and the short employee manual. We watched a proverbial hazardous material safety video, even though the most hazardous thing most of us would deal with was "Fan-Fare," that mysterious industrial cleaning agent one only finds at Six Flags. After that, the time comes for the field trip outside. The park is sparsely attended for a Monday morning in early June but still running strong.
"What do you think is the question people ask the most?" our trainer queries.
"Where is X?" I volunteer, "where X is some ride."
Our trainer defines my variable. "Where's the bathroom?"
He takes us through the park's six themed lands, each representing a flag that has flown over the midwest through our history. We start in America, making our way through Spain, France, Great Britain and the park's nods to Missouri and Illinois, our trainer dutifully noting the location of each restroom along the way. As the story goes, Six Flags originally wanted to name the park "Six Flags over Missouri," but the company couldn't find six different flags in Missouri's history. Expanding the name expanded their options.
I also had options. When Six Flags came recruiting at Eureka Senior High School, I applied on the spot during lunch. I heard nothing about my application for weeks. Days after I graduated from high school, I was talking to Dad about putting in an application at a Burger King down the street (despite my abortive experience with them in Kansas City one year earlier) while we were out running an errand. As we pulled into the driveway of our new St. Louis-area home, Mom was running out to meet us.
"You got the job at Six Flags!" she cried. She'd opened the mail. At the time, I really didn't care she'd opened my mail, too.
Six Flags over Mid-America has three games sections, all linked to ride areas: Britannia, coming off Thunder River; Old Chicago, coming off the Screamin' Eagle coaster, and Ninja, coming off the coaster of the same name. Spanish Backstreet is another game section, but it mainly consists of babysitting arcades and making change, so I don't count it as a real section.
With the basic training complete, I report to wardrobe to suit up for my starting section: Britannia. The uniform is a white short-sleeved smock with plaid lines that cut me across the bust and up my neck, bottomed with black shorts. I have to buy and wear L.A. Gear tennis shoes, even though they are one of the park's official sponsors. I expected an official promotional deal that wouldn't involve taking a payroll hit.
A savvy guy who has to be at least a year younger than me takes me on another field trip through all the carnival-esque games of the section: The King's Darts (dart balloons), the basketball tosses (both of them with big and small hoops), St. Andrew's Green (mini-golf), Ring-A-Thing (trying to toss a ring onto a soda bottle neck), Golden Grail (toss wiffleballs trying to get them onto a colored chalice), Churchill Downs (mechanized horse racing), Space Chase (a Jetsons racing game which has absolutely nothing to do with England), Wacky Wire (manipulate an electric ring around a moving spring without touching the sides), the ubiquitous Skee-Ball and the winner-prone Highland Hoops.
"Really watch the foul line on this," he says on the hoops game. "We lose a lot of money here."
I'm soon working one of the stands -- I forget which. But I will never forget the "till." Eighty dollars in change sits in a green apron of pockets tied around my waist. With all of the Britannia workers wearing tills and white shirts, we sort of resemble European peasants in tunics... sort of... all wearing name tags.
They have a color-code system. Newbies like me are "Green Tags" or "Slime Tags." Eventually, I'll graduate to "Black Tag." Maybe I'll make it to a foreperson, or "Red Tag." Maybe I'll get to an assistant foreperson, or "Orange Tag." A few lucky persons will make it to "Gold Tag," winning honor of Service Superstar, complete with award luncheon and a gushing letter from the company suits.
The one tag you don't want to be is "Brown Tag," nicknamed "S--- Tag." They are the 15-year-old employees, the people on a tight leash because of Missouri's child labor laws.
"People are always asking me why I can't hire more 15-year-olds," our trainer says in the introductory session. "I have to tell them that only one percent of my workforce can be 15-year-olds." Their hours are capped below part-time status. Even if they want to work more, they can't. Most everybody else is either in high school or college, including the forepeople and the supervisors, making this workplace more like a frathouse.
The till is the first of many Six Flags Conventions I Fail To Understand. When a guest comes up to play a game, I take his or her dollars, drop them into my till belt and take out the corresponding value of quarters to be dropped into a metal lock box located somewhere in the stand. Or we drop a Susan B. Anthony dollar down there. After rejection by the general public more than two decades ago, they have finally found some useful purpose. I find it puzzling the operation can't handle dollar bills directly. Maybe it's because bills take up too much space in the box. Maybe bills get crumpled up. Whatever.
All of us function as both gamemasters and change machines, and when our tills run low of quarters or SBA dollars, the forepeople come around to swap our bills for more coins. At least once a day, an undercover agent from Cash Control comes in -- dressed in a t-shirt and shorts like a guest -- and takes wads of cash from the back room in a nondescript gym bag to a double-locked fortress in the center of the park.
Managing my till takes practice through working Highland Hoops, the golf game and whatever else I set foot in. On the first day, I come up at least five dollars short after counting my cash, which is supposed to add back up to 80 dollars.
"Don't worry," a supervisor tells me as I feel for my neck. "It's your first day."
I drown my sorrow in peanut-butter sandwiches and I Love Lucy after I get back home. Tomorrow is a new beginning, a new till.
The next day I break even, although I have an advantage of only working a half day.
"We have too many people on shift," our supervisor explains midway through my shift. Park attendance is not justifying the level of staffing, so some people have to get off the clock.
I don't mind. Back at Wardrobe on the hill, I change back into my regular attire and enjoy what I call "The Perk:" unlimited use of the park as a guest when not working. I just show my ID card to a guard at the employee entrance and slip in from the back, avoiding any ticket lines. It's going to be a nice three months.
Six Flags Over Mid-America is an extention of high school in many ways, having its own employee sports leagues, pep rallies and the occasional overnight trip. But when Games employees run free, the outcomes range from mildly hilarious to criminally actionable.
