Wild times at the Dunkin Donuts

So I was commenting on one of the blogs on the Times Union site and I mentioned how I once worked at a 24 hour Dunkin Donuts. I worked every single shift that place had and a big part (at least 75%) of that time I worked the overnight shift, 10pm-6am. I've seen some crazy stuff.

There was a guy doing handstands in the lobby, a guy I had never met before asking me to go away with him on a bus to another state because I was beautiful (we were right across the street from the bus station), people driving drunk through the drive thru, the NYC prison bus that came at 2am with spouses of prisoners visiting their husbands in a maximum security prison. They were some of the toughest women I've ever seen and would hate to have pissed them off. There's also the person who came in a few nights in a row who appeared to be homeless. I think I saw her a few days later on "Unsolved Mysteries". My personal favorite were the sorority pledges that were forced to stand at attention in a line outside the windows while their sisters sat on the inside having fun. There was also the guy who came in about once a week or so, so I knew his order. He knew I knew his order. He came in high one night and he was totally blown away that I knew his order.

So the point to all of this is the Christmas gift I received for my first and only year working there. It was a tradition for the Manager to take the microphone from the DJ and to give gags gifts out for Christmas while explaining why she gave them. For example, one of the assistant managers was always saying "I saw it on Oprah" so they gave her a paperback written about Oprah. Ok, that's cool. That's fun! Then my turn came.

Now, keep in mind this was 1993, I was just barely 20, so it's all kinda fuzzy in my mind, but I do remember she said "Every time I see you, you're eating". We were allowed to eat anything we wanted at anytime, for free, as long as it was not in view of customers and we weren't too busy. So I'd pop a munchkin from time to time. Obviously those munchkins were popped about the time the manager would pop in to say hi when I worked nights. I also remember eating a lot of frozen chocolate chunk cookie dough.

So she takes my gift out of the bag and it's this horrible little stuffed person magnet with a red bathing suit on that says "Eating is My Life" across the chest and she reads the words to me "Eating is my life!" and laughs. The whole place laughed with her.

There's irony that I have my tracker in the background

Yeah. Real funny. I was an 18/20 back then and only about 210. My Mom recently found the horrible little stuffed person in stuff I had boxed up and left behind when I moved to Minnesota in 2003. She presented the stuff to me when I was up there visiting her in May. Time had taken it's toll on the horrible little stuffed person magnet. It was pretty gross looking as you can see in the picture. Good enough excuse to throw it out, so I did. I have no idea why I kept it. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

As always thanks for reading