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Daniel Nest's avatar

Well, at least we now know exactly WHO cut the cheese!

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Andrew Smith's avatar

I won't name names, but I was NOT the only one.

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David Perlmutter's avatar

"Cutting the cheese" has a literal, obvious meaning, and it has also been used as a euphemistic reaction to someone passing gas. What you were doing is somewhere in between the two.

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Andrew Smith's avatar

I definitely farted my way through this job!

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Andrew Sniderman 🕷️'s avatar

I have two relevant stories, ok 3. The first one is when we go up to the mountains people tend to get well, a little gassy at 8000 feet. I have no idea if the science supports this but it seems to be just the first day. The generic excuse for elevation flatulence is ‘It’s the altitude!’ That excuse covers any untoward behavior up in the Sierras. The second is my buddy who was a flight attendant. Like many service jobs they love to hate their customers so they would walk the aisle handing out peanuts and doing something they called ‘cropdusting’. The 3rd one is sad - my local art house is closing. The Summerfield, supposedly replaced by a Planet Fitness. The community is up in arms. I saw Anora there last and it was so good. The popcorn and coke are on-point! They also have Jr Mints and those are the only 3 food groups any movie theater needs.

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Andrew Smith's avatar

I do still love Junior Mints.

Cropdusting was also common in the restaurant business, although the servers probably did more of this in the movie theater (under the cover of darkness) than in any other jobs I had.

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Andrew Sniderman 🕷️'s avatar

Ewww that's gross man

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Andrew Smith's avatar

I promise, there were WAY grosser things going on there.

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Andrew Sniderman 🕷️'s avatar

in LA, where I did my food service tour(s) of duty the dept of public health has now instituted a A B C grading system and you have to display your letter grade on a full sheet of paper by your front door! I've not seen this is another city; if you get less than an A, you're screwed.

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Andrew Smith's avatar

We had this! Can't recall if it was Richmond or South Carolina, but I definitely recall having to display that letter grade. And yeah, just forget being in business if you got anything lower than an A.

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Rudy Fischmann's avatar

I, too, worked at an arty movie theater, although it didn't really serve anything beyond the usual movie theater snacks that were just a step up in gourmetness, etc. Things like fresh baked muffins/brownies (that were really day old from a bakery two doors over), trail mix, nutritional yeast. butter for the popcorn, stuff like that. I didn't get free movie access, but I did get to clean the bathrooms and blast whatever music I wanted through the sound system for the single big screen as I mopped the ever-sticky theater floors. I tell ya, you haven't lived until you've heard Black Sabbath's Masters of Reality cranked up real loud as you scrape bubble gum from the backs of seats.

Anyway, that is a well-designed menu. I learned how to wash windows with the free area events rag (Orbit) we got for free. Interestingly, I would work for that publication a couple years later after a brief stay at a gourmet ice cream factory (Stucci's) and concurrently working as a violin salesman(Shar Music) even though I didn't know how to play violin. They were just expanding into phone and internet sales and it was late 1994/early 1995. We often looked at this new web site that only sold books for ideas on site layout/purchase options. Shar's website exploded and became the center focus of the business so I was out of a job. I'm not sure what happened to the book site. I think it was called Amazon or something like that.

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Andrew Smith's avatar

The sound system thing is interesting. Back then, having earbuds in or headphones on all the time wasn't really possible at a job like that. For one thing, batteries died in less time than a typical shift lasted, right? I think there's something to the collective experience of blasting music all around at a job that may be fading. I'm not saying that's a bad thing overall, but it is an interesting change.

I think my early internet experiences in 94 were all about trolling.

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Rudy Fischmann's avatar

Mine still are. 🤣 maybe not as much as 15 years ago, but still a hefty percentage.

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Andrew Smith's avatar

I've seen the damage it can do when you don't have the right audience, and I'm never quite sure what my audience is, if that makes sense. Still, it seemed so liberating and fun to troll! The internet certainly didn't invent the idea, either. I remember doing CB radio pranks that might have gotten us killed under other circumstances.

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Rudy Fischmann's avatar

For me, it was going to places like Fuddrucker’s and using a fake name so they had to announce something like “Order ready for A. Hitler. A Hitler, please pick up your order. “ When Bart pranked Moe’s Bar for the first time after years of me doing something similar, I felt that. 😢❤️

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Andrew Smith's avatar

Yikes on the "A Hitler" one in today's context, but I definitely appreciated the Bart-Simpson style pranks too.

We would also go through the Taco Bell drive-through and ask for "Yugos and Cheese", or to McDonald's and order a Whopper. We were also kinda dicks.

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