As some of you have by now guessed based on my rant on working at The Sunglass Hut, I have worked all over New York City. Some jobs were good, but a great many flat out sucked and this is what my Working X SUCKS series is about. Another particular life killing and spirit sucking job was working in the gift shop at Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in Times Square.
There are frankly too many reasons why this was one of my worst work experiences ever, but I will never the less try to describe the particularly attrocious aspects of my time there.
- Robbing people blind!
Everything in the giftshop is so horribly overpriced that even at NYC prices its insane! A magnet for $15 dollars?! You gotta be mad! And I have to smile like an ass and try to "upsell" these things to people. For those of you that dont know "upselling" is retail speak for using rhetoric and a smile to push shitty products that people were not originally looking for on them because the name of the game is to rape the consumer for everything they are worth. And by the way none of the profit you personally will see either.
- Understaffing
They are rediculously understaffed for the number of people that visit this place everyday. I tell you I have had to service a line that was literally 50+ people deep as the sole cashier! Forget about calling for help, it will take a manager an eon to get to where you are and by that time you already have a mob of angry people wanting to kill you for their $15 magnets.
- WAX HANDS!
Now this is definitely one of the worst! Yes, I know having a wax mold of your hands looks cool, but understand the following:
You are gonna pay through the nose for them (especially if you want more than one)
ITS DANGEROUS! Yes, you can get seriously burned! I was scorched when they were training me on how to do make them (this should show you how exensive their training program is for newbies). For this reason, I would advise that kids younger that ten never get them. You have to plunge your hands in ice water to make them numb then dunk them repeatedly in scolding hot wax to make these things. Then back into the icewater to harden. Do it wrong and open your hand a little and your hands are roasted.
As I said, they do not train people for more than an hour on how to do this correctly, get the wrong worker on the station and you are as good as cooked.
They dont always come out good and you have to make another one which is of course usually at your own expense.
IN A NUTSHELL STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM WAX HANDS IT SUCKS FOR YOU AND IT SUCKS FOR THE WORKER.
- Management! If you can even call them that!
These people are the epitome of nonhuman empty suits. As a worker, you NEVER see them until they want to come downstairs to tell you how to do a job they couldnt do if they tried. I had one particularly hollow headed shoulder padded manager come to me and tell me "You there! We are getting complaints on the wax hands! What do you have to say?" So I said, "I say, its a foolish station that is always under supplied, overburdened and hazardous to the health of the visitors." I am sure you can tell I did not last long.
- The tourists
Ugh! For some reason tourists love to make the life of local workers hell! Not all of them mind you, just the ones from overseas and not from the U.K. (in my opinion). They just ransack everything and dont care what happens to the product or the poor soul that has to fix it up. Then they get angry at you over the American dollar system. I KNOW THAT ITS HARD TO UNDERSTAND HOW A NICKLE CAN BE WORTH LESS THAN A DIME WHEN ITS BIGGER BUT I AM NOT LYING TO YOU WHEN I SAY THAT THE DIME IS WORTH MORE!
- Sexually abusing the wax statues
You know people like to crack on Trump for being a "pussy grabber" but the reality is (especially with JLo statues) the wax images are always needed to get repaired because people want to hump their favorite celebs and this is as close as some will ever get. It really is lame.
- THE WHOLE THIS IS WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD
The place is a monument to star worshipping. The only thing more empty than the wax statues are the souls of the people that fall all over themselves trying to see them. You want to know the problem?
NO ONE SHOULD CARE AND EVERYONE DOES!
I could go on for days about this awful place, but you get the idea. I worked there for about two weeks before I called it quits and it was one of the happiest days of my life when I left for the last time. I have never gone back, nor will I ever.