Joe - a dinosaur theme park story with hotdogs.

Joe

This morning Hodges tells me I’m on triceratops. I don’t do triceratops I say and he says you don’t do triceratops there’s a million other smart-asses just waiting to do triceratops. And so, upshot is, I’m on triceratops. Losing this job isn’t an option. I’d rather face the Tyrannosaurus rex than have another interview with my job counsellor who advised this job is ‘last-chance-saloon’. Now he is a smart-ass.

    Dawdling over to the triceratops enclosure Amy from accounts catches up with me. Triceratops is not so bad she says. They’re herbivore. It coulda been worse. Look what happened to Casey. Last week Casey was put on velociraptors, no training. Turned his back for one second and next thing he knows he’s lost both arms and a leg, the left, his favourite apparently although who has a favourite leg?

    Talk in the canteen is Casey’s lucky to be alive. If you can call a future in a low-grade medical facility alive. Gordon and I went to visit him. How am I going to wipe my ass? he said. At least you’re looking on the bright side said Gordon. What do you mean? said Casey. You’ve got an ass, said Gordon. Coulda been worse.

    Duncan is waiting at the triceratops facility. What happened to Pete? he asks. Pete’s sick I say. Don’t you usually do the hotdogs? he says. That’s me, I say. Joe the hotdog man. Are you trained on triceratops? asks Duncan. I am not, I say. Oh boy, says Duncan.

    Duncan gives me what he calls a whistle-stop tour of the triceratops experience. It seems easy enough. First we check the guests are wearing an accredited wristband. Then we fit them with a helmet and load them into the wagons, giving them the spiel about keeping their arms and legs in the vehicles and not in any circumstances to feed the triceratops. What happens if they feed the triceratops? I ask. It’s yours truly, aka you, who will be cleaning up the mess, says Duncan. Triceratops equals incredibly delicate stomach. If you want to see dinosaur shit spurting thirty feet in the air don’t give the don’t feed the beasts warning. I’ll leave that up to you. Sounds easier than hotdogs I say. We’ll see says Duncan. Last week I asked you to hold the mayo. You gave me mayo. If you tell me it’s easier than hotdogs as far as you go I’d say the jury’s out. 

    At break time Amy from accounts comes over to see how I’m doing. Between me you and the dinosaur gatepost I’m pretty sweet on Amy from accounts.

    We take a walk over to the hotdog stand and right there running the show is Steve. Steve is Amy’s boyfriend and ain’t that a kick in the teeth. Steve is usually on the pterodactyls and nobody wants the pterodactyls cause although they’re awesome to look at and all that they’re always crapping on your head. Hodges reckons it’s lucky but has anyone ever seen Hodges in the pterodactyl cage? No they have not.

    Hey Amy, hey Joe says Steve and he gives Amy a hotdog and tells her it’s on the house and then he messes up my order. I mean, how do you forget the dog, it’s kinda essential. 

     We stand there shooting the breeze for five minutes, Steve and Amy looking at each other all gooey-eyed, me still sans dog, and then Hodges storms over with his whistle and says he’s not paying us good money to stand with our fingers up our asses and don’t we have work to be getting on with?

     The truth is we don’t. The truth is business is kinda slow. A number of years ago when youth unemployment – those aged eighteen to twenty-three - hit one million the government came up with an initiative guaranteeing every person in this age bracket an apprenticeship. You could choose house-building, fashion design or dinosaur theme park attendant. I chose fashion design but that was over subscribed so I said ok let’s do house-building but that was over-subscribed too so I ended up here. Lucky me. 

    The truth is dinosaur theme parks are passé. Seen one and truth be told you’ve seen them all. There was a brief fillip when they rereleased that Steven Spielberg dinosaur movie but that didn’t last long. Turns out people didn’t want to see dinosaurs so much as people being eaten by dinosaurs. They shoulda been here last week when Casey got eaten I want to say but that seems bad taste so I keep schtum. 

    When I get back to the triceratops enclosure I ask Duncan if we have any guests. Nada he says which turns out is Spanish for diddly-squat. 

After work I hang around to see if Amy wants to do anything but she goes gooey-eyed again and tells me she has a date with Steve. Turns out he has a couple of pals who are doing the house-building apprenticeship and they are going to take them around the houses they are building where they can pretend they might live there one day if people like us could ever afford to buy a house. So I return to the youth cubicle centre, check into my allotted cubicle and spend the night jerking off thinking about Amy. Plus ca change, plus ca la même chose. A phrase my pop taught me just before he got fired from the canon, hit a wall, died. The human cannonball experience was another government employment initiative that was poorly thought out, poorly executed. 

    Having spent far too much of the night jerking off I oversleep and rush to work without even having time to shower. 

    Sorry, I say to Hodges, won’t happen again, am I on triceratops? You’re on velociraptors says Hodges. Parker’s gone sick. What about hotdogs? I say. Hotdogs is what I do best. I’ll be honest with you, says Hodges. We’ve had complaints about the mayo. People ask for mayo they get ketchup. People ask for ketchup they get mayo. It’s velociraptors or bust. How bad can it be? I say to myself. Casey was unlucky. That’s all. How many velociraptor guys have we lost in total? A handful? But as I hear the sound of the enclosure gate clicking shut behind me I remember the last thing Casey said to me before we left the hospital. The thing about velociraptors, he said, is their sense of smell. And one thing they like is jizz. If you’re on the velociraptors don’t jerk off up to forty-eight hours before but go with sixty-two hours to be on the safe side. And if you do, if you’ve got no choice but to jerk off, these things happen, then make sure you take a shower after like your life depends on it. Because it does. Oh Amy, I say. Oh Amy from accounts, I say. I hear a rustle in the leaves. Plus ca change, plus la même chose.