The Moose in the Closet: Tales from a Smoker: Livin' in a Smoker's Paradise

A new Here's the Thing... is up. Check it.

I’m off to Chicago bitches. Take some time this weekend to think about your Death Pool picks.

Oh, and I got a good review for my WToT story. Nice.

_____________________

Tales of a Smoker comes to a close although we may see another smoking week pop up in the future. Next week is going to be another themed week and not only that, I’m going to smoothly transition it from today’s story. Writing!

Anyway, I think the smoking got really bad towards the end of junior year. I took a job that I hated but in retrospect realize was most likely the best job ever in the history of best jobs ever. I was the game technician for Jillian’s.

Jillian’s was a megabar, of sorts. Three floors, carved out of an old factory. The first floor was a restaurant and dance club, the second floor was a video game parlor and bar and the third floor was all pool tables. It was located right across Fenway Park and it always got slammed on the weekends.

A game technician meant that I sat in a room, watching TV, until someone called me on my walky-talky and told me that a machine was down. I’d go, pull the paper/gum/condom some drunken idiot stuffed into the coin slot out and go back to watching TV. A game technician also meant that I stole literally thousands of game tokens and gave them to my friends for Christmas and Birthday presents. A game technician also meant that I stocked the cigarette machines.

Let me repeat that for those that weren’t paying attention: I stocked the cigarette machines.

You see, in order to get their cigarettes way cheap they’d buy these retarded big boxes that held hundreds of cartons of cigarettes. We probably went through a shipment of cigarettes in a year if that. I actually happened to be working one day when we got the shipment in. We opened the box, put the cartons in some storage bin and locked it up.

We never really took detailed inventory, neither when the cigarettes came in nor when they went into the machine.

And I had a key to the storage bin.

I’d steal a carton every week and a half or so. I eventually decided to quit that job after the summer and once I made that decision I started stealing a couple of cartons a week and selling them for twenty bucks a carton. I’d walk into Jillian’s with an empty backpack, stuff it with cartons or cigarettes and briskly leave after my shift. I was even taking orders for people, someone would ask if I can get some Marlboro Lights and I’d take care of him. I was making an extra hundred bucks a week or so but it could have been more, I just didn’t want to get TOO big. I’ve seen Scarface, I know what’s up. But still, for a college kid that had a summer job that paid for housing and was collecting a paycheck from Jillian’s, a hundred bucks a week tax free meant I was living like a king. I was getting burritos instead of McDonald’s.

At the same time I was stockpiling my apartment with cartons of Camel Lights for me and Parliament Lights for Robin for when I did leave the job. By the time I quite Jillian’s, I had about twenty cartons stored in my apartment. I didn’t have to buy cigarettes for a almost an entire. It was really every cigarette smokers dream. I’d have to say that by the time I left Jillian’s I easily stole over 50 cartons of cigarettes from them.

But there’ll be more about Jillian’s next week as I present my second themed week in a row. Stay tuned!

Labels: mitc

Tales from a Smoker: Livin' in a Smoker's Paradise

Thursday, August 04, 2005

0 Comments

Previous Posts