Wednesday, September 24, 2008

The Vendor

A fellow by the name of Cory Bennett has written an extremely enjoyable account of a day in the life of a Wrigley Field hot dog vendor in today's Cornell Daily Sun:

A good amount of the conversations I’ve had with my fellow vendors over the last few years have concerned line numbers. We swap line number stories, discuss strategy for getting a good number, and complain about pulling a bad number — banishing you to a day of vending purgatory.

“Shit man, I’m gonna get malts in the upper deck.”

Yes, the upper deck — the bastion of bad tipping, steep, peanut-covered stairs, summer camp children trying to pay with nickels and dimes and old people too full from their blue plate special at the Golden Nugget on Broadway (the kind of diner where the waitresses are chain-smoking, bouffant-haired and hollowly call you “sweetie”).

No, you don’t want to vend in the upper deck. You want to vend in the 100-level.
Good stuff. Highly recommended.

3 comments:

Levi Stahl said...

Ouch. As a season ticket holder in Wrigley's upper deck, I would take offense . . . except that as a vegetarian I carry in my own food (there's only so much grease-slathered Connie's Pizza a normal human can eat).

I know the beer vendors are the royalty of the vending world, and their experience doesn't necessarily map to that of the Super Ropes dude, but from everything I can tell, the beer vendors who work our section appreciate the large number of regulars who do know how to order, tip, and even talk ball.

Daniel said...

Ahhh I remember the good old days working at Angel Stadium. We used to always pull for the Panda Express stands on the top level. SoCal fans don't tip anyway, so that wasn't a factor (unless the Yankees or Red Sox were in town, those fans tipped well). Back in those days (late '90's) the Angels were awful, so we'd only have like 1,500 fans on the top level. We'd kick back and eat all the teriyaki chicken (since that wasn't counted at the end of the night) and stick jalapeno's on the walls of the walk-in freezers. We would have contests to see who could eat the most jalapeno's on their hot dog. Good times.

Anonymous said...

People TIP vendors?

Christ, the food is already marked up like 200%...

Of course, I'm generically against tipping (if it's part of the price, put it on the damn bill).