Today's game is "Worst Job You've Ever Had."

[LiberalEsto]

34. Working in a hippie "head shop" in the summer of 1970

Among my various jobs that summer-- between my freshman and sophomore years of college -- was a stint as a sales clerk at a head shop called Media 1 Stop in downtown New Brunswick, NJ.

The place sold bell-bottom jeans, denim shirts, tee-shirts, vests, jackets, leather sandals and belts, funky hats, woven shoulder bags, incense, rolling papers, candles, cheap jewelry, posters, records and more to the college students and townies. We had all the latest styles, Jeans were about $6 a pair, not that I could afford them. I was struggling to support myself while working on the Summer Mobe anti-war movement. The pay was terrible and the sales commissions were miniscule.

After a couple of weeks, the manager, an unattractive overweight guy with a beard, tried to drag me into a dressing room for a makeout session. I resisted. To retaliate, he cranked up the volume on the sound system whenever I was talking with a potential customer, ruining a number of sales. When I complained, he told me I could put out or shut up. I quit. This was long before women had any kind of rights in the workplace,

A couple of days later the owner called and hired me back, saying he had fired the manager for harassing me. One of my co-workers, who also was harassed by the manager, complained to the owner on behalf of both of us. So I went back.

As it turned out, I only worked there for a couple more days.

One morning shortly after we'd opened, a sheriff's department officer walked through the door and yelled "Police!" We started giggling. The guy got red-faced and yelled,
"This is no joke! This is the FBI!"

And so it was.

City cops, sheriff's officers, state police, FBI agents, every conceivable kind of cop piled in through the doors and started searching the place. They had a field day ripping through the posters and rolling papers. The head FBI guy had a search warrant and a warrant for the owners' arrests. But the owners had evidently skipped town the night before and left the clerks and acting manager holding the bag. The owners were wanted for tax evasion.

The cops were furious that not only couldn't they make the arrests, but they couldn't find even a single marijuana seed on the premises. They looked us over and told us to clear out. We were relieved to escape being arrested.

I found another job, this time as a sales clerk at a department store. But my troubles with the head shop weren't over.

Even though the owner had taken out a portion of my pathetic pay as income tax, he kept the money instead of paying it to the IRA, the bastard. So the itty-bitty little tax refund I would have gotten helped finance his getaway instead of helping pay my college expenses. It probably would have paid for a couple of packets of ZigZag rolling papers.