Since this is Thanksgiving week, I’m going to somehow bend everything I  write to fit a “So Grateful” theme.

My Once Upon a Job for today won’t be hard, but my PoP for tomorrow may be a trick. It may be one of my tookus tricks, if you know what I mean.

I’ve had A LOT of different jobs, in a strange variety of fields. I kind of like to put my jobs in two categories – fun jobs and grown-up jobs. However, I have had a lot of fun at some grown-up jobs.

If I had to choose the one job where I had the most (unauthorized) fun, it would have to be when I worked at Wienerschnitzel in high school.

Wienerschnitzel didn’t have any of the fandangled electronic order boards like most fast food places have now. We had black plastic menu boards we wrote on with white grease pencils.

We also had flat pickle slices that stuck nicely to those menu boards. So when it got slow, we’d sometimes use the grease pencils to draw a target on the board, then we’d take turns flinging pickles to see who could get closest to the center.

There were also great practical jokes to be played. Every new hire was told to mop out the walk-in freezer. Most of them actually tried. But only a few had the nerve to come back and tell us they’d done it.

I guess they figured we’d believe them, since mopping that area would probably take them the same amount of time that unsticking the mop from the freezer floor took.

There were usually three or four huge CO2 tanks in the back room behind the cooking area. Only one was hooked up for carbonating the drinks. The others were just sitting there, begging to be played with.

I liked to stand with my hand on the valve, and call someone back to cut tomatoes or onions. When they rounded the corner, I’d crank the valve open and hit them with a blast of air, usually in the face.

There was one practical joke I wish I had thought of and executed before anyone else did – for two reasons: First, when the manager found out about it, he forbade it to ever happen again. And second, it was done to ME.

As I was walking into work early one afternoon, I was unaware that two of my male co-workers were on the roof with a five-gallon pickle bucket full of water.

I have to admit, their timing was impeccable. I took the full five gallons over the head while I paused to open the door. I was not only drenched, I was drenched in dill-scented water. I wouldn’t have minded the odor, but I preferred to smell like my usual chili-cheese dog.

I did get even, though. One evening, one of those co-workers came to the drive through and I recognized his voice while he was placing his order, so I filled a five-gallon bucket with ice.

He pulled up to the window in his little beat up convertible. I told him how much his order was, and while he was looking down in his wallet, I dumped the entire bucket of ice right in his lap.

The manager forbade THAT prank from happening again, also. But he forbade that one mainly because he didn’t want customers who saw it to think they might get a random bucket of ice in their lap if they came to the drive-through.

After closing, there were usually only two or three of us scheduled to clean up. We’d have mustard and ketchup fights, pickle wars, and occasional games of “what gross combination of food would YOU eat?”

We often made huge messes, but since we basically hosed the whole place down anyway, it never mattered to us. In fact, on the nights that took a little extra soap and water, we’d take off our shoes and socks and slide around all over the place.

But one of my favorite after-hours games – and my main reason for writing this whole thing, was hide and seek. You wouldn’t think there would be that many places to hide in a fast food restaurant, but with most of the lights off, there were some really good nooks to squeeze into.

I’d been eyeballing an area I thought would make the PERFECT hiding place. It had to have crossed everyone minds at some point. But no one had ever gone there. YET.

In those days, we didn’t have dainty little icemakers over the top of the fountain drinks. We had one GIANT icemaker, with a bin that was roughly the size of a bathtub and a hinged lid on the front.

One night I climbed into the bin.

The icemaker made big sheets of ice, about two feet wide, four feet long, and about a half-inch thick. The sheet of ice would slide on to a wire mesh, and the wires would melt through the ice, making individual cubes that fell into the bin.

If I stayed in there too long, there was a good chance I’d get a sheet of ice dumped on me. So I was having second thoughts on just how clever it was to hide there.

I don’t remember if someone found me, or if I just jumped out suddenly. I know there was a loud “RARRR!” involved.

My co-workers could not believe I actually got IN the icemaker.

For years I marveled at what a great hiding place that had been. Then at some point in my life, I became a germ-phobe. And suddenly it dawned on me that I had been laying in the icemaker, the only source of ice for the drinks we served.

Forget my shoulder length hair, my sweaty arms, or my food stained clothes. I WAS IN THERE WITH MY SHOES ON.

Those shoes had walked through the greasy kitchen, out to the parking lot, and all around the dumpster. There was stuff stuck to those shoes I don’t even want to think about.

So today I’m SO GRATEFUL for mini-icemakers that stupid teenagers can’t crawl into. I’m so grateful for bigger icemakers that have dispensers, rather than wide doors.

But most of all, I’m so grateful our pranks and jackassery didn’t cause the health department to shut Wienerschnitzel down.

Even 30 years later, it’s still one of my favorite places to eat.

We don’t have Wienerschnitzels in the Midwest, so I only get my fix when I’m visiting Utah. The last time we were there, I ate at Wienerschnitzel about five times over a two-week period. Three of those days were in a row.

I really hate that I’ve just spent all this time thinking and writing about Wienerschnitzel, and now I’m hungry for a polish sandwich with kraut, and I can’t get one anywhere around here.

But I’ll be in Utah for Christmas – I’ll get one then.

And for THAT I am so grateful!