If you’ve read any of my previous posts on Confessions of a Concessions worker – especially DIY Ceiling Fan – you know that when I worked in the Longstrike deck stand, we always had a good time.

One summer, we took the idea of working as a team to a whole new level.

We decided that we would treat the stand as if it was a baseball field and each job was assigned a field position:

The Longstrike deck stand is located behind the left field foul pole at FirstEnergy Stadium. (Photo: Amanda Cain/2008)

Registers: Pitcher and Catcher

Hotdogs: First Base

French Fries: Second Base

Funnel Cakes: Third Base

Cheesesteaks: Shortstop

Nachos/Ice Cream: Center Field

Sodas: Left and Right Field

Whatever job you were assigned for the night, that was your position. Our stand supervisor was the team manager and she was in charge of calling strikes when someone messed up. You called the wrong order? Strike one. Not paying attention to your job? Strike two. Dropped food? Strike three.

Three Strikes? You’re out.

Of course, being the mature teenagers that we were, we did everything we could to make each other mess up – without causing problems for our customers. We would question the orders and try to tell each other the wrong number of hot dogs or french fries. The whole point was to try to get someone to three strikes. Striking out, we decided for some reason, was equivalent to being fired without actually getting fired.

The game became even more serious when we started keeping track of how many times each person “struck out” and the person with the most strikeouts had to do the worst job at the end of the night: either washing dishes or scrubbing the hot dog rollers.

I don’t remember how we came up with this idea, but it made working the long nights a bit more interesting. Everyone got into seeing who would end up scrubbing dishes at the end of the night and it was a way for us all to have fun together while still getting our jobs done. One of the guys got fired so many times each night that it became a running joke and everyone would add outs to his tally any time they walked past the score sheet. Even the assistant concessions supervisor got in on the game and would add outs to the score sheet.

Surprisingly, during the three or four years we all worked together, none of us actually “struck out” or got fired. By the end of that season, we got tired of playing the game, but it was still entertaining while it lasted.

Confessional: What is something you have done at work to make your job more entertaining? Did you make up a game with coworkers? Did it get anyone in trouble?