Another page from the Coquitlam playbook, this one a nod to my brother Dave.
Dave worked at one of these “travel infocentre caboose” for a couple summers I think, near about the end of his high school tenure. He worked the job with friends, either pals from before the gig or ones he made there. It didn’t change the fact that the duties were dull as dishwater.
What’s the job? You wait for tourists to spot your silly caboose, sitting pretty in the corner of some parking lot. Maybe they saw it as they zipped by on a nearby freeway, maybe they’re nearby-local and friendless, childless, whatever. You wait for them to double back, pull up, walk up and ask you “what does one do here?” Good question. You don’t scream to them “ONE LEAVES, IF ONE’S LUCKY; GET OUT NOW!!”. No… instead you hand them a pamphlet or six, mention a park, fluff up the town, and reliably earn a paycheck from the local municipality’s tourism budget.
Drive-by tourism? Really? I guess it happens… maybe I shouldn’t judge… but even in those “well-before-the-internet” days, it’s not like they did any kind of brisk business. Shit, it’s not like they did ANY kind of business, since all they offered was information, for free.
(Just like the internet. Wait, EXACTLY like the internet! Some jobs just don’t warrant doing, and yet here you are, finding poor schmucks doing them, all the same. Whoops, off-topic…)
Most summer afternoons there were dull, and lazy, and in dire need of excitement.
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