Women can Lube Roller Coasters!
The story behind one of my favorite jokes.
During the summers while I was in college studying theater, I got a job working at the local amusement park as a ride operator.
It was repetitive and exhausting, interspersed with moments of oddness, humor, and connection. (One day a metallic balloon escaped from a child who was holding it and happened to touch one of the power lines. This random balloon caused two/thirds of the rides to instantly lose power. I watched it happen. Sucked for those operators on the end of the park with power. I was one of the lucky ones.)
One day I asked my boss if I could learn to operate the Ferris Wheel. I’m only 35, so this was really not that long ago that I was in my early 20s, but at the time it was mostly just men who operated the Ferris Wheel, Spider and Rocko. These were the rides that took more effort, both physically and mentally. You had to be especially careful to balance where people were sitting on those rides. It also took more finesse to operate those ones because you had to stop the seats at the right place. It also took some muscles to open and close all the seats.
Men often got trained on these three rides without asking. Knowing all the rides came with a pay raise. (Also work was way less monotonous if you knew those three rides.) As far as…
