How I became the Robin Hood of Bondi
Once I got seriously into surfing in my early teens, I needed money for surf stuff. All my friends had part-time jobs; I was the lazy one who didn’t. All I wanted to do was surf, but I could see they were all pretty pleased with the tiny amount of money pimply faced teenagers were getting per hour back in the 1970s.
I’d washed Mum’s and Dad’s cars as many times as I possibly could for $1 a pop. Now I needed to get a real job, and earn some proper cash to fund my obsession.
Most days after a surf we would all walk up across the park and across Campbell Parade, the main drag that runs along the top of Sydney’s Bondi Beach. I could see a Dairy Queen being built – a big American burger chain that had made its way to Australia to give Macca’s a run for its money. The fitout was looking bright and loud, a real standout against the milk bars, newsagent, fish and chip shop and pizza shops.
Up went the sign: ‘Staff Wanted’. And I thought, ‘Well, I love burgers and it’s a couple of hundred steps from the surf – I can do this.’ It wasn’t burning ambition – more like ‘Ho hum’, because I wanted a new surfboard.
It was the same feeling of halfcocked motivation I had when they asked me to host Celebrity Dog School and I said NO, but my wife Sylvie wanted a new kitchen so I said YES.
So I put my surfboard on the footpath outside the shop and went in – barefoot, wet boardshorts, no shirt, long hair, pimples, the full Puberty Blues package. Before I said anything, the boss snapped: ‘Don’t put your board there, you’ve blocked the door to the shop.’ It wasn’t blocking the door at all, he was just being a dick, and now we’re off to a pretty bad start.
‘Have you got any casual jobs going?’ I asked.
He was wearing a ridiculous uniform – I don’t remember how it looked exactly, but monkey-vomit yellow with a hint of tartan rings a bell – though to be fair I was in no position to judge anything or anyone. He looked behind me at the trail of sand my feet had left on his new tiles and sniped, ‘Well, one of your first jobs could be cleaning up your own mess.’
This job interview wasn’t going so well, and I didn’t really care. But he said I could start the next day at 5pm for a four-hour shift. This fitted into my busy lifestyle perfectly: home from school, straight down to the surf then run up to my new job.
I filled out a form, then he gave me a shirt and slacks on a coathanger, along with a cap – a ridiculous cap that perfectly matched the ridiculous uniform.
I said, ‘Thanks, see ya tomorrow!’, and walked out. There were still waves to be caught, so I grabbed my board and ran back down to the beach. On the way, I took the clothes off the hanger and rolled them into a ball with my towel.
The next day, home from school, I grabbed the uniform ball off the floor and jammed it all into my backpack then raced down for a quick surf.
I jumped out of the surf about 15 minutes before my new career was due to start and raced up to Dairy Queen, put my board on the footpath outside, got a towel out of my backpack, ripped my boardies off, gave my Speedos an extra wipe to dry them a bit more, pulled out the ball of Dairy Queen uniform and threw it on. It was completely crumpled and wrinkled, nothing like the freshly preened package the boss had handed me the day before.
I put on my Dunlop Volleys and went inside. I was salty and my hair was matted and crazy, but I don’t remember ever not feeling that way in those days. I would always surf before school, so I just remember this feeling of being constantly entombed in dry, salty seawater.
I must’ve looked ridiculous; in retrospect, I would’ve sacked me then and there.
The boss was disappointed, but he only had four kids working and he needed two out the front and two behind, so he had to keep me on.
He told me I had two jobs: doing the soft-serve cones and sweeping up after anyone had come in with wet or sandy feet. I mean, who’d be disrespectful and bratty enough to do that?
He gave me about a five-minute lesson on the soft-serve machine. It was pretty simple: hold the cone underneath the nozzle, pull the handle, make sure the ice cream goes into the cone, move the cone in small circles to get that whole Mr Whippy swirly shape, then when the machine clunks that means the serve is done.
You give it a little twist for that decorative pointy shape at the top, turn to the customer with a big Dairy Queen smile, and that’s it. ‘What if I mess it up?’ I asked.
He said, ‘Well, you can give that one to the customer free of charge, but it’d be better if you didn’t mess it up.’
It definitely wasn’t rocket surgery.
Mum and my sisters were the first customers to appear. They stood at the door watching me ‘work’. I looked up and saw Mum, and she put her hand on her heart and mouthed the words, ‘I love you, I’m so proud of you!’ They came in and Mum said something about my crumpled uniform. She couldn’t believe they would hand out a uniform without ironing it first. Then they ordered some burgers and I got to make them a soft serve each. I was still very new at this, so of course I screwed one up, and they got it for free. OK, so now I’m Mum’s favourite child, scamming the system and saving her twenty-five cents.
It was a busy shift and soon I was getting pretty slick on the old softserve machine. I don’t want to say I was absolutely brilliant at the little decorative twist at the top of the ice cream, but yeah, I was. Then my mates came in, five of them. I made three soft serves perfectly, then unfortunately I really really messed up the last two. So I called the boss over, apologised and gave two of my mates their free ice creams.
The boss wasn’t happy, but it wasn’t about how happy or unhappy he was, it was clearly about how happy my mates were. I had just been elevated to Best Friend status and word soon got out that I was the goto guy for free ice creams at Dairy Queen.
What? First Little Larry stole golf balls (yes, reader, that’s another confessional tale in my book), now he’s purposely messing up soft serves so his mates get them for free? I’m more than slightly worried this smart side-hustle of authoring could land me in prison on historical ‘ball grabbing’ and ‘fudging soft serve’.
Now, according to Wikipedia, Dairy Queen ice cream isn’t even ice cream. To be classified as ice cream, the product needs to contain at least 10 per cent butterfat, and Dairy Queen’s has just 5 per cent. It’s only half ice cream.
So by giving away half the orders, I was really just doing my bit to balance up nature.
I was the Robin Hood of Bondi, stealing from the rich Queen to give to the poor surfers. I was heroically guilt-free as I lavished broken blobs of butterfat on my merry men.
I was handing out soft serves like Oprah handing out cars, and they were lining up outside, sandy feet as far as the eye could see, a huge pile of surfboards blocking the entrance to the shop. It was a beautiful sight.
At the end of the four-hour shift, I got my $10. ‘This is great,’ I thought, ‘this is going to change my life.
‘A few shifts a week and not only will I be able to buy a new board, I’ll also be the most popular guy in Bondi.’
So I rocked up again the next day for my shift, feeling pretty pumped.
But just after I walked in, he sacked me.
Wait! What? I didn’t understand. I’m only new to this whole ‘employment’ thing, but you’re telling me that turning up unshowered with long, wet, matted hair and zinc cream on my nose and lips, wearing a crinkled uniform with the wetness from my Speedos seeping through the Dairy Queen trousers, then giving away half the evening’s profits by way of fraudulently faulty soft serves is sackable?
This grownup legitimate work world is crazy.