443: Amusement Park
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From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life, I'm Edward Glass. Okay, so we're going through the gate here into the park. Yeah, we're going. This is our morning, this is the morning walk into the park, so everybody will split up into their different sections and get the park open and we'll start putting out prizes and getting- We're at an amusement park in Kansas City, Missouri, called Worlds of Fun. We're going to be spending the entire hour today at amusement parks. It's five minutes before opening and I'm walking with Cole Lindbergh, who's 25, with permanently must hair on the cheerful vibe of the Bus and Buddies era Tom Hanks. He's been coming to this park since he was a little kid, started working here as a summer job at 14 and then basically just never left. It became his real job. 11 years later, he is a full-time year-round employee. I love amusement parks. Anytime my family would go on vacation, we'd schedule it around an amusement park because I love rollercoats because I love the amusement parks. I mean, I've walked this pathway that we're taking right now. I've walked it thousands and thousands and thousands of times. When he was little, his family had seasoned passes here and they would come a lot. He traveled to any new roller coaster to try it out, daydreamed about a job where he would design parks and build roller coasters. And when his dad drove him here at the age of 14 for a job interview, he wore a suit at that interview. Just sitting inside the park's offices, which are utilitarian, picture the principal's office at a public high school. Even that was exciting. I remember being kind of like, "Oh, wow, this is the inner sanctum. This is the inner working. This is where all the cool stuff happens." And then, the first time actually getting in the uniform, actually working in the park, I remember to me, it was like, "Wow, this is kind of surreal. I'm actually working in an amusement park now." And to me, that was kind of like, "Awesome. Awesome. I'm so excited about this." You may think that enthusiasm would diminish over time, but what's incredible about Cole is that even after a decade here, even after becoming an adult and working 60, 70-hour weeks every week all summer, even with the pressure in his current job of running a whole department and hitting financial targets and buying all the supplies and hiring and supervising over 100 young people, he is still pretty psyched about working in an amusement park. And it is not a glamour job. The department Cole runs is the games department at Worlds of Fun. This is 32 games, kind of you would see at any carnival or midway where you get, you know, three softballs to try to throw them into a milk can or you throw bean bags at targets or you shoot darts to knock over a stack of cups. Nobody comes to an amusement park for the games. Cole himself never went to an amusement park for the games, but he's an extrovert and he has filled the department with extroverts. Like Mallory.
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