If you're a parent and want your child to develop a good work ethic, I will give you a piece of advice, don't start them working at 15 and half at the local McDonalds. I learned the best way to stick pickle slices on the freezer ceiling in the first twenty minutes, and it went down from there.

By the end of the first day, the dishwasher asked me, "Do you wanna get sick? Because I've got some 'chronic bronchitis,'  then whispered to me behind his hand, "it's what you think."

I quit a year later after going to buy my supervisor a lighter with a naked lady on it, and went to work at the Safeway across the parking lot.  

They started me bagging groceries at Safeway. It was the perfect job, 80% of the job was helping old women put 20lb bags of cat litter in the trunk of their Cadillac.  Depending on the weather, I would spend the next half hour walking the perimeter of the shopping center, looking for shopping carts, flirting with girls at the Taco Time Drive-Thru, just tomcatting around.

This day, I was hanging out in front of the Hollywood Video watching cars side-swipe the video drop box. Just as I was realizing it was so hot out the pepperoni stick I had was sweating, a little kid of maybe ten or eleven rolled up on a girls Huffy bike.

"Mister, do you have a box for me?" He said.

"Sure, what do you need it for?" 

This kid was as a chubby little beach ball with blond curly hair.  He was wearing a juice stained Tasmanian Devil t-shirt that said 'What Part Of No Don't You Understand?!#?' and neon tribal parachute pants. He was sweating profusely, his little blond afro dripping in his eyes, and kept snapping the elastic waste of his pants to air out. 

"Well, Peaches just had babies, and my mom says she's going to put them asleep forever if we don't find new homes for them."

It was common for families to give away unwanted pets in front of the Safeway.

'Sure, but where are they?'

'Right here.' he said, handing me the two plastic bags that were hanging from his handle bars.

I didn't have time to brace myself for what I saw next Two plastic Safeway bags, soggy with condensation. each containing four dead kittens.

I threw up a little in my mouth. Swallowing the vomit, I said, ‘Looks like they’re asleep.’

‘Yeah, it took me a half hour to get here.  They got sleepy.’

‘Well, you know I have the perfect place for these little guys.’

'You do? '

'Sure do.'

'Ah, that'd be great! I can get home before Animaniacs.' then said goodbye to the dead kittens, each by name, and rode off.

I figured I would just throw them in the trash compactor in the back and try to forget about the whole thing, but had to get someone to open it up for me. The Helper clerk that day was Ron. He had worked at Safeway for ten years but was only 25. Ron still wore his letterman jacket, and was in a RocknRoll band with the assistant manager at the Taco Time. He was the first person I knew who had a television in his car.  A 27-inch television on a lazy susan where the passenger seat should be. You’d always see him playing Mortal Kombat in his Ford Probe at lunch.

'Hey Ron, can I throw this out?'

What do you got there?’

I showed him what was in the bags. 'Whoa. Were these in some ladies cadillac?'

I re-told the story to him, and how I was just going to throw them away. Without hesitation, he said he had a better idea. I followed Ron out to the back of the store where he took one of the bags from me. David vs. Goliath style, Ron started swinging the bag like a sling and after reaching maximum rotation, he flung the bag onto the roof of the Safeway. he did the same with the other bag.

'Why'd you do that?' I asked.

He gave me a knowing look and said 'Just wait...just you wait.' 

I was confused, and spent the rest of the day just wondering what he had done. The kittens soon slipped my mind and I went back to work. About a week passed before I started noticing large groups of seagulls and crows hanging out around the parking lot.

Then it happened. I was loading an elderly woman's groceries into her car and had just closed the trunk on her Cadillac when I heard what I first thought was a hollow echo of the trunk closing. Then I heard it again. Only this time it was louder and sounded more like meat slapping sheet metal. I looked over just in time to see a something vaguely familiar fall from the sky. I looked up to see a flurry of birds flying overhead, dropping things as the struggled to fly away.  I went over to where I saw something fall, and examined what the birds had dropped. To my horror, I recognized a patch of fur...it was one of the kittens!

I ran back into the store, where I nearly colliced with Ron, wearing a slicker.

‘Better get a jacket, buddy. I hear it’s raining out there.... raining CATS.’

For the next week it rained cats; the parking lot a rotten kitty apocalypse.