It was Saturday afternoon, and the boy and I didn’t have shit to do but chase hangovers and watch Black People Acting Stupid marathons on MTV. We needed an activity. Downtown Sac is dead on weekends and all the brunch places in San Francisco were filling up fast, so making fun of hipsters was out.
Thus, we stopped short of America’s smuggest liberal hotbed to visit Fairfield’s ticket to family excitement, the Jelly Belly Factory. We exited the highway and zigzagged through a sprawling office park at a whopping 5 mph, thanks to the blind Asian cunt driving a Mercedes in front of us. We spent a few minutes watching her learn how to park before ramming her Jew-frying ass into a nearby ravine.
Once parked, I threw my empty can of Natty Lite into a nearby trash receptacle, took my partner’s hand, and followed several other groups of bottom-feeding tourists into the pristine concrete structure.
I was promised free jelly bean samples and a magical world of mystically sweet wonder and treasures unknown to the outside world. Instead, I was thrust into a cattle herd and moved through one sterile environment to the next, thanks to the formation of OSHA in 1987.
The first 30 minutes of my Jelly Belly Factory experience involved waiting in a line full of squirrelly kids and harried mothers who thought everything would be okay when their mate said, “Just the tip.” While we played my man’s favorite game, “How Many of These Little Shits Could Be Mine,” a Jelly Belly associate informed us that although we’d arrived just 15 minutes before closing time, we’d all get a chance to take the tour and there would be plenty of time to shop at the Jelly Belly store afterward, so we “don’t need to worry about that.”
Well, thank gawd! I was really worried that a glorified “factory” connected to a large specialty store containing superfluous consumer goods might not allow me the chance to process a transaction in which they make a profit. My mind could finally rest at ease.
When we got to the front of the line, we were issued white paper hats and ordered to put them on. I don’t wear hats unless it’s at least -5 degrees Celsius or I’m going white water rafting. The Jelly Belly Factory revealed neither of these scenarios, so I refused headgear. My excited partner wasted no time donning his hat while I mentally recounted my five favorite ways to stab someone my size or larger.
Although I’m well versed in what it takes to play a vicious Veruca Salt, this was no special Chocolate Factory, and the chick running the tour was no Willie Wonka. After ordering the group at large to wear their hats (“No one likes hairy jelly beans!”), she addressed me personally.
“We really need you to put on your hat.”
“I have a head injury. My doctor says I can’t put things on my head.”
“Um… okay… Can you put your hair up?”
“I’m all over it.”
If the requirement had any merit at all, I wouldn’t have been such a lying bitch. It was totally obvious that it was merely a control issue.
First, hats don’t do shit. If it were a matter of hygiene, they would have given us hairnets. They certainly wouldn’t have given us flimsy paper hats that fell from at least one child’s head every 30 seconds. If getting hair everywhere was an issue, the hats were only making it worse.
But it’s clearly not an issue because of my second point: We never actually went into the factory. The tour involved being escorted to a series of monitors strategically placed along an enclosed catwalk situated above the factory. Nothing was happening in there, so we did a bunch of walking, stopping, and standing just to watch 5-minute segments on all things Jelly Belly.
If I wanted to watch a bunch of crap on a TV monitor, I could have stayed home and caught Flavor of New York’s Real Chance at Run’s House. Here’s an idea, Jelly Belly marketing team: Send me a bag of free jelly beans and the factory tour DVDs. I may or may not watch them while I try to figure out why there is a bubble gum flavored jelly bean when we already have a product of the same taste, color and consistency that also delivers long lasting flavor, a.k.a. bubble gum.
The best part of the tour was the end, when I collected a small bag of assorted jelly beans, ripped my hat to shreds, and shoved its remains into the screaming mouth of the nearest toddler. We kicked open the nearest set of emergency doors, when sounded an ear-piercing alarm and activated the sprinkler system. After taking turns doing donuts on their freshly mowed lawn, we got back on the highway and gave the entire office park the finger. (Mine still hurts from being up so long.)
Yep, it was just another lazy Saturday afternoon with an added sugar rush and a healthy dose of spread-fire hatred.
