Words and Things

A year and a half ago I worked seasonal at a portrait studio. My manager was a bit of an idiot and she ended up randomly taking a week off and not answering her phone. We had so many problems because of the back to back blizzards backing shit up but she couldn’t be bothered. I had the highest sales of anyone in the studio so basically was put in charge of everything while she was away.

My friend Frank was in town for the week to visit me and my bro. I told him about the bullshit at my job and so the three of us decided that it would be hilarious to basically Punk the studio. We spent a few hours planning it out the night before. I printed some coupons from the studio so that he could buy something stupid for $7.99 so all the photos would have to stay in the system for 6 months.

Next day comes and its me, this kid Marco and this girl Claudia working. I was in charge of booking and sales so I made sure they were going to be free to shoot his pictures. He and my brother show up and they get in the room. Marco starts to set things up and Frank is taking some basic pictures at first. Then after about 4 or so poses Frank asks Marco if it was okay if he took some pictures with his best friend. Marco said okay and turns to my brother and says “You’re going to have to get up” and my brother said “It’s not me he’s talking about” Marco then starts to say “Who is he talking abo…” when he turns and sees Frank talking to no one.

The idea was that Frank had an imaginary friend named “Jodi” and he and Frank have been best friends for 6 years. Thus the #6 in one of the photos. I had warned him the night before to try and use as many props as he possibly could. These aren’t all the photos but we ended up using pretty much every single prop in the studio. At one point he wanted to take a picture like a horse and asked if we had a saddle. Marco and Claudia said that we didn’t but I was not having that AT ALL. I used the brown rug and a container and made one. Then I told them to get all the stuffed bears we had in the studio.

He then neighed like a horse and kicked up. It was hands down the funniest thing I have ever seen in my life. My poor brother had to sit there the entire time and not laugh otherwise he’d give it away. I almost had a heart attack at one point because I hid my cell phone by the backgrounds so that I’d record video of the entire thing and Claudia almost found it.

Then we had to look at the pictures and failed so hard because we couldn’t stop laughing at the table. He ended up buying $130 worth of pictures. For the rest of my life I will never have a better day at any job ever.