In your attempt to find a job where you could make money in an environment you also thought could have fun in, your search led you to your local Chuck E. Cheese's. This would be fun, you thought. You loved coming here as a kid, why wouldn't you love it now? It wasn't until your first busy shift that you knew you had probably made a mistake (or, in my case, my first busy week, which included me working a 12-10 shift...on my birthday). Ah, the struggle. Here's 9 struggles you face as a CEC Cast Member.

1. "Waking Up" Chuck E.

Everyone has to do it at some point or another, but that doesn't mean you want to. The thought of having to put on the costume and allow kids to crowd around you, beg for tickets and try to follow the choreography to the preset song you picked is so not appealing. It's always a relief when your manager makes someone else do it and you get to watch from the side. *evil laugh*

2. Parties

Another week has passed and you check the new schedule your manager has just put up. There are a lot of people working on Saturday during the day...I wonder why...oh god...no...NO...PLEASE GOD WHY!?!?!?!? That's right. Parties. Three at a time. Thirty kids at each. Double the amount of helicopter parents. Maybe you'll catch the flu before that shift from Hell, but probably not. Good luck, soldier.

3. Merch

Ah, the merch counter. Mostly when parents bring their kids up to you here, that means that they're probably leaving soon. One less family to tend to. However, there are always those kids that continuously bring you a receipt with ten tickets. "What can I get?" Once again, little Johnny, you can get anything from the RED BOX. And please, stop referring to Chuck E. as Mickey Mouse. We're not at Disney World, okay? If you want Mickey, you're going to have to talk to your Mommy about that one.

4. Salad Bar

Munch is laughing out of spite because he just perfected his salad bar with UPICS and now this guest is going to ruin it by buying a plate. OF COURSE. After all the hard work you just put into prepping, filling, flipping, and icing salad bar so that it looks and really is fresh, there is always that one guy to mess it up. And, let's be honest, it's usually not a guy. It's a soccer mom who drives a minivan and also asked you to make a Gluten Free Indy with no sauce for her kid. That's just how it goes. It's okay to sneak into the kitchen and cry about your cucumbers and beets getting messed up. I have.

5. Gameroom

I'm not a GRA (Cash is my specialty), but I understand the pain that they have to go through every shift. I have watched people play games and then claim that they lost their token in the machine. Really? Did you? Here, let me open up the machine, "fix" something that wasn't even broken, close it back up, and hand you a couple tokens so you'll leave me alone.

6. Kid Check

Thoughts you have at Kid-Check:

"Another family? Really? Stamp."

"I don't really care if you guys got to see Chuck E. or not; I'm just obligated to ask that. I'm not going to make someone 'wake him up' just so you can see one of my co-workers in the costume. Too bad. Maybe next time."

"That's not a number. That's a blob. So, I can't really tell if your stamp matches theirs, but I've seen you with them all day so..."

"How funny would it be if I stamped '666' on this family's hands? .....Am I Satan?"

7. The Kitchen

When I'm at work, I avoid the kitchen at all costs. It always seems like there's someone frantically making pizzas and wings and running around like a chicken without a head. Plus, there's a hot oven in the mix. I do not want to subject myself to that. I give the kitchen people a lot of credit for (almost) always keeping their cool when they have 30 orders lined up and half of them just got stuck underneath each other in the moving oven. Also, God bless the kitchen people for making me food all the time without making me pay (shhh, don't tell). They're the real MVPs.

8. The Shows

There is no way I'm going to allow you to sit there and tell me that you don't know all the words to all the songs that play while you're working. They play on a loop from the time you clock in, to the time you clock out. Honestly, you probably know more words to a song about a giant armadillo named Phil or a rockin' Robot than the most played songs on the radio. That's sad.

9. The People

The people that come in are not the worst. Sometimes there's a cute little kid who makes your smile and your shift worthwhile. In fact, the kids usually aren't the worst part. Even though some kids can get on every last one of your nerves, it's usually the parents that come in just to ruin your day. I've seen more adults complain about Chuck E. Cheese's than I have seen college students complain about their workload. Hey, Mom of Seven, you chose to come here. Relax.

Regardless of how annoying the guests can get, how much you hate coming home smelling like pizza and salad dressing with stains all over your clothes, or how much it drives you crazy to look at a messy merch wall, you know that, deep down, you love your job. I know I do. We're a family over at my Chuck E. Cheese's and my co-workers and managers make what I do worth doing.