.

[cowgirl836]

I believe the first Jeff's Pizza location was in Menomonie, WI. I dont think the Ames location opened until my sophomore or junior year (2008-2009 range).

Yeah I was freshman in 06 and that seems about right

 

[IcSyU]

Thinking back more, I think Gumby's went tits up in spring 2008 and I believe smotherella stix assumed pokey sticks role in my diet fall 2009.

 

[cowgirl836]

Wasn't there a pizza pit or what was the go to prior to Jeff's?

Then was it black market or something up north of Freddy that was cool for a minute

 

[Rabbuk]

For some reason I’m thinking Menomonie.

Edit: It was bothering me I looked it up. Menomonie is correct and they closed it in 2016.

I had the right general idea of the city in my brain, that is 100% what i was thinking of though.

 

[AgronAlum]

Wasn't there a pizza pit or what was the go to prior to Jeff's?

Then was it black market or something up north of Freddy that was cool for a minute

Pizza pit was there. Gumby’s was more of the go-to I believe.

 

[IcSyU]

Wasn't there a pizza pit or what was the go to prior to Jeff's?

Then was it black market or something up north of Freddy that was cool for a minute

Black Market was down the road from The Cafe in Somerset. It hosted a Man vs Food on the Jethros episode that they claimed was in Ames but actually filmed in Ankeny because I believe they'd already closed the Ames location.

 

[tolstoy]

I worked at WOI radio my first semester. The AM studio and the FM studio control rooms are directly across the hall from each other. My job was to show up at 11:30pm and basically babysit the two studios until 7:30 the next morning. There would literally be no one in the building at all. Both stations were just broadcasting satellite feeds all night, so my job consisted of sitting in a chair and playing a tape on the AM station every hour which said the time and station ID....took literally 5 seconds.

One day, my schedule randomly had me coming in at 11 am. I thought “That’s weird, maybe I get to learn something new”. It was Festival time, so they were working for donations. I show up to the AM station to find someone I had never met. He looked up and said “Sweet, you’re here. We’re playing Car Talk, I’m about to throw it over to the live studio so those guys can solicit for donations. They will talk for about ten minutes. While they are talking, listen to the tape and find a good place to cut in. When they throw back to you plug this into this, press this button, turn this knob and hit play. I gotta go”. Then he walked out. His descroptions of my duties included pointing at a pile of cables and a literal wall of places you can plug things into. I had no idea what to do. I did my best, but when the people talking in the live studio wrapped up, I made my best guess, but nothing happened. Nothing but dead air. I didn’t know haw to fix it, and the people in the live studio were flipping me the bird through the glass while they were covering for the radio silence. I walked down the hall to the manager’s office, and quit on the spot.

 

[CycloneDaddy]

Worked at a bank and had a Saturday off for KU vs ISU basketball game. New manager started the week before and week of the game decides my time off request was no bueno and put me on the schedule. Im a good fan and call in sick on game day to sit lower bowl to watch the Win. Showed up on Monday for work and she is shocked I show up for work even though Im explaining I was sick on Saturday. She starts to fire me but I cut her off and quit.

Fast forward a year or so and I show up for a on campus interview and its her husband doing the interview, didnt get that job.

Fast forward another couple years and my first day on the job they make new employees sit through an HR presentation. Sure as **** I walk into the boardroom and she is now working for HR for my new company. We just gave each other the **** you look, awkard few hours.

 

[abd4cy]

What are your Ames employer horror stories?

When Campus Book Store was open I was training to be a cashier and they didn't have a POS system so every price had to be manually entered.

I sold a textbook and accidentally typed in $89.99 instead of the price of $99.99. at the time I didn't notice it but later that afternoon the buyer's parent comes in and hands the owner $10 and said he noticed his daughter was undercharged.

The owner screamed at me in front of the entire store about what kind of cheating scam I'm running. It was packed full of students buying books and I was really embarrassed. I walked out right then and there and only went back to pick up my last paycheck, which they refused to handover until my roommate's father (attorney) called and threatened a lawsuit. I think the check was $200 lol.

Anyway, I never went back in there after that. I forget her name, but the owner was not a pleasant woman.

I worked there for a solid 4 hours, told her to f off and walked out. First day of the job and I was tasked with cleaning the shelves. She would give me a section, then told me to come find her when I was done. Finished the first section went and found her. She told me to do the next in line. Finished that, went and found her. She told me to do the next. Same directions a few more times so I took it upon myself to just do the next few sections. She "caught" me in the middle and flipped out because I wasn't told to do that. I asked her if that what I was going to be tasked with. She said that wasn't the point. I said my peace and walked out. Never went back for my paycheck or anything else after that.

 

[NWICY]

Wasn't there a pizza pit or what was the go to prior to Jeff's?

Then was it black market or something up north of Freddy that was cool for a minute

Pizza Pit has never moved to my knowledge, it's been in the same building about 2 blocks south on Welch. Pizza Pit on the top and Welch Ave station(?) the bar on the bottom, that used to be "the Library" for many years. Pizza Pit was the go to when I was in school good always get a coupon out of the daily for a XL (?) 1 topping for 5 bucks.

 

[exCyDing]

I’ve been lucky, I’ve only had one truly bad work experience. I was a teller at a small regional bank for about six months, working at a branch in a Hy-Vee. First three months, no problems.

Then we got a new manager.

She was a year out of college, one year in banking and zero management experience. Long story short, she tried to write everyone up for ridiculous things like swapping shifts, failing to meet loan goals when we didn’t have anyone who could do loans at that branch, etc etc. Standard operating procedure was to refuse to sign and make her call HR since it was never a valid write up. This was almost a weekly occurrence with at least one of us.

Moral sucked and everyone was looking for a new job. Then she accidentally forwarded an email string where she said she wanted to fire us all so she could “hire her own people.” Within a month, it was me, the manager, one other teller and random fill-ins from other branches.

I got a new job just as the manager was taking a long weekend. Since there was no one else to give my two weeks notice, I emailed her and left messages on her cell and office phone.

No response.

Her first day back, she says her hellos and I can just tell she doesn’t known yet. Sure enough, maybe 30 minutes later she comes out to tell me I’d have to work two weeks starting that day because she didn’t get it and they were so short staffed. I ask her who I should have given notice to and why she thought the branch was so short staffed. She calls me unprofessional. I point it was pretty unprofessional of her to have this conversation with me here, in front of other employees and while I was in the middle of a transaction with a customer. She asks if I’d just like today to be my last day. I told her I felt bad leaving everyone else when they were so short staffed, but not a bit bad for her, closed my drawer and handed her my keys.

Right after I left, the other teller gave her two weeks notice. And after the bank closed, the manager slipped on ice in the parking lot and broke her ankle. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person.

 

[nfrine]

My brother worked there, apparently loved it but had some run-ins with the owner's son a few times who apparently is an ass. He chewed his ass out in front of some customers once for something stupid that he (the owner's son) was wrong about. From what my brother told us he had a good relationship with the owner and the owner asked him about the situation to get his side of the story and actually took my brother's side instead of his own son's once he got enough info from everyone that was working that day that witnessed it.

I do have 1 kind of "bad" story of my own but isn't nearly as bad as some have I am sure. I interned 2 summers for Hy-Vee's corporate IT department and I was in need of a part time job for the fall semester as I was taking just the minimum 12 credits to finish off my degree in 4.5 years with an additional fall semester. Was doing some work that summer before at the East Ames Hy-Vee and was chatting with the store director how I was living just a few blocks south of the store at the time and needed some part time work for my last semester and I had a really light class schedule that would allow me to take some daytime hours if needed too. I already had worked in the meat department at the largest store in West Des Moines for several years prior to this and had a great reputation there as they allowed me to come back and work holiday breaks and summers all through college. The store director liked that I had plenty of experience and meat department was always a place they needed good part time help so he hooked me up with the meat dept manager and we transferred my employment from the WDM store to his store for the fall semester including my current hourly rate I had at the WDM store. I was told I would get at least 20 hours a week, I got that to start then 20 hours started to dwindle down to 16, 12, then just 8. I had all this extra time to offer and work ethic has never been a problem for me so one night I pulled the assistant manager aside and asked him what was up because my hours kept getting cut and I wanted to know if it was because of something I was doing. He assured me he thought I was one of their best workers but the department manager tends to dish out hours based on how long you have worked there regardless if you were a good worker or not and that my hourly rate I brought over from the WDM store was probably higher than any of the guys they had on the part time roster so his "off the record" answer was I was the new guy and I cost more to pay than the other guys do. So I called down to my internship supervisor at the corporate office in WDM and asked if they had any work for me and it turned out they had a few clean up and side projects going on they needed some help with and could offer me some hours if I wanted to drive down 2 or 3 days a week. Well my intern rate with them was at least $5 more an hour than what I got working at the store and was worth the drive so I basically took my 8 hours at the store and supplemented it with at least 12 hours of afternoons at the corporate office. It probably was a blessing in disguise because I wound up working 40+ hours part time at the corporate offices for 5 months after graduation until I finally landed a full time job elsewhere.

You got a Cliff's Note version of this?

 

[JM4CY]

Yeah I wouldn't have guessed Jeff's was there until 2007 or so. I was at ISU from 2005-10.

 

[keepngoal]

Hickory park stories .... yeah, I didn't like working there... myra or whatever her name is was the kitchen manager and made it miserable. But when the owner was around, the nicest, most caring person you could know. *****. Did get to take ribs home most nights at no cost tho. Oh, and anyone related to the owner (maybe myra was or a family friend can't remember), was usually an ass.

Most fun place to work was the QT on the hill of Campus Town. Loved working the weekend nights when the bars closed. We caught probably 1/5 of the people that would nuke, eat, walk out or put pringles cans down their pants. We would sit in the cooler looking through the windowed doors to bust people. Nothing ever came of the 'busts' but just laughs and stories for us as people ran out of there as fast as they could dropping whatever it was they "weren't" eating.

Part I hated about QT was the Monday AMs or Friday AMs were all the students stopped in for cig purchases.

 

[BoomerClone]

I was at ISU 97-02. My first job in Ames was as a janitor for a building on campus. I can’t remember the name of the building but it was some sort of administrative building. I lasted maybe 3 weeks. My “boss” would tell me to vacuum the offices while people were in their cubicles trying to work. It was so awkward. They would be on the phone and I’m pushing the vacuum around them. I didn’t know any better, was just going what I was told.

 

[Tri4Cy]

What are your Ames employer horror stories?

When Campus Book Store was open I was training to be a cashier and they didn't have a POS system so every price had to be manually entered.

I sold a textbook and accidentally typed in $89.99 instead of the price of $99.99. at the time I didn't notice it but later that afternoon the buyer's parent comes in and hands the owner $10 and said he noticed his daughter was undercharged.

The owner screamed at me in front of the entire store about what kind of cheating scam I'm running. It was packed full of students buying books and I was really embarrassed. I walked out right then and there and only went back to pick up my last paycheck, which they refused to handover until my roommate's father (attorney) called and threatened a lawsuit. I think the check was $200 lol.

Anyway, I never went back in there after that. I forget her name, but the owner was not a pleasant woman.

Ha! I was thinking the same place. CBS was owned by a couple of old timers that didn't give two ***** about anyone or anything other than making as much as they could. The turnover there was atrocious. They had damn near unlimited supply of college kids looking to make money so they could just treat everyone like **** and replace them the next day. Not to mentioned they were sexist/racist as well. I was one of the more tenured employees there at the time (over a year) so would occasionally be invited out for drinks. Oh the things they would say. I really started to feel uncomfortable working for them as I got to know them better. He (I can't remember his name now) was also bi-polar.

I was near the end of the line watching him treat everyone so poorly when my last day came. He had plans to expand the book store into the space next door and I thought taking on that project would be a good way for me to stay out of sight for some time. Now I'm a pretty OCD kind of guy and put in a lot of work to ensure the room was set up exactly as he laid it out on the plans. He was having a bad day and came over and just laid into me about how stupid I was and can't listen, etc. I told him to **** off and do it himself. I then walked my ass across the street to UBS to take a job that paid better but also didn't treat me like ****.

Oh, I forgot about the spying too. He'd regularly send his "spies" to UBS to check prices as he didn't have access to the same pricing database that they did. So that was his way of getting that information. That was fun, working up front and calling the "spies" out by name as they walked in and telling them to "say hi to **** face for me!"

Thanks for reminding me of all these memories I had successfully suppressed all these years!

 

[AllInForISU]

Worked at BWW for a few months. I had told them when I was hired that I was getting married and needed this certain time off for the wedding and honeymoon. They were ok with that at the time, but had me on the schedule when the time actually came.

I told them I wasn’t going to be there and they freaked out on me. Told me that was unacceptable and I didn’t fill out a time off request or something (didn’t even know we had those at BWW). They said I was getting written up if I missed and would be fired if I was a no call no show.

I quit on the spot. Ended up I was in negotiations for a job actually using my major and was pretty confident it would work out, it did and I haven’t been back to BWW since. Those guys were dicks.

 

[theshadow]

Pizza Pit has never moved to my knowledge, it's been in the same building about 2 blocks south on Welch. Pizza Pit on the top and Welch Ave station(?) the bar on the bottom, that used to be "the Library" for many years. Pizza Pit was the go to when I was in school good always get a coupon out of the daily for a XL (?) 1 topping for 5 bucks.

They've been in that spot since they opened (1976).

 

[BCClone]

How’d you work there for 4 solid years and quit on the first day?

Hours not years. Re-read.

 

[cyclone87]

Black Market was down the road from The Cafe in Somerset. It hosted a Man vs Food on the Jethros episode that they claimed was in Ames but actually filmed in Ankeny because I believe they'd already closed the Ames location.

The Ankeny location was only open for like a year. They said it was the Ames location since Ankeny had already closed. The Ames location lasted for about 6 years. Their Chicago style was pretty good. I don’t think the owner was great at running a business, seemed friendly though.