Friday, July 25, 2025

Insight: Take This Job and Shove It

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor


One of the things that I enjoyed the most about working as a journalist in Florida was the sheer number of odd, bizarre and amusing stories to report about in the Sunshine State.

Johnny Paycheck had the only Number One 
country hit of his career in 1977 with 
'Take This Job and Shove It' which was 
played repeatedly during a radio station
prank on April Fool's Day in 1986.
COURTESY PHOTO  
In fact, the daily newspaper I worked for there at one time published a regular feature every day on the back of the local section of unusual articles of interest from locations in Florida.

One that certainly caught my attention involved a radio disc jockey in 1986 who decided he was going to show everyone how much he disliked his work.

At about 5 p.m. on Tuesday, April 1, 1986, Charlie Bee was broadcasting his afternoon program of country music for WAPG-AM radio in Arcadia, Florida, east of Sarasota. Without any warning to listeners or radio station management, Bee suddenly locked himself in his broadcast studio and began playing “Take This Job and Shove It” by Johnny Paycheck over, and over, and over at varying speeds.

He ignored hundreds of telephone calls from listeners, friends, the radio station manager and other disc jockeys to surrender his microphone and stop what he was doing immediately.

Not paying any attention to their pleas to stop, Bee continued to repeatedly play “Take This Job and Shove It” and adjusted the radio station turntable to the point that he could slow down the speed of the record or speed it up. No matter what speed Bee chose to play it, the repeated song angered everyone that day.

If you haven’t heard it, the song “Take This Job and Shove It” is about the bitterness of a man who has worked long and hard with no apparent reward. The song was first recorded by country performer Johnny Paycheck on his album also titled “Take This Job and Shove It.”

Paycheck’s recording was the top country song for two weeks in 1977. The recording spent a total of 18 weeks on the Billboard County Music charts that year and happened to be the only Number One country hit ever recorded by Paycheck.

The radio station switchboard was flooded with more than 250 complaints from listeners while Bee remained barricaded behind the doors of the program’s control room.

Stopping the song briefly to air his own personal grievance, Bee complained over the airwaves that April 1, 1986 just happened to be his 49th birthday and the radio station managers were making him work on his very own special day. Then he went right back to playing “Take This Job and Shove It” for listeners tuning in.

He also explained to listeners that he was "fed up" with not receiving an adequate salary and would play the song until his employers agreed to give him a raise.

Hearing Bee’s broadcast complaint and with the situation now having stretched to more than an hour, the station manager resorted to calling the police. The DeSoto County Sheriff’s Department and officers from the Arcadia Police Department responded to the radio station studios and sheriff’s deputies began to knock loudly on the barricaded control room door. They demanded that Bee remove the barricade, unlock the door, and stop playing “Take This Job and Shove It.”

The deputies were banging on the door so loud that it could be heard over the airwaves as Bee continued to play the record repeatedly.

The embattled disc jockey then proclaimed over the air, “This is my show and they’re not going to tell me what to do.”

With the situation at a stalemate, Arcadia Police Officer Dan Ford asked Bee politely through the barricade, “Charlie, don’t you want to go home now?”

With that, Bee took down the barricade and unlocked the control room door. With the tension seemingly resolved, Bee left the radio station studio with Officer Ford.

No charges against Bee were filed over the incident, although the station manager terminated his employment as a disc jockey with WAPG-AM.

With the radio studio control room now empty, WAPG-AM disc jockey Bill Madison replaced Bee at the microphone and he dedicated his first song to Charlie Bee, playing “Take This Job and Shove It” one last time that evening.

When reached by telephone at his home later that week by a reporter, Bee said the incident arose out of sheer frustration.

“I was fed up and playing ‘Take This Job and Shove It’ expressed my sentiment exactly,” Bee told a Florida newspaper the weekend following the incident.

He refused to give any further details in subsequent newspaper articles, but his fellow DJ and friend Bill Madison eventually confessed that the entire situation and incident was an elaborately staged prank with which the police were cooperating.

Charlie Bee was never heard again on the airwaves of WAPG-AM after April 1, 1986, and it is unknown what happened to him thereafter.

Paycheck was sentenced to seven years in jail for shooting a man at the North High Lounge in Hillsboro, Ohio in 1985, and he spent 22 months in prison before being pardoned by Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste in 1991. He was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 1997 but died at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University Medical Center in 2003 at the age of 64 from emphysema complications. <

No comments:

Post a Comment