Former X-Games Champ Promoted To Shift Supervisor At Krispy Kreme

LONE TREE, CO - When Josh Hartman won three gold medals at the 1999 X-Games, the 21-year old thought he had reached the apex of his career. Turns out, he was right. Like his favorite hobby, skiing, everything’s been downhill for Hartman since February of 2000, when he injured his back in a snowboarding mishap.

With no college degree and no job skills, Josh was forced to take a job at Krispy Kreme in Lone Tree, Colorado. After three years of employment, things have taken a turn for the better, as Hartman has finally been promoted to shift supervisor.

“It’s about time. I think I really deserved this promotion,” said Hartman, now 27 and living with his girlfriend and her daughter. “I’ve been sort of the de facto shift supervisor for some time now. I do the most work, I have the most seniority, and when the new kids have questions, they come to me. I’ve really established myself here, which is pretty good for someone with no college degree.”

The manager of the Lone Tree Krispy Kreme, Larry Fitzgibbons, decided to promote Hartman after Hartman impressed him with his work ethic and punctuality.

“Josh is a good kid. He’s always here on time and he’s the only one willing to clean the toilets at the end of a shift,” said Fitzgibbons. “Plus, he’s been here forever. Most kids work here for a few months during high school, but he’s making a career out of it. Pretty soon he’ll be making ten bucks an hour like me.”

Hartman’s current lifestyle is a far cry from 1999, when he was a celebrity on the extreme sports scene. Hartman took medals in Men’s Slopestyle, Halfpipe and Big Air, and was the toast of Crested Butte, CO. Life didn’t seem like it could get any better for Hartman, and it didn’t.

“Now those were great times,” recalled Hartman. “You should’ve me in ’99 during Big Air. To get the gold, I threw this sick backside 360 with a mute grab, and on the next run I stomped consecutive switch 90 rolls, which is something I’m real proud of. Getting up on that podium to accept the gold was totally amazing. It's what my entire life had been leading up to. But there’s a downside to reaching the peak of your life at age 21. There’s still a whole lot of years left after that. If I could do it all over again, I would’ve at least learned to read or something.”

Hartman spent the majority of his teen years learning to ski and snowboard. Like many other talented X-Gamers, he neglected his studies to become more adept at his hobby. His mother, Sheila, often warned him that sports alone wouldn’t take him through life, but after his success in ’99, she had second thoughts.

“I used to give him a lot of grief about all that snowboarding and stuff,” said Sheila. “He kept insisting that he could make a living at it. I thought he was nuts, but when he got to the X-Games and won all those medals I had to eat my words. He was, like, famous for a while. Well, locally famous. And for a very short while. After he hurt his back he sort of lost his edge, and that’s when reality set in. As exciting and thrilling as ‘mute grabs’ and ‘switch 90 rolls’ are, they don’t help much in real life. The only bright side is I don’t have to listen to those stupid expressions anymore.”

According to Hartman, he learned that valuable lesson the hard way. After his X-Game career ended, he was unable to find work and couldn’t afford to go back to school. And his reputation as X-Game champ wasn’t exactly opening doors for him.

“I walked into a job interview in Aurora for some kind of mutual fund company, and I figured my reputation would precede me,” recalled Hartman. “I was kind of casual about the whole thing. My resume didn’t say much, but it did mention I won gold medals in Slopestyle, Halfpipe, and Big Air. I admit I was a little cocky. Then the manager was like ‘OK, you won some events at the X-Games, but what else have you done?’ I thought that it would be enough to get the job, but then he pointed out that I had 8 spelling mistakes on my application. He didn’t like that it was written in longhand either. Or that it was on a cocktail napkin.”

Hartman says he walked out of the interview angry but humbled.

“I’m like ‘What the fuck? Doesn’t this guy know how hard it is to pull off a switch frontside 720 or a switch cork 900?’ But he didn’t. He didn’t even know what they were, which kind of surprised me. I guess competing in a made-up sport doesn’t impress people very much.”

Fitzgibbons, Josh’s current boss, says he is impressed by his feats at the X-Games but doesn’t have much use for those talents at Krispy Kreme.

“Winning three gold medals is quite an accomplishment,” he said. “I told him that, too. But now he’s part of America’s workforce, and he must strive to attain success in other fields. I just told him one day that he should take all the effort and energy he put into doing a Tail Grab 360 or a McTwist and channel it into making the best donuts he can. We here at Krispy Kreme like to think of our donuts as ‘totally rad’, and ‘gnarly’ and sometimes people even get ‘stoked’ when they eat them. See? You just gotta talk their language. That’s why the kids respect me so much.”

Though Josh has put his X-Games days behind him, he still considers them a valuable learning experience, as well as a stepping stone to other accomplishments.

“I’ve been to the top of the mountain, figuratively and literally. I’ve won gold medals, and I’ve cleaned toilets. Right now, I’m kind of on the downside, the downslope, if you will. But it’s cool. I don’t want people feeling bad for me or anything. I have this Krispy Kreme thing going now, and it looks like I’m climbing the ranks. It may not be as glamorous as being an X-Games champ and getting laid like crazy and being a semi-celebrity, but it has its perks.”

Continued Hartman: “Someday, after I’ve made enough money from the donut business, I’m gonna open my own snowboard shop. It’s gonna be called ‘World Champion Snowboard and Snowboard Accessories’. It’s totally going to happen. All I need is a couple hundred thousand dollars, good credit, experience running a store and uh…oh, I should probably learn to read.”