“What’s the worst job you ever had?” said Brad after dinner, and his five guests were momentarily silent. Brad is a psychologist and even at dinner parties he tends to “interview” his guests while never revealing anything about himself. “People love talking about themselves,” he confided to me at lunch one day. “I just give them the opportunity.”
Now, as I listened to the other guys describe summers spent doing construction work, high school weekends spent stuffing envelopes and a college summer working as a “manny” for spoiled rich kids I was truly stymied mainly because while I’ve had more than my share of horrible jobs, I’m not sure that any one of them stands out as “the worst.”
Now it was my turn and the other guests were looking at me expectantly. “Guy?” prodded Brad, and I felt I should be lying on the sofa; my mind was racing.
“Well,” I began, “the year I spent teaching middle school was really bad,” which was a tremendous understatement since I spent a year trying desperately to maintain order teaching a group of kids who had no desire to learn and whose parents regarded school as free day care. “I vomited before school every morning and had diarrhea every night,” I said.
“Wow, that’s pretty bad,” said Brad.
“But that’s not the worst,” I said thoughtfully. “I spent 6 weeks working at a pet store cleaning cages and fish tanks,” I said. “That was pretty bad because I hated the snakes, was afraid of the birds, and the hamsters would attack me. I went home bloody every day.” Brad nodded and was about to speak but I continued.
“But I think being a flight attendant was even worse,” I said. I noticed that Ryan reached without ceremony for the wine and topped off his glass. He offered the bottle to Carlos who nodded grimly and topped off his nearly full glass.
“Worse than cleaning rat cages?” Kenny asked unwisely.
“Way worse,” I said. “At least the rats couldn’t talk back to you.” I spent almost 8 weeks as a flight attendant until the sheer boredom of spending hours every day opening cans of Coke and fighting with passengers who were too stupid to pass the Head Start entrance exam got to me and I quit.
I paused for a minute and Brad, clearly wishing he had never broached the subject cleared his throat, preparatory to changing the subject but I was on a roll.
“There was the time I worked third shift in a mail order call center,” I said, remembering how vicious people can be over the phone, especially when they are drunk and angry. Then I mentioned the three months I spent working as a waiter at Bennigan’s when I learned that the only thing worse than dealing with an angry drunk on the phone was dealing with an angry drunk in person.
Brad’s eyes were beginning to glaze over and he unceremoniously left the table to get dessert. Ryan kicked me, hard, under the table but I ignored him because I suddenly remembered the time I spent working in the men’s department at Jordan Marsh trying to explain to size 48 men that no, the size 32 jeans were not mismarked.
“But,” I said, “since you asked, I think my very worse job was managing a large health club and aquatic center.” I paused. “Do you know what a ‘Code Brown’ is?” I asked darkly, just as Brad appeared with dessert.
“What’s for dessert?” asked Barry, eager to change the subject.
“Mississippi Mud Pie!” said Brad brightly.