Occupational Oppression
Thursday, September 6th, 2007
This week’s question:
In the wake of labor day, we wondered: What’s the weirdest or worst job you ever had?
Next week’s question:
‘Tis the season for everyone’s favorite essay question, but “what did you do on your summer vacation” that you could never have told Teach about?
I had the easiest job at the slaughter house—hosing blood and stray feathers off the turkey carcasses after they had been killed, plucked and decapitated. The bodies, still warm, often jumped and jerked when the cold water hit them.
Through high school and college, I was a lunchlady at an exclusive Catholic boarding school in my hometown. I stood behind a stainless steel counter, under the hot lights of the serving line, doling out pizza, wiping down tables, and forming a harsh class consciousness that still hasn’t left me. I don’t remember the physical work so much as the bleak feeling that I wouldn’t amount to much, starting as I was from a financially meager and connection-less spot. Ten years later, the fear of somehow getting dropped back into that job persists: I periodically picture myself in a hairnet, making $5.50 an hour, weeping into the beef stroganoff.
Somewhere in the ether of my post-college panic year, I agreed to play Cinderella at children’s birthday parties. For ten dollars an hour. Six hours of back-to-back “Happy Birthday” was not the worst part. The booger-eating pretty pretty princesses were not the worst part. Dancing and twirling and sweating and cooing in a voice two octaves above my own was really not that bad. But I was a fraud. A budget Cinderella in a crumpled drugstore costume that I was not allowed to take home. It was never washed and never ironed. The five-year-olds crowded around my blue-sequined Chinatown slippers. “I didn’t expect you to be wearing those shoes, Cinderella.”
I was living in Byron Bay, Australia, at a little hippie-hostel called the Arts Factory. I offered my services in exchange for a free place to stay. So I cleaned the pool. Which wasn’t too bad, except that I had to be up early every morning. One morning my boss approached me, “There’s a cane toad in the pool. Kill it.” Kill it? I scooped the little guy out of the pool… What would I kill it with? I ended up beating it to death with the end of a broom. I’ve never forgiven myself. And I got switched to bathroom-cleaning later that day.
House on the water. Tennis court in the backyard. 88-year-old senile woman. That was the package deal my friend and I accepted upon our college graduation. It seemed strange that a Connecticut family would entrust their matriarch to two momma’s boys who never even cooked before. (We arrived with a primer: “How to Boil Water.”) But we needed a place and the $100 a week stipend. They needed to make sure grandma stayed out of trouble. We tried our best. Mrs. Chase’s main hobby was to climb a stepladder to change light bulbs every time our heads were turned. Each morning she asked us who we were again. And when we finally added spice to an entrée, she told us “my mouth is burning.” While we didn’t pursue careers in home health care, future employers were told that Mrs. Chase survived our tenure.
I’ve held almost 20 paying jobs since high school (including temp, freelance, part-time, and career-related jobs like my current job that I love). The worst was working as a “technical writer” for a Boston-based husband-and-wife consulting firm for financial institutions. Why? Boss took me to her hotel room to put on a pair of (fresh-out-of-the-package, thank God) pantyhose because I forgot mine; boss’ daughter had a job I went to school for and my bosses paid her rent in Manhattan; job description included mailings for my boss’ social organization; travel was twice as frequent as what I was told in interview; and bosses only hired girls in their early 20s.
After college, I spent 3 years temping, until eventually, I was offered a position I couldn’t refuse. The agency said it would be for “just a few weeks,” but I ended up spending the next 4 years working in pageantry. I’ve witnessed bathing suit malfunctions, girls shipped off to rehab, and some pass out mid-sentence from hunger and lack of sleep. Ultimately, after reaching the top of my field, I had to retire before I developed an addiction or disorder of my own.
They gathered the chickens with a bobcat, a little front loader, out of the chicken house and they’d dump them in a holding pen. You’d reach in, grab them, two at a time, by the legs, and stuff them, head first, into the plastic crates that were rolling past behind you on the assembly line. This happened at night because supposedly, the chickens were “calmer.” By the end of the shift, we’d be covered in chicken shit, feathers, and scratches, and we’d race to be the first in the showers.
It was disgusting. I was a strict vegetarian for years after that.
When I was 20, I left my minimum-wage, mom-n-pop grocery store job and took a slightly higher paying position in a group home for the mentally handicapped. I had reservations from the start, mostly due to my complete lack of training in that area, which didn’t seem to bother those who hired me. Most of the residents were high-functioning, and one of the residents even had a dishwashing job. However, one man kept insisting I come back to his room and watch his 13″ television with him. Another man liked to walk around the house naked, and I kid you not, the man must’ve been related to Dirk Diggler. Still another man was rationed one cigarette every 30 minutes throughout the day, and although he could not tell time, he always knew when he was entitled to smoke. If we were so much as 5 minutes late with his cigarette, he was known to hit other residents and employees, throw blunt objects, and generally enact havoc. Some people are far more talented and able than I in working with the mentally handicapped. For me, it was a six-week learning experience. I lasted six weeks before I was back to stocking groceries, and I did that until I finished college.
My first after-school job was at a plant store in Soho. We sold high-end plants to Manhattan botany aficionados. Mostly it was sweeping up dirt and taking dirt from HUGE bags (which the owner paid $20 for) to put them into tiny bags (which the owner sold for $7 each). There was one great thing about the job: customers would see my dirty hands and assume that I was a plant expert. They would ask, “My plant is dying! Help! Help! What do I do?” And I would either say “More water!” or “Less water!” as I saw fit.
How dare you talk about us that way. You’d be nothing without us. Our track record speaks for itself.
Don’t mention it. I’ll send a new pair of pantyhose to your office tomorrow as a peace offering.
Your insolence will not go unrewarded.
p.s. make sure they’re nude, not black
My roof of my black, 1971 Ford Pinto was attached, using straps, suction cups, & bungee cords, to a huge orange sign that said “Caution: WIDE LOAD.” I drove along in front of the big truck that would haul mobile homes from the sales lot in Lansing, KS to wherever the new owners were about to call home. If the truck had to make a turn against traffic, I would drive to the top of the next hill and block the way so unsuspecting motorists would not accidentally crash into someone’s new house. On the CB radio, I’d stay in contact with Willie, the truck driver, and let him know about any challenges he was about to face, “The bridge is too narrow, you’re gonna have to take both lanes. I’ll block the way.” When we arrived, I would help unload the cement blocks, hydraulic jacks, and skirting. I was 15 years old that summer. The other girls couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to work in my mom’s clothing store.
I can’t believe you ever even took that job! It sounds like a tragedy waiting to happen. The fact that all three of you survived shows you have excellent karma. (The lightbulb changing thing is too precious — reminds me of a Dean Haspiel comic from OPPOSABLE THUMBS #1.)