Dumbest, strangest and most horrible jobs

• Dumbest (most mindless):
  • Sweeping the floor at a large Burger King in downtown Brooklyn. Wearing the brown/orange/yellow uniform, complete with idiotic paper cap. The "free" burgers which were deducted from our pay; and gave us heartburn.
  • Slavery at the Strand: In the Dickensian dimness of the shipping department, cutting boxes to size, stuffing them with books and old newspaper. Severe depression overwhelmed me; I fell into a zombie-like state in which even packing a box was beyond me and got fired.
• Strangest
  • They'd just fired an editor at the World's Worst Publishing Company when I happened by. He'd threatened the rest of the staff with a loaded weapon. (He'd seemed like such a quiet young man until they put him in charge of the Gun magazines). So instead of the proofreading job I thought I was interviewing for, I was given an editorship. It helped that Obnoxious Scott, friend of a friend from high school, was pulling for me. And once I got the job, lording it over me. "This is not school! This is not practice! This is real! It's sink or swim -- sink or swim!" admonished the boy wonder. It wasn't Scott's constant harassment, or the illegally tiny salary, or the gun-toting weirdo of a boss that finally did me in. It was the 4-page-an-hour quota. I cannot churn out trashy copy on topics I know nothing about; it just isn't in me. I lasted all of a week. None would have wished it longer.

Return to The M&M Segall Home Page