Helping my mom sell antique and collectible books at a booth at the Rogers Sale. What's the Rogers Sale you ask? Imagine Bartertown from Mad Max meets Deliverance, located about 10 miles north of West Virginia... and for many of the attendees, the sale was THE highlight of their week.

 

My mom and I get along great so that wasn't an issue. What WAS an issue:

 

1. Waking up at 5:30am to drive 30 minutes through backwater hellholes to arrive at the epicenter of backwater hellholes.

2. We'd end up stationed next to toothless hicks selling tube socks or inbred yokels selling whatever junk they dug up.

3. Unlike the lovely Hartville flea market, the "roads"/aisles weren't paved. Gravel/dust covered your feet.

4. Let's see, I'm a city kid having to work in this kind of environment.

5. Did I mention they also sell livestock at this place? So imagine the (literally) unwashed masses, coupled with the stench of animals (and their waste), and produce that was sitting out in the sun all day.

6. Let's see, I'm a prissy city kid having to work in this environment.

7. Quite possibly the filthiest restroom facilities outside of the worst of the worst favelas.

 

 

Not fun. Not fun at all.

 

Right now over at ruralohio.com they're swapping stories about working the docks and selling newspapers on the corner of Broadway and 5th.

 

Yeah, where's all the hot dog vendors and shoe shine boys?

Okay. This doesn't sound like much compared to previous posts, but pretty much every job that I've had up until now has been from the movie "Office Space". Some have been even worse. I wish I was Merton. At the end. Of the movie.

Okay. This doesn't sound like much compared to previous posts, but pretty much every job that I've had up until now has been from the movie "Office Space". Some have been even worse. I wish I was Merton. At the end. Of the movie.

 

I'm guessing you mean Milton...not Merton.

No. MERTON. He was a lesser-known character that was cut from the movie. He goes on grand adventures at the end.

 

;)

My worst job was being a telemarketer at MBNA in Beachwood. My group was the first group to use scripts and it worked well. It was fun at first, especially when I got my first incentive check. After a while we started selling business credit cards and had to use that same script and the owners of these businesses would get pissed that we called the place soliciting. That on top of having to still overcome objections and sell cards to people who had, just lost their jobs, just lost their spouse, or just filed bankruptcy started working my nerves.

 

Conversations litterally went like this:

 

Me: Hello can I speak to XXXXX, My name is XXXXXXXX from MBNA and I'm calling to see if you'd be interested in our new 5.9 % fixed rate world pints master card?

 

them: I just filed for bankruptcy.

 

Me: That's OK, we still may be able to issue you a credit card, now if I could just ask you a few questions.

 

them: A) would get pissed or B) would hang up C) would actually go thru the application.

 

that, Plus I had to drive from Northernmost Cleveland Heights to Beachwood Science park in rush hour in the winter. I hung in for three months then I was outta there.

I've heard alot of people say roughly the same thing about that job.  They were busy selling cards while people just around the corner were collecting on the cards that they had sold only a short while ago.  But's they also said it's good money.

My worse job was working in the kitchen at Parasson's restaurant in Stow in the summer of 1988. If you recall that summer, it was one of the hottest on record. It seemed every day was in the 90s. We even hit 104 degrees that summer -- the hottest day in Cleveland history. If there was air conditioning in the kitchen, I sure don't remember it. I do remember keeping the back door open for ventilation and to let out the steam from all the boiling of pasta noodles that we were doing. At the end of the week, the supply truck came and we had to unload it. I never realized how heavy boxes of sauce were when the sauce was frozen. I've had a bad back since I was 16, and my back was a mess after unloading the truck.

 

I earned $3.35 per hour, and survived one full week at Parasson's.

 

After that, I began working door-to-door selling cash coupon booklets for chambers of commerce in communities throughout Portage and Summit counties for $8 an hour. That seemed like big bucks after Parasson's. It actually wasn't that bad, but it was damned hot. Some people who answered their doors felt pity on me, seeing me dripping with sweat, and bought booklets from me only because they felt sorry for me. Others let me into their air conditioned homes, or would offer me cold drinks (one guy was hosting a beer party and offered me a brew), and when one woman offered me a drink and I asked if she could instead turn the sprinklers on. She did, and I walked through them!

 

Another woman was sunbathing topless on her front porch (she was face-down -- oh well). Another woman answered her door wearing only a towel -- she had just gotten out of the shower. She said "I can't buy anything -- I'm naked." I told her I sell booklets to naked women too. She laughed and came back clothed. Damn. At another house, I began walking up the driveway when I saw a medium-sized dog come racing out from under a half-raised garage door. I was told don't run if a dog comes after you. I stood my ground and the dog just danced around me barking. Fido soon realized I was no threat and trotted back to the garage. No coupon booklet for them! At a mansion in Hudson, the kids answered the door. I asked if their parents were home. The kids said "I don't know..." They began running all through house yelling "Mom?! Mom?!" Finally she came to the door and, after all that, she didn't buy.

 

But in one of the saddest sales stories came at a house in Kent. The grass had grown tall. The curtains were all drawn. And it looked like the house was abandoned. But I knocked on the door anyway. A man who hadn't shaved in a few days answered. He spoke like he just woke up. He said "No thank you." We were told that if one spouse wasn't interested to ask to speak to the other spouse. I asked him "Is your wife home." He replied "she just died."

 

Other than the down-sides like that one, it wasn't such a bad job. I learned how to sell, got some confidence and it helped to erode my shyness. But the heat and the change in pay from an hourly wage to a below-minimum wage + commission eventually got to me and I quit.

My actual worst job was as a roofer.  I was living in Euclid, and was the organist/music director at St. Christine's just down the street, but was going to be leaving so I didn't renew my contract, and switched from full-time there to gigging around town.  That left a hole in the ol' paycheck, and my first attempt to fill it was answering an ad for a roofing company out in Solon - it paid $7/hour!

 

So, up at 5:30, out to Solon by 7am, along with a dozen other new guys and maybe a dozen regulars...filled out paperwork, and by sunrise we were up on a dew-soaked cedar-slat roof, ripping off slats, tossing them onto tarps, then gang-hauling tarps to the edge of the roof, slipping as you walk, but if you held onto the tarp, you could keep from going off the edge...it was slippery, dangerous, certainly not OSHA-approved...

 

The worst was on the highest peak...I was ripping off slats, and just started to slide.  Slowly, but inexorably.  Nothing I could do to stop, nobody could get to me, and there was nothing between me and falling three floors to the paved sidewalk and rock-strewn flowerbeds except a flimsy rain gutter.  For some reason, I just stopped - I would say one of the saints I invoked for help must have heard me, but I don't believe there's a "Saint Oshitoshit" anywhere in Butler...

 

It was a 10 hour shift, and after eight hours, I was completely blown...didn't get any work done the last two hours, so I refused the paycheck - I felt bad, quitting after a day, knowing I wasn't coming back - I guess that was SOP for these guys, because they were really nice and appreciated that I told them I wasn't coming back...best $70 I ever lost, because it completely remediated all guilt I felt about it...but yeah, that sucked...

 

I did a little roofing with my friend's dad one summer.  Just tearing off, no replacing.  Very bad work, and we were on low-pitched roofs.  He wouldn't let us work on the steep ones, because we were under 16, under the table, and def not osha approved.  My friend, who did alot of roofing with his dad, and I used to argue about which is worse- roofing or bailing hay.  I figure it's a tossup.

 

Cashiering at a grocery store was also horrible.  I've never been subjected to such a parade of nasty people as I have when working in a grocery store.  I survived bagging, then they moved me up to stocking, which I actually kind of enjoyed, but they moved me to cashier and wouldn't let me move back.  No matter how fast you go, every one of the customers stands in line and b*tches and sighs and moans about being in line the whole time, then gets to you and treats you like an idiot.  They treat you like you're an idiot if you don't know the difference between a gala apple and a fiji apple or the difference between romaine lettuce and arugula (have you ever met a 16 year old who did?).  If you're register locks up for some reason, they imply that you must be stupid because back in their day people knew how to make change, which is besides the point as the drawer can't be opened at this point anyway.  I was gone in a month.

I did roofing once, not as a "job". The most annoying part was carrying giant bags of shingles up a rickety ladder.