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There are some strong contenders for the 'Worst Job I’ve Ever Had To Do'. Looking back it is clear that in my youth, I was not only desperate, but also suffered from incredibly poor self-insight.
Why else would someone with a pathological fear of telephones, talking to strangers and sitting in stuffy cubicles become a Mr. Delivery phone operator?
Still, that didn’t come close to the time I did a stint working 16 hour shifts in Menlyn Mall – or as I prefer to call it, The Seventh Circle of Hell (as far as I remember Dante reserved that one for violence and murderers) for the worst reality TV show concept ever.
I can’t elaborate much, because I’m scared I might get sued, but suffice to say that while drunk at my cousin’s wedding, I seriously considered breaking my own arm so that I didn’t have to go back to work.
The valuable lesson I learnt from that little foray into television is that it’s harder than you think to break your own arm.
But of those, and the many other jobs I’ve had to do which included, but did not consist of, having chefs throw plates at my head like they were Frisbees, children vomiting in my hair, and the one time where I had to scoop a dead rat the size of a fox terrier from one of those Danger: High Voltage boxes; one job rises head and shoulders, like King Saul from the Bible, above the others in sheer and utter horribleness.
I was a mime at the airport.
A really good friend was doing corporate theatre and she hooked me up. (Note, I have not told her that this turned out to be the worst month of my life and I don’t plan to. Ever.) I accepted the gig, because I was kind of desperate for money, but mostly because I was in dangerous denial about many things. Those things being:
• My miming talent and skill
• My ability to do it without having three double whiskeys beforehand
• My desire to do impromptu performance art in everyday settings
• The general public’s desire to see me butcher the craft of silent clowns
• The fact that passengers, waiting for their planes to leave, would not want to jump at audience participation
• How fast my will to live would fade in the face of humiliating myself in front of strangers on a daily basis
Dear reader, I almost lost my fucking MIND. I still can’t talk, or even write, about it without feeling the hot sweat of shame around my head like a crown of ignominy.
At least now I know that I cannot be bought. Because there is no amount of money in the world that will ever make me pick up the white gloves again.
