Historical Fall 2003 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
Who has the hardest job? OK, I know, you do. Who among us doesn’t think that our job is really hard, who among us doesn’t think that everyone else shirks a bit? And you’re right: YOU do have the hardest job. Wading through my prose is no easy task, I know, then there are all those other things you do during your waking hours. So relax, you’re #1. What is a job, anyway?
First, absolutely non-paying jobs can be as hard or harder than those which yield a paycheck. How could anything be harder than being a parent and trying to raise children in this crazy world? Not only that, how could anything be more important? And what about the wonderful volunteers who do all that needs to be done, and do it for free? That said, for the purposes of this discussion, I will focus only on those jobs which result in salary.
Now that “job” has been defined, what about “hard”? Like beauty, it is in the eye of the beholder. Something that is arduous and difficult and onerous for me, might be fun and attractive for you.
In this case, for example, it might be tuning up an automobile. You might groove on that, but I would find it pain worse than death. And if I had to change the oil, yikes, my hands would get dirty! So we’ll recognize that reasonable people can disagree on the difficulty of most jobs. Still, there are some incredibly challenging jobs that transcend personality and interest; everyone, everywhere, all the time, would agree that these are the hardest jobs around.
This information is not made up and represents quite a bit of fact-finding and research (if you doubt me, oh cynic, check this out at www.hardjobs.com).
In order of least to most hard, here are the five jobs that you hope you’ll never have and that you absolutely want your children to avoid (they are an argument for a good education!). #5 Being the person who dresses the trained monkeys for the circus routines. Of course, the operative words here is trained; I mean, how trained can a monkey be, really? Personally, I have quite a bit of experience with chimps and, trust me, they are not cooperative. Getting their arms and legs into the little pants and dresses is a major pain; stockings and high-heels are even worse.
The chimps seem, at times, to be triple-jointed.
They are a bundle of energy, always moving, undoing what you’ve done, and are actually quite strong. Oh yeah, they smell pretty bad, too. Worst of all, they have no taste so if you’re not careful, you wind up spending a lot of time getting one dressed just in time to be in the opening parade, and then you notice that the colors don’t match. #4 Being the person who spreads hot asphalt on a summer day.
My guess is that spreading hot asphalt might not be too bad in the middle of January in St. Louis. OK, forget the smell, forget the lifting and bending, forget the inherent danger in working with a liquid that is heated to a couple of hundred degrees (and is sticky!).
In January, maybe the heat would maybe be comfortable.
But in June, July, or August? No way, Jose. Whenever I drive by this activity, people sloshing liquid tar on to alreadyhot pavement, I shudder and turn up my air-conditioner another notch. #3 Being the person who cleans and maintains the faces on Mt. Rushmore.
The photos of George, Abe, Teddy, and Bill on the mountain are always taken from afar and the faces look quite good.
In fact, even stone erodes so there is a need for constant maintenance.
A crew of three has a full-time job of polishing, cleaning, and repairing. Regardless of the weather (and it can get awfully cold in South Dakota during their winter, August through April), you can see them daily, erecting scaffolding and then lowering a cleaner to the faces where he uses a chisel, occasionally, a jack-hammer, concrete, and gallon tubs of Clearasil to conduct cosmetic surgery.
I mean, can you imagine being suspended hundreds of feet in the air while you polish Bill’s nose and clean the bird debris out of his nostrils?
This takes dermatology to new levels. #2 Being the person who tastes the candidate flavors for Baskin-Robbins ice cream.
To be fair, this job does have its rewards: chocolate-mocha; peppermintguava; and apple torte banana, to name a few.
But do you realize that for every flavor that makes it to the store, TWENTY-SEVEN died in the tasting lab? Sure, rolling peach Melba on your tongue would be fun, but to get to peach Melba, you had to try hot orange pepperoni, maple custard jalapeno, pepper mace peppermint, mustard bubble gum, raspberries regurgitated, chocolate cotton, strawberry sinus, Paul Revere’s Saddle, guns & toeses, lemon lime leprechaun linguini, Snow White Apple Black, eggplant eyeball, vanilla chili, chocolate chili, strawberry chili, sandy sherbert souffle, holy moley & warts, bumptious baklava Bavarian, whiskey butter, jockey jerk, mayonnaise mocha, chocolate stringbean pewter, peppermint perspiration, mashed potato mash, sequined sassafras salmon, caramel caviar, and monkey butt banana.
This job gives new meaning to courage (and to Pepto-Bismo). And, the worst job of all, #1, being President Bush’s speech writer.
I mean, can you imagine the level of difficulty and pain one must feel writing for a man who views words as speedups and distractions?
This President, after all, is the person who has said, “Will the highways on the internet become more few?” “I know how hard it is to put food on your family,” “They misunderestimated me,” and, perhaps the ultimate, “Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning? (No, I am not making these quotes up!
They come from Divided We Stand by Roger Simon.) This President has also said that he cannot name a favorite book of his while growing up. (What is more surprising is that he can’t remember his favorite color crayon.) Think of the daily pain that a wordsmith must suffer, someone whose passion is using words to create meaning and magic, when they write speeches for W.
It would be like being the person who was responsible for Michael Jackson’s facial make-up; OK, it might be worse.
I hope that this list helps you feel a bit better about your job, whatever it is.
After all, things could be worse. You could be W’s speech writer and also responsible for foreign policy.
Now that would be the hardest job ever.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, Fall 2003.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times2003_09.pdf, printed page(s) 8; PDF page(s) 8.
