COLUMN: Making it through the daily grind

From Cila Warncke's, "Bigmouth Strikes Again," Fall '00 From Cila Warncke's, "Bigmouth Strikes Again," Fall '00They're the stuff of nightmares, bad jobs. And I've had them for as long as I can remember. Whether 12-hour stints at fast-food restaurants or the 2-6 a.m. shift loading trailers at UPS -- or the current temper-testing job at a busy north London pub -- I can safely say most of my jobs have been downright misery inducing. Imagine the scene -- St. Patrick's Day, 2000. The pub I work in was heaving, the walls damp and ready to bow with the pressure of the Guinness-guzzling crowd inside. Awash in spilled beer and sweat, my four-hour shift felt like several lifetimes, and thoughts of homicide -- or escape -- crossed my mind. Finally, when the last pissed-up patron had been ushered out, my three fellow bartenders and I gratefully reached for cigarettes and flopped across the bar, eyes glazed. Sure, if I hadn't have been working I might have been down at a pub myself, enjoying my own pint of Ireland's finest. Or maybe I would have had time to plan a party with my friends. Certainly I would have avoided being shouted at, having beer spilled on me and having to pick up chunks of broken glass off the floor at the end of the evening. On the other hand, I would have missed out on sitting down with my workmates, pulling a pint and swapping stories about the rude and amusing people we'd served. I wouldn't have heard the latest gossip on "the regulars" or caught up on my friends' lives. Mostly, I wouldn't have walked home with the ego-boosting knowledge that I'm a survivor. It is hard to fully explain to people who've never had a bad job -- or any job -- just how soul-satisfying crap employment can be. Sure, you have to deal with rude, overbearing customers. Yes, you have to placate unreasonable bosses. And you have to leg it to work sometimes because you slept that extra 10 minutes. I have often been tempted to envy the people who have made it to 18 or 20 years of age living comfortably off of their parents' money, never giving up a day in the sun for a day behind a cash register. After all, how many nights out with my friends have I missed, how many holidays have I not taken, how much sleep have I been deprived of because I needed the extra cash? On the other hand, I cannot imagine life without bad jobs. In these jobs you learn crisis management of the sort they don't teach at Wharton -- what to do when your bar has just run out of your most popular lager, what to do when you can see a fight starting across the bar, what to do when six different things demand your attention at once. Plus, you develop the one thing you really need in the real world -- a thick skin. A few nights ago I refused to serve a very out-of-it patron at the bar. Instead of sulking off, as I'd hoped he would, he started shouting at me. My younger self would have lost it; I would have run or hid. As it was I had no choice but to stand my ground, and though it wasn't pleasant, I felt an incredible sense of satisfaction when he tired of cursing at me and muttered his way upstairs. Miserable jobs also teach you how to work with the kind of people you would never have the occasion -- or the desire -- to meet otherwise. Work at a bad job long enough and you will know how to find something in common with anyone -- welfare mothers, 50-year-old Olympic hopefuls, former high school heroes, pseudo-hippies who smoke dope on their breaks and volatile Cuban chefs. In short, I wouldn't trade my years of comedically awful employment for anything, because without them I would have missed out on a world I didn't know existed -- a world of strange hours, utter weariness, bizarre misfortunes and colorful characters. Most of all I would have missed the satisfaction of finishing a hellish night, sitting down, lighting a cigarette and savoring the fact that I've survived one more day.