Lightning Round!

Here’s some quickie jobs I did and how they rank compared to potential bear attack.

The Post Office: my stories of very briefly working for the post office garnered a lot of attention from sympathetic posties back when, and anyone who read them can probably guess where this is going, I’ll take the bear, thanks. Five minutes per day of potential but improbable bear beats a 12 hour day with no meal break and constant back pain.

Professional spammer: I took a temp job emailing surveys for a non-profit in my youth to save money for a Playstation. It wasn’t exactly thrilling, sending the same email for eight hours a day, but it paid well enough. I think I might lean to the bear, though, based only on the room for career advancement.

Casino concessions: Man, there was a time when I really thought that making enough in tips to pay for a bag of mini-donuts on my break was a good night. Wandering a loop through the slots and game tables trying to sell Cokes or coffees before they ended up room temperature sure could have used a bear attack to liven up the shift. Working the actual concession stand wasn’t terrible, though it’s a toss-up between the dull opening shift and stressful closing shift. Got some good stories out of it, but frankly I’d get a good story out of bear proximity too.

Artistic Director of the theatre company I founded: stressful, anxiety-inducing, no pay, never had a clear sense I knew what I was doing… best job I ever had.