When I discovered that Saddam Hussein had employed several doubles whose appearances were surgically altered to resemble that of their employer, I deemed this the worst job in the world. Now that the United States army is cruising toward Baghdad with an intent to kill the Iraqi leader, the occupational safety risk for the Saddam double position has soared dramatically. But is this truly the worst job in the world?
Raised in the working class, I was required to labor my way through school. This experience infused in me the characteristics of a bad job. For example, here's your name tag is a phrase you generally do not want to hear uttered on your first day of work. You'll find your hair net above the sink is never a signal of impending occupational bliss. And if your new manager says, this is the french fry station, do yourself a favor and quit on the spot.
The 2002 Jobs Rated Almanac, by Les Krantz, ranked the worst jobs for that year. The top five were lumberjack, fisherman, cowboy, ironworker and seaman. According to Krantz, the worst jobs were determined based upon poor quality in the following areas: working environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands, security and stress. While these jobs may indeed suck, they don't require cosmetic Saddamization surgery. But my skepticism forced me to conclude that Krantz did not exhaustively research this topic. There had to be a job worse than lumberjack and I was determined to find it.
Entertainment Tonight is a television program which allows you to live vicariously through the lives of popular celebrities. ET recently allowed its viewers to work a crappy job through the lives of Will Smith, Lara Flynn Boyle (no idea), and Taye Diggs (ditto). So what were the worst jobs these stars worked? Smith and Boyle were each employed by a parent and Taye Diggs worked in a Dunkin' Donuts for a day. (Okay, this was going nowhere.)
Then I discovered WorstJob.com, a website which allows its readers to submit their worst job experience and to vote on the submissions of others to determine the worst job of a given year. The runners up for 2002 include a nurse's aide who cleans up bodily fluids, a peep show janitor who cleans up after customers use the booths, and a turd driver who's job is to "clean the grate at the sewer treatment plant." But the number one worst job as determined by the website readers was this:
Porta-Potty Cleaner
"Yep. I'm a porta-potty cleaner in Idaho. I go in to these hot, smelly, nasty, booger-on-the-wall, porta-potties, stick a PVC wand in the sh*t tank, and wait a few for the pump to suck it up. Dealing with the smell, you get used to, but the sweat in the eyes, the broken t.p. dispensers, the paper all over the floor, the cr*p in the urinal, and the broken plastic seats really suck! When they're tipped over on the door, and you have to clean 'em up, you might as well sell your soul to the devil.....cause that's what it's like anyway....PURE HELL."
Les Krantz will be hard pressed to convince me that lumberjack is worst than any of the top five jobs featured on this website.
According to WorstJobs.com, Porta-Potty Cleaner was the least desirable job in America in 2002, but is it the worst job in the world? Is it crappier than Surgically Altered Saddam Hussein double? Let's employ the Faux News approach; I'll report, you decide. This week's poll is on the right...
