Jobs for the Boy

The other day, Buffy listed her worst jobs of all time. I feel like I need to do the same. Here, in no particular order, are my worst jobs ever.

1. Kleeneze salesman.

I was 14 and needed some cash for a family holiday. What could be easier than trudging the streets of Hastings putting small catalogues full of essential cleaning products through doors, then going back to collect them a few days later? One woman bought practically everything in the catalogue (paying for my holiday fun). Nobody else bought anything. Including the woman with 100 cats whose house smelled like every Kleeneze product in the world couldn't make it smell of anything other than cat piss.

2. Paper boy

Also when I was very young. For years, I spent every Thursday evening delivering the free paper. I was assigned Hastings' roughest estate. The place where single mums go to smoke crack. Blocks of flats that smelled like the aforementioned cat woman's abode, with rottweilers instead of cats. Every week, I delivered papers - getting one penny for each one - while fearing for my life. The highlight was when a three-year-old called me a f*cking c*nt.

3. Broad bean picker

Summer as a student, standing in a field in the middle of nowhere, on my own, picking broad beans with just a crackly radio for company. I toiled in the fields for days. Then, at the end, the bastard farmer (who lived in shack because his wife had caught him shagging his young female farmhand in the barn) told me that 75% of the beans were "too small" and refused to pay me for them. After working out my wages were 76p an hour, I stomped off. Oh alright, I slouched off. I hate farmers.

3. Child Support Agency maintenance officer

I did this for 5 years after leaving uni. 5 years of being called what that three year old called me on a daily basis. 5 years of ruining people's lives. 5 years of listening to men cry on the phone. What a laugh. Still, we had a subsidised bar. £1 a pint every lunchtime. That's why I stayed for 5 years.

4. Factory worker

I worked in two hellish factories in Hastings, the food-packing capital of SE England, but they all blur into one. Whether standing by a conveyer belt picking out the black cornflakes, or shovelling carrots into pickle vats, or separating the siamese twin jelly babies from the normal ones, there was always one thing you could rely on. Actually make that two. One, it was always mind-meltingly tedious. Two, all the people who worked there were c*nts. Oh how I loved being addressed by my colleagues as 'poof', 'student poof', 'you lazy f*cker' or 'Rambo'. Still, I did wear eyeliner to work, so I guess I asked for it.

5. Connex customer services executive

If I ever hear the words 'leaves on the line' or 'is it beyond the wit of man?' I start to twitch. Then I start to cry. Everybody knows the rail service in the UK is crap. At the CSA, we used to joke that the only job that could be worse would be working for a rail company. So I went to work for a rail company. I can;t really describe what it's like being on the phone all day listening to people rant at you about dead pigeons, rude ticket inspectors ("I'm not racist, but he was black"), blocked up toilets and lost laptops. I feel tense now just writing about it. I need a beer. 'Let the train take the strain? You must be joking!' Aaaaaaaaaargh!