Worst Job Ever?

There was a discussion question that asked you to recollect your worst job.  As cranky as I am, I don’t really have a job that rings out and sings, “I was a horrible job.”  For the most part, I do enjoy working.  Left to my own devices, as I’ve said before, I get into trouble and/or do stupid things.  Thus, being productive and being paid for being productive are two very nice things that keep me on the somewhat straight and narrow. 

I left one job after three months, but it wasn’t so much that I hated the job.  It was more that I hated the company.  They were involved in subprime financing, and I felt they weren’t ethical and took advantage of people.  Capitalism is fine and dandy until you charge people the equivalent of a 100% interest rate for the privilege of being lent an extremely small sum.  They sucked.  However, I did quite well at the job, so I won’t nominate that one as worst job. 

Probably my worst actual job was working at a gynecologist office.  Why oh why did I apply there?  I’m not terribly fond of women in general, and doctors and bodily fluids give me the heebie jeebies.   I was in high school, and they were looking for someone in the afternoon hours.  I was bored, wanted another job since my first job was only 8-10 hours per week, and it turned out that my boss at M e r r I l l   L y n c h was a patient there and could give me a great reference.  So I of all people ended up working at a gynecologist office.  

At first I was in the front office.  Answer phones, take copays, greet patients, file medical records.  Within a few days, you’ve heard so much TMI over the phone, in person, and through labwork that your tolerance starts to build.  I just write down their verbatim complaint, file their herpes records, and try not to do too much visible wincing.  And I got really good at spelling gonorrhea.  It wasn’t that it was necessarily a bad job at that point; it just wasn’t the most pleasant topic in the world to think about as I was eating my peanut butter & jelly sandwich. 

Then one day the office manager tells me I’ve been promoted…it might have had something to do with another employee committing espionage, so there was an immediate vacancy.  The bribe was the promotion itself and a whole 25 cents more an hour.  Where was the promotion?  To the back office, of course.  Because doesn’t every person aspire to clean speculums, clean rooms, ask patients the List of Embarrassing Questions, talk about embarrassing problems, do urine tests on other people, and assist doctors by preparing tissue samples for the lab?  Ugh, I’d rather alphabetize things, thank you very much.  You can keep that quarter an hour. 

Of course I didn’t say that.  I said sure, and I got anointed the job of prepping patients for the nurse and doctor by taking as much off their plates as possible. That meant calling the patient when the back office was ready for her (often after a 45 minute stint in the waiting room), making small talk, weighing her and dealing with the resulting denial/embarrassment, taking her to a room and asking her the List of Embarrassing Questions while trying to build a non-judgmental rapport, making official notes of her answers, making private notes for the nurse and doctor, learning why she’s here that day, taking her blood pressure, tell her to take off her clothes, give her a gown, blah blah blah. 

I had to be a people person and get very personal answers out of women.  One of my first tasks was to weigh the woman, and it’s not like most women share their weight with other people.  I’d guess that most women don’t let anyone know that.  Within 5 minutes of meeting her, I knew one thing no one else knew.  Then I had to ask if she was sexually active.  If so, multiple partners?  What’s your method of birth control?  And on we continue to go down the List of Embarrassing Questions.  For the first week or two, I completely stumbled on the whole social script I was supposed to do.  It’s so awkward and scary, and I was waiting to be yelled at by the patient.  But no one yelled at me.  A few weeks in, I was interviewing a really nice lady, and she opened up, and we had a really nice conversation and the whole thing actually started to make sense.  I slowly got more confident.  I worked on my small talk script, I worked on varying my body language and how I asked questions, I developed a little comic routine for the scale, and I started to get into a groove.  With the vast majority of patients, I’d find at least 1 or 2 small ways to connect with them through the 10 minutes or so that I was with them.  It seemed to make them more comfortable, and then I felt even more at ease. 

I was there when women found out they were pregnant, when they found out their husband was cheating on them (because if you tell someone who thinks she’s in an exclusive relationship that she has gonorrhea, it probably isn’t an exclusive relationship), when they found out they had cancer, when they’re in labor, when they’re so run down by life they have nowhere else to turn.  Pivotal life moments. 

I worked in that back office for 7 months.  Did I like the job?  No, not really.  I had been put out of my comfort zone in so many ways.  I didn’t like medical stuff.  I didn’t really like being surrounded by women.  The things I had to do were really awkward, and sometimes I got a little nauseous dealing with all the ick.  In terms of liking a job, it had to be my least favorite job ever.

But do you know what?  Looking back, it was definitely a way that I needed to be pushed.  I learned so much about interacting with people, how to get people to talk with me, how to ask questions, and all sorts of random medical knowledge.  As I write this, I’m almost thinking that what would have been classified as my worst job ever may be one of my best jobs ever in terms of what I took on with me to the real world.