Super Tuesday has come and gone, leading unceremoniously to Swell Wednesday and Nifty Thursday. The candidates continue their never-ending campaign for a Washington D.C. office shaped like an oval with one heck of a view. But let’s face it – a presidential election is like some televised job interview on steroids. Resumes are padded, objectives are set, promises are made, and lies are told. However, for $400,000 a year, plus benefits and a really cool title, one could easily understand the desirability of such a job. Believe it or not, your Mountain Times staff members have held different jobs with fewer benefits and significantly less-cool titles (like “You” and “Jackass”) Here are some of our worst:

Melanie Davis: Scam Artist

Melanie managed to escape from her dismal cubicle at the credit card company, as did Charles Bronson, Steve McQueen, James Garner and Richard Attenborough.

My worst job experience, fortunately, lasted only six weeks – or should I say I only lasted six weeks. This is the shortest time I have ever held a job, the only time I have quit without notice and the highest paying job I have ever held, all rolled into one.

I am speaking of my tenure as a legal rip-off artist. I spent this time in the cubicle farm of a credit card company (which I will not name) targeting those with poor credit history. I took incoming calls in the customer service division, complete with headset and only three personal items allowed in your cubicle.

Basically, this company would issue anyone a card with a $300 limit. The card, however, arrived at a customer’s house with a balance of $190 in fees already charged. The unsuspecting person would then use the card for whatever reason and usually went over the $110 available, subsequently suffering over-limit fees.

My job was to explain how the $125 purchase turned into more than $350 in debt. I realize this sounds like a word problem – it was. I was yelled at, threatened, and learned a whole new vocabulary for terms relating to “scam.”

It wasn’t really a scam, however – completely legal. Had the customers read the fine print on the application they signed, they would have seen the fees spelled out. I could not live with myself trying to explain to people in financial hardship already that they now owed my employer $350.

During orientation at this company, there were 25 people in the class. The instructor said on the first day, “Only five of you will still be here in six months.” I quit in six weeks, yet I was the 15th person out of the class to leave. I guess that is something to be proud of – I made it longer than most.

I did wonder why the pay was so high. I thought it was the 10-hour days. I didn’t realize they were offering a market value for your conscience. This Mountain Tops comes with a lesson for you, dear readers: read the fine print!!

The company I worked for has since went under. The cubicle farm has shut down and the dwellers sent out into the bright sunlight, squinting and rubbing their ears where a headset used to be.

Jeff Eason: Janitor’s Janitor

One of Jeff’s less scrupulous coworkers.

My first two jobs were probably the worst ones in my 30-plus years of punching clocks. My first was during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of high school. I worked as a house-painter’s assistant for two hippies who were from The Farm in Summerville, Tenn. For $2.50 an hour, I climbed up ladders and cleaned out under eaves and around the side of porches of the old houses that they were painting. Most of our work that summer was in Mobile, Ala., where it was infernally hot and my work put me in constant contact with brown recluse spiders, huge centipedes and other things that could bite me, sting me, or just plain old freak me out!

The next summer I got a job at the old folks home across the street from where we lived in Fairhope, Ala. My official title was handyman’s apprentice, but I think it might be more accurately described as janitor’s janitor. The retirement home was replacing all of the toilets in the building and I spent most of my summer taking out old toilets and replacing the wax gaskets in the floor so the new ones could be installed. For this I earned minimum wage, which was $2.25 an hour in the mid-70s. It wasn’t all bad, though. I was able to drink all the prune juice I wanted and some of the old folks had great stories about turn-of-the-century life in the South.

The weirdest job I ever had was a temporary one in Durham after college. I spent three weeks repainting thousands of empty canisters that hold oxygen, nitrogen, compressed air, etc. After some brief instruction, the company had me repaint an entire warehouse of canisters by myself. The mental effect of spending eight hours a day with no one to talk to for three straight weeks is not one I care to repeat!

Caroline Monday: Maid for the Birds

Joannie’s bird learned lots of new, colorful words after Caroline’s stint as her maid.

I feel my worst job experience is best summed up in a blog entry I wrote while I was in college, during the time I actually had the job. Her is a blog from Sept. 7, 2004, titled “The Bird, or How Much Do I Really Want To Go To Europe?”

I recently started working as a maid for a woman named Joanie. Joanie lives in a two bedroom condo and, as far as I can tell, has no job. I don’t know why she needs someone do her laundry for her and take out her trash. But as I am eager to earn money for Europe this summer, I am more than glad to make up her bed for $10 an hour.

Anyway, Joanie has several pets, which do create extra mess. She has an adorable dog, two very lovely cats and an evil bird. I don’t have a lot of experience with birds, so maybe all birds are mean, or maybe it’s just this one. Anything that causes poop to fall from the sky can’t be good. I really don’t know why anyone would want a bird for a pet; to me they just seem like rodents with feathers and wings. But, some people have rodents as pets. Different strokes for different folks.

Back to Joanie’s evil bird. My task yesterday was to take the bird out of its cage and put it in the downstairs bathroom while I cleaned out its cage, which also had to be done in that bathroom. Joanie showed me how to take the bird out of the cage, with her bare hands and take apart the cage, etc... Then she left for lunch.

So there I was, with the bird and the poopie cage. I thought it seemed easy enough so I opened the cage and started to stick my hand in. I don’t know if the bird would have actually bitten me, but it was opening its little pointy beak and sticking its black little birdie tongue out at me.

So I took one of the cloths I use for dusting and managed to grab the bird, which was going crazy at this point. I took the bird into the bathroom and set it down and the bird starts flapping around and going berserk. All I could think of was that Alfred Hitchcock movie, “The Birds.”

I started to hate my job as I squatted on the floor of that bathroom trying to cover my eyes, thinking that’s what the bird would go for first. The bird finally settled down, perched on the shower curtain rod. This wasn’t really any better.

I leaned over the side of the bath tub, trying to clean out the bottom part of the cage, all the time watching the bird, which was hovering over me on the rod. This part is the worst of the whole thing, I’m washing the cage and I see some green slimy stuff plop on the edge of the bath tub, inches from where I was leaning over. All I could do was wonder if this is worth $10 an hour.

Sherrie Norris: Early-Morning Waitress

Though Sherrie’s experience as a waitress could easily be described as scrambled, she was relieved to quit and found it over easy.

I had to travel down memory lane for this one, as in the last three decades or so, I have been completely content with my full-time, though diverse, career pathway as an emergency room admitting clerk for five years, nursing home social worker for 10, and caterer for eight while writing part-time simultaneously nearly the entire time – something I was always blessed to lean on while I was trying to decide what I was really meant to do. Seems like being a writer is what I was supposed to be doing all along – it just took me a while to come to that conclusion.

My worst experiences came one after the other, fortunately, getting them out of my way around the ages of 19 and 20, so I could move on with life. An early morning waitress, I was not cut out to be. All the boys bellied up the bar at the Times Square Diner for breakfast, and each ordered their eggs a different way. I didn’t know sunny-side-up from scrambled over easy. And I can still see (the late) Andrew Bare banging his coffee cup on the counter as a signal he was ready for a refill. Graduating to a lunch-time waitress might have been nice had I filled a gentleman’s glass with iced tea, rather than spill it in his lap. The tips were good. I was always able to laugh at myself and move on. And move on, I did to the DOT office as a receptionist. I just wish I had known the funds were getting cut and to get a paycheck, I had to take up my sign and head out with the road crews to flag traffic. There are many reasons, that I still remember not so fondly, why a good ol’ gal from the First Baptist Church was not looked on so warmly during those hot, sweltering months in the summer sun. I kept a nice tan, but had just gotten married and was not too crazy about being one of the boys. It wasn’t accepted as easily as it is today, but most people never knew it was not my choice.