Speaking of the phone, I pick up the Dean's phone sometimes, and I just got to talk to Lillian Vernon HERSELF. V. exciting.

Lillian Vernon, like, the catalog?

YES!!

Singing or standup?

Neither. I can only Karaoke VERY VERY drunk. And that's never pretty.

WOW!!

I have no phone fear, but I have major PA angst. But I enjoy public speaking. Go figure.

Wow, Jess might win the suckiest jobs of all time award.

My job history, more or less: Sold products of my sister's dairy farm to local customers who came by and requested them. In Spanish.
Cashier, museum gift shop. Nice, but boring.
Taco Villa. Left after having to pull ungodly filthy underwear out of the drain in the urinal, then clean the obscenties written in taco sauce off the dining room walls.
Miller's Outpost.
College Financial Aid Office
College theater - usher, then lighting tech, then 3 years of stage managing.
College library. Yep, that's 3 simultaneous work-study jobs, for a total of 56 hours/week, and I still couldn't afford textbooks.
Craptastic Dilbertland office job
Foreign Service, admin.
Teacher
Postmaster
Tech Writer
Interface Designer
Project Manager

I don't miss working.

When I worked at WGBH in Boston I got to talk to Alistair Cooke once. Shockingly, he was extraordinarily nice and civil.

And Bob Villa was still working there around the corner. And I got to eat vegetables from The Victory Garden.

When I worked for the Accounting Firm for Hollywood Has-Beens and B-Listers I talked to all kinds of people like: Bobby Womack (soul musician), Art Clokey (invented Gumby), Chris Knight (middle Brady), and Fred Willard (comic actor). We had Lily Tomlin in the rolodex too.

I don't miss working.

Me neither. I know I work now but I don't miss the other kind of work. I can take getting shit on by my kid. A boss, NSM.

I am in the loathe the phone camp. I don't mind answering at work so much, but the home phone I will ignore and not even check the caller ID. My cell I will look to see who it is before I ignore it. I will only call for food delivery if no one else is around to do so. Alas, I have one sister that loves the phone. MIL loves the phone too, but at least she understands that I don't share the love.

I had one summer job away from home that was either kid sitting or store sitting depending on what the mom felt like doing. It was at a pharmacy in a resort town and was mighty fun.

No food service except one week at a pancake house which drove me back to school. I did accounting for the next 15 years or so until I started my business in 1988.

I only had two soul sucking jobs and I quit both of them with no notice the moment I figured out there would be no joy. I've always been very insistent that the huge portion of my life that I spend at work is a pleasant use of my time. (edited for clarity)

Good to see Brown gone, but really it is only the resignation of his boss (and the vice) that cause me any hope for the administration.

Yeah, but I just talked to Lilian just then when I posted it.

I often win the bad job contest when I point out that when I was telemarketing, what I was selling was accidental death and dismemberment insurance.