There are some jobs that I think I'd enjoy only if everything was perfect that day. For instance, when I see my mailman—oops, I mean letter carrier—on a mild, sunny, breezy day, walking from house to house with his iPod, I'm thinking, "I could definitely do that!" But give me a single day of pelting rain and I'm turning in my mail bag.
I volunteer a lot at school, and I get a real charge out of working with the kids, particularly when we do Writers' Workshop. But you know what? I can't deal with the discipline problems. I just want to shake them by the shoulders and shout, "You're disrupting the entire class! GO AWAY!" Yup, I would only want to teach the good kids.
My vet who makes house calls gets to examine kitties all day. Oh wait, except for that time he called to say he'd be late because he was trying to administer pills to a pit bull!
Then there are the jobs I can't imagine doing even once. For example, my disposal regurgitated a handful of arugula stems the other day and blocked up the sink, and my trusty plumber came to check it out. I'm thinking, "Rotting food? Or worse, raw sewage? Um, maybe another day."
Then there's the guy who came by every day last week to take away trapped squirrels and put out new cages for the family who had taken up residence in our porch roof. Hmm, panicky rodents with sharp teeth? Nah.
I'm sure there are people who'd rather don HazMat suits and remove the asbestos from my old furnace (as two guys did indeed do last spring) than sit around correcting punctuation and spelling all day. That's what makes horse racing, eh?
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