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10 Worst Jobs in Cleveland

Do you have the worst job in Cleveland?

By Gus Garcia-Roberts 

Heifer-impregnator, cool your ego. Steel smelter, thanks for burning off your hands and all, but you won't be receiving a plaque this week.

When publications run lists of the worst careers, they usually teem with occupations involving cramped environments, extremely hot or cold conditions, and, of course, fecal matter. But here in Cleveland, those working conditions can simply be described as Being Broke & Raising Kids. So this week, we're taking you beyond the mundane torture of everyday life to find those jobs that literally pull the very soul from your chest, throw it on the ground, and beat it with some ball bearings wrapped in a sock.

Because let's face it: While violating cows can get messy, it's a desk job compared to working for the mayor. Wouldn't you agree?

#10 The Guy Who Confiscates Weed at the House of Blues
Estimated Pay: $100/night
Benefits: Our weed
Yours is a truly Paxil-worthy existence. You trudge up from your bedroom in your grandmother's basement, wearing your yellow-and-black-striped work shirt. But before you head out the door, you take a good, long look in the mirror, and stare deep into the eyes of a painful reality: You're the Guy Who Confiscates Weed at the House of Blues.

You know us well. We're the Guys Who Take Out Our Weed When the Song Commands It. We paid good money for these Ben Harper tickets, and we're here for the complete experience. So when Harper sings "Burn One Down," we plan on doing just that.

We have to, really: Do you realize how discouraged, say, Bone Thugs might be if they looked into the crowd while performing "Blaze It" and saw not a single person blazing it? They usually follow that subtle ode with the more explicitly titled "Weed Song." That's why we brought two joints — neither of which we plan on forfeiting to you, Mr. Professional Mellow-Harsher.

You shouldn't act surprised; you know our policy. Yet nearly every time we attempt our mission, you follow the overpowering aroma directly to that Humboldt County Miracle-Gro clutched between our fingers.

"Give it here," you demand, grabbing our arm and blinding us with your industrial-strength flashlight.

"No way, man," we explain. "Bonnie Raitt just said 'Puff that.'"

But you just don't get it. "I don't got a problem with you smoking weed," you said during our last visit, when we asked you to comment on your existence. "Just don't do it here."

"Well, we can't exactly get Blues Traveler to do a set in our den while we take bong rips, now can we?"

That was when you reached behind our ear and took the Auxiliary Emergency Joint.

Come on, man, it's Puddle of Mudd!

#9 The Mascot That's So Inoffensive It's Offensive
Estimated Pay: $80,000/year
Benefits: Full health coverage, 17,000 unused rally towels
You're the guy who wears the Slider costume. In other words, you are Cleveland's hand gingerly patting the outraged Native American community on the back, as if to say, "Chillax. We get it. We can't ditch the name or the sweet-ass Chief Wahoo logo, because we really like all that shit. But instead of featuring a wacky Native American mascot dancing on the dugout to Daddy Yankee, which we would totally prefer, we're going to grudgingly go with plan B: the overweight, fuchsia, bootleg Phillie Phanatic."

The Indians keep your true identity secret, Inoffensive Mascot, but this isn't exactly uncovering Deep Throat. It's pretty easy to guess what your career trajectory was before you stepped into those furry boots: You're an ex-dance major who failed to make the gymnastics cut for the 2000 Olympics. Because your third cousin is the dead aunt of Aaron Fultz's half-brother, you were given a tryout for the job. You got it, barely, and you now spend 81 days a year doing the two-step to "This Is Why I'm Hot" while nearly drowning in your own sweat from wearing a 68-pound costume on a July afternoon.

In the off-season, you're sent anywhere someone can pony up the $350 fee, be it a bar mitzvah in the Heights ("Shalom, Slider!") or a Warehouse District party where yuppies blow coke off your smooth eyeballs ("Hold still, dude!").

In moments of self-contemplation, one question plagues you: Will you have to wear this damn costume in hell?

#8 Neighborhood Crack Dealer
Estimated Pay: $27,000/year
Benefits: Free cocaine, sex, cheeseburgers
Yes, you're the purveyor of the scourge that keeps the ghetto paralyzed. But it's not as swell a gig as Young Jeezy makes it out to be.

Your ass throbs from sitting on the hood of a 1986 Buick all day. Your pants sag from the weight of all those dimes and pennies; your customers tend to pay in accumulated change. Your groin area aches from a work-related affliction, about which we declined to hear more details (this is a family newspaper).

Those cinematic moments you believed would mark your coming-of-age as a kingpin — weighing money because it's coming in too quickly to count, bribing police lieutenants on piers, yelling into pay phones at guys named Manolo — just don't happen in Hough. The only Colombian you know is Juan Valdez. Sometimes, when you're guzzling Pepto-Bismol to fend off stress pains, you think to yourself, "I worked myself all the way up from being the guy on the corner who yells 'Tooo-eeee!' when he sees a cop, and for what?"

Then there's the matter of your depraved clientele. They photocopy dollars onto green paper, try to trade you broken Sega Genesis consoles, and crawl behind you to tie your shoelaces together, hoping that when you trip, a vial will slip out of your bubble jacket. Your workday is as packed with brainless high jinks as a Mexican game show — or worse, a bachelor party at Tequila Ranch.

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