Hour Six: The weirdest job ever

The thrill of live tv, as it were. I had this post written in its entirety, and then published an old autosave that lost the entire second half. This was supposed to be my hour 5 story.

One of my requests was for me to continue the background story about going to veterinary school, which I started, did one post, and then never got around to finishing. I’m sure doing it in this context won’t do the story much justice- I could write for quite some time on this one- but it will do.

After I graduated from college, I thought that maybe I was going to apply to vet school. Having missed the deadline for the year, I found myself with a year off and in need of a job. Theoretically, I should have been working in a veterinary clinic, but having a flimsy amount of experience made me a crummy candidate. So I looked elsewhere.

I found a couple of jobs on Monster, which was the only way to go in those days. The first job was to be a receptionist at a financial planning firm. I fibbed a teeny bit and said I was interested in expanding my horizons by learning about finance. I actually hate finance.

The second job was to assist an MD who was conducting clinical trials with the trial paperwork. Done!

(Looks around. Kids are asleep, yes? OK. We can go PG-13 now.)

The first day on the job, my boss took me into his office and clarified the position. He was a urologist who specialized in male sexual dysfunction. He was in the final phase trials of a promising new drug, he said, then uttered the word soon to known the world over: “Viagra.”

My job was to talk to potential trial participants over the phone and do a phone screen. Word travels fast in the impotence circles, it seems, and every randy old gent over the age of 70 wanted in on this miracle pill.

This was a revolution. Before this, all that was available was an injection- ouch- or an implant- ouch ouch. It was huge news. Newsmagazines were in the office on a regular basis to interview my boss, with me in the background holding folders strategically up to my face so as to avoid my grandmother seeing me on 20/20 on a segment about the “miracle sex pill.”

The phone screening process was both illuminating and horrifying. People would tell you things, oh, the things they would tell, such things as one never ever wanted to know. Information that I did not need, despite asking a long laundry list of intrusive questions.

That was quite a year. Someday if we meet over a beer I can tell you about the protractor study. Needless to say I am glad I didn’t take job number one.

I was almost sad when I got into vet school. But not really.

To be continued…