One
by Mark—Age 36—Evanston, IL
I am a manic-depressive, and I have always had trouble working. Currently I live in a subsidized housing program and recieve disability, and I choose to spend my time making art. But throughout my younger years I endured one stressful job after another. When I was fourteen years old, I caddied at Westmoreland golf course, and they had a chart where a golfer rated the caddies. A caddy rated me and said, “Worst caddy to ever walk the hallowed fields of Westmoreland.” And they framed it, and put it on the wall as an example of how not to do it. A New York Times article once said, “The most stressful job in America is working in movie theatres.” I worked in one for ten years, with manic-depression. But since I’m limited to 400 words, it occurs to me, a good job to discuss is when I worked in a psychiatric hospital.
I worked in a psychiatric hospital in the kitchen as a dishwasher, and I was once a patient in psychiatric hospitals. I served the patients, and found them to be rather friendly. One patient was a “dead head” and he wore a flower in his head and he used to say, “People are just mixed up, one day they’ll understand.”
But the doctors were mean, and would always yell at me and boss me around. One patient was a businessman who had a nervous breakdown and I would be nice to him and bring him his coffee. He offered me a job but it was too far away, I declined.
Another time, I was washing dishes and I got a call from someone who I thought was one of my friends and he said, “Wanna go out for coffee?” I went out. It turns out he was an escaped mental patient. He bought me dinner, and asked me questions about the hospital. I never saw him again.
The staff in the kitchen where Phillipino and they were pretty nice. Except the head cook. He claimed that he swam to America from the Phillipines. He would yell at me and tell me that I wasn’t a man. I guess he would know!
That place closed down, but it was just another job. I worked to get where I am now, which is a dot on the map of America.
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