Earlier I challenged my fine readers (all three of you) to come up with a job I couldn't six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon link to my shady past.
David of Sketches of Strain said: "Okay, I'll bite. Pet groomer. Kevin Bacon it. "
Geez, Dave, I can Bacon that in one.
I have been both a receptionist for a veterinarian and the "animal technician" at not one, but two pet stores. I sucked at the receptionist thing, because I consistently lost my cool with the customers, particularly the old farmer who dropped his half-dead beagle with a maggot-infested wound on my desk and said he'd "be back and pick 'er up later on". I quit the day I was asked to help hold down a large mongrel while the vet stuck his hand up the poor beast's arse to relieve impacted anal glands.
I had to dye my hair to get the smell out.
You'd think that since I was an animal technician twice that it was a sure sign I was good at it.
You obviously thunk wrong.
It was a glorified title meaning "she who swabs the shit and serves the slop". That's all it amounted to, cleaning cages, changing bedding, and feeding the various critters. The first pet shop was small and specialized in kittens and fish, a reasonably uncomplicated routine of letting tiny kittens shred me while I bathed them and going armpit-deep into goldfish tanks to unclog the filter. The second pet store's stock was much more varied.
The Cherry Street Seed And Pet Emporium of Long Beach carried no kittens or puppies, but birds of every kind, a million reptiles, boatloads of fish, guinea pigs, hamsters, and rats.
I used to be an animal lover. I was a pet store's dream, that customer that falls in love with every single creature and wants to take them home as their own. Except the birds. I never cared for birds.
They all had bird status by the time I quit.
I cleaned them; I fed them; I tidied them up.
And I killed them.
Part of my duties as animal tech was to "weed out" the defective beasties from the huge shipments we would get from the breeders. Mostly it was parakeets who got the ax, as the breeder would bring in boxes containing dozens of birds. In all those, there would normally be two or three that had a deformed foot, a twisted wing, something that made them unsellable.
The manager told me, "Don't put the bad birds out, keep track of how many you get rid of."
I asked "Get rid of?"
"Yah" he sighed impatiently. "You gotta kill them."
No instructions. No how to manual of bird snuffage. I was suddenly the designated assassin.
We won't go into the gory details of how I eventually "put down" every species of stock we carried at least once. Suffice it to say I toughened up and did my job. And it was gross.
I finally quit when the manager insisted I come in to work the day after the L.A. riots, although they'd burned down the DMV next door and there were National Guardsmen on the rooftop. I think taking public transportation at that time would have been more adventure than I cared for, and I said as much. It came down to the cliche "you come in now or don't come back at all".
I didn't go back at all.
I never really liked killing them. At first I tried to adopt the doomed, so at one point I had five crippled rats, a rabbit with an eating disorder, a paralyzed guinea pig, three tripod geckos, and a canary with one wing. After a while, the apartment complex got a few too many complaints and I was back in executioner mode. I noticed it became a little easier if I imagined my manager's face on the victim.
So I think that counts as one degree from pet groomer.
I bet you're all afraid to ask if I can six-degree lingerie sales now, huh?
(previously posted on Blogspot)