Skip to main contentIt's Labor Day weekend. Time to tip back a beer or four, fire up the grill and think about how much your job sucks.How your boss doesn't understand you.How you're more bored than Mayor Tom Potter at a Trail Blazers game. How your job is lower than Emilie Boyles' credit rating. How your daily tasks make Sisyphus look like a slacker trust-afarian. We're here to help. To remind you it could be worse. A whole lot worse. There are Portlanders stuck in jobs that are way more boring, disgusting and hopeless—or even all three. Read on. It won't be hard work, we promise.
The Dead-End Job
Inside the Peep Hole with Brian Meador.
BY STEPHEN MARC BEAUDOIN
It was the doorknob butt-plug incident that clenched it—Brian Meador realized how lucky he was to have what he considers a "hilarious job."
Working as the graveyard-shift janitor in a porn store for the past nine years, Meador—perhaps not surprisingly—has stories of coked-out, hella-horny customers he could spin out for days.
"Most of them aren't classified as amusing," though, says Meador, 33. "Most are classified as disgusting."
But the short version of the doorknob butt-plug incident is this: A co-worker of Meador's was making the arcade rounds, pounding on doors to remind stingy customers to drop another dollar in the video machines.
At one door, the co-worker couldn't get an answer from the locked-in customer, or an inch of movement from the doorknob. In a heated moment, the co-worker yanked on the knob so hard it popped out of its door socket...and, it turns out, from the overenthusiastic customer's rear.
In his nine years working midnight to 8 am at the Portland sex shop and video arcade Peep Hole (709 SE 122nd Ave.), Meador's seen that and much more: All types and persuasions, as well as a parade of uniforms, creep into the store's well-used "video arcade" booths.
He rattles off a wide-ranging list: "Police officers, sheriff deputies, FBI, construction workers, TriMet workers, electricians, gays, straights, trannies, grannies, you name it."
In a city long rumored to offer more adult sex stores per capita than any other in the country, you'd think tracking down an enthusiastic porn-store janitor for an interview would be as easy as spotting a john on Southwest Stark Street.
No sir.
Of the dozen porn shops this reporter called, only three would even consider the request. And two pulled out after pressing for further story details.
And so affable Brian Meador—who once won free movie tickets to see "some action movie" by calling into a radio show to proclaim his pride at holding one of the "most disgusting jobs in Portland"—was the lone contender. It would be interesting to see if he held up to one West Burnside porn-store clerk's assessment of the job in question: "You've gotta be damn kooky to wipe up semen all night!"
Since moving from Eugene to Portland almost 20 years ago, Meador followed an interesting path to his current job that pays $10.50 an hour.
He spent two years in the military as an aviations electronics technician, repairing electronics for helicopters and other Army equipment. On Meador's return home to Portland from his stint overseas in Japan, his dad kicked him out of the house.
Lacking a job or a home, Meador spent the next four years living on Portland's streets. Then, in the fall of 1998, a job opportunity came to him.
"A friend of mine used to work [at the Peep Hole] and said there was a job opening," he says. "At the time, I was homeless." With little workplace experience after six years of life in the military or on the streets, Meador welcomed the opportunity.
"It's good people, decent pay, and the benefits are better than most places," he claims.
And, as he ticks off a list of benefits enviable to most of Portland's working class, he may be right.
His job at the Peep Hole includes a 401(k) plan, full medical and dental insurance coverage, two weeks of paid vacation each year, free round-trip airfare to anywhere in the U.S. for every year and a half of work, and other sexy benefits, like free porn-movie rentals and 25 percent off nonsale porn-store merch.
But nine years into the late-night cum-mopping gig, Meador—who identifies himself as straight and unhitched—says he's not finding himself as turned on by the sexuality of his post. He claims he hasn't rented a porn movie from his store since 2001.
"Working at a porn shop for nine years, yeah, it does mess with your sex drive a bit.... After a bit, even porn gets boring!" he says, but in the next breath giggles about some of his favorite porn-parody movie titles, like Whore of the Rings.
Outside his 30-odd hours a week at the Peep Hole, Meador usually retreats to his own Hobbit hole, "sitting at home and playing video games," he says. "Every now and then I go out with friends for coffee to Tik Tok on Southeast 82nd, and for decent food I go to Cleary's."
Meador's not a beer guy, but he does enjoy a good shot or two of 190-proof Everclear: "It's a great way to wake up."
To dissers of those who punch the clock on the porn-store circuit, Meador is dismissive: "If they think my job is that bad, whatever."
And besides, he says, it's not like he's working with filthy, snot-nosed kids. "This building's cleaner than working for the public school district, I'll tell ya that."
The Impossible Job
Like being a commie organizer in Dallas, Jim Anderson faces one of Multnomah County's most daunting political jobs: recruiting Republicans.
BY COREY PEIN
In the lounge of the Multnomah Athletic Club, Jim Anderson eases into a leather chair. His Lions Club meeting has just wrapped up for the day.
Anderson bears the slightest resemblance to Dick Cheney. His eyeglasses are the same squarish style, and his hair has receded in the same pattern. Both are dedicated Republicans of a certain age. But that's about all they have in common.
Cheney favors power ties. Anderson wears a bolo. Cheney hates the press. Anderson was a newspaperman for 42 years, most recently at The Denver Post.
Cheney sneers. Anderson smiles, when appropriate.
Cheney runs the country. Anderson runs the, uh, Multnomah County Republican Party.
And the only more impossible political job than getting Republicans elected in a county that went 72 percent for John Kerry in 2004 would be organizing a communist takeover of Dallas.
The county Republican Party's nominating committee, appointed by the outgoing chairman, elected Anderson chairman last November. It's a position with few rewards, the least of which is the salary: nothing.
Anderson works from his home in Troutdale. "We have no office," says Anderson, who is retired. "We're looking for one, but we're looking for one that says free, F-R-E-E."
They do, however, have a P.O. box. And a cell phone, carried by the secretary. Anderson usually leaves his turned off.
At least the old communist fellow-travelers could lean on Moscow. The state Republican Party, Anderson says, provides no financial support, and risks no organizers in enemy territory.
"They just let us stew in our own juice here," he says.
In Multnomah County, Oregon's biggest pool of potential voters, Democrats have a registration advantage of more than 2-to-1.
In the last general election, registered Republicans outvoted Dems in only 12 of 128 Multnomah County precincts. Even on those 12 redoubts of GOP turf, margins were slim: five votes here, 358 there.
"It looked like they needed to have some organization when I took over," Anderson recalls. No disrespect to the previous chairman, Dick Osborne, who Anderson says was "running a one-man show."
In a place where elected leaders talk of ending war and global warming and taming capitalism, Anderson's goals are, by comparison, modest. He wants to increase the number of about 80,000 Republican voters in the county by 5 percent—enough, he hopes, to reclaim the state Legislature.
He's set about filling forgotten committees and recruiting precinct committee persons, who are responsible for getting out the vote. There were 343 PCPs when Anderson took over—the county Democrats have over 430—and he says his party has added between 10 and 15. He'd like 1,200 but says: "That's pie in the sky. I don't think we'll ever get that many."
Finding candidates is another challenge. Most are retirees or business owners who can afford to spend time away. Some, he knows, have won office only to go broke in Salem on a legislator's meager $1,534 monthly pay.
And not unlike the communist party cells of old splitting hairs over what Trotsky really meant in 1923, a party comprising outsiders and misfits is bound to have discord.
"They spend an inordinate amount of time debating things, because everybody's got a different idea of what the party stands for," Anderson says. "They sit in these committees and pick at words. It's a nightmare. I think everybody knows it. But they do it every two years."
The last state conference produced a 43-page platform. Anderson read some of it. Naturally, he hopes Republicans will take Congress in 2008. But he's not sure if that's possible.
As for Cheney's nominal boss, Anderson is not happy with President George W. Bush. And Anderson likens Karl Rove, whom he once met, to a "snake in the grass." Good riddance. "George Bush hasn't helped," he says. Or the war. Or Oregon Republican Sen. Gordon Smith: "Bless his heart—he's alienated a lot of good Republicans."
Despite it all, Anderson's party loyalty is firm.
"I tell people, if I ever go to the polls and vote for a Democrat, please shoot me," he says. It's always been that way, since Anderson proudly voted for Ike. He longs for another like Ike. Like Reagan. "An honest one."
Herbert Hoover was president when Anderson was born. He won't give his exact age, wary of the prejudice shown by some of the party's Young Turks—a.k.a. Baby Boomers.
"I keep telling them," he says, "'If you want to be chairman, you should've run for it.'"
Touché.
The Humiliating Job
A Rat's Tale: Portlanders who've worn the Chuck E. Cheese costume reveal the faces behind the mask.
BY PAIGE RICHMOND
The temperature is 90 degrees, but your legs and arms are covered in inch-think, matted gray fur. The view from inside your 15-pound head is limited—you can see only through your permanently grinning mouth. Forbidden to speak, you communicate through exaggerated movements. You frantically shake your arms and legs, as if you're dancing the hokey-pokey—after taking too many muscle relaxants.
Your impromptu dance attracts a bum's rush of children. The ankle-biters latch onto your legs, screaming your name and professing their undying love. One child lingers behind the crowd, his lip quivering. The sight of a 6-foot rat is too much—he starts bawling and runs to his mother, who scoops him up and shoots you a contemptuous glance. After 20 minutes, you drag yourself past the salad bar and through the pizza kitchen, where you remove your head for a five-minute break.
You are the oversized rodent mascot of Chuck E. Cheese's, the chain of family restaurants known for pizza, arcade games and birthday parties. And how do I know all these details of earning minimum wage to dress up as giant vermin?
Because as a high-school student nine years ago, I worked at CEC (what employees call it), dressing up as Chuck E. for three hours every Tuesday night. Over two years, I was shoved by teenage boys and peed on by a 4-year-old who could not contain his excitement when I hugged him.
At the three CEC locations in Oregon and 500 other locations in 48 states, employees are paid to don what they call "the rat suit": a plastic head, fur-covered gloves and kitschy outfit (which varies from a tuxedo to a track suit to running shorts, depending on the location). While children may worship the ground Chuck E. treads, dressing like a rat is no walk in the park.
"You either love it or you hate it, and there's no in between," says Rob Ferguson, manager of the CEC in Beaverton.
After working there for 13 years, Ferguson, 37, still dons the costume two or three times a week. As a manager, he could compel any one of his 50 employees to wear the suit, but he actually enjoys wearing it.
Ferguson overlooks any crimes against adult human dignity and focuses instead on the "happy" children.
"When you see the smiles on the kids' faces, it's like you're a celebrity," he says about his 20-minute daytime shifts in the suit. "I just enjoy that look. I'll be behind the mask but still smiling."
Christian Heinlein, who worked at a now-defunct CEC location in Beaverton for two months when he was 16, shared my unhappier experience.
Unlike the suit at Ferguson's location, which is frequently dry- and spot-cleaned, the suit Heinlein wore was "really heavy, hot and stinky. It was rumored to be dry-cleaned at least a few times a year, but it certainly didn't smell like it had ever been cleaned," he says.
One of his worst moments as Chuck E. was getting kicked in the shins by a Little League player still wearing his baseball cleats.
Now 29 with a 10-year-old son and working at local tech company, Heinlein would drag himself back to CEC if his son insisted on a birthday party there. But he'll never eat the pizza again.
"No freaking way," he says. "I've seen what happens when you pay teenage boys minimum wage to work in a pizza kitchen that can't be seen by customers or managers."
Making pizza and cleaning up diarrhea splattered on a bathroom wall (which I did my first day on the job) might be gross, but Heinlein and I agree that masquerading as vermin is the worst job we've ever had. Ferguson still thinks cleaning up puke inside the "sky tubes," an indoor maze resembling a Habitrail, is worse than pretending to be a rodent.
"I think they've changed the suit a lot in the last 10 years," Ferguson claims, since there is less fur on the current suit's legs and arms, which makes it lighter and less hot than a pizza oven. But he knows that few of his teenage employees share his enthusiasm for the costume.
"If they say it's all right, they're usually lying," Ferguson says. "That's 16-year-old talk for, 'I can't stand it.'"
The Disgusting Job
Paul Fisher's work sucks ass.
BY NICHOLAS DESHAIS
Some call it human waste, others call it shit. For Paul Fisher, it's just another day at work.
Fisher, 29, works 85-hour weeks. He gets up around 5 am, owns his own business and is currently doubling the size of his house, adding an 1,100-square-foot addition to the Oregon City home he shares with his wife and 1-year-old daughter.
And for $15 an hour, he moves poo. Crudely, he's the toilet for your toilet.
"It's a job," says Fisher of his 11-year career with Byers Septic Tank Pumping Service, a full-time side job to his own Oregon Wastewater Service Inc. "Every job has its downsides."
True. Pizza makers come home smelling like red sauce and pepperoni, and temps lead the life of an office gypsy, each day calling someone else "boss." But Fisher...
"We have to physically stir the solids that are in the tank," he says, detailing the first step of emptying a septic tank. "Get it into a liquid state before the pump will suck it up."
Fisher, tall and goateed, doesn't seek the same protection the rest of us might: astronaut's gear, an atmospheric diving suit or anything else resembling a full-body condom. Nope. Just gloves.
"Heavy gloves," Fisher assures WW. "They're not your household kitchen glove."
The average septic tank holds 1,000 gallons. If shit were gasoline, one of Fisher's stops could propel your car around the earth. It's not, unfortunately, but Fisher still fills his truck with it, to be transported to the Tri-City Water Pollution Control Plant, the fancy name for a sewage dump in Oregon City. But first he has to get it out of the ground.
After Fisher liquefies the crap, with what one can only imagine as the most disgusting and ridiculous spork in history, the "off-loading" begins, done by hose and siphon. Fisher empties septic tanks the same way you'd empty a fish tank.
Using a 3-inch-thick hose—thicker than a fireman's—Fisher transports what was forgotten and underground to the glorious sunshine and tank of his truck.
"I don't know how to describe it. Some people might say 'musty,'" Fisher says, mulling over how to describe septic stench to the uninitiated. "It's an odor you don't really get used to. I tolerate it. Still, after all these years."
His tolerance, admirable in ways beyond scent, began after another odiferous endeavor. Fresh-faced off the fishing boats of Alaska at age 18, he "got in a dump truck," and, for better or worse, his work with waste started.
He's been in that dump truck ever since, moving tons of turds in what's usually a clean enterprise. Most times, Fisher can stand back and listen to the hose's flow. But every now and again, says Fisher, "a hose explodes." Thanks to the back pressure of the siphon, the hose keeps running. The wrong way.
Fisher likens it to leaving the faucet on, with one obvious difference, he says: "It's not water."
When the tank is empty, he's on his way.
After a couple of stops, visiting people who have been collecting crap for a couple of years, Fisher heads to the dump. With a truck that holds 2,000 gallons—two stops' worth—he goes there quite a bit.
The Tri-City sewage plant is, according to a video from Clackamas County's Water Environment Services, in a "new breed of treatment facilities" that have the potential to be a "popular destination for tours and meetings." (But do they offer snacks?)
Fisher, on the other hand, goes there for a grate in the ground, where he dumps his load into the headworks (video: "where raw sewage is received, screened and distributed").
"Imagine a screen, a grate in the ground," Fisher says of the headworks' entrance. "Getting a slurry through it..." he pauses, remembering the "splattering" he says is impossible to avoid on a dump run.
"Sometimes there are feminine products, stuff like that, and you got to rake it out," he says.
Fisher's load, we now know, consists of more than just Nos. 1 and 2. There are any number of things down there. The treatment plant, whose job it is to separate the solid from the liquid, doesn't want the paper, the rubber, the feminine products or even the occasional fish. Fisher must rake away the refuse to let the river of human excrement get through that grate.
We'll think of Fisher's job for a little perspective next time we're swearing at a jammed photocopier.
* * * * *
See Portlanders talk about their worst jobs:
It's A Long Way To The Top
The worst jobs of notable Portlanders.
BY AARON MESH
They may be well known now, but these folks had to begin somewhere. WW asked them to share their worst jobs—and found that a surprising number of them started out in close quarters with fecal matter.
"It was just me and the monkeys," recalls City Commissioner Sam Adams, whose work-study job during his freshman year at the University of Oregon was cleaning monkey cages at UO's primate research center. "I would dread going in there because they were so mad," Adams says, remembering how he would wear huge rubber gloves while moving monkeys from cage to cage—late at night, alone. The center gave him a key to the lab and some less-than-helpful advice: "If you ever get bit, call us." He thinks he made $3.75 an hour.
Portland's Office of Sustainable Development director Susan Anderson was not well suited to fast-food work. "I was a 16-year-old vegetarian and had to work at Arby's making roast beef sandwiches," she recalls. "I just wouldn't want to touch the meat. I would try to focus on doing the milkshakes and the fries."
State Sen. Kate Brown (D-Portland) says her worst job had her up in the wee hours during college. At 4 am she would wash lettuce in the cafeteria for the University of Colorado at Boulder. "I was the salad lady," she says.
In 1970, WW cartoonist John Callahan took work as a psychiatric attendant—at the hospital across the street from his house in The Dalles. He worked there for a year, for less than $400 a month. "It was a horrible experience," which often included holding down shock-treatment patients: "There were two of us holding down the hips, one on the shoulders, and one on the kneecaps.... One of the patients kicked the attendant in the testicles after we gave him a sponge bath." Callahan (who was in a car crash in 1972 that left him quadriplegic) says the job left him—and others—scarred for life. "The psych hospital had the worst drunken doctors."
When Portland Center Stage director Chris Coleman was in high school, he saw the underbelly of Fast Food Nation. And the dark secret of the Atlanta Wendy's where he worked was coagulation. "The worst part of it was cleaning out the fry vat. The floors by then were just kind of grease." Coleman used boiling water to mop every night. "I can't believe I remember this. It was pretty sucky."
Mary's Club owner Vicki Keller isn't a shrinking violet. But when she was working as a telemarketer for a very different club—the Lions Club—she was "pretty shy in those days." Keller made 20 calls an hour, but she remembers one especially unpleasant one: "I was trying to be bubbly and personable and asked for someone by their first name, only to be told that they had died a month ago. Now I'm always nice to telemarketers."
KATU reporter Anita Kissee-Wilder can still remember the call of her boss. "Aaannniiitttaaa!!! It was the summer of 1994 and I was attempting to earn college cash. My job: vacuuming a rich elderly woman's home in San Diego...every single day...for a mere 10 dollars! Trouble is. That job turned into being her poodle 'bitch!' I'd have to shuttle her annoying poodles to all their 'appointments' in my 1987 electric blue Chevy Cavalier, while her brand-new, pimped-out, cost-as-much-as-my-college-education Jaguar sat in her dust-free, just-vacuumed garage."
Don't tell talk-radio host Lars Larson he doesn't know the kind of jobs migrant workers perform. In high school, he cleaned a butcher shop in Tillamook, clad in boots and a rain slicker and wielding a pressure washer. He quit after a week. "At age 15," he says, "I knew there was something better."
Long before he became the impresario of all things Pink Martini, Thomas Lauderdale was living in Washington, D.C., and "really, really broke." So in 1990, he took temp work opening the mail at the Ronald Reagan Republican Center. He recalls that many of the letters were "crazy mail from irate Democrats and disgruntled Republicans alike."
Before getting his career on track at the Portland Fire Bureau, City Commissioner Randy Leonard worked for six months in 1978 setting up mobile homes in the suburbs. He made a good wage for the time: $9 an hour. "It was outstanding money because nobody wanted to do it." When he wasn't "laying in the mud and driving in cinder blocks," he was hooking up the homes to sewer lines. "My memory is it never quit raining."
101.5 The Buzz radio personality Daria O'Neill used her college job-message board to pick up summer work as a swimming instructor at a summer camp. "When I got there, it turned out that THEY HAD NOT YET BUILT THE POOL," she writes. "They hadn't even dug the hole into which the pool would go. Prior to guarding the pool, and teaching lessons in the water which would go in the pool, I was to direct and supervise every aspect of building the pool. I was 19 and had brought little more than a bathing suit and hiking shoes." She was also unprepared when the pool's construction crew turned out to be a team of convicts on work duty. "I didn't realize this until a few weeks in."
Where Interstate 95 hits Miami Beach, that's where you'll find the busiest ice-cream stand in the nation. And when he was 16, that's where developer Randy Rapaport found himself, sweating and scooping. "My black tie would be dipping into the hot fudge," he recalls. "It wasn't long after that I started wearing a bow tie. I learned innovation at the Howard Johnson's."
"I could talk all day about my Kinko's job of yesteryear," says Menomena drummer Danny Seim. And he could, apparently: He sent WW a 600-word essay on the 10-hour night shift he worked from 2000 to 2004. Among the highlights: Deleting the bestiality websites frequented by a customer in the self-service computer nook. "I was supposed to clear each computer's cache at the end of my shift, and his always had the same horse-loving sites listed. Actually, this wasn't just one guy, come to think of it. I believe there were at least 17 people engaging in this sort of activity over the course of my tenure."
Gavin Shettler was working near paintings long before becoming executive director of the Portland Art Center—during college, he was a security guard at the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. The job was dull, but the boss was hell. "The head of security was a sergeant in World War II. And he ran this place like a military operation." After another afternoon of getting chewed out for leaning against the walls, Shettler and his fellow guards quit. "We just went out for beers and said, 'I don't think we're going back.' And we didn't."
Novelist Tom Spanbauer founded the Dangerous Writing seminars—but his most dangerous work was in a basement on New York City's Lower East Side. The building was plagued by a sewer that frequently overflowed, and Spanbauer's superintendent gig made him gag. "I would go down there with my big plastic boots and a shovel, and push all the human shit back into the hole. There's rodents down there, and cockroaches." After two such experiences, he refused further assignments. "You can't get much worse than shoveling shit in a basement."
KATU news anchor Angelica Thornton says she still has nightmares from the job she once had as a traffic counter. "I counted cars on the side of a highway offramp in the scorching sun," she says. "I had a lawn chair and a clicker and my partner was a brand-new ex-con who told me in one breath that he was still hooked on cocaine...and asked me out with the next breath.... And I was 20 and I think he was at least twice my age. It sucked. Longest eight-hour shifts you could ever imagine."
"I used to play flute in a jazz trio in Toledo, Ohio," recalls lesbian activist and former Basic Rights Oregon executive director Roey Thorpe, "with a bassist who always wore shorts and never wore underwear. Needless to say, I knew far more about him than I ever wanted to."
Widmer Brothers Brewing founders Kurt and Rob Widmer have competing stories about who drew the worst tasks at their first brewery, opened in 1984. Rob writes of doing maintenance in the brewing kettle's firebox: "I had to crawl through a hole barely wide enough for my shoulders to fit through and, once inside, it was very cramped, hot, dusty and not just a little claustrophobic." But it's Kurt who earns the beer with his tale of stripping paint from the brewery's ceiling with a gas-powered sand blaster. "Dressed in the heavy protective hood and coat, I had to dump a [100-pound] bag of sand in the blower and then sprint across the room, climb the scaffold, and grab the business end of the wildly swinging hose and direct it at the ceiling.... Did I mention that the blower was louder than an aircraft engine and that I didn't have any hearing protection?" Great story, Kurt, but you don't have to yell.
"I worked as a hot tar roofer for part of one summer in Houston, Texas," says Willamette Week Editor Mark Zusman. "Because the tar is heated to a boiling swirl, you had to wear long pants and a long shirt in addition to gloves while working on a flat black roof in 100-degree weather, so as not to give yourself first-degree burns. That summer, I schvitzed."
Byron Beck, Paul Leonard, Corey Pein, Rachel Schiff, Hank Stern and Mark Zusman contributed reporting to this story.
The "Blow" Jobs And Best Jobs In Portland
Working in the Rose City can be a dream—or a nightmare.
BY ETHAN SMITH
In a perfect world, there would be no bad jobs. We'd all work as Playboy photographers and professional massage-chair testers. But since there are plenty of terrible jobs that no one wants—mostly taken by those damn illegal immigrants—they could at least be a little funnier. Sort of like these"blow" and best jobs (some real, some imaginary) in Portland:
BLOW JOBS
OMSI's cleaning lady Let's face it: If you're dusting skinned human bodies at 3 am in a deserted museum, they will come alive and kill you.
Tom Potter's optometrist After almost three years of squinting at Portland's future, Potter's vision is cloudier than ever.
Portland Beavers PR rep "We're the Beavers. From Oregon. No the other Beavers from Oregon. I know, it is confusing. But we're changing it soon. Uh...to the, er, Wet Sox? I hate my life."
Sandy River lifeguard You try stopping several hundred drunken, cliff-diving, possibly armed rednecks from drowning themselves.
24-hour security guard at the City Hall restroom Wait, that one's real.
BEST JOBS
Mark Lindsay's barber "You're sure, Mr. Lindsay? Just cut around the bowl and don't touch the 'burns? Awright. Man, this is easy."
Director of the NAACP's Lake Oswego chapter Plenty of free time.
Aerial tram operator Lever goes up. Lever goes down. Lever goes up. Lever goes down.
U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith's personal chef Just thaw out some Eggos three times a day—the Republican senator from Oregon loves his waffles.
Pearl District Neighborhood Watch officer Duties consist mostly of defusing confrontations between rival gelato shops and keeping on the lookout for offensive loafer/sweater combinations.
WWeek 2015