37: The Job That Takes Over Your Life
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Mappasanta didn't care much for the Eiffel Tower, and he didn't care for the food at the restaurant in the Eiffel Tower. But he had lunch at the restaurant in the Eiffel Tower all the time. It is the only place in Paris he used to say, or I don't have to see it. That is exactly how I feel about my job. I come into work days, I come into work weekends, I stay late at night, at work. At least if I'm here I think, I'm not out worrying about all the things I'm supposed to be doing when I get here. My dad used to work days and weekends and nights when I was a kid. Now, some Saturdays, he calls me up, I'm at the office. A couple of weeks ago, I realized two things about my job, my job producing this radio show, this one right here that you're listening to, I realized that every week as I come to grips with the fact of having to actually do the show, I go through the five stages that Elizabeth Cooper Ross says you go through to come to grips with death. Do you remember the stages? Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, that was the first thing I realized. Second thing I realized was that if I'm having these feelings, I'm spending way too much time at my job. You know, I'm not here to talk to my me though, I'm here to talk about you. Our show today, it's all about you, you. You work too hard, you spend too many hours at work, you spend too many hours thinking about work, and if you don't have a job, spend too many useless hours thinking about that. Today's show, the job that takes over your life. Act one, a guy who interview sick people until he comes to believe that he is sick. Act two, some teenagers who think they're signing up to be in a play, find out they're joining a sort of cult instead. Act three, guys who get thrown in the slammer, this will be because they don't want to work in unsafe conditions. Act four, you know, let's not even go into what's in act four right now. Act one. I was hired to interview men and women in the state of Utah who received Medicaid support for treatment of mental illnesses generally diagnosed as schizophrenia. That's Scott Carrier who's had an on-again, off-again career as a radio reporter in Salt Lake City. He was hired for this interviewing job because the director of the research project heard some of his radio stories and thought he was a good interviewer, somebody who knew how to listen. They taught Scott how to administer this test, which measured mental health. It was a hundred questions, each of which was scored in a scale of one to seven, took an hour to give the test, Scott was paid $30 for each test he gave, the people he gave the test to, got $5. I had little understanding of schizophrenia before I began, and I have little more understanding now. I took the job because I had no other, I took the job because I just quit my steady job, my professional job, after realizing that what I wanted more than anything was to put my boss on the floor and stand on his throat and watching gag. Then my wife moved out, took the kids and everything. She said, "I've thought about it and I really think it's the best thing for me at this time in my life." So I took the job interviewing Schizophrenics because it was offered to me and because it was all there seemed to be, and it seemed somehow predestined, a karmic response that
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