Best job I ever had? Oh, that’s easy…

The awesomest job I ever had – and I’m including the one I have currently held for the last 37 years – was as a car jockey at the Hotel Plaza II on Bloor just East of Yonge.

I was 19 and never was a particular young man more suited for a particular job. This was round peg, round hole, man.

Get this. I worked from 3 PM to 2 AM six days a week. My daily schedule – written on a scrap of Hilroy five-subject three-ringed notebook paper and push-pinned to my wall – looked like this:

I did this for three straight months. You’ll notice there’s no accommodation in there for bodily sustenance. That’s because the good folks at Pizza Pizza kindly provided the jockey crew with two party-sized pepperoni pizzas every night with the only proviso being we were obligated to recommend their crappy pizzas to unsuspecting tourists who asked our advice.

So, can you imagine? Wake up late, tan for 4 hours. Test drive sleek cars all night. Free pizza. And tips.

Seriously, if I could get that job back right now, I’d be tempted to scrap this whole little talent agent experiment on the spot.

My skin was darker than Eddie Murphy’s that summer, only I was skinnier and sported a way better afro. In fact, I fashioned myself after Leroy “Sugarfoot” Bonner, frontman for THE OHIO PLAYERS; you’ll see the uncanny resemblance below.

At the hotel, my fellow wheelmen and I had a little summer-long competition going. The contest was to see how loud you could screech the tires on tight turns careening up four levels around the obtrusive parking pillars. There were no other rules to the game. There were no demerits, for instance, if in your haste to create a racket, you scraped the entire side of a vehicle against a support column.

And I remember doing exactly that to a shiny huge white Cadillac Coupe DeVille with New Jersey plates. By the time I got this massive boat up to street level the passenger side of the car looked like Antonio Margarito’s face after going twelve rounds with Manny Pacquiao. Luckily the avuncular owner of the wreck was travelling solo so, getting in on the driver’s side, he probably didn’t see the passenger side damage until he stopped for gas in Rochester. The heartbreaking and ironic shame of it all was the guy gave me a US five-dollar bill, the biggest tip I got all summer.

To this day, I still feel terrible about that. To this day, I still lose sleep. I assuage my guilt only with the fact that the poor schmuck must be dead by now. I know that really should be no consolation whatsoever. Strange thing, the human brain.

Anyway, the point of all this:

I hope that decades-old bad karma doesn’t follow me to The World Series of Poker in Las Vegas on Saturday June 1 where I will be playing in The $1000 No Limit Mystery Millions Bounty Tournament with an eighteen million dollar prize pool and no less than $1,000,000 guaranteed to the winner and at least one $1,000,000 mystery bounty envelope.

Should be fun. Stay tuned…

If you get a chance, in the comments section describe the best/worst job you ever had. I’m so hoping there’s a rodeo clown or a Valerie Bertinelli stunt double out there!

If you’re not already subscribed, just make your comment and type in your email address and you’ll be automatically signed up for live updates of the blog. And don’t worry, there are no ads and you’ll never be bombarded with bitcoin promos or penis enlargement banners.