doggie daycare.

I'm going to tell you about a crappy job.

Last year, when my brother-in-law moved back into town, he really, really needed a job. He was putting out applications right and left to whatever job would hire him. He ended up at a doggie daycare. In case you're not familiar, this is a place where people leave their dogs for the day so their pups can play with other canines rather than sleep on the futon all day or chew up the house.

The daycare is located in a strip mall. There is no outside where the dogs might frolic in the fresh air. Forget frolicking, the dogs don't even get to poop and pee outside. Where do they do it? Inside the doggie daycare. One of Trevor's responsibilities is to clean it up. There is a bucket in the middle of the room that is meant to work like a fire hydrant and draw the dogs to do their business in one spot of the room. Apparently, it doesn't work. They instead pee everywhere else, for instance on the wall or the crates or on the little tykes climbing castle. More things in the room is just more stuff to clean the pee off of. Trevor has a mop for these messes. He frequently has to change out the mop water, which involves putting all the dogs in their crates so he can leave the room, because if you leave the dogs unsupervised, they might just kill each other while you're gone.

This means that when Trevor needs his own break, he has to use the walkie-talkie to ask someone up front to come watch the dogs while he steps out. He has to ask for bathroom breaks. The dogs are able to just go whenever and wherever they like.

Now, anytime you get a few dogs together, not all of them will get along. There are some dogs that play fine with most others, but not quite all others. And so you have to rotate the dogs in and out of the crates that are in the room. Some dogs don't really get along with anybody. As much as Trevor would like to just lock these dogs up in the crates all day, the owners are bringing their dogs in specifically so they don't have to do that themselves. He could still do that, except that there are cameras in the room so that people can check in and see what a terrible job looks like their sweet pups all day. Trevor actually installed the cameras on his day off for extra cash.

Apparently, some people treat the daycare as more of a kennel, and leave their animals for weeks at a time. As a result, the dogs are woefully untrained. Very few of them even know "sit." Training them is out of the question, as cleaning and keeping the dogs from killing each other take up the whole day.

There are two rooms in the daycare - The Gym, for the big dogs, and the Romp Room for the little ones. Neither of them have windows. So picture being in one of two windowless rooms all day long. There are as many as twenty dogs all around you. Some of them are moments from biting each other. Many of them are barking for no reason at all. Also, there is poop and pee everywhere, all the time.

Every day, Trevor came home and ranted about this horrible job he was doing for $7.50 an hour. He said it was making him hate dogs. I tried to put on my best sympathetic face, but at some point it was just too funny. It was a comically bad job. I had no idea this job existed. I knew about doggie daycares, though I assumed they had outside space, rather than some poor sot performing the Sisyphian task of cleaning up their mess.

Trevor has found a new job. There are no dogs, and he can manage his own bathroom breaks.