Almost Quitting Time

WHEN YOU think of difficult jobs, you think of high-risk jobs. Policemen face death daily. So do emergency room doctors. Skyscraper window washers know that grievous bodily harm is just a wrong step away. But then again, these jobs feature a certain amount of excitement, a few shots of adrenalin now and then to break up the workday routine. The pressure is high, and mistakes can be deadly. It's easy to stay awake.

But anyone who works at a low-pressure, no-risk service job faces a daily battle with a quieter, more maddening foe: ruthless, relentless tedium. For some, "busy work" is a way of life. Get up. Go to work. Perform the same task over and over till lunch. Hope for some excitement. Perform the same task over and over till quitting time. Try not to go crazy.

It's not easy.

VINCE DIXON sits in the Cambridge Discovery kiosk in the heart of Harvard Square, answering questions all day long. Is it a hard job?

"Saturday afternoon when the sun is out, sure," Vince says. But what about having to answer the same stupid question over and over and over again? "We never get stupid questions," Vince says diplomatically. "We have to be diplomatic. You get question like, 'Where is Harvard Square?' and have to explain, `Well, you're standing in the middle of it.'"

Now and then, excitement rears its crazy clown face. "Once a kid walked up and asked me, "What's the fastest animal in the world?" I told him 'The cheetah.'"

Only seven more hours till quitting time.

A less diplomatic customer service representative up the street preferred to remain anonymous. (Hint: he works in a Xerox place in the Harvard Square area.) We'll call him Larry.

"It is a very repetitious job," says Larry. How's that? "We do a lot more than copying. We also do a full range of printing." Oh. But surely there are odd requests that break up the copy-shop monotony. "Sometimes people come in with Bibles." Is that illegal? "No, but I don't like to copy them. And some guy came in last week with a big, big textbook. I couldn't understand why he wanted it copied."

These are the high points.

So what do you do for fun if you work in a copy shop? From the looks of it, you smoke a lot of cigarettes. "I do see a lot of people smoking in the back," Larry says. "I don't know why. I guess it's just something to do while you watch the paper go through the machine."

(Incidentally, Larry categorically denies the most popular conception about copy shop hijinks and monkey shines: to the best of his knowledge, neither he nor any of his fellow employees have ever made Xeroxes of their own butts.)

THE SWISS Watchmaker spends his days squinting through a magnifying glass at pieces of metal the size of termites. All day long. He's a very busy man. Too busy repairing watches to answer questions about what it's like to repair watches all day long.

But his manager, Steve Rossman, is quick to assure the curious that the watch-repairer is doing just fine. He never complains? "Not that I know of," says Rossman. "He just sits there all day long, repairing watches. Never complains."

But when you're dealing with broken things, you're also dealing in funny stories about how people broke their things. Like? "Some guy came in with a broken watch. Said he'd put it through the washer and dryer."

Five hours till quitting time.

Telephone information operators are not permitted to give out their names or answer non-phone number related questions. But they do have supervisors who can do the latter.

"It's not easy," says an unnamed 411 supervisor. "People expect us to know what they want just by saying a few words. And the ratio of `polite callers' to...um...`others' is just about half and half." It's a crap shoot, and the only surprises are unpleasant ones.

"We get all sorts of requests." Really? Like what? "Some of them dirty."

What city please? What city please? What city please? Almost lunchtime.

Lanes and Games employee John Leveroni doesn't mind the relentless din of rolling balls, falling pins, and the monstrous contraptions that set them up again. "You get used to the noise," he says.

Customers are a different matter. "Dealing with customers is a problem in itself. They all have their ideas and they want to tell you how to run an alley. Anyone who has to deal with the public has got it damn tough." League players "get upset when you put open bowlers next to them." And open bowlers steal shoes.

"Yeah, we lose about 30 pairs a year." Law enforcement on a footwear level must provide some degree of excitement. Hot pursuit? Scuffling and fisticuffs?

Naw. "We just tell them that it's actually stealing, and that the shoes belong to the alley. Sometimes people try to keep rental shoes in their own lockers."

Amy Barry's voice is as sweet as her Boston accent is heavy. And when her phone rings, it's never good news. Amy puts together the Obituary page for The Boston Herald.

"When I first started doing it, it was so sad," she says. "I thought, 'Oh my God, it's so awful.' But you get kind of used to it." Amy admits that "being a policeman...or maybe a detective" would be a much harder job. And like a policeman (or maybe a detective), the key to emotional survival is professionalism. "I hate to say it, but you try not to think about people's lives and things."

Which is apparently the same attitude Postal Service employees maintain. If you work at the Central Square Post Office, you know what it is to be busy all the time. Busy, busy, busy. So busy that you'll let the phone ring 14 times before you answer it. So busy that when the caller's questions are non-mail-service-oriented, you only have three things to say: "Yes, the Post Office is the most difficult job. I can't talk about it. I really don't have the time."

Hello?