The worst job of Childish Gambino’s career
Donald Glover, AKA Childish Gambino, has enjoyed a uniquely fruitful and varied career in show business.
As Gambino, Glover has won multiple Grammys, toured the world, and attracted a loyal fanbase that adores him, but that’s only scratching the surface of his achievements, as, arguably, rapping isn’t even his most notable job.
As an actor, he has appeared in Solo: A Star Wars Story, Spider-Man: Homecoming and The Lion King, among other films, but arguably it’s his TV work that’s the most impressive. He was in Community, Atlanta and Mr and Mrs Smith, the latter two of which he also created. He has also written for, directed, and helped to produce several of his projects.
Glover has done stand-up comedy, too, while we’re at it, which is to say that the man bears numerous talents and has mastered a great many of them.
But, still, despite his immense achievements as an artist, he was once a regular person who had to hold down jobs that he hated. In conversation with GQ in 2012, while his showbiz career was still young and the memories of his old life were still fresh, he elaborated on the worst one.
“I used to have to break down boxes at a store specifically for teachers,” he reflected, “It wasn’t busy; there weren’t teachers coming in every day [that] needed stuff. They would come in at the beginning of summer, and you would never see them again.”
Glover recalled how, even though the job was far from a busy one, he would still need to dutifully come in at three in the afternoon and stay until eight at night. He tended to be done with his box-breaking duties within the first half-hour of the shift, meaning there was “literally nothing else for [him] to do” afterwards.
He admitted that he found it difficult not to “sleep or play video games” during these intensely boring shifts, which was a tall order. But, in order to keep his mind active and to kill some time, he got creative and a little bit smutty.
Glover admitted to messing around with the educational dolls that were at his workplace, arranging them “into obscene gestures” and placing “their hands on their genitals”. It was lowbrow fare for such an astute comedic mind, but he was young and mindlessly bored, so perhaps can be forgiven for it.