Joy Behar Opens Up About Working At A “Mental Hospital” On ‘The View’: “Prepared Me For This Show”

Joy Behar has had a lot of jobs throughout her 82 years of life, and some of them might surprise you.

On this morning’s episode of The View, each co-host shared the grimmest job they’ve ever had, and whether it prepared them for their current careers. What we learned was that Sunny Hostin once worked at TGI Friday’s, Iowa native Sara Haines worked in a field detasseling corn, and Alyssa Farah Griffin was a caterer. However, those jobs sounded easy compared to what Behar and Whoopi Goldberg had to do.

“I once worked at a mental hospital, which prepared me for this show,” Behar joked, revealing that she was a teacher at Kings Park Psychiatric Center in Brooklyn.

“I also worked at Saint Vincent’s Hospital in the pathology lab where I had to take organs off the dumbwaiter and then the doctors would describe what it was and I’d have to type all that up,” she continued. “Then the pathologist would come in and tell you whether the person would live or die. I knew ahead of time whether the person would live or die. That was a hard job.”

Goldberg, for her part, worked as a makeup artist at a funeral home. According to the moderator, her former boss played a trick on her first day on the job. When she was waiting to meet with him in a room full of drawers meant to store deceased bodies, Goldberg could hear the faint sound of one of the drawers opening.

“I noticed that the drawer was moving,” she recalled. “As I’m getting up to run but still looking to see [what was going on], my boss sits up and says, ‘Boo!’ And I ran into the door. I knocked the air out of myself. It was the best thing that could’ve happened to me.”

Goldberg explained, “Everybody, I bet, in this room would think, ‘What’s going on with this body?’ He said to me, ‘Now, the worst thing you imagined as happened. These are vessels. They’re empty. They’re not gonna sit up, they’re not gonna grab you. So you don’t have to be afraid.’”

“Once I stopped cursing him out, it was wonderful,” she added of the “great training” tactic.

The View airs on weekdays at 11/10c on ABC.