What's the strangest job you've ever had???????

[Orendorf]

I'm guessing there's some interesting answers...

For me, it would have to be when I worked at a funeral home. Funny thing, people would treat me differently when they found out I worked there. It honestly was a really easy job, other than going to the coroner's office. They do the messiest stuff, not sure I'd ever want that job.

I particularly enjoyed taking the hearse through the McDonald's drive-thru after I'd have to pick someone up in the middle of the night, people tend to get spooked about such things...


So, tell me some stuff


EDIT: Oops, I meant to post this in the "Anything Goes" forum, mods please move if necessary.

[Cloudwalker]

Sorry, haven't had to many strange jobs. Just numerous normal ones. The strangest is the one I have now. I work in the hospitality industry. If you aren't crazy when you start it will drive you crazy. I've been working in it for 24 years which means I'm certifiable. (As for posting it here rather than AG, I think it would fit in either place.)

[Richard H]

I was a tree planter.
And then a lumber jack – felling junk trees in an area previously logged 7yrs prior.
The junk trees created too much shade and GP wanted a natural forest to grow up again.

I also tried selling pre-paid cemetery plots and vaults, but business was dead.

[teddyv]

I don't think I've had any really strange jobs, but I've certainly had some surreal moments.

One of the more memorable (although not the best setting) was when I was working in Ghana as a geologist on a gold exploration project. I was 24 at the time and though I had travelled a bit I had never been plunked into the middle of a very poor country. Anyway, our security officer - a local Ghanaian - got sick and passed away 2 days later at the hospital. I was the only geologist on site at the time as the project manager was away.

Since we were his employer we basically took care of things. We sent some of our local workers to arrange picking up the body, purchase a coffin, and make other arrangements. Late in the day a Mercedes bus pulls up and I see a coffin in there. Then my workers call me over, open up the back of the bus and I see they have the body wrapped in a blanket and slid under the back seats. They uncovered his head and at this point I'm just thinking, "Yup, there he is".

I did go to the wake/funeral which was interesting. Me and a couple other "bruni's" (white men) were dressed in traditional clothes - basically a black sheet and special flip-flops. We got dressed in a village a couple km's short of the town of the funeral which of course brought all the locals out to see what was going on. After we got dressed and walked out, I think the whole town was laughing at these very white men in traditional garb. They of course weren't mocking us or anything like that, I think they were actually quite honoured.

I kind of wish this happened a little earlier in my tour as I had already been there for 4 months, after which your sense of humour tends to decrease rapidly.

[trodder]

I don't know that any of the jobs I've had were all that strange.
I've been an exterminator crawling under houses and in attics killing bugs and getting covered with ticks for my trouble, that was a dead end job.

I was a deckhand on towboat on the Mississippi river. The job wasn't strange but I met a lot of strange folks on the job.

I was a glass cutter for a while....nothing strange there either.

Pretty normal I guess.

[David161099]

When I was 17, I took on a second job.

It involved dressing up as a giant eagle (Think chicken) for a Pizza shop and dancing around in the nature strip in the middle of the highway advertising the pizza.

Cops pulled pulled me up a few times....Boss would say hang bank in front of teh shop for a while, then he would get me out there again after a few hours.

The Boss was kinda dodgey.

[Bethany67]

I managed a day and a half in a coleslaw factory as a teenager. I've not eaten shop-bought coleslaw since because I've seen the mouldy cabbages and bugs that go into it. I did several months in a cheese-packing factory and that was a joy by comparison.

I now investigate companies and individuals to weed out moneylaunderers and fraudsters for an investment bank, and it's a great job even in the current financial climate. Some are obvious ('Hey I met this Colombian guy in a bar, he's really nice, and he wants to deposit £100million with us; is that okay?'), and some more challenging with multiple shell companies and following the chain until we get back to the beneficial owners; it involves a lot of lateral thinking, the eagle-eye of a lawyer when it comes to official documents and facts, and sheer 'gut instinct.'

[IMINXTC]

LOL... Like Orendorf, I once worked at a funeral home, but as a night security guard. The building was post-modern and had a lot of cubbyholes, coves and windows, and people liked to hang out in these places which were thick with vegetation. They would often drink and shoot drugs and other unmentionable things.

So, my favorite sport was to go around the place with a flashlight shining up into my face, and making grotesque faces and sometimes even howling. You should have seen them run!

I feel so guilty

[daughter]

I was very briefly employed as a professional shoplifter. A manager of a bookshop wanted to make sure that her staff was able to spot thieves, so my job was to go in, and walk out with whatever I could get.

I was very good, I gave it all back. The staff were rubbish, they never noticed that I was robbing them blind. I got away with hundreds of pounds of merchandise.

Then I had to come in and explain to the staff how I'd done it, and what to look out for.

It did mean that any time I returned to that shop I was shadowed, which was rather unfair, because I never actually did steal from them...

[Richard H]

Laughing @ David in his eagle suit and SFASH with his flashlight!

[winwun]

Daughter, your employer wouldn't have been Willmark, Inc., would it ? I used to work for them, and would get some really strange assignments.

Ever been to a theater and bought a ticket that simply said "Admit One" and didn't have numbers on it ?

If so, the theater operator was probably ripping the producer of the film off.

They were supposed to pay the film producer a percentage of the house, and they verified this by showing the beginning ticket number when the box office opened, and the closing number when the box office closed.

Foolproof, right -- wrong -- they would sell off the numbered roll of tickets for a while, and then substitute the numbered roll for their own roll which said "Admit One", and then an hour or so before the box office closed, they would again insert the numbered roll into the machine and the count didn't reflect what they had sold off their own roll.

To catch these guys, we would have to stand outside before the box office opened, and with a counter in our pocket, count the number of tickets sold before you bought yours, and then come back every 15 minutes and make another "buy" and make the last "Buy" right before the box office closed, and then watch the box office and count with the hand-counter the number of tickets sold after you made your "final" buy and before the box office closed.

All this had to be done without anyone knowing they were being "checked".

I would wear reverseable jackets, put on glasses, take off glasses, use a collapsable cane and limp, wear a flop hat, take it off, and do whatever was necessary to not be "busted".

It was interesting at times . . .

[daughter]

That does sound an interesting job winwun...

No, mine was an independant bookstore that was in danger of closing down because they were losing so much stock. They paid me for three days... first day nobody knew who I was. After that I was walking around letting them see the tricks of the trade. (Even then some of them didn't notice what I was up to.)

However, the shop did stay open, and did stop losing so much stock.

That was probably my weirdest job ever.

The only one I still dream about is working in a sweet factory. I still see the boiled sweets swirling in the sugar coating in my nightmares.

Urgh...

[Dani H]

Being a mom.

And someone seems to have misplaced the manual that came with these kids ...

[Gargantuas]

I once did a job where I was placed in a closet with a chair, telephone, phone book, piece of notebook paper, pen (no desk) and told to call people at random to ask if they wanted aluminum sighting.

[Maverick57]

I ve worked as a bail bondsman, a security guard for a hospital and as a loss prevention manager for JC Penneys.

I dont know if the jobs themselves count as weird but I definetly encountered many things and people that would fall into that category.

For example, when I worked at the hospital we used to have a woman come in every week via ambulance with nothing wrong with her and after being released by the doctor she would strip down naked in the lobby and run around the hospital. At first glance you'd think she was crazy, but after talking with her you find out she's really not. She would more or less say she did it because she could.

I've had all sorts of stuff like this happen at those jobs that make u go