OK, what's the strangest job you've ever had/done?

[cali]

Good or bad, what's the most bizarre job you've had?

[NOW tense]

1. Prototype Ion air filters or

Picking Rocks in a field.

[cali]

2. I'm a Vermonter. Picking rocks in a field doesn't seem strange to me.

And I'm clueless about prototype ion air filters.

Edited to add my strangest job(s):

Working at the Somerset Club in Boston in a concierge position. I was the first woman other than a maid or waitress to do so. And it was a fascinating glimpse into the repuke power structure- though the club has nothing to do with politics.

Working as an au pair for Richard Goodwin while he was political editor for Rolling Stone.

[NOW tense]

4. Picking rocks is always odd.

It is needed, but seems odd when you are out in the middle of a corn field picking up rocks. The air filters thing was strange only because of the huge mismatch of whom I worked with. Libertarian Physicist and shouting matches is all I have to say.

[Ohio Joe]

3. Cleaning money out of a fountain

Paramus Park Mall, in Paramus NJ. There is a waterfall fountain that goes up the middle of the mall to the food court on the second floor. Once a month, we would turn off the fountain and shovel the coins, people had tossed into it, into buckets.

[The_Commonist]

5. I've thrown a few coins into that fountain!

What do they do with all of that money?

I suppose my "strangest" job was being the cook in a hippie commune.
I made dinner for about 40 people each night, and helped keep the other 2 or 3 communal kitchens stocked with food.
It was actually a very pleasant job, particularly in the summer when there were vegetables growing in the garden.
There were many nice summer days of picking vegetables, preparing the dinner, swimming in the pool, playing with my girlfriend, drinking beer late at night.
But, eventually I needed to make a little money, so I went back into the computer industry...

[Ohio Joe]

6. I worked there back in the early 80's

And back then, we separated it into pennies, nickles, dimes, quarters and "other". It was sold to a local bank by weight (I forget what bank it was) and the money given to local charities on a quarterly basis, so the money was held in an account for a few months to gather. They used to run a list of who got the money each quarter in the office (going up the escalator, walk straight, bathrooms are right in front of you and just to the left is the office doors). "Local charities" were usually kids things, sports teams to get uniforms or equipment, stuff like that. I would assume it still works the same but who knows, I don't even know if the same company owns it.

[dysfunctional press]

15. i did that at the amusement park i worked at...

and my boss always let me keep the money.

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. trying to dispose of 24 cases of Kool Whip in the winter.

Seattle.... early 70's....winter...snowing.

I worked for a marketing research agency, which had focus group taste tests of
a "new" version of Kool-Whip.
After the groups, for some reason, there were 24 cases of Kool-Whip in the office.

We were not allowed to give it away, I think because it was in the testing
*secret* stage, not commercially available. So hauling it off or putting it in the dumpster was not allowed either, and the Kool-whip people would not pay for us to ship to them.
Boss told me to get rid of it all.
I tried first to flush it down the toilet.
That is when I discovered Kool-whip is not a food, and it does not dissolve in water easily and it does not flush at all...just swirls around in a big mound.
I waited till the elementary school next door let out, and invited the kids to make a snow man of the Kool Whip.
They did...a real big one.
It froze that night, a Thursday, Kool-Whip man got covered with snow on Friday, the weekend came, weather warmed up to about 40, it rained heavily, and Monday when I came back, there was no sign of the Kool-Whip man.
I have no idea where it went, but often had visions of the thing drifting down the street on a slippery river of rain.
True story.

[proud patriot]

28. LOL

:rofl:

[Buns_of_Fire]

8. Nickel Picker (Coin Telephone Collector)

This, of course, was back in the days when there WERE pay phones.

The job itself wasn't all that strange, but the LOCATIONS of some of the phones were. I've collected from phones in men's rest rooms, women's rest rooms, jails, prisons, mental hospitals, bars in the seedier areas of town, migrant camps twenty miles from nowhere -- and one nudist colony (where I learned relatively early in life to look people straight in the eye when talking to them ;-)).

[asdjrocky]

9. Gosh.... there's been so many.

I've done singing telegrams in a gorilla suit. I was a male stripper for about 6 months. I was a DJ in every kind of club and radio station you can imagine. I played Jesus once in a stage production of Godspell for a three month run. Give me five minutes and I'll come up with three more.

I'm now in the process of starting a new business in home vegetable gardening. I've never been able to stick to one thing, just ask any of my ex-wives.

Edited to add-
What about you?

[cali]

14. As I said working in the Somerset Club was pretty strange

It's the most elite private mens' club in the country- located on Beacon Hill. I worked there in the late 70's and it was like entering a different century. It had strong whiffs of Henry James and Edith Wharton. I had to create my own "uniform" which ended up being an ankle length black skirt, a white stock tie blouse, a black blazer and black pumps. I had to wear my hair up- never loose. What did I do? I arranged parties for Cabots, Lodges and others. I arranged flowers. I lied to wives.

And working for Dick Goodwin as an au pair was quite interesting. Got to hang out with Hunter Thompson and live at Hickory Hill. Fly on the wall jobs, both.

[asdjrocky]

20. Thompson?

Did you actually touch Hunter S Thompson? He was the only reason I read early Rolling Stones.

[cali]

26. Hunter took on a very protective stance over me

He was incredibly nice to me and we spent quite a bit of time together, starting with a very strange night driving around Elko Nevada. We found we both loved the writers Malcolm Lowery and Walker Percy. He knew friends of my Dads. We subsequently spent more time hanging out in Maine and D.C.

[asdjrocky]

27. Have I told you lately, that I hate you?

I kid.

[Belial]

10. Not really strange.. but I did MAKE the donuts in High School..

[annabanana]

11. I alphabetized stock certificates in the basement of Wall Street

during one Christmas season. That was kind of weird.

[pipi_k]

19. This reminds me...

I once worked in the office of a major HMO, doing data entry, etc.

One of my jobs involved filing hundreds of applications and change forms each month.

My supervisor wanted me to get involved in doing other things, so she hired a High School girl to do the filing.

Very first day this girl comes in...I give her the forms and tell her to file them alphabetically.

She says to me (I swear this is true!)..."How do you file alphabetically?"

About ten times a day she would hunt me down to ask questions, and that started to cut into the time I could spend doing my own job. It got so bad that I started hiding in the smoking room even though I had quit smoking at the time.

Needless to say, the poor girl didn't work out.

After I finally left the company, one of my coworkers told me they had to hire three people to do my job.

I didn't know whether to be proud or very frightened for being such an anal overachiever

:scared:

[Sedona]

12. Rock n Roll Disc Jockey

in Miami Florida in the late 80's

Big hair, big bands, ...wasn't for me after all the work I did to get there.

Go figure. That's me 20 years ago at the bottom right in the pink dress. Already I was breaking the big hair rules! :)

[dysfunctional press]

13. puppetteer for cole marionettes...

there were two of us who did the show 'the legend of sleepy hollow' at elementary schools sround the area/state.

[JTFrog]

16. Spaghetti Farmer.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_7180000/newsid_7185500/7185593.stm?bw=nb&mp=wm&news=1&ms3=6&ms_javascript=true&bbcws=2

:evilgrin:

[kwassa]

Dogcatcher

Summer job, a lame effort to enforce leash laws in a small town. All I caught were family pets, often pedigreed animals, with my greatest weapon: hot dogs. They were such suckers.

The real problem were feral dogs on the outskirts of town. I was given a tranquilizer rifle, and all the accessories, plus the whole stick with the loop on the end to snag dogs arround their necks. The problem was that these dogs were smart, and as soon as they saw the rifle or stick, they were gone.

I lasted about three weeks.

[kwassa]

17. Dogcatcher

Summer job, a lame effort to enforce leash laws in a small town. All I caught were family pets, often pedigreed animals, with my greatest weapon: hot dogs. They were such suckers.

The real problem were feral dogs on the outskirts of town. I was given a tranquilizer rifle, and all the accessories, plus the whole stick with the loop on the end to snag dogs arround their necks. The problem was that these dogs were smart, and as soon as they saw the rifle or stick, they were gone.

I lasted about three weeks.

[pipi_k]

18. Worked in the office of a factory where they made

clothing.

People would recognize the brand if I named it.


Anyway, what made my job so strange was that nobody ever actually TOLD me what my job was. I could have sat around "looking busy" all day and nobody would have noticed.

OTOH, don't even TRY to get one stinking box of paper clips from the office supplies closet without filling out multiple forms, taking an oath, and giving urine samples.

The place was worse than a prison.

[RaleighNCDUer]

21. I was hanged, twice a day. But only once on Sunday.

Working as a stuntman in an old west theme park, I was killed 7 times daily for the edification of the crowd - 4 times by hand guns, once by shotgun, and twice by hanging.

EDIT: I did have the distinction of being the first one the park ever hanged, and I was the only actor who played a bad guy in every scenario. I don't speculate on the meaning of that.

[frogbison]

22. Picked the worms out

of sweet corn, as it came by, two inches deep on a wide conveyor belt. I'm sure I got them all....

[OnyxCollie]

23. Caretaker for a cemetery.

I had to dig down to the vault above a coffin once. Can't remember why.

[madamesilverspurs]

24. Headstone designer.

That followed a year of clerking in a regional insurance office, and I often wondered if the headstone customers had been denied treatment by their insurance carriers.

[8 track mind]

25. Diffusion Technician

for a major Korean semiconductor company in Austin, Tx. I landed the job after a lot of interviews and thought i made the big time. Wrong, wrong, wrong. All they had me do was organize their bolt bins in a clean room environment. 6 years of college for that shit. This is also when i discovered that i did not like wearing the damn clean room bunny suit for 12 hours out of the day. The semiconductor manufacturing biz is full of sooooo many bad chemicals and compounds that could eat human flesh in a mater of seconds. That shit is baaaad news.

[tjwash]

29. internet duplicates poster

[tjwash]

30. internet duplicates poster

[tjwash]

31. internet duplicates poster

[me b zola]

32. Vibrator operator

A large concrete vibrator that resembled a jack-hammer. :blush: I wielded that thing for 12 hour shifts one summer when I was in my twenties.