Name It. The Most Fun, Weird Job You Have Held?

[mainegrw]

I don't know if I can beat any of the vast experiences here, however I have spent half a lifetime working in the theatre and entertainment industries doing just about everything except performing. I've worked for schools and community groups all the way on up to Broadway, in addition to hundreds of concerts and live events. Too many stories to share here...

These days I build theatrical specific automation machinery and control systems. A boring job to most, but loads of fun for me and my coworkers.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

 

[Rustyt1953]

in addition to hundreds of concerts and live events.

Who knows. We might've trodden some of the same stages and tripped over the same gaffers tape.

 

[jbtrucker]

1980's owner of a fried chicken joint paid me $20 plus free meal to dance around outside wearing a chicken suit.

 

[BearBio]

You went back to college at what age? And you're a biologist now? Man, I'd love to hear more about that!

Well, after working 25 years in the Title Insurance field, I was Operations Manger for a title Co in Santa Ana, CA. Met my wife. I left and was an Advisory Title Officer in Glendale, CA. Owned by a husband and wife==husband a drunk and wife hated men, esp. white men. Start of 91-92 or thereabouts, market crashed in real estate. I went from ~1000 transactions a month to 48 or so. Lasted about 6 months and then was let go. Worked part-time guiding for a buddy on deer and wild pig and as a "Hired Gun" for attorneys (legal consultant) (age 40 or so). My SIL heard about a program for returning adults at a Baptist College, taught on weekends. Goal was to get them degrees in Oceanography. I enrolled (I had been a Zoology major for 2-3 years previously) and did pretty well=strict curriculum but geared for working adults. I did well and graduated in July 1996 with a degree in Biology (Marine biology) and a GPA OF 3.75 (age 46). My advisor asked me to TA a course he was teaching in Belize and Guatemala on Jungle Ecology. While there, I was "stalked" by a jaguar, peed on and shat upon by 2 species of monkeys, found a Fer-De-Lance in the kitchen, etc. I also almost drowned when my raft tipped over exploring a Mayan cavern. Came back with a few parasites and a few stories about the scars.

My advisor (Science Chair) and my wife convinced me to go to Grad School. Found out I couldn't dive (diabetic), so I kinda switched to Ecology. Started a Thesis on wild pig behavior but Cal DFG convinced me to do a Thesis on "Urban Bears"==I fell in love with Animal Behavior and graduated with an MS in Animal Behavior and a GPA of 3.94 (age 48). Did volunteer work for about a year before Fish and Wildlife picked me up (age 50). Worked in Sacramento for 2.5 years and an office in Washington State hired me and moved us to the eastern Cascades. Been a "Fed" for almost 20 years now; was Chief of Endangered Species Recovery and Habitat Conservation for Central Washington ==wasn't me, so I stepped down when the chance came and went back to doing field work. Mostly regulatory work in general: boat docks, dams, new species listings, etc. Met two Nobel Prize Winners: Francis Crick (discovered the shape of DNA) and John Vaca (Climate Change, along with Al Gore). John and I discussed Climate Change in the Yakima Watershed over beers! I've had run-ins with meth heads, bear, irate ranchers, wolves, poachers, moose, poisonous snakes, etc. over the last 50 years or so!

Come July, I retire and am looking forward to fly-fishing and maybe teaching at the local college. I'm thinking about a class called "Bizarre Biology"==all the weird (I mean really weird things in nature (i.e. vampire finches, vampire moths, zombies, zombie caterpillars, etc) and one in Mimicry and Crypsis (my favorite class in grad school!). Time for a (new) third career=why not teaching!

 

[Chino74]

Forest service summer work in Washington state....had a lotta fun, money not so much...

 

[wundudnee]

I did that too!

I did too, but we had a army jeep for a tractor. Picked up a lot with a aluminum hand held and a bicycle wheeled cage. It was very awkward pushing that wire cage around so we would just tip it over and become targets. I looked up once and caught a golf ball right between the eyes. Put me to my knees.

They built a chopped frame old Ford into a mower tug. We were supposed to get off and pick up any balls that were missed so they wouldn't go through the gang mower. We got really good at hitting them with a tire and mashing them into the ground rather than getting on and off the rig.

 

[fordson]

After school job in HS. Worked as a meat (ColdCut) cutting machine repairman. Worked with three other older mechanics. They didn't have ten fingers among the three of them. Didn't work there long.

 

[michael1000]

small arms instructor for the air force. this was where i learned to love the combat masterpiece.

 

[rwt1405]

I've been a career Paramedic since 1985, and for the most part I've loved my job (God only knows you couldn't love EMS for the money).....

But, some of the most fun I had was about 3 years, in the mid 1990's, when I worked (part-time) as a HazMat Technician, for a HazMat Response team.

The stories I could tell....

It was always amazing that as soon as we got to any location, they couldn't give us the "scene" (building, land, vehicle, etc) quickly enough, and how they vacated the area/s VERY quickly, leaving us to do what we needed to do.

My favorite memories where on loading docks, etc., driving fork lifts/front end loaders/etc. while in Level A fully encapsulating suits.

It is simply amazing that we never killed each other, or ourselves........

Then one day I really thought about it, and decided it was probably not the wisest part-time job choice I ever made............

 

[Dave_n]

As a "golf ball retriever" in the UK the year after the end of WWII. One penny per ball retrieved from the "rough". Little did we know then why 6 and 7 year old boys were hired!. Like all golf links on the UK coasts, they had been mined and only the fairways had been "demined". 6 and 7 year olds would not set off the 110 lb spring in the mine. However, by 1947, the springs had corroded and a dropping golf ball sometimes had enough momentum to set off a mine (in the rough). My friends and I decided that though a nice source of income, we needed our extremities more! Dave_n

 

[mtgianni]

I always enjoyed work from haying and working in tomato fields at age 5 to my last job at 63 as a gas meter specialist.
Weirdest is probably filling small natural gas odorizers. A company I worked for bought it's gas from an unodorized pipeline. The large cities had automatic odorizers but we had to add the odorant, metro-captan, to small taps, aka, farm taps. You would drive a truck pulling a 2 wheel trailer to the far end of the system and find a remote place to eat. you would then eat all you could and follow it up with a glass of mik or a milk shake. Drive to the taps and fill by hose if possible or gallon jug if not possible the small devices manually. They might at most hold 2 gallons and were filled annually. At the end of the day you were naseous from the smell and when you got home you took your clothes off outside and left them in the sun before entering. Cotton would air out for a day or two and be OK, leather shoes and belts needed a week to be odor free. If you were tough you could eat that night but had better not eat anything spicy, greasy or carbonated as it would come back up.
Miss that part of it not at all.

 

[ben_g1]

Suntan lotion applier for the Swedish bikini team. That was a sweet job, but boy did my arm get tired.

 

[Mals9]

At age 20 or so I was a ramp rat manager at a small commuter airline that flew twin engine tuboprops. I am an airplane nut and it was just a lot of fun. Many times terrible weather, 33 degrees and pouring rain on Christmas, terrible pay but I truly enjoyed it.
Worst was a part time job while in school working as a grit blaster in a 8'x10' box with a 2" hose cleaning metal pipe stands for use in the oil fields. Had metal removed twice from my eyes before they realized the pressurized helmet I was wearing was running at 30% capacity.

Mals

 

[bigride]

In my younger days, being a youth pastor kept me on my toes. You never knew what question was going to pop out of those angelic mouths at any moment. We had lots of laughs and meaningful moments.

Also delivered donuts as a second job for a while. After a while, just the smell of donuts made me queasy.

 

[soFlaNative]

From working out of a starter's shack that made "Caddyshack" look like a convent to my current gig in utility ops the weirdest, wackiest and funnest, rewarding job has been being a husband and father.

 

[islamoradamark]

Doorman/security at the Bikini contest at Holiday Isle

 

[mike from st pete]

Not a fun job, nor weird.
Most of my working life was keeping the gears of manufacturing running.
Industrial mechanics is now more computer work than actual mechanics.
I've built some interesting machines with the production engineers. The problem came from stubborn engineers that insisted, "That is going to work" and you will make my idea viable.
Eventually a compromise design was the one that worked better.

 

[galena]

Shortly after I retired from the USAF I worked for a friend who ran a Dude Ranch as a horse wrangler. Fun job, and I learned a couple of things.... One --never let a dude unsaddle a horse (you have pieces of saddle all over the ground), and Two-- some of them Eastern Ladies sure do like cowboys, enough said on that subject.....

 

[pmanton]

I spent 3 years serving with the Marine Aviation Detachment at The Pacific Missile Range, Pt. Mugu CA and the Naval Ordnance Test Station China Lake, CA. I didn't go to work, I went to FUN !!

The next tour of duty was so terrible in comparison that I left the Marine Corps.

 

[bigolddave]

Five months after I started at the company where I worked for thirty-nine years, I was elected to the credit union board of directors. Because I worked in finance, I was made head of the supervisory committee, which is in effect the internal auditors. As we worked on our first audit, well into the evening, we discovered some discrepancies. The treasurer, who was assembly supervisor, had not pursued some delinquent loans. This was a very small CU, and only in its second year of existence. Turned out that because he could not get a loan, as a board member, he had convinced several of his workers to get loans on his behalf, promising to make the payments. We also discovered that a cash deposit of several hundred dollars had taken over two weeks to get to the bank. The treasurer was ultimately confronted with the deeds, along with a number of other things he had done. The owner of the company allowed him to keep his job long enough to repay what he had embezzled.

Five days after this happened, I was standing next to him on the trap field, where we shooting in the Industrial League. I had a difficult time concentrating on the targets with him next to me with a loaded shotgun.

As part of my job, I later was involved in several other situations involving misbehavior by fellow employees, including one where I had to spend most of every week for six weeks investigating embezzling at our branch office in the Toronto area.