What was the strangest job you ever had????

[Beware the Beast Man]

Yesterday, someone started a thread asking what your current job is. I thought my job as a CAD engineer for a toilet partition company was a bit strange, so...
What was the strangest job you ever had?

Mine was a temp job shortly after I graduated high school. I dipped wicker craft brooms in cinnamon oil for 8 hours a day. I lasted three days before Long John Silvers called me back up for duty. To this day I cannot handle cinnamon in large doses.

[tsakshaug]

1. mine

Chairlift operator at a ski area in the summer

[ret5hd]

2. oh man, by far my current job is the weirdest...

a coupla years ago, i was broke no job, yada yada.

then i got this really cool offer...just log onto this particular website and spread discontent, doubt, etc. just naysay every idea that comes up. make obnoxious posts....

oh. wait a minute. never mind.

[Beware the Beast Man]

3. RimJob, is that you???

:evilgrin:

[ret5hd]

5. ha...

no, but isn't nader the greatest?

[Oggy]

4. Mine was connected to your current one

I had a summer job when I was 18 installing toilet roll holders. The weirdest bit was by some coincidence I ended up fitting them at the college I was at.

[givemebackmycountry]

6. I got TWO

JOB ONE:

Right after high school.
Upstate New York.
Grab a hose, a trouble light,and a wire brush.
Climb into an empty, rusted, submarine like, thirty thousand gallon underground gas tank.
Scrape rust off of the inside in 80 degree weather.
When you stopped to smoke, or grab a drink of water, the BOSS would take a 12 pound sledge hammer and BEAT on the outside of the tank.

It sounded like a BELL.

JOB TWO:

Lead plant in upstate New York.
Length of employment: 90 days.
Job description:

Strap this vacuum cleaner like apparatus to your back.
Put on plastic goggles and respirator.
Take vacuum cleaner like apparatus, and your ass, and climb all over shit and vacuum up the LEAD dust.

You had to be tested every thirty days for lead levels in your blood.

I went from normal to your fired in 90 days.

I think I was making six bucks an hour.

I wonder if that job is still out there?

I may need a PLAN B in BushWorld.

[SarahB]

7. Taught Gymboree classes

Now, that was a surreal exercise into perkiness Hell. :crazy:

[Red State Rebel]

8. Seamstress for a Drum & Bugle Corps

Travel in the summer sleeping in a different high school on the floor almost every night. The guys rehearse all day, compete in the evening, load up the buses and head to the next town. Between performances I would make repairs and alterations to uniforms as is needed. At least once a week I would have to commandeer a vehicle and go to the laundromat and wash all the uniforms.

In one 10 day trip I was with them we traveled over 4,500 miles.

It was a lot of fun - the guys are great (135 of them between the ages of 16 & 22) and it was fun to be a part of the organization. It was also exhausting!

[Philostopher]

9. It wasn't just the job made it strange ...

but the whole circumstance. I once had a job for a 'bonus points' program that was subcontracted to a major upscale hotel chain. This was fifteen years ago, before everybody was handling their own bonus point programs. I was, officially, an international correspondence clerk. That meant I read, researched and responded to people who frequently didn't write very well in English, who often were practicing on us, but who would practically have a tantrum if we seemed not to understand what they wrote. Add to that we were making just barely above minimum wage, so very few of us ever had even seen the lobby of the hotel chain that employed us. We had no translator on staff, but usually the letters were fairly clear.

One of our customers was a German struggling stage actor who developed a crush on the woman whose name went on all the letters (we all wrote them, but they were stamped or signed, depending on the nature of the letter, with her name for consistency). He used to send her promotional packets with photos and posters from his portfolio.

Once, we also had a case of a gay British couple who objected to the fact that only heterosexual, married people could stay in the room as a couple and collect bonus points on both people's bills. Usually, we didn't ask -- but if the hotel made an issue of it, as this one had, the program didn't automatically put the points on the account.

His letter was beautifully written. More importantly, he spent thousands of dollars a year in the chain's properties and threatened to stop and to tell all his friends to stop.

To the chain's credit, they changed their policy -- and elected not to argue it again, in the future. It wasn't worth the money they'd lose making a point, you see. It would have cost them more to institutionalize a policy that appeared to be moralizing than simply to quietly go ahead and credit the points to any room with a couple whose charges wound up on the same bill, if they asked.

Other than the minister's wife in my department, who used to get upset that we used 'Ms.' instead lf 'Mrs.' on all letters that were obviously to women, everybody else was happy about that decision.

[iconoclastic cat]

10. I've had many strange jobs,

but here are two:
1. Driver for a very high-priced "escort" service
2. A "submissive" in a bondage act that performed at goth/industrial/kink dance clubs.

[CO Liberal]

11. Oldies DJ at a Disco

"The Back Door" in Morristown, NJ in the Early '80s. It was in the basement of a Chinese restaurant, and the entrance was behind the restaurant - hence, the name.

I was the DJ on "Oldies Night", which was Monday. On other nights, I tended bar, checked IDs, and served as MC for the male dancers on Ladies' Night.