Strangest job you've ever had

Well, even if it was legit, I wouldn't wear a shirt and tie in any county in Texas. It is too damn hot.

 

Another good story might as well have happened in Texas, though I was in Washington:

A grandma - from what I could figure out - had been cremated and was being buried.
A grandson, who was wearing white high tops with stone-washed jeans (this was in 1999) and sporting a mullet, his girlfriend, his dad and I guess his grandpa, were all there for the burial.
We dig the little hole.
Grandma is winged into it.
Then they are all talking and sounding drunk. Grandson lights up a cigarette, when grandpa says, "Well, son, I am sure grandma would want one more."
So, grandson lights up another Marlboro Red and wings it into the hole and they all start crying hysterically.
It was one of the most awkward moments of my life.

 

awesome. i have nothing to add, but posted just so this bad boy will show up on my "show new replies to your posts" button.

i look forward to see how this one plays out.

 

When I lived on Guam, I was moonlighting as the overnight security guard at the Cliff Hotel.
They had these big, carved wooden latte stone bar stools in the Taotamona Lounge. I forget what the native hardwood is called. I used to know it.
Anyway, I found this big, drunk Chamorro guy walking out with one of the bar stools one night. I had hard time convincing him to put it down. I couldn't really be too confrontational about it, on account of he was raging drunk and fully capable of killing me.
I finally talked him into putting it down and leaving.
I had to carry the stool back to the bar. The damn thing must have weight 75-100 pounds.

 

I got a temp job at a plastics factory. For the first few weeks, my responsibility was to take these plastic pieces for car seats that came out of a molder and use a scraper to scrape off the excess plastic around the edges ("flash," it was called). After a little while, they put me on a machine that squirted adhesive foam into the bottom of half a trash can, and I put the other half inside. They became those team trash cans that you see.

Then they got rid of their temps, and I went to a moving company. Made more money for less standing.

 

The job itself wasn't weird -- working at a video store -- but dusting all of the porno video boxes in the back room was always an odd task.

You'd go in there, usually when it was slow, but there would sometimes be someone in there. They'd be kind of leery when someone walked in with a feather duster, but I'd assure them that all was cool and they could resume inspection of the Edward Penishands box.

It also creeped me out when I got to the Sybil Danning Nazi-dominatrix porn boxes from the 70s. I'd dust thoroughly so as not to piss off Freulein Danning.

 

My jobs, overall, have not been strange. Not really in order:
Babysitter
Lawn mower
Pool service
Busboy
Bank teller
Warehouse worker
Mailroom driver
UPS loader and small sort
Drug dealer
Package store clerk
Night security guard at a bank
Night security guard at a hotel
Ice cream parlor attendant
Grocery store stocker
Newspaper stringer
Newspaper reporter
Newspaper editor
Repo/property cleanup

 

Another strange job I held was washing semi trucks.
I did this part-time during college. It seemed it was always freezing (Idaho) when I did this. Plus, we hand washed the trucks.
So, after a hard night of partying I would get up at 7 a.m. and drive 45 minutes to Fruitland to use a giant broom to scrub down a semi truck which had driven through the Blues (mountains in Oregon) and the Cascades the night before. The water would freeze to the side of the truck, as well as on our heads and bodies, but we would have to continue on.
I am 6-5, but washing the very top of semi trucks with a broom is not fun for the triceps.
The worst part of the entire job was cleaning the trucks that hauled raw beef. There would always be chunks as big as a football on the back, sides, ground, tires, wherever of the truck. Nothing like getting 3 hours of sleep after a hard night of drinking/smoking cigs/smoking weed in college just to see a chunk of raw beef the size of a football.

 

I had community service once. I had to work weekends at a park, cleaning up the picnic arbors, setting sprinklers, cutting grass, etc.
That was a strange summer just because of the people with whom I had to work. Community service makes you associate with some strange people.

 

I've been in on a few drug deals, Buck, so I know the feeling. Everyone thinks it's a cool job, but it's really a lot of waiting, boredom and dealing with assholes. It doesn't help that I've always been a strict adherent to not getting high on your own supply.

 

I'd agree with that Buck.
The one weekend I had to do community service it was at the pound.
I had to clean up dog shit for 8 hours straight the first day.
The second day I had to load dead animals into a truck. We got them all in and they told us the cats and dogs had to be separated. So, I had to unload them all, separate the species and reload them into different trucks.
I would have rather not done community service.

 

If I had followed that philosophy, I would have been much more successful at it.
It was something I did in high school and college. I'm not proud of it, but I'm not ashamed, either.