Strangest job you've ever had

I briefly worked as men's bathroom attendant at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport.

All day long these guys tapping their feet (usually the right) and then reaching under the door.
I would just rush over and hand them some extra toilet paper.

Had one guy who sit in the stall and clap his hands, whistle and slam his fists into the toilet paper holder. ... Weirdo!

 

I've always thought that had to be the, ahem, shittiest job out there. Having to listen (and smell) while guys painted the bowl or tore a deep one out while taking a leak...

 

Took glamour shots photos for 10 weeks in the most godforsaken cities in the United States.

 

Buddy of mine took yearbook photos for Jostens.

Good lord, did he hate it.

 

House demolition crew when I was about 16.

Three guys taking down an entire house with sledgehammers and crowbars.

And then sorting out the good stuff for the salvage company.

 

Had to clean a sludge pit, which meant climbing down into a below ground tank, scraping the sludge off the walls and floor with a shovel, and packing it into a five gallon bucket which another slave, with more seniority, then had to pull back up to ground level, empty and repeat.

And if you don't know what "sludge" is. . . consider yourself lucky.

 

I was an owl vomit collector once. The next summer, I cleaned animal skulls and bones to put on display.

 

From cleaning the field house at Rice University to choreographer for a heavy metal band. Odd.

 

i had a temp job in which i stood in front of a fax machine all day for 10 hours a day. this piece of shit fax machine took only one page at a time. i was faxing multiple page documents. i know in the grand scheme there are thousands of worse jobs, but for a college kid home during winter break, this pretty much sucked.

 

This guy laughs at all of your dirty jobs.

 

Signed on with a temp service the summer after I got out of college. My first temp assignment was at a box factory. I lasted one day. The only reason I didn't leave at lunchtime and never return was that I needed the supervisor to sign my sheet at the end of the day so I would get paid.

I can think of no greater way to validate the need for a college education than working one day in a box factory:

It's mind numbingly boring (you're making fucking BOXES!).

Your co-workers are, to put it mildly, not the cheeriest bunch, which is a nice way of saying they're either homicidal or suicidal. You would be too if you made boxes for a living.

Your supervisor might have a high school diploma somewhere in his family tree.

I still think about that day when I'm having a bad one a work. It usually cheers me up.

I also worked at a driving range a couple of years later when I was between jobs. That didn't suck.