Strangest job you've ever had

Reading this thread makes me thankful the only jobs I had before getting hired in journalism my junior year in college were normal ones:
-- busboy/dishwasher at Friendly's
-- cashier at Jamesway
-- dietary aid at a nursing home (taking their dinner order and serving it to them in the dining room)
-- volunteer supervisor in a computer lab in college

 

1. In high school I worked a summer as the ballpit guy at Chuck E. Cheese. I started out in the kitchen but I wasn't fast enough cutting the pizzas, apparently. I was also too tall for the Chuck E. suit. So I sat in the ball pit for entire 8-hour shifts playing with the kids and, ahem, accidentally pegging the obnoxious brats in the heads with the balls. I remember once falling asleep during a slow shift - the manager woke me up. Didn't get fired but I quit soon after.

2. Spent the summer before my sophomore year of college in some sort of wire factory in the Midwest. My first responsibility was wrapping wires. I was so slow at it that every day three or four Venezuelans would take pity on me by coming to my station and match my entire day's total in about five minutes to help me make my quota. (The women in the place were so scary that the Venezuelans were like rock stars there. They didn't speak a lick of English, but could have any woman there they wanted, and did, *shudder.*
My second responsibility was soldering wires, which was better because it didn't involve speed but it was boring as hell.

I mention this experience because this is where I met a 17-year-old prostitute with her jaw wired shut. Her pimp had broken her jaw and then forced her to work in the factory to make money until she healed. I tried to talk her away from the pimp a couple of times but she wasn't having it. Wasn't the smartest hooker in the wire factory, if you know what I mean.

 

Spent one summer during college working for a crazy, crazy old man, who sat in a wheelchair he didn't need and smoked like a fiend, who redid homes in Bloomington. Most of my work was staining doors and shutters, but from time to time I had to take his dog, Puppy, for a walk. Puppy was a full-bore Doberman pinscher. At least I didn't have the duty, as my friend did, to fly to Florida with him and sail his boat.

Had a lot of odd jobs between first journalism layoff and re-entry to the field. One was designing telephone book ads. I guess they don't design themselves. Worked for a couple on their second marriage, with a husband who told us crazy stories about Vietnam, and a wife who was despondent because her daughter was getting married and moving away. When she made me and the other "designer" write an essay on what could make us do our jobs better (we lost a tryout for the coveted Canton book), I wrote, "Stop being a raving lunatic because your daughter moved away." I'm not sure whether I quit or was fired, but I was out the door in a flash after she read that out loud. Of course, I ran out like that every day because the couple played the litest lite rock station in the world, which every day at 10 a.m., played "You've Got a Friend," alternating each day between the James Taylor and Carole King versions. I fucking hate that song.

The strangest, though, was being a copy editor for the Saturday Evening Post. I'm not sure I can discuss its longtime editor, Cory SerVaas, MD, without her siccing her lawyers on me for slander and libel. But any strange story you hear about her is true. I've got a million of 'em, and I ran screaming out of there after four months. At least no one played "You've Got a Friend" there.

 

I nominate this as the funniest should-be cliche ever. Seriously, I'm going to start using it, and if anyone asks any follow-up questions, I'll just act like they're stupid for not knowing.

 

Sirs, Madames,

A few weird ones:

The first was a volunteer position. Recreation director in a minimum-security prison. Did it for semester. More sad than scary. Hopelessly unathletic inmates (non-violent first-offenders, some white collar times, drug cases, some older guys more comfortable inside than on the street).

Another for a summer was strange but mostly boring. Security detail for a recording studio. Eyeballing coke-driven musicians. Not any real famous names, but a few cool guys. Bob Ezrin (sp?), a producer of some great 70s rock. And the guys in the session band that backed up Lou Reed and Alice Cooper (no coke that I could tell with those guys and Prakash John, the bass player, was completely cool). Mostly though Toronto groups that never rose above bar band status.

Doorman in an Irish bar (the Shamrock on Coxwell Avenue). Greek owner and sons waiters. Scottish bartender. Needed Irish content, I guess. One bouncer, capacity 295. Summer beer strike. When I busted my ankle playing roundball and told the owner I couldn't make it for six weeks, he said: "Too bad. I thought you had a future in the business." I didn't the night I had to ask 12 bikers (Satan's Choice) to leave.

YHS, etc

 

Bump. I liked this thread.

More. More.

 

Worked in a seafood restaurant for two years during HS and the summer before college. I was not well liked, mainly because I drove 30 minutes down the road after work to hang out with my magnet school buddies instead of playing with them.
They were the type to say they were too good for college, that only idiots went to one. Instead, they would just spend 40 hours a week installing HVAC and then work four shifts a week at a shitty seafood shop in a small town. Yeah guys, you really are getting one over on the rest of us.

 

Me too, plastics factory summer after high school. Best moment: Fellow worker, stoner I knew from high school, was zipping around in a forklift with the prongs up high (a no-no). He stuck one of them into a huge metal hopper of plastic pellets, making a ridiculous amount of NOISE, booming through the plant. As soon as the bosses looked over, but before they could say shit to him, he slammed the forklift into reverse to pull out the prong.

That's right, all the plastic pellets start gushing onto the plant floor like a freakin' "I Love Lucy" episode. Hopper had to be 20 feet high, 10 feet diameter, and the pellets just kept coming from this hole about six feet from floor. Bosses looked like they were losing their minds.

 

So much for that buzz.

 

in high school i operated heavy equipment at a 1,800-cow dairy farm.

 

The Easter Bunny at an outdoor shopping mall.

It was 110 degrees, the suit weighed around 50 pounds, the head was the size of a Volkswagen, and I passed out.....no one even knew, they just thought the Bunny was stoned.

 

I worked two jobs ... in and around Graceland. One was scooping ice cream and the other was helping out a guy who sold merchandise to the stores there.