There are so many possibilities and opportunities for our careers that it’s really hard to just decide in one day what we want to do for the rest of our lives. Thus most of us have to go through many or a couple small jobs or internships to find out what we like to do, what we don’t like, to get some experience or just to earn our own money.
You know the saying that every job is a good job, because no matter how ridiculous it may sound, each of them teaches you something. However, sometimes these jobs may surprise you with their… weirdness. About that, one Reddit user recently posed a question online asking folks to share their weirdest job that they have ever had. So scroll through and enjoy, as they vary from stand-in boyfriend at festivals to professional shoplifter.
More info: Reddit
I used to live down the road from a cabaret club in Japan – like a place where you paid to drink with girls and talk to them, basically. Not overtly sexual but if the cabaret girl was willing it could be. I used to stay up late back then so often bumped into them coming back from work around 2-3am. Some of them were basically my neighbors and I offered some supper once. They rarely ate properly if at all and drank too much at work so they took to the supper with the type of gusto you only get when you’re drunk-peckish.
I guess they liked my cooking. And I was a decent listener I suppose, so they hung around more and more and got guilty about eating too much of my food.
That turned into me getting this weird gig where I got paid to essentially make food for 5-6 cabaret girls per night and let them drink bottled tea and b***h about their clients till they sobered up. Sometimes they puked or had to crash at mine because they were too wasted; if that happened they often paid me a bit more out of embarassment despite me insisting they didn’t have to. Some of them made BANK. 10k to 15k USD per month on average. I was paid like 40 per head so could make 200 per night in cash usually. Did that 2-3 days a week while I was living in Japan. Weird but really not all that bad and supplemented my living costs nicely.
At the end of the day, they just wanted someone to talk to after a long day and homemade food to come back to.
I was a stand-in boyfriend for girls to take home during festival periods. Just so the girl don’t have to deal with the parents / grandparents grilling them for being single / leftover woman.
Was a fun gig, I got free food, meet some nice and interesting people. Stopped now that I’m married but my wife still wants to [sell] me out for that extra $ LOL
One of my friend’s aunt works as a professional shoplifter 😀
Her work is to go into shops and try to shoplift. Later they analyize the act and discuss it with management how to avoid it, what training could the employees go through or what security systems could help them prevent.
When studying a year abroad in China, I was paid to attend a conference on petrol/chemical developments to make it look more international. Basically listened two days to stuff I did not understand in a cheap suit in a random Chinese industrial city.
Underwater videographer for a National Geographic documentary shoot on Tiger Sharks.
There were always two of us underwater for the filming. One with the camera and the other one just behind and above with a long aluminium pole with a crossbar on the end. We called it ‘the Defender Pole’.
If any shark came too close (these were some very large sharks) to the cameraman, you’d give it a gentle boop on the snoot with ‘The Defender Pole’.
Fun times
EDIT: Thanks for all the updoots, comments and interest.
Some further background on the Tiger Shark doco – it was headed by a guy named Greg Marshall, who invented a device called “Crittercam” to attach to wildlife such as sharks, turtles, lions and stuff. He was the Nat Geo producer, and along with the amazing Birgit Buhleier, headed the documentary project.
Monkey Mia in Shark Bay, Western Australia is a very remote beach resort famous for the wild dolphin population which comes in close to the beach most days. The greater Shark Bay area is home to a huge & diverse range of marine life – including a s**tload of sharks of course.
There is a resident group of international scientists who come from all over the world to study there (dolphins, sharks, turtles). One of the PhD candidates was studying Tiger Sharks (Mike Heithaus) and Nat Geo teamed up with him to film his research as part of the documentary storyline – including putting Crittercams on the dorsal fins of the sharks to see what they did in their natural habitat. The sharks would be temporarily caught on static lines, then measured, blood samples taken etc – and then the Cam would be temporarily attached to the fin.
A lot of our filming work was to be underwater during the catch and release stage – Ian Kellett (the Head Cinematographer and great friend from then on) & myself, one of us filming, the other on Boop Snoot duties with The Defender Pole as the shark swam away. The Crittercam would automatically release after some hours, we would retrieve the device and they would study the footage. It was fascinating af
Took a job mowing grass at the town graveyard.
I was 20 at the time.
Oddly enough certain parts of the graveyard had a….weight or feeling – some parts felt light, welcoming and peaceful; other areas felt dark, depressing and heavy. I remember not liking to mow certain areas or tombstones.
It was definitely an interesting job and one I’m glad I experienced.
I once asked a guy what he did for work and he told me he ‘drove a granny stripper’. I assumed this was slang for some road building or agricultural machinery, but nope… He was the driver for a 70 year old stripper.
I worked as Night Auditor in a hotel. Was getting ready to put out breakfast around 4am one morning and had a windex spray bottle in one hand and a small towel in the other, for cleaning the sneeze guards. Someone came down the stairs behind me and said “Excuse me?” When I turned around there was a large man a few steps away moving toward me without a stitch of clothes on. I instinctively raised the windex bottle and towel like a gun and shield. As if that was going to do anything. He put his hand up as if to signal “don’t shoot”. I laughed and he laughed. He said he was locked out of his room because he forgot his key. I asked him if he had a piece of ID on him. Of course, I could see he didn’t… Somehow we managed to wake someone up in his room who could vouch for him. Surprisingly enough, it turned out rather innocent. Of course intoxicants were involved. Best part is my manager gave me security video from that night so I have a VHS of the whole thing.
I used to work for the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, Weights and Measures Division— I was in charge of making sure all rulers were exactly 12 inches long.
I was 14-15 and a the mom of a friend was a cook in a diplomatic residence. She told me that they were looking for a responsible guy to be a valet. Since it was about to be new year’s eve I assumed it was just for the party and showed up. Hired on the spot and went to work. All went well and in the morning the head of the staff told me that I had January 1st free, but I was expected the next day at 6AM and that they would have a new uniform for me. I realized then it was not a one time gig, and kept my mouth shut because the money was good.
I did wonder how many cars would enter everyday to a residence that they needed a fulltime valet. The answer was two. At most. It was the most boring job ever. I even offered to help around the house or the garden and I was immediately and drastically reprimanded by the head of staff, which left me confused at the moment. I later realized it was because all the staff had just the one job with one task and they were also making bank, so they wanted to preserve the status quo.
Worked on a public health research project going out to bars and clubs at 1am, chatting to the patrons and asking to do saliva [substance] tests and breath tests. When people realised I wasn’t a cop they’d get all their friends to join in and see who could get the “highest score” on the breathalyser. Had a lot of people swear at me, and quite a few hit on me. Was super weird, but heaps of fun.
As a teen I counted the coins in kiddy rides and public phones. No machine to help me, just a 15 year old lugging around sacks of coins and then counting them by hand in a spare office.
I was also a mascot in various animal costumes at shopping centres and sporting events.
And I would sometimes work as the mascot minder – your job is to stop kids from kicking the mascot in the groin or ripping off the costume head. You learn to spot the evil kids and cut them off at the pass, intercept the blow and apply a painful (but non obvious) grip to convince them to bugger off.
I was the shop hand at a smalltime auto body shop for the better part of last year. The boss just had me do his errands when there was nothing for me to do around the shop.
I’d drive into the city and pick up his prescriptions. Pick up his booze, misc groceries, water softener, stuff like that. He got me to clean his BBQ once. Pull weeds from his man made beach which surrounded a pond he had that he had on his property. Cut his grass. The guy was loaded and he paid me well for what he had me doing. But it was just such a funny job, my boss was quite the character too. Just an old drunk, but a sweetheart.
Edit: also I think the reason he got me to do all this running around for him was because he would drink all day in the office. He would try to hide it but we all knew.
I used to work on a bar strip in a popular city. I would dress up as a pizza slice, sing songs, beatbox, dance, take pictures, and sell pizza to drunk people. It was awesome.
I worked for a very wealthy guy for several months in my 20s. Five times a week I showed up at the office that was set up just for me to use, sometimes went out with him to try new restaurants, worked on his new ventures, went to auctions, amusement parks, did random things he had in his mind that day. He usually carried stases of cash, probably at least 30-50k worth, for him to spend on that evening for entertainment, like hanging out with beautiful women.
I think he kept me around to kill his boredom and loneliness but mainly because I never cared for his money and was able to hold intelligent conversations. He was a classy guy in his 60s and treated me with respect. I left because I decided to go back to school but my mom who introduced me to this guy kept in touch for a while.
I worked in a place that made prescription orthopedic insoles.
You would get plaster molds of feet from the doctor, clean them up, and then mold an insole for the patient.
I mostly did finishing stuff and cleanup. Entry level stuff.
The craziest part was that the molds were considered medical records, so you had to keep them on hand for six months. So we just had shelves and shelves of plaster feet molds, and every day you would go to the shelf from six months and a day old and throw away a bunch of feet.
I once got paid to give out free samples of coffee at a gas station. I got there at 5am to be given this huge backpack with a giant container of coffee in it, and it had an air compressed nozzle that I would use to spray coffee into sample size cups.
I was told to approach anyone pumping gas and give them one and it was a disaster. The air pressure was too much so the coffee would blast out every time and get all over my clothes. I kept burning myself as a result. It was a heatwave so no one really wanted them anyways and people laughed in my face. Multiple people also told me I should have gone to college, which I was. This was just part of a summer job before my senior year.
It was humiliating and I never went back.
I was once a mall Santa. The problem is I am 5’4 and at the time weighed around 135 lbs so they had to stack a bunch of extra pillows. Someone I work with took a picture and I brought it home for my mom who puts it up on the fridge every year for Christmas…she says I look like Santa with advanced stage colon cancer.
I spent the summer of 2005 working a night shift as a writer/editor on the tv series Big Brother.
Very strange. I felt like Ed Harris in the Truman Show. But the best thing was, we were all at desks on the big sound stage at Elstree Studios, where films like Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark were made.
Under my desk in yellow chalk, it said GOTHAM CITY WEST as they’d just finished filming a Batman film there.
Worked as a private engineer to a rich family in Portugal. I maintained they’re mansion and two super yachts. They paid me good money but after years of being woken up in the night to change their bedroom AC up or down one degree I felt like more of a slave than a highly trained engineer so I quit and now work as a Hydraulic engineer in the super yacht industry.
I’m going to spin ‘weird’ here a bit.
The summer before my last year of college I worked at a moving company in a southern city where my two crew members were Julio and Sanchez. They always spoke Spanish to each other but once they saw I could pull my weight they would start including me in their conversations.
Man! Those summers got up to the high 90s and we were moving some heavy s**t, I mean like grand pianos up two stories. Julio and Sanchez were my guardians that summer and they were making $7.25 an hour…
Before that summer I was stressed about finishing my degree and getting a job – I felt like I had a new lease on life after that experience. I finished my degree and found a job after going through that.
I’m not saying everyone needs that kick in the butt, but it worked for me.
I posed nude for a photographer lady a few times. I felt pretty awkward, but hey, 100 euros is 100 euros. I needed the money, badly
In Canada when I was a teenager in the 90’s I worked for TransCanada Pipelines for a summer job. It was mostly cleaning stuff and shadowing permanent workers with any help they needed, but for a month during the summer 10 of us student and a permanent employee went out to walk the lines in eastern Ontario.
We split in 3 teams of three and we were basically walking over the pipelines with a sniffer to detect leaks. In a team we had one of us in front receiving a magnetic field from the pipelines, followed by another operating the sniffer and lastly someone sending the magnetic pulse so the first one could know where to walk.
Pipelines run 3 wide in this area hence why we had such a big team. We were very well payed and our work was totally useless as any leaks would be detected by the helicopter that runs the length of the pipelines every week. Vegetation would quickly die around a leak and it would be obvious, but because the company’s insurance got a huge rebate if we walked the lines every summer, it was better for the company to pay us than to have an increase in the insurance policies.
I worked there 2 summers, best tan I ever had.
TL,DR: I worked as a line walker for a pipeline company. Totally useless aside from lowering insurance policies.
When I was a teenager, I got a summer job working at a local “root and herb” production facility. My job was literally just dumping giant sacks of medicinal leaves, usually sassafras, into a giant industrial grinders, then shoveling the powder into a different sack to be sold to overseas markets. The thing was, we’d often have to mix in like anywhere from 20% to 40% filler material, usually some useless plant material, to make more profit because “the Chinese buyers will be none the wiser.” The kicker is, the person that owned the business that did blatantly shady practices was also the mayor of the small town. Go figure.
I once worked for a Seattle cellular startup that installed cell phones in the seat backs of American Airlines planes (this was back when they would not let you use your own). My job was to follow with a plane testing the phones, logging issues, educate flight crew on how they worked and giving free calls to passengers to promote the phones. I would fly all around the world in first class 3-4 days a week.
As a student I worked as an personal assistant for a guy in a wheelchair. He grew his own [substances], so part of my job was watering his plants and sometimes I helped harvesting and bag them…
Internship at a sex shop….
Don’t ask me how but my school managed to find a spot in the financial sector at a sex shop.
I kid you not, the lady was the only person working there and she had 4 interns managing the whole business whilst she was maybe a few hours each week at the shop.
At one point she even said f**k it, you guys are managing the shop as well.
We had no idea wtf we were supposed to do.
One time a customer came in and asked us if we could sell some [substances].
We said we don’t sell that here, he went away and we called our boss explaining what happened.
She yelled at us through the phone for not selling him [substances] because apparently she sold [substances].
Note that [substances] are allowed in our country but only to be sold at verified stores.
After that (this was like 1.5/2months into the intern ship and we were supposed to be there for 9 months) we were all like hell no, we ain’t getting paid so we won’t deal with this s**t.
She was unstable as f**k shouting at us if we did something wrong if she was at the office/shop so we left a note on the door that is was closed, locked the door, inform our school and left the f**k out of there.
Got called in to do repair work occasionally on a fish farm, dived down to the nets (18m deep about 10m diameter) and came up in a circle fixing holes in the net, the holes were caused by sharks trying to get in. The nets were full of metre long fish (barramundi) which constantly bumped into me. Then all the fish got some sort of disease and their scales started rotting so basically the entire stock died. They called myself and afew colleagues in to come and remove all the dead fish. The nets with all the dead fish were too heavy to be pulled up so we had to go down and scoop dead fish into nets which were then raised by a crane and dumped on a barge. The fish bones went through the wetsuit like hypodermic needles and I stunk like all hell for a fortnight. We scooped like half the fish into smaller nets reducing the weight until they could lift the whole big net out the water. Took us two weeks and I think it was something ridiculous like 20 tonnes or more of fish. But for 200 dollars a day for a fortnight, worth it.
I used to work for a humane society like organization…but only for cats…and they would raise most of their money by putting on plays…I would drive around and pickup the money for said plays. It was called “Cats Second Chance”
Oddly enough I also worked at a youth detention center as..idk a Narc? Lol I sat in my car with a walkie talkie and was to alert security if there was an escapee…however could do nothing to stop said escapee bc we were sub contracted lol…So I’d be like “Ya Tony we got a runner in sector 3…Good luck.” The kids used to pretend to shoot me with fake guns and throw fake grenades at my car.
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