Comments on: Captain Obvious eavesdrops

By: Kimberly

Kimberly — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:18:58 +0000

My weirdest job was in a box factory. We made the boxes that greeting card sets go in (boxed Christmas cards, or those sets of all-occasion cards). We also made boxes for Tiffany’s, which was the cool part.

I know someone who works at one of those living historical farms. She spends her days in 19th century garb talking to people as if it is still the 19th century.

By: roo

roo — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:43:49 +0000

I may have mentioned this before, but it’s just so perfect I can’t resist bringing it up:

Once, when I was working backstage at the Victoria’s Secret fashion show, I saw that one man had the enviable job of oiling the supermodels.

Love what you do, never work a day in your life.

By: patois

patois — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 15:51:21 +0000

I gots nada.

By: Farmers Wife

Farmers Wife — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 10:09:24 +0000

God I feel so boring now, I would love to be able to say “once, when I was in Switzerland…..”

By: Bon

Bon — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:56:31 +0000

i was a nude artists’ model once, for a year around the end of college. not terribly weird, really. best thing i ever did for the eating disorder and attendant loathing that consumed me during that period. i learned to see that my lumpy bits, through others’ eyes, were not nearly so disgusting as i’d feared.

i also spent a summer making young Japanese girls cry at the Anne of Green Gables museum in PEI. there i was, dressed up as Diana in my puffed sleeves, breaking it to them that Anne was actually a literary character after they’d flown halfway ’round the world to see her. bummer.

By: magpie

magpie — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:43:58 +0000

i’ve led a boring life of non-weird jobs.

By: Gretchen

Gretchen — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:05:22 +0000

Hmm… I pollenated corn for a couple summers. Perfect for a teenager: minimal work that ended with a great tan.

By: Jen

Jen — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:31:05 +0000

I always dreaded it when my parents would ask me about the occupations of guys I was dating. It was always something strange like “underground oil tank tester” or “pheasant butcher” but I think the weirdest one was “steel drum shiner”. He was a roadie for a steel drum band and it was his job to travel around with them and polish them up for each gig!

By: Lady M

Lady M — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 04:44:13 +0000

The weirdest jobs – avocado rustler. vs avocado tracker. In Southern California some year back, it was not unusual for farmers to discover that their avocado groves had been stripped overnight by thieves. The police had special agents that would find where they’d been sold. Apparently, you can tell they are stolen crops because they’ll still have leaves attached, or the size of avocado won’t be the same within the same box.

During high school, I’d console myself on tough days that maybe I could become an agricultural police agent!

By: Leslie

Leslie — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 03:31:23 +0000

I sometimes develop recipes for brand-name cookbooks you’d never buy, and theme recipe magazines you’d never notice (think Smoothies, next to Reader’s Digest and about the same size). Silly, if not weird.
I look to The New Yorker for stories about fascinating and bizarre jobs that would never occur to me otherwise. That’s how I learned about perfume engineers and Alain Robert, that French guy who scales buildings. And, my favorite, the people who determine color palettes for paint companies (and, ultimately, our living rooms).