I always love when writers — or anybody, really — talks about the jobs they took to get them to where they are now. It’s always such an odd assortment of work. (I shredded documents to hide from the EPA in one job, and in another, found myself working for an advertising agency where all the ad execs looked like porn stars and all their desks and offices were adorned with sex toys — so, uhh, maybe not an advertising agency? I worked for the ICRDA, the International Cash Register Dealers Association, where I crashed a tour van in a parking garage.)
So:
Weirdest job you’ve ever had?
Go.
Jessica Nelson says:
I loaded semi truck trailers, moving freight weighing up to 75 pounds. I am 5 feet tall and weighed 103 pounds at the time.
April 29, 2014 — 8:40 AM
Wm Billiter says:
Mixing livestock feed at a grain elevator… that is, until Frenchy got his arm stuck in the auger of the corn dryer and we had to assist in the on-site amputation… after that little accident I decided to bag groceries at the local IGA…
April 29, 2014 — 8:43 AM
Jeffrey Howe says:
Usher at the Fine Arts, the last porn theater in St. Louis. A local convent owned a part interest for many years, thanks to the original owner’s sense of guilt/humor when it came time to draw up a will. Partway through the job AMC bought out the local chain and tried to change us into an art house, because of the theater’s name. Our first movie under the new management was “Return of the Secaucus Seven”
Boy were our regulars confused.
April 29, 2014 — 8:46 AM
B.E. Sanderson says:
Supervisor for the 1990 City of Marquette Animal Census. Door to door counting pets.
April 29, 2014 — 8:49 AM
cmariebissett says:
Cocktail waitress at a topless bar. 🙂
April 29, 2014 — 8:58 AM
Dot says:
Well this isn’t so weird as it ancient. I was a “runner” at the auctions my grandpa held at his auto salvage yard. Meaning I would physically run the actual paper that my uncle wrote in pencil on the carbon copy paper roll that came out of the metal box, to the office. I can still hear the sound if the pencil on the metal, and smell the paper! Ha it was easy when we started closest to the office building but when u got further away there was no down time between sales. I got paid 2 bucks… Which is borderline….no basically breaking child labor laws. I remember feeling like i was gonna collapse!And I loved every minute. That job made me feel like I was carrying the weight of my entire family on my shoulders…and I delivered.
Keep in mind this was even before the fax machine that BLEW our minds. There was no texting or emailing…this was during the late 80’s. 34 doesn’t feel that old but when I tell that story I feel a million years old.
I almost picked hot dog stand attendant at cedar point. But I’m glad I choose auction runner it brought back good memories:)
April 29, 2014 — 9:15 AM
Beth Bishop says:
I worked at a coal mine, several actually. I was part of the office staff, which meant I spent the 7am to 3pm shift in a trailor working amongst ancient adding machines, old computers, and rusty filing cabinets. I did a lot of number crunching, to make sure the tonnage that left the mines matched what arrived at the washer or rock dump. I talked to truck drivers and told them where to pick up and where to drop off loads. I typed barge data into a computer that used Linux. Other than chatting with the truck drivers, it was rather boring. However, I did get to go on a dragline. I walked around inside it, watched giant gears turn and long pistons pump. I got to stand in the cabin with the operator while he worked the bucket. I watched him swing it wide, watched the giant scoop crash and delve into earth, watched it dance and jangle as it swung to dump the contents. There is something incredibly peaceful about a machine so loud and large that you have to wear earplugs to enter it.
April 29, 2014 — 9:37 AM
Sarah says:
Manning various desks at a miniatures gaming convention. For the most part, it’s… no stranger than you would expect of a bunch of gamers – cosplay emergencies, twenty minutes of “let me tell you about my character so you can help me find a mini that suits him/her,” etc.
Nothing, however, will ever top the lady that came up to me, explained how awesome she thought a certain paint line was, and then brought in her ball-jointed doll she’d painted with them to show me. All fine, good, and not unexpected; it was a pretty well-done doll, done up as Qui-gon Jinn. And then she pulled up his shirt and very, very proudly pointed out how she’d even painted his happy trail…
April 29, 2014 — 9:40 AM
freerangers says:
I have had so many bizarre jobs over the years; some of then not fit for a public forum. When I was 16, living in the North of England, I tried my hand at door-to-door sales of aerial photographs of homes. I was paired with a young skally (scallywag) who proceeded to sell 10 in a row with his fast moving patter and slightly aggressive coquettish style of salesmanship. Then it was my turn. I’m not the hard-sell type but tried my best. The first house I tried, the pinafore wearing housewife said no thanks. I asked why not and she took me into the house and showed me a wall with many aerial photos framed proudly.
“The problem with yours love, is that they are 15 years old. This photos got no swimming pool on it.”
I was trying to sell 15 year old photos of peoples homes and the kid I was with was making a packet doing it. I lasted 4 hours.
Other jobs: A quick rundown.
Tarot reader for the Dionne Warrick network in Montana (2 weeks)
Coat boy for an Indian restaurant (3 hours)
Silver service waiter at an estate in England (5 hours)
Leather worker in The Adirondacks (2 days)
Bar man at a squash club (age 14 in the UK) (3 months)
Photo model for teen magazine (occasional in the late 80’s)
These are the printable ones…
April 29, 2014 — 9:53 AM
Sara Crow says:
A few years ago, I worked as an executive assistant at an auto racetrack which had a drag strip (NHRA), road course, and dirt track.
Amusingly, most racetracks (and event venues in general) have a PR policy that requires that no one be declared dead in their facility, which inspired me to start (haven’t finished it yet) a zombie story called “No One Dies at the Racetrack.” I figure with all the inside information I have, I should be able to write something pretty amusing eventually.
April 29, 2014 — 9:55 AM
Kay Camden says:
I had to glue the teeth back into a large shipment of animal skulls. Not sure what kind of animal. Something with horns.
April 29, 2014 — 10:21 AM
terribleminds says:
This is amazing.
April 29, 2014 — 10:53 AM
Marc Cabot says:
Cleaning up after school and on weekends in a meat locker. Ever seen a bloodfall? I have. I’ve made one. Well, it was more of a bloodfount at first, but then it calmed down and turned into a fall.
I was the general gofer as well as doing the really, really icky jobs. “The ash barrels are full. Take ’em and dump ’em in the landfill with the Ranchero.”
“The Ranchero with the 400 cubic inch engine, bald tires, and fuel efficiency measured in gallons per mile? On it.”
Sixteen-year-old me loved that Ranchero, and should not have been allowed within five hundred yards of it.
April 29, 2014 — 10:37 AM
terribleminds says:
Definitely the stuff of storymaking, there.
April 29, 2014 — 10:53 AM
susielindau says:
I raked shag carpeting and ironed boxer shorts for an old lady back when I was about 15 years old. I had to remember not to use too much starch…
April 29, 2014 — 10:39 AM
j. tapeslinger wolf (@jayxwolf) says:
I used to work the night shift at a comics shop in a small town. Not a weird job in and of itself, but there were some clients who made it plenty strange. Like the guy who wandered in half an hour before closing and proceeded to flip through the Diamond Direct Previews catalog and point out every picture which had either (a) a skull or (b) one or more exposed breasts. He then began to rant about his “druid” and how his druid told him, “You shouldn’t put hexes on your exes,” but, he continued, “you can’t help it sometimes!”
April 29, 2014 — 10:45 AM
Christopher Wilde says:
I once helped build the first six feet of an 12-foot animatronic tiger shark so that it could eat Ashley Scott’s leg. Also, if you watch the movie that happens in (Into the Blue), the dead smugglers in the plane have my hands.
April 29, 2014 — 10:47 AM
Christopher Wilde says:
AN 12-FOOT? Jesus.
April 29, 2014 — 10:48 AM
Steve says:
I was briefly the department clerk in a robbery-homicide division in a city in the deep south (Macon, GA). The detectives were to a person great guys, but because this was the south and it’s still 1960 there in some spots, everyone not in the dept. itself assumed I was also a detective. Which was embarrassing when I was working one day with a really excellent woman detective from the crimes against children division, typing up a report on a molestation case, no less, and a patrol officer from another department brought someone in and immediately began addressing me with the clear assumption I was the one in charge. I only left because I had a much better job offer, but I often think of that gig and it influenced me as a writer far more than any other short-term job I ever had.
My favorite kind of weird job I had: late night announcer for two shifts a week at a classical radio station. Even ran into a total Play Misty For Me situation where I had a woman caller who would request Debussy’s Clair de Lune every morning around 4 a.m.
April 29, 2014 — 10:52 AM
Justin says:
Worked at a small marina (gas station for boats) on an island in the Puget Sound after my first year of college. The owner was a drunk and surly chain-smoker. On his best day. I spent most the summer walking to the grocery store to buy him cigars, building him a deck, and driving his crappy Jeep Wagoneer whose only gear was reverse. I miss that job. RIP Barney.
April 29, 2014 — 10:55 AM
nlhartmann says:
A long, long time ago I wrote fortunes for Chinese fortune cookies. I’ll bet you thought it was that Confucius fellow. Actually, the cookies were part of a promotion for a toy company (my actual employer), and that was a great job with or without cookies.
April 29, 2014 — 11:30 AM
Tami Veldura says:
Not a job I held (thank god) but a friend of mine. Correctional Officer for a maximum security prison. Part of training involved how to use mace and a tazer- and not the tame stuff you can get at the store. In order to be properly trained, you also need to be on the receiving end of these items. So one day she goes into work to get maced and a few hours later she gets tazed which is like having capsaicin rubbed in your eyes and then hit in the chest by a bull.
After that they went through a day-long primer on why you shouldn’t have sex with the inmates. She worked there for a year and a half, two people were fired for having sex with the inmates.
April 29, 2014 — 11:37 AM
punkeroo2 says:
I have been a zookeeper in an indoor aviary, a race-horse groom, and lunch lady at my kids’ school. I have worked in a rubber factory inspecting hockey pucks and a candle factory pouring scented candles. But I think the weirdest was retail. I managed a mens wear store for a year. Between irate customers over turning racks and threatening the staff, panic driven men on their way to their own weddings needing tie tying lessons, and macho, all-that-and-a-bag-of-chips, I’m-too-sexy-for-my-shirt guys on the prowl for nightclub wear, it was definitely stranger than I expected.
On the plus side I leaned to sell $99 polyester suits and purple ties to men who never ever wanted to own a suit, and convince them they looked good in them.
April 29, 2014 — 11:44 AM
kamackinnon says:
I worked admin on tour in Europe with a circus for almost three years.
April 29, 2014 — 11:55 AM
Cameron says:
I did voiceover work for the English-language version of Japanese…um, erotic anime. I think my character was an alien octopus nurse or something. I managed okay with the script, but got so uncomfortable when it came time to improvise that I just blushed and stuttered.
April 29, 2014 — 11:58 AM
Heather Greye says:
Cleaning bathrooms on boats that were to be sold.
Checking pr0n sites to see what type of ecommerce tech they used. #notenoughbleachintheworld
April 29, 2014 — 1:03 PM
tracikenworth says:
Security guard for an on-campus theater. I was a short girl who they paired with a huge guy to keep an eye on things, lol.
April 29, 2014 — 1:47 PM
paula65writes says:
I was a personal shopper at Bloomingdales. I did all the legwork for people and then set up a dressing suite for them to try on clothes. The dressing suite always had with coffee, tea, and cookies. Most of my customers were the ladies who lunched and businessmen too busy to buy a shut or pick out a tie. I outfitted a few movies as well: fatal Attraction, The Cotton Club, The Untouchables, to name a few.
Another job I had was as a Hype Dancer at dance club. I was the chick on one of the box-stages throughout the dance floor, dancing to the music. I’d try to get the club goers hyped up and dancing to the music. I also got to keep my clothes on. The pay was lousy but I got into the trendiest clubs for free, danced my ass off, met a lot of famous people, got free drinks all night, and was just a little bit famous in the NYC club circles.
April 29, 2014 — 1:58 PM
paula65writes says:
Buy a suit; not buy a shut. My typing sucks today. Sorry.
April 29, 2014 — 5:37 PM
runner says:
Cleaning test tubes in a pathology lab. First dump out the blood clotted in the tube, or urine, then immerse the tubes in a pan of nice soapy water. Scrub scrub with a bottle type brush. rinse well and turn upside down to dry. After school. No face mask or goggles. Gloves for the hot water, yes, but no thought of possible contamination. Next job was in a research lab dumping quart jars of formalin fixed animal parts into a pit behind some of the buildings. The jars were washed up for reuse. Still a teen. No mask or face shield. Did splash formalin in my eyes once. Nasty.
April 29, 2014 — 2:14 PM
Alyn says:
I’m an apprentice butcher.
April 29, 2014 — 2:17 PM
Malinovka says:
I was a tarot card reader who knew nothing about tarot cards. Luckily I had a Rider-Waite deck with all of those symbolic pictures, and a degree in Bullshit 101 (aka English lit). Also helped that my dear old dad is actually Roma and passed on his dusky hue… stereotypes were good for buisness. Made at least one person cry a night. Best job I ever had.
April 29, 2014 — 2:34 PM
Nat says:
That’s my dream job! Damn.
April 29, 2014 — 5:37 PM
yeyeright says:
Once, I worked for two weeks as an assistant to an elevator repairman, while they hired a new mechanic. On one job we got to ride up and down the shaft on top of the elevator to make sure everything was working OK. That was pretty cool.
April 29, 2014 — 2:48 PM
Sandi (@ultramom) says:
One of the oddest jobs I ever had was writing speeches and promotional material for a local politician who was from the other side of the aisle. Definitely exercised some creative writing skills.
April 29, 2014 — 3:19 PM
Craig Forsyth says:
Setting up glasses for a beer pourer in a German beer garden. This involved putting two one-litre glasses within reach of his left hand so he could grab them and flip them under the beer tap without having to turn it off. Over and over again. All day. Every day. For a summer. After the first week I was apparently making automatic movements in my sleep. It was merciless torture until he mysteriously broke his hand and I was asked to take over.
April 29, 2014 — 3:28 PM
James Ritchie says:
I had a lot of run of the mill manual labor jobs before I started writing. I was also a hunter/trapper in the deep wilderness. Then I did some jobs that other writers make up fiction about. But, to me, the oddest job I had was several months spent guarding a few acres of empty scrub land out in the middle of the desert. It wasn’t fenced in, there were no boundary markings, it looked exactly like the hundreds of thousands of acres surrounding it, it had no buildings on it, and it was forty miles from nowhere. I had to bring water and food for the day, and there were no cell phones then, so I really was cut off.
I was also armed, and told to run any trespasser off, and to be forceful about it, though no one told me how I was supposed to tell when someone crossed onto the land I was guarding. I did get some reading done, and with nothing better to do, I did quite a bit of target practice, and got pretty darned good with a revolver.
In fairness, I did see half a dozen vehicles out there in the distance, and they did look out of place, Sometimes one would stop and sit for half an hour or so, but no one ever came within half a mile of the land I was guarding. I never could get a straight answer on why that land was worth guarding when all the land around it was useless, and often sold for as little as fifty bucks an acre, if you could find anyone foolish enough to buy it.
That was almost forty years ago, and I still wonder why I was paid pretty decent money to guard that bit of scrub desert. Hell, for all I know, someone is still out there guarding it.
April 29, 2014 — 4:04 PM
James Ritchie says:
Oh, I should add, that land was guarded twenty-four seven. I couldn’t leave until my replacement showed up, and they were STRICT about it.
April 29, 2014 — 4:06 PM
Nick Nafpliotis (@NickNafster79) says:
Amusement Park Go-Kart Track Operator.
I never thought it was that weird of an occupation, but people always seemed mildly intrigued by it. It was where I learned how to start hating most of humanity, though.
Probably the best part about the work was when we would take the speed governors off the back of the carts and have demolition derbies on the track. It was a lot of fun, but not very safe.
April 29, 2014 — 5:10 PM
Nat says:
Cashier in a sex shop – sorry, adult toy store. I have dealt with stripper pole emergencies, full-sized silicone dolls (those bitches are heavy), strap-on sniffing customers and so so many teen girls looking for party costumes.
April 29, 2014 — 5:34 PM
Rio says:
I was a belly dancer/fake tarot reader in a Bosnian circus once. From what I’ve read so far, fake tarot card reading is a pretty popular career choice for writers. Not gonna lie, those were some of the best (albeit strangest) years of my life. The circus might not be glamorous (especially in Eastern Europe), but the movies are right about how close everyone is.
April 29, 2014 — 5:41 PM
Raven Blackburn says:
I had to type old records (1940’s) of a mental hospital into a computer database. The paper files were covered in bird shit and stored on this huge, creepy attic. After reading some of those reports I was scared as hell, especially when I had to bring the old files back and get new ones. The lights on the attic weren’t that reliable and tended to flicker and they didn’t cover the whole room, only sections.
Also, I was alone in my office the whole day, staring at white walls, just the cleaning lady there to keep me company now and then (but she was great, we shared the same taste in books. When I am published she is going to get a copy).
I did this for about 3 months and questioned my own sanity after that.
April 29, 2014 — 7:24 PM
thomaspierson says:
I was a caretaker in a cemetery. “500 daily customers, not one uttered complaint.” I spent my days, setting up headstones, leveling sunken graves and doing night patrols every sprint and summer holiday and, of course, on Halloween.
April 29, 2014 — 9:29 PM
Laurie Evans says:
Wow. I love weird work stories, too. Knew these comments would be great.
I never had a weird job. I mostly worked in offices and cubicles. *shudder*
April 29, 2014 — 9:39 PM
Rachel says:
I actually read EVERY comment this time. Incredible.
April 29, 2014 — 10:28 PM
Rachel says:
I mean, the stories are incredible. Should have clarified.
April 29, 2014 — 10:48 PM
Rachel says:
Although I’m a bit late, I feel compelled to add my weird job story. In college, I placed items in boxes on an assembly line. Just stuff like coupons and toiletry samples. Nothing exciting. But I developed a huge crush on my boss and quit the job so that I could date him. What can I say? I was a twenty year old virgin and he was the warehouse manwhore. Hmmm… What a stupid mistake. I should have kept the job.
April 29, 2014 — 10:41 PM
Moonshine Meret says:
My weirdest job ever was selling meat off the back of a pick up. It lasted two days before I quit. Long story short, it was commission sales. We drove around to random people’s houses and knocked on doors to see if they wanted frozen steak from a cooler that had been drilled into the back of a ’95 Toyota Ranger. The driver for my team did very little selling and a little more ‘buying’ than was recommended. After he drove us both over to his dealer’s house to buy some coke on the job, I told him to take me home, and I never went back.
April 29, 2014 — 10:46 PM
terribleminds says:
I’ve had people try to sell me meat out of a van. I… did not buy it. Your job sounds like the job of folks I know who sold speakers out of trucks.
April 30, 2014 — 7:00 AM
incognitiously says:
While interning at a NY late night talk show, I was appointed to drive the band leader’s expensive European car from the garage on one side of Manhattan to the other, and sit and wait in it, engine running, so that he could go straight from the studio at the close of the show to his commute home.
April 29, 2014 — 11:16 PM
Vilda Bond says:
Marilyn Monroe look-a-like for corp entertainment in its Hollywood heyday. ( 1980’s early 90’s)Had to sing her songs, do the voice, patter, and improvise all as Marilyn. As an impersonator, I also did Betty Boop, Carmine Miranda, but Marilyn was and always will be the most in demand. I’ve drafted 7 or 8 chapters of work from those years. Bizarre, tragic, and hilarious….including having Bob Greene of turn my story into a “Cheese Burger’ ( title of collections of his Esquire stuff) Oddly, I feel like I know what how lonely it was to be her…Very alienating gig…after the applause part.
April 29, 2014 — 11:32 PM
brucearthurs says:
Boy, do I feel boring after reading all the posts here.
Lemme see, my jobs over the years: Dishwasher, pizza delivery, stock boy at a fabric store, log cabin varnisher (three coats of polyurethane on a full-sized cabin takes quite a while), then three years in the Army (trained as a photo lab tech, ended up spending most of the enlistment as a company clerk). Post-Army, a year as a legal secretary, then thirty years delivering mail for the Postal Service. Post-retirement from USPS (loved the actual job, finally couldn’t stand the dysfunctional management system that believed treating employees like liars, thieves, and criminals would motivate them to work harder), I’ve worked as a security guard.
I have various stories from every job (bomb threat at the lawyer’s office, etc.), but the jobs themselves were fairly routine.
April 30, 2014 — 4:22 AM
Jeff Xilon says:
It’s not a weird job itself, but I spent a good part of my University time working at a 7-11 and pulled a lot of graveyard shit. The world is quite a different place when you start work at 10pm. I think most writers would probably benefit from spending some time in that world.
Teaching English here in Korea isn’t exactly a “normal” job by most people’s definition, but still not too weird. I did have one strange one fairly weird one though tutoring a kid who’d spent years in America and had come back to Korea to go to an elite high school.
He lived with his uncle who was rich and they’d send one of his company underlings to pick me up and drive me to this big western style house that was gated and sat by itself on this lonely road surrounded by rice fields. This guy wasn’t a professional driver or anything, just the dude who got stuck with an extra errand for the boss.
The house was very largely but strangely empty, like there was a big landing that had nothing but a liquor cabinet all by itself looking small and lonely in a too-large space.
The weirdest part of it though was that the kid had no need to practice English: he was completely fluent. His family here in Korea thought he needed help because he didn’t really talk around them. Turned out he was just felt really shy with these people he’d been sent off to live with. To me he talked up a storm. So I made a nice bit of extra money to get driven to this strange house and chat with this high school kid for an hour or two a couple times a week.
April 30, 2014 — 8:33 AM
ThePerfectBirdMan says:
I worked for a while at a meat packing plant. All day, everyday I had to pack exactly 2 pounds of chicken into bags and the scale I used measured up to the nearest hundredth. Now anytime I go to get meat at the deli, I can’t help but say: “No, that’s NOT actualy half of a pound, your scale is off by a hundredth.” And they always look at me REALLY funny.
April 30, 2014 — 9:37 AM
Rick Claypool says:
probably a toss-up between historical interpreter (I had to dress like a canal boat deckhand circa late 1800’s and operate a restored lock and a canal boat that was pulled by a mule) and resident assistant at various group homes for the developmentally disabled. writing for the Toledo City Paper was awfully weird, too.
April 30, 2014 — 9:42 AM