What unusual jobs have you had? (And who decides what jobs are unusual?)

Thinking about our upcoming Wear Your Helmet to Work Day. 

Growing up, my parents worked 9-5 office jobs. 

I did a little of that while in school but have also had some other unconventional jobs, never mind working at a car magazine for 30 years.

In junior high, I worked for a bike shop. I was the BMX guy. I know, you’re shocked. 

In high school, I worked at a candy store: Ralph Rotten’s Nut Pound. In addition to selling nuts, candies and dried fruit, I helped the owner with quality control. :)

I also worked in a law office for a few summers: basic paralegal work, finding missing files, handling the mail, getting breakfast for Mr. Serpe. (He’d toss me the keys to his Toranado and a few buck so I could grab something at the Italian bakery.)

While in college, I was the paint room attendant. Wanted to repaint your dorm room? Call me up to coordinate paint and supplies. Had to use an approved color, of course, unless you were willing to repaint before the end of the year.

Hold the cattle in the chute with a pair of nose pliers while they get ear tagged and vaccinated (Spring). Pull the weeds in the field that the cattle didnt want to eat or would hurt the cattle (Summer). Pile up all the dead wood and watch the burn pile all day long (Fall). Keep the hay up near the fence so the cattle could get to it (all year round).

That was my first job not working for family and I learned what I did not want to do for living...

Everything seems normal when you're in the moment, right?

For a while in college I was a nude model for the life-drawing and sculpture classes. There were lots of portraits around campus of me in the buff. I was recognized fairly regularly. 

For a hot minute I was an adventure and rock climbing guide. I still climb, but certainly no longer guide (though I love teaching rope and anchor techniques). 

I spent several years as a teacher in South Korea. 

A number of years ago I took what I thought was going to be a short-term gig doing high rigging -- that is, working on high steel and moving very heavy things. Turns out that I couldn't quite get out of the industry, so now one of the small businesses I run is a specialty rigging house. Just this week we had to move and place a couple 5-ton generators; this involved moving them down a 25% ramp, which was a neat thing. 

Oh, I was also a semi-professional weightlifter for abotu a decade and I still hold a bunch of records and titles. That never paid much, though, so it was not something I could pursue as a sole profession. 

I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up. 

Voiceover talent for phone on-hold messages and in-store advertising, e.g., grocery stores, gas station pump islands. Pay was awesome: $100/hr in the late '90s. Biggest claim to fame? For 6 weeks or so, my voice was heard by countless thousands of diners in hundreds of Burger Kings across the country when they ran a campaign about a new french-fry recipe. Yeah, not really a claim to fame. Most memorable message? An ad for Sextrific, a bullE36 M3 performance enhancer sold at convenience store counters. Runner up was an ad for a colon cleanse at a spa. Not sure who decides if it's an unusual job.

I've done automatic transmission disassembly for a summer while in HS. Next summer I did R&R and built one myself for myself.

Delivered newspaper bundles from the printing facility to your local carrier. Plus did a one day inserter job at another newspaper.

High School: Technically not old enough to work. Wedding catering, paid cash under the table, had to wear a little boy's tuxedo shirt and clip-on bowtie. I got a banquet food shift meal and mall/movie theater money, so it was all cool with me.

College: slinging sandwiches in the on-campus food stand during the week, working the hostess stand for back-to-back double shifts at your standard riverside tourist trap restaurant in Ponce Inlet on the weekends

Immediately after college: Tutoring kids for the SATs and ACTs, substitute teaching, and making about $0.15 a piece stuffing mail at the local direct mail warehouse. Very busy for not very much money.

A little later: Digital marketing "startup" that was sketch as hell and kept moving my paycheck around between parent companies. One year I had like 5 different W-2's to file despite working in the same place the whole time. I left after the CEO told me to calm down and passed me a xanax on the conference table in front of the team I managed.

I mean, my current role of "automotive journalist" is pretty far outside the scope of what I thought I'd be doing at this point in my life.

The only other oddities included working at the college radio station as a DJ (You're listening to WFCF 88.5 Flagler College Radio–Radio with a reason) and working in the office of admissions as a tour guide. The tour guide role paid money, so that was nice.

After college, I worked at a used car dealership (where I learned I'm a terrible sales person) and then stocking shelves at o'dark 30 at a Michaels craft store.

Then, somehow, I ended up here.

not sure if these are unusual, but I used to rebuild (recone and refoam) speakers for a living.  Before that I was a golf caddie at a private club. 
Those were both great jobs. The speaker one was a blast because I also did some service calls and installations. We did lots of the major night clubs, roller rinks, and uh, gentleman's clubs in Detroit and the suburbs.

I was 13 years old and made a 8mm Earthquake Movie at a home builders construction site when they dropped a pile of sand to use for brick mortar.  It was a Saturday and the builders college aged son stopped out with a WTF attitude then asked if my buddy and I wanted a job cleaning out new single family homes under construction.

Two weeks later I turned 14 YO and spent 3-1/2 years cleaning garbage wood, E36 M3 boxes, drywall pieces, cutting lawn at the models.......my buddy stuck around and became a carpenter then started his own construction business.  

In HS I was breeding hedgehogs and selling them to classmates

I was also an indoor rock climbing instructor at my local gym for a year

SAT instructor with Kaplan for a year (big bait & switch with the pay plan there)

Went to car auctions and bought cars for big name dealer groups for a decade

stafford1500 said:

Hold the cattle in the chute with a pair of nose pliers while they get ear tagged and vaccinated (Spring).

Did that for a summer.  Also castration.  That same summer I was a motorcycle cowboy, helping herd from astride my trusty Kawasaki 175.

At the tender age of 17 I was crew chief for a tent rental company.  I was chief because I was the only one on the crew who could hold a valid driver's license.  I could also talk to the snootier clients without freaking them out.

My first summer job was as a painter's assistant at an internationally-known manufacturer of levels.  A few weeks in, the production paint sprayer guy found a better job and quit.  Guess who got promoted?  Yup.  I was their production paint guy, making $3.85/hour.  Dunno what they did come September.  I heard rumors of a fairly high number of units coming back because of bad paint.  LOL. 

I spent a summer during HS working for a golf cart distributor assembling fleet carts. They came in bolted to shipping frames with all the ancillary stuff (top, windscreen, steering wheel, seats, etc.) inside a crate. For gas carts we had to go through prep and initial startup steps, mostly gas and oil. For the electric carts we had to install the batteries and wire them up. I vividly recall losing a box-end wrench by accidentally dropping it in a way that it contacted two adjacent battery poles, completing a circuit of the installed batteries. A big bang, and instant vaporization of one end of the wrench. Scared the crap out of me.

In reply to brandonsmash :

Ha!  I did nude modeling too at one point... but I was in my 50's

I was part of the takeover team for a company that specializes in corporate hostile takeovers of chemical companies. We'd show up wearing dark glasses and flack jackets and have the place locked down within a half hour (to protect trade secrets). The boss came with a huge German shepherd, and at least 1 guy was packing. 
 

They didn't pay me enough...

My best job that was a little unusual was building houses with Habitat for Humanity in several different countries. I was part of the appropriate technology team, which basically meant we worked to build decent housing using locally available materials and techniques. Thatched roofs, waddle and daub, compressed earth bricks, adobe, cast off tires, hay bales, brick arch roofs, dome structures, hand made cement blocks, concrete roofs in hurricane zones, even houses made in the jungle using lumber we made from trees on site using a sawmill we dismantled and carried on foot many miles into the jungle.  All with manual labor (no equipment or power tools)

We did a LOT or really cool projects. 

Parks department gardener/landscaper. summer job

Offshore powerboat  shop and traveling race mechanic, summer job

Doodlebuging in the Nigerian delta. 5 years

Own opearte brewery. 8 years

Robotic assembly line build. 5 years

Cardiac device start-up. 17 years

Retired. Whos counting?

Most of my HS friends worked in food.  I vowed I would never work in food.

Worked at a hobby store that sold models, R/C stuff and skateboards. For maybe a year while in HS. 

Worked three Summers for the township parks and rec as an assistant technical director for the summer musical program (essentially, I was a baby sitter who got to play with tools and build stuff).

Then more "normal" jobs working at auto parts stores. Retail then jobber/retail.  Got to play with machines and a fork lift at the second one. 

Then worked at a comic book store chain for 4 years. That was fun, but pay was terrible. 

Been in the white collar engineering field ever since (28 years).  First designing for supermarkets and then for pharmacuetical manufacturing.  Supermarkets were the closest I got to working in the food industry.  Seeing the back-rooms of different chains can definitely tell you where you want to buy your groceries from. 

Shoveling sheep E36 M3 from a barn. Kind of a crappy job, if you ask me. But it was prior to me being legal to work, but old enough to have a DL. 

Child sex abuse investigator 

Suicide hotline reaponder

Taught custom woodworking to schizophrenics

I was the special effects coordinator for a couple movies. Got to burn stuff down, blow stuff up, all kinds of cool stuff. Every 10 year old boy's dream job!

Flight attendant in the Arctic
Military musician for the Changing of the Guard ceremony in Ottawa (and yes, I wore the big furry hat)
Windsurfing instructor in Canada and Australia
Musical director for the best university marching band in Canada
English teacher in Papua New Guinea

Professional race car driver  :) 

My first job: $1/hr to scrape wallpaper off. Did it for 200 hrs, which exactly matched the cost of  my first motorcycle

Personal chauffeur: Perfect job for a college kid. Take client to the party - get paid to study while drinking the leftover champagne. No tips, but higher base rate to compensate, so I didn't have to kiss ass.

Vocal talent: My voice is somewhat similar to Dick Cavetts so I have no idea how I got this job, but I'm just reassuringly monotone enough that I made a series of relaxation tapes.

Understudy on Carol Channings national tour of Hello Dolly. I wasn't very good, but hanging out with bored and lonely chorus girls didn't suck. 

I worked for a well known psychic/astrologer on her 1-900 line.  Not as a psychic but as quality control.

Proctored SATs, GREs, and AP exams back in the day. Paid pretty well because it was difficult to find reliable people willing to show up early on Saturday mornings.