Article created by: Denis Krotovas
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.
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.
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
Making glockenspiels. I still have that amazing and weird job
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.
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.
I was a Fortune Cookie Writer.
I had a Chinese translator who used to write my quotes in Chinese on the other side.
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 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.
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.
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.
I was the guy who scraped ice smooth on a bobsled track. Weirdly fun job actually
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 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.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
My uncle owns a business and hired me to put stamps on over 10,000 letters. That was tedious and weird. But hey I made $100.
