“They Woke Up Screaming For Six Months”: 50 Messed Up Jobs That Actually Exist

I do hospital removals of the deceased, home removals, transport for the medical examiners office, organ donation, to and from the airport , transports of all kinds, even supply anatomical donated cadavers to numerous universities and many are long distance out of state and I have to physically move these individuals myself in most cases so I see lots of stuff that most people cannot handle. I admit that it does have an effect on my psyche though cuz you can’t unsee the horrible things that we encounter and there’s a very high turnover in staff but somebody has to do it. It’s one of those things that people don’t want to acknowledge even though it’s our reality. We will all one day be laying on that cold steel cooling table awaiting transport to our final destinatin and I can only hope that someone like myself that will give me the dignity that I deserve when that time comes just like I do for those who go before me.

The special agents that review horrific footage of child abuse, CP and other nasty stuff so they can testify in court to put the criminal away.

A family friend works for the military as someone who identifies bodies. As in if a group of soldiers gets blown up or something, all the salvageable body parts get boxed up and sent to her and she matches the hands to arms to torsos etc to make sure each individual can be properly sent home for burial or cremation.

Work in a hospital.  I saw the same lady with the same rolling luggage a number of times over the years and thought it was kind of weird.  Turns out she was the one who took the newborns who didn't survive to funeral homes/morgues.   Now anytime I see rolling luggage at work I wonder if there is a fetus in there.

SANE nurses (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner) see some of the most awful things imaginable in the ED. I'd think it's even difficult for the volunteer victim advocates who are there with the patients through the whole process. It requires special training and a fortitude I don't possess.

Those guys in India that clean sewer clogs by diving into the sewers with zero protective gear and wearing nothing but shorts.

It’s not really messed up or not entirely known of but it’s a job people have the wrong impression of and therefore don’t want: Wastewater treatment plant operator. People think I dive around in and work with sewage all day. No, the purpose of these plants is to take in sewage through pumps and disinfect and sterilize it so it can be released into natural water sources where it is then taken up again by a water intake plant that provides your clean tap water. Cleanliness is actually the primary focus at a site like this.

Fact of the matter is I spend most of my 8 hour shift looking at a monitor to make sure all of our pumps are running, the plant is almost entirely autonomic. My laptop with Netflix and even video games when I feel like it is right next to me. Once maybe twice a week I have to go brush what is 99% algae and dirt from channels with running water. In the last hour and a half of my shift I sweep the offices, take out trash, and use high pressure hoses to spray down our equipment around the plant. And not because it’s necessary, but because our boss wants us to look busy in case the mayor unexpectedly drops by.

Easiest job I’ve ever had, and the topper is I’m a city employee. I have the best benefits imaginable, my city matches my retirement, more time off than I know what to do with, and 2 out of 5 nights I’m at work by myself, 3 out of 5 I’m with one other guy who I get along with so no dealing with constant supervision. I wear company owned and laundered pants and shirts, I get a free pair of work boots once a year, I get raises every 6 months to a year. Never saw myself doing a job like this, but with how things are going it’s a job I wouldn’t give up.

There are companies that specialize in cleaning up horrific crime scenes.

Legally, that is. They're hired after law enforcement has investigated.

In Japan, there is so much loneliness amongst the population that there are companies that let you hire a fake family or a fake spouse for a day. Even rent a girlfriend/boyfriend.

My brother is a last responder, he brings bodies to the medical examiner/funeral homes. Some of the stories he tells make me wonder how that poor kid sleeps at night.

I know two people who work at funeral homes and part of their job is to retrieve the bodies. They both have PTSD and some pretty messed up stories.

I work in a chemical preservation plant in an industrial estate. Right next door is a state run industrial laundry that services several regional hospitals, 2-3 semi loads of laundry in and 2-3 semi loads out every day. They employ two women to go thru all the laundry as it comes in to check for removed limbs, fecal matter, jewelry etc. Not too many day's they don't find something.

They have to check the laundry because it could clog/damage the machines.

I’ve got a friend that processes transports both full cadavers and body parts for medical labs. Like when someone donates their body to science. Not really messed up, someone has to do it but I’ll never forget the day he told my dad he couldn’t stay at our house too long because he had 4 feet in the car. And my dad’s response was, “4 feet of what?”.

My sister had a friend who works in the government. His job is to try and infiltrate fertilizer plants and get to the main control computer. If he makes it all the way to it and it's able to do something that will explode the plant or at least start something that might make it explode he will stop everything just shy of doing it. Then he informs the plant supervisors and Security that they just f****d up really bad. He has succeeded in dozens of plants. Just goes to show how easily an attack could be.

Corrections. A lot of what we do is either hidden from the public or swept under the rug. Day after day I lock human beings in small cells so that I can accurately count them. They share cells with people and have to s**t in front of them. I watch d**g addicts get told by society that if they just stop doing d***s then they'll stop coming to jail, but the jail is the only structure in their life. I go hands on with crazy people only because I need to protect myself and my partner when they get violent even though they don't know any better. I have to feed food that is labeled "not for human consumption" to people. Yes, people know about our job. No, they don't know that we have some of the highest rates of PTSD, s*icide, substance/alcohol abuse, and divorce.

Training cadaver dogs, you have to keep human body parts in a freezer with you and defrost them to do tracking sessions and then refreeze until it’s too deteriorated to use so you turn it in and get a new body part. Could be a nose could be a torso.

In my mother's tribe they cremate their bodies. We usually have a ceremony were we dance and sing all night until the sun rises. After wards we take the body to the cemetery that's in our reservation and we cremate them there. There's a specific person who has to prepare the grave and braches/trees for cremation. He's usually the one who sets fire to the body when cremation starts. Afterwards we watch the body burn. Usually by then people are leaving but he has to wait until the body is fully cremated. He says he can see the head fall off the body and that's when he knows the body is almost done burning. When the fire stops and there's only ash and bone. He buries the remains afterwards. Having a job like that, it's understandable why he suffers with alcohol addiction.

At some beef slaughter houses there is a guy that shoots cows in the head with a pneumatic gun all day as they come to him on a big a*s conveyor. I worked at one and the guy that did it there was killing over 2 thousand cows a day, 5 days a week. 5 days of vacation a year.

Collecting samples for breeders. As in livestock basically help the horses and bulls to later use for in vitro.

My dad works at a waste water treatment plant. Last week he got covered in raw sewage up to his neck.

There's a whole job that's solely decapitating heads of bodies donated to science so plastic surgeons or surgeons can practice on a real person.