49 People With Jobs So Strange Most People Don’t Know They Exist

I recently started working in a carrot factory. I stand at a conveyor belt as carrots roll past me and pick out all of the mouldy ones. How did end up in this job you ask? I decided to do an arts degree and now have no career prospects.


In all seriousness though, I work with a lot of migrant workers who work extremely hard doing a job they are accused of “coming to this country and stealing”. They are lovely people who take a lot of care while dealing with the food products and they deserve all the respect in the world for continuing to work hard during the pandemic.

Concrete petrographer. I just started this month. I studied geology in college and now my job is to look at concrete using petrographic methods I learned at school and conduct ASTM tests to determine quality of concrete. Very interesting work because concrete is engineered rock and there’s A LOT more to it than you think.

I'll answer for a friend of mine, former college roommate.

He works for a company which makes coin and paper money sorting and counting machines. They pay him to stay home and be on call. He's a happy guy.

I don't know how he got the job, but he's extremely mechanically inclined and pretty inventive. (Though calculus tripped him up and he failed college.) When he was in high school, he mounted a model rocket like a hood ornament on his car, controlled by a button on the dash. Push the button and it fires the rocket.

I am studying conservation and restoration of patrimony. I have entered to tombs with archeologists and I am the one who get the bones out, stabilize them and make them presentable for museums. Also I worked in a church, I had complete access to all the rooms, so there are like hidden halls and basements and it's usual to find skeletons or ancient things in there, the atmosphere is quite creepy, humid and dark.

I work in a lab where I raise moths! I got it by telling my lab partner that I love bugs and he hooked me up.

I was a puppeteer for many years and I actually got that job from an ad in the classifieds. It cracks me up that there is a scene in Being John Malkovich where he tries to find "puppeteer" in the classifieds and fails.

I’m a House Manager for a family of four, basically I’m a female butler. I’ve worked for them for 14 years starting as the kids Nanny, they’re my second family pretty much!
I organise trades people, holidays, birthdays, daily meals, dinner parties, housekeeping, the list goes on..
It’s challenging at times but keeps me on my toes and I enjoy that.

I don’t know if this is obscure, but my boyfriend is a high rise window cleaner. There are only 4 in our city. He loves his job! Sometimes when he is working, I will go to the city to the building he is cleaning and look up at him on the street. So cute.

For 4 years I was a fake priest in Japan. I first worked for a company making 90-100 US dollars for a fifteen minute ceremony. When I found out I could cut out the middleman, I started on my own and started making 200 a wedding. I remember one day I had six weddings back to back and made 1200 in a day. This was huge back when I was living in an English teacher salary in Japan. It was so much fun. The brides were more than often super hot and so were many of the guests. I felt like Jesus but kind of dirty. There was one time when the Japanese family was actually Christian and they freaked me out when they actually started singing along with our hymns. I had to remember not to make the catholic cross gesture cause I was dressed like a protestant. It really threw me off my game. One time I had to read a scripture in Dutch. I told the organizer that I don’t speak Dutch and they told me just to make it up, so I went full Swedish Chef and everyone loved it! It was definitely one of the coolest and easiest money jobs I have ever had. I also got huge discounts and free parking at the hotel I worked at along with free bento lunches each day I worked. 10/10 would do it again!

Mine isn't necessarily weird but how I fell into it was!

Around 10 years ago I was working in the IT industry, I decided to help my dad out one weekend sell hunting gear at a militaria expo (basically antique military gear and army disposal). One of the sellers had a 'vampire k*****g kit'. Knowing very little about antiques at the time I pulled out each piece, checking them over. The story checked out, did some research on my phone throughout the day and found out that it could be a fake in two ways. It could be a kit put together by someone out of antique pieces to make it seem real. And technically even if it was authentic it was a Victorian fake. With the fear of vampires in the late 19 century, con men put together vampire k*****g kits and sold them to rich businessmen visiting Europe.

What stood out to me though was the main reason I bought it. In the middle of the kit was a crucifix with an ivory inlay, that doubled as a god d**n percussion pistol!!!

Long story short I took a chance spent $1000 on it and got persecuted by my father for such a dumb move, I didn't have much in my savings at the same.

I took it to Ripley's Believe It Or Not in Australia and they flew someone out from the US to look at it which was pretty exciting. Within 5 minutes of looking at it they offered me a ridiculous sum of money for what I thought was a large investment to begin with.

While in ways I do regret selling the kit, it allowed me to start a career in the antiques trade. Five years later I moved to the UK to study a degree and now I specialise in rare obscure antiques that have allowed me to travel all around the world sourcing new weird objects!

In the summer I guard and clean the toilet units (not the toilets) for festivals.
I got the job trying to find a cheap way to go to the big festivals and this organisation was looking for volunteers.

So all I have to do is stand in front of the units, make sure the ground stays clean, everyone had toilet paper and clear a block of units so the cleaning team can do their job.

Another part of the job is making sure no one dies or passes out in such an unit. You can't imagen how many drunk (often naked) people we need to get out of these units and escort them to the First Aid.

I work in a clinical lab where I get to play with baby sweat for a bit of my day. We are testing for chloride level. Increased chloride in sweat is one of the diagnostic markers for cystic fibrosis.
I am a clinical laboratory scientist. Not all clinical labs perform this test but I am lucky enough to work at a lab where we do a couple interesting low volume tests.

I cleaned grills for super rich people in Palm Beach. Even got to clean Michael Jordan’s at one point. And it was recommended to me from a friend who was in sobriety with me after I got clean.

My jobs not weird. I’m a welder. But what I do isn’t very common. I build Virginia Class Subamarines.

I'm a potter. Not sure if that fits the bill for weird. I used to be the manager for a museum art school, and began taking classes there years ago. Eventually transitioned into being a full time potter and pottery teacher.

I used to cut pictures of weewees and hohas off packaging of adult toys. All day every day. I got the job by being able to pass a d**g test.

The interview
Boss: can you pass a d**g test
Me: yes
Boss: you sure? Because if you don’t pass I won’t hire you.
Me: I understand
Boss if I pay for your p**s test and you fail I’ll be mad.
Me: I haven’t smoked in like 3 months don’t worry.

I spent a year on a team reclassifying the Duke University Library system from Dewey Decimal to Library of Congress. Had to learn like four different alphabets just to label them properly.

Edit: Holy mother. Didn't think anyone would care, but I can explain a couple of things.

1. Duke University has one of the largest research libraries in the world with millions of books. In addition to the main library, we went through engineering, biology, art and divinity. There was also another main library on East Campus. The whole operation took about 2 years I think. I was there from December 2006 to February 2008 when the project ended.

2. The Dewey Decimal system works perfectly well for small American libraries that cater to an English speaking, Judeo Christian populace. The Library of Congress system is more egalitarian and perhaps more importantly, has unassigned sections for disciplines that have not yet been discovered. Large university libraries and other world class collections are better served by the LoC system.

3. I don't quite remember the number of people on our team, but it was about 15 of us doing the physical labor. We were a company that did contract work for libraries. We mostly labled books, scanned barcodes and reshelved.

4. The reason I learned those alphabets was because we had to meet production and the barcode sheets only used the Latin alphabet. Most of the time the barcodes on the book and the labels matched, but sometimes they didn't or were missing altogether and then you'd have to waste precious time figuring out what was going on. I'd scope ahead when we were about to hit a section in another writing system to make sure I was prepared.

Im diver. When i was 13 i started diving and in the army, i did it, too. So i love my job now as an underwater worker.

I used to do artificial insimination, and embryo transfer on cattle. I got it by being drunk at a party. Coolest job I ever had.

Official court stenographer. I type everything everyone says in court. I was told about it in high school and thought it sounded cool so I went for it. Took 5 1/2 years in college, but I’m nationally certified to type 260 WPM and regularly push above 300 WPM in court.