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.

From 15-18 I worked at a glorious dog daycare in a huge air conditioned building. With so many dogs

I worked for them 21 years ago, and they're still thriving. I see employees around town wearing the shirts

Pay me to pet dogs? How could you say no.

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.

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!

My dad told me of this one time he went to my mom's work Christmas party, (she was a banker). As the bankers talked shop and tried to sound impressive, the spouses grew bored and talked among themselves. The guy who drew the biggest crowd was this man who worked at a toilet factory and he did quality control. His job was to flush toilet paper and simulated p**p down the toilet. The people at the party, (especially the men) were riveted by his descriptions and peppered him with questions while all these upper management bankers looked on with irritation.

I used to digitize my local newspaper's old photo negatives for the local archives. I got to see the most amazing snapshots of everyday life, and how my hometown lived through and reacted to major world events, such as the world wars and the rise of technology and innovation.

It was a great job and I got to bring the pup to work.

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 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.

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’m an assistant curator in numismatics. Basically I manage our museum’s collection of ancient coins. It’s a small museum (which explains why I even have this job as I’m not a professional numismatist) but we have a pretty sizeable collection of mostly Roman coins. But we also have Greek, Hellenistic, Byzantine, Medieval European, Chinese, Islamic, and Crusader Kingdom coins.


I catalogue coins, appraise them, do any research that is required and help incorporate coins into our exhibits. I also do educational outreach so I hold workshops for our volunteers and the public. I work with professors in the history and archaeology departments of the university we’re attached to in order to help them incorporate numismatics into their curricula.


Edit: forgot to add how I got this job. Basically I came to university and decided to volunteer with the museum because I like history. I did tech support for the first year and then the director asked me if I would like to train in numismatics. I said sure. Five years later here I am managing the collection. Full time in the summer and part time during the academic year.

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 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’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 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.

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 design water parks.

I went to college for Graphic Design and Advertising. In my last year I had to do an internship, so I took one at an aquatic engineering firm to help organize photos. 10 years later I am a project manager and create resort deck and water park programs.

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.

Not weird but pretty rare. I'm a professional winemaker. How I got it: I have a university degree in winemaking (Viticulture & Enology from University of California Davis), worked many harvests, now I run my own winery. It's my dream job and I made it happen!

I used to be a hand model.

Apparently I have really really good looking hands. Although they look completely normal to me.

People were always asking me how I got into it so it was fun to b******t people I was “discovered” on the street, now I moisturise 15 times a day and sleep with my hands in plastic bags....

The money was great but I’d have to spend long days on set being careful not to wreck my manicure. (Which they paid for of course! Also paid for the time it took to get the manicure)

Mostly did tv commercials

Now I tell people at parties I’m a retired international hand model but gave up showbusiness for the much more worthwhile and rewarding career of teaching kids to read....