Can't say I've had bizarre or wierd jobs - but I was the cliched admin who was at the boss's wife's beck and call if she needed something.

Most teens when I was that age worked in restaurants or the like - not me, I showed horses for a living.

I typed out handwritten submisions for a Health historical book once - all 389 pages worth! It was a local project on the history of the local health centre. THAT was kinda fun!

Our school travel club catered a wedding to raise money. We also cleaned a feedlot and washed ridiculously high fuel tanks for the same cause.

Correction: that should read stand on guitars.

[ October 22, 2002: Message edited by: flotsom ]

I've shovelled wheat, mud, clay, potash, dung, french fries, roofs, snow (duh!), gravel, sand, steel...all with pinpoint accuracy.

I've been a trained killer in Her Majesty's Service.

I've publicised Fringe Theatre.

I've branded and emasculated poor little doomed cattle....and baled their hay.

I've moiled for oil and natural gas.

I've roofed innumerable buildings.

I've been a pack mule, unloading boxcars and semi-trailers.

I've taught Shakespeare.

I've cleaned carpets and written for newpapers.

I've built tables for McDonaldcorp, banks, MoneyMart and investment brokers (and have not completed my penance).

I've harvested experimental (who knows what genes lurk in these grains?) malting barley and canola for university scholastic researchers and multinational agricorpses.

I've mown lawns and driven garbage trucks.

I had a paper route.

And all my life has been me asking, "Could I find my proper groove, What a deep mark I would make!"

No Tommy...there was a young fellow for whom the nearest village - about 40 minutes away by skiff - had drafted a bylaw stating that he couldn't laugh past eleven p.m. and the owner of the oyster farm license, a very reclusive Vietnamese man who had been an officer in France's Special Forces (Naval Special Boat) - and myself of course. Oh, plus fourteen cats (which I am allergic to) and two viscious pitbulls.

That was actually quite a heavy time and place.
The Natives of Meares Island had previously shot at the boathouse which was completely riddled with holes and loaded with fuel and on which I was living (to avoid the cats) until...well never mind.

Actually, things got ugly* and I missed a great oportunity to sail with the Sea Shepherds Society as Paul Watson is a close friend of OysterFarmer.

Sold by phone: magazine subscriptions, lottery tickets, carpet cleaning, magazine ad space

Waited tables, tended bar

Cashier at: cafeteria, convenience store, deli

Did bookkeeping and taxes for: bar, private club, individual clients, husband's stereo business

Raised funds for Greenpeace, mid-sized theatre, community radio, university, Amnesty Int'l

Taught drama to children and adults

Taught ESL to adults

Taught 'Intro to the Internet' and 'How to Write for Radio'

Wrote: for community paper, for campus paper, broadcast news copy, 'zines, romance novel, fundraising material, smut, editorials, web site reviews

Organized: conferences, fundraising dinners, street parties, awards dinners, concerts, rallies, black tie cocktail parties, lectures, annual picnic, fun fair

First job was a dishwasher in a motel restaurant... Not very interesting. Then I took a job as a deli counter clerk in a small shop. By myself on weekends, from open until closing. It went under.

Got fired while waitressing at an A&W for dumping coffee on a patron (he asked for it, but that's another thread...).

Cleaned house for what passes for upper class in Regina, SK... Discovered that rich people can live like pigs, too.

Worked as a nurse's aide in a nursing home. Can't imagine how I got the job... 18, drama student, hardly qualified.

I was a role-play actor for RCMP Human Relations training, on and off for 8 years -- scenarios ranging from domestic disputes to hostage takings, death notifications, etc. Got to cuss out lots and lots of cops. Big fun!

Made a lot of low-budget local commercials.

Taught improv and acting to models. Also taught drama classes to kids for a while.

Sat as a nude life model.

One of the weirdest -- was managing a touring kids show on seat belts for the Safety Council, a seasonal gig... We traveled the province in a motor home, me and two actors. They cut my funds in the 3rd season, we couldn't afford the second actor, so I became "Larry the Crash Test Dummy".

Worked in customer service for a cable tv company, and was commandeered by the production side one Christmas to be an "elf" in the Santa call-in show with a drunken and libidinous Santa Claus who kept making really inappropriate comments on air... They needed somebody "feisty" to keep him in check and who could adlib easily...

Worked at WCB as a claims adjudicator, which wasn't weird in itself, but it had its moments, like the day I had to track down the cremains of a deceased worker from a fatality claim -- they were stolen from the funeral home by the ex-wife who didn't want his current common-law partner to have them. No, I'm not kidding.

My current job is on the odd side. I go around asking people for money so I can do something I really like to do. Sometimes I even make films.

I've slung fast food,
catalogued control valves,
dishwashed,
demolished a building (with a sledgehammer, not explosive),
shovelled pigeon poop,
ran the lighting for a musical dinner theatre,
jughounded,
measured the damage caused by trawling,
administered a UNIX system,
and then got stuck in the rut I'm still in
(banging rocks and reading wavy lines)

Edited:

I forgot my two worst jobs!

Vacuum cleaner salesman (yes, much self-loathing is involved in any such position)
Shelving distributor (the work was fine, but the warehouse with the shelves was a deathtrap...I feared for my life every day)

[ October 24, 2002: Message edited by: Sarcasmobri ]

quote:

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demolished a building (with a sledgehammer, not explosive),

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Cool.

quote:

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They cut my funds in the 3rd season, we couldn't afford the second actor, so I became
"Larry the Crash Test Dummy".

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I love this.

Zoot - "I'm no dummy, but I played one on TV."

You're much unlike me, as I have always worked like a dummy instead of working as a dummy.

The Okanagan Valley, British Colombia.
For 9 AM I would open a building, sign out musical instruments to a bunch of army cadets and be back by 4 PM to sign them back in.

Documentation writer and programmer for a firm that made printed circuit board design analysis/integration/translation software.

Programmer for a subsidiary of a big multinational, writing and testing parts of a major software development environment for Java.

Programmer for a medium-sized startup company (now on its way to a watery grave) writing personal information assistant software for cell phones and other low-capacity handheld devices.

[do we detect a trend here?]

Research assistant (er, sort of)

And, of course, professional student.

[ October 24, 2002: Message edited by: Mandos ]

quote:

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Off hand I can't think of a worse job than the week I had to give up my cushy floater at the spice plant - in the air-conditioned vanilla extract room (mmmmmm, vanilla) to fill in for a guy who worked on the crushed red-chilli pepper line. It was like getting bear-sprayed all day long. I would go through four, five boxes of Kleenex a day. It was an unworkable situation. I couldn't breath, I couldn't see, snot flying everywhere!

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Vanilla has psychoactive properties. I'm sure of it. The vanilla gig was hands-down the best job in the plant. Imagine going from the heat and dust and deafening roar of a plant full of archaic Dickensian machinery, imagine the soup-crotch - the heat was awful, truly awful...and then being posted to the quiet vanilla extract room.

vanilla