Odd Jobs You Have Had

[crokett]

When I was younger I worked as a diesel fitter.


I worked in a women's unmentionables factory on the production line. My job was to hold them up before packaging and if they were ok I'd say "Dese'll fit 'er!"

[gsmittle]

I worked in a pesticide factory for two days. My job was to stand just after the capping machine and bop the caps with a rubber mallet to seat them. Every so often the machine would put a cap down on the spray nozzle and I'd get a face full of Black Flag bug spray.

I also worked as a disco teacher. You know: "Dis go here, dis go there..."

g.

[dbhost]

I worked picking strawberries in the summer in the fields just down the street from Hewlett Packard's Corvallis, Oregon plant.

I ran a hay bale compactor. We had a mixture of hay / alfalfa that was baled up, and compressed to about 1/4 the size of a normal bale, then stuck in shipping containers. My boss told me they were selling this stuff to Japan or something like that...

And worked as a hunting guide during duck season... Paddling lazy businessmen in an Old Town 17 canoe while they drank beer and watched for ducks..

THEN I went to college and worked some weird jobs...

[WLee]

You know those little red things in the spanish olives that you buy? (Pimentos, which are actually slices of a pepper). Well for a (very) short period of time, I used to put those in there... (ironic really because when I was a kid I always used to pluck them out before eating the olive).

I think that qualifies as my "oddest" job ever.

Also, for a week one summer in my late teens I helped pick cabbage for a local farmer; couldn't eat coleslaw (much less sauerkraut) for nearly a decade after that -- the memory of the "stink" of the cabbage that got into your clothes and even skin.

[Tom Slick]

I used to work at a deli/liquor store/gas station. The store had a small grease trap that I was tasked with cleaning every week (Sundays). Its top was about 1' below ground level so once you mucked most of the grease out with a large cup on a stick you had to lay down on the ground and scoop the rest out by hand with a large cup. Imagine rancid oil/fat/food on a nice 110* summer day. It smelled like puke.

I've also "suckered" peach trees and repaired "drippers". not really all that odd if you grow up in an ag area.

I also put up signs for a regional fair. I was given locations by the boss and would go put these big signs (4'x8') up in a field. Come to find out he didn't have permission to put up the signs on these properties and I got stopped by the owners a few times. I was also under age for doing that kind of work but was paid in cash .

[LinuxRandal]

Oddest job I did, sound effects, for a utility video (Nightmare on Elm Creek). One friend was doing a job as a favor to another friend, and was in the restaruant I worked at, and heard a sound he liked. That night, he came back and we figured out and performed all the sounds for the video, (over budget production). I ended up in the credits.

[herb fellows]

Pin boy in a bowling alley at the home for the blind. Actually, my best friends' job, but we heard the stories so many times it seemed as if I did it! A definite 'turn over all the cards' if WHAT'S MY LINE ever comes back!

[jackellis]

I worked as a janitor and a dishwasher the summer after my senior year of high school to earn enough money for my first quarter of college. Worked in the registrar's office posting grade slips and grading tests and homework assignments while at college. Did all sorts of interesting things in a power plant during my co-op work periods like unloading fuel barges and working in a lab testing water samples.

I won't knock being a dishwasher or a janitor (which I do at home on occasion), but those jobs were all the motivation I needed to stick things out and get a degree.

[bigstick509]

I worked in a pickle factory the summer between my junior and senior year in high school.

[RayintheUK]

A "wringer-out" for a one-armed window cleaner.

Ray

[jcjrsmith]

Bouncer in a disco in Cincinnati. Carnival Barker (Carney) guessing Ages-Weights-Birthdays on a scale at an amusement park, Opera company ticket sales, ice-cream seller at Sea World of Ohio.

[BobSch]

I worked in a pickle factory the summer between my junior and senior year in high school.

You didn't get involved with the pickle slicer did you??

[germdoc]

ice-cream seller at Sea World of Ohio.

I didn't know Ohio was on the coast...

I ran the Scrambler at Lake Winnepesaukah in Chattanooga for a summer. Occasionally I'd have to get a bucket of lake water to clean out the seat if a customer "heaved grits" during the ride.

[jhart]

One summer I worked at a Green Giant canning plant. My job was to run the conveyor belt bringing the corn from the outside platform up to the bins where it went down for the workers to husk the ears and get it ready for the canning. Had to run it about every 8-10 minutes during 12 hour shifts. Really boring!!

[pierhogunn]

Country Ham anyone

I worked for an outfit in Boone NC called Goodnight Brothers.

They make country ham, and while I worked there supplied it to Bojangles...

I worked in the shipping dept,

the wierdest / worst job I did regularly was to re-package fat-back

you take something that is hard froze, covered in salt, and nasty, and take it from one container and put it in another smaller box.

The absolute worst job in the plant was working in the chip room. Your job was to take a pile of tumors, scars, and god only knows what that has been cut out of the premium cuts of country ham, make a pile of them on a little styrofoam tray, and then do a little hamouflage with a little bit of good ham chips left over from the stamping and cutting process...

even after working there, I still love the stuff, and on some of the really good pieces, you can still taste the cure on the ham. ( that's the briny-green stuff that they cut off of the ham before sending it to the freezer to be flash frozen so that they can put it into a hydraulic ram to form the loose ham ( boston butt by the way) into a ham-shape piece for the slicer.


If you haven't had country ham, imagine prosciutto but with out all that uppity added to it...

and if you boil it, before frying it in a pan, shame on you