I know he was fired from the office 9but he didn’t really work there), but what did he do all day? Did he work or was he disabled? His mother was a cleaning lady, so i doubt he had a trust fund. So what’s the story?
We were never supposed to know. That’s one of the things about his character, it didn’t appear that he ever had a source of income but evidently had enough money to keep up with the lifestyles of a semi-famous comedian and his occasionally out-of-work buddies.
There was the episode where Kramer went to a baseball fantasy camp. George’s respons to that…
“Kramer goes to a fantasy camp. His whole life is a fantasy camp. People should plunk down two-thousand dollars to live like him for a week. Do nothing, fall ass-backwards into money, mooch food off your neighbors, and have sex without dating. That’s a fantasy camp!”
I suppose the initial stages of marketing the “Bro” doesn’t count. Or “The Executive” either? But he did work at that bagel shop (after the 10 year strike?).
In one episode it was revealed that Kramer was a bagle shop worker whose union had been on strike for years.
Besides the bagel shop, he modeled men’s underware, sold a coffee table book, won a bunch of money at the racetrack (not a job, but income) was a screenwriter, acted out different diseases for medical students… that’s the ones I can recall right off…
He was also a department store Santa.
He actually had a few jobs:
[ul]
[li]Actor (appearing in a Murphy Brown epi)[/li][li]Author (Coffee Table Book and ghost-writing Peterman’s memoirs)[/li][li]Golf pro (Stan The Caddy was getting him ready)[/li][li]Do-it-yourself pizzeria impressario (with Poppy - thiss didn’t get off the ground either)[/li][li]CEO and tour guide of the Peterman Reality Bus Tour[/li][li]CEO of Kramerica Industries[/li][li]the aforementioned bagel making job[/li][li]Fake dermatologist for Kruger[/li][/ul]
In the strictest sense, I guess only the bagelmaking, acting, and Peterman stuff count as real jobs…
Don’t forget the free lifetime coffee!
“These pretzels are making me thirsty!”
One of my favorite Seinfeld moments involves George asking Kramer, as they stand in line at the liquor store, how it is that Kramer manages life when he never has any cash on his person.
“Oh,” says Kramer, as George pays for the bottle, “I get by.”
We found out that Kramer was on strike from the his job at the bagel shop for most of the run of the show. From Wikipedia:
Wasn’t he employed as an acting “stand-in” once? Together with a vertically-challenged friend?
He’s also an inventor, having come up with the aforementioned “Bro” and the rubber bladder so oil wouldn’t spill out of tankers (Darren, Kramer’s intern from NYU, helped him with that). Maybe he just collects money here and there from patents.
Kramer also free-lanced as a dog kidnapper although I don’t think he did it for money.
Kramer and Mickey had jobs as actors portraying diseased people so medical students could try to diagnose them. Jaundice and gonorrhea come to mind, “Hey, I gave you gonorrhea!”.
They were also actors stand-ins for some soap opera, Kramer as the father, Mickey as the 10 year old. Mickey had to start “heightening” due to the child actor’s growth spurt, resulting in his being ostracized by the height challenged community.
Yep, I forgot that gig…
Kramer also had various one-off ventures, such as selling old vinyl records to a music shop.
And vintage raincoats
I was under the impression that Kramer actually made a pretty good score from his coffee table book and was able to live off of that for a few years.