I can use a pipette bulb with both my right and left hands. It has been useful when I needed to pipette a lot of samples, but a lot of people seem to think it’s a weird and impressive talent of some kind!
I can also draw, replace medium, filter and reconnect a dissolution syringe/canula in under 20 seconds, as long as the draw/replace volume is less than 10mL. VERY useful for profile studies, but it scares some coworkers to see me do these steps so quickly.
I can create long complicated multi-page tables in QuarkXPress.
I know how to construct attractive pyramids of bestsellers for your viewing pleasure.
Finally and most importantly, I know how to attach stickers to books so they can be quickly and easily removed.
I can spell any medical word, even if I’ve never heard it before, just based on it’s root words.
I also have a bad case of editor’s eye.
I can comprehend even the thickest accents without difficulty.
I am awesome at making perfectly round and perfectly browned pancakes.
I’m very good at sharpening knives.
I can trim the fat from any chunk of meat without removing any actual meat.
I am the queen of caulk.
I can drill a hole through a sheet of plain, painted, or polished aluminum without damaging the surface.
I can determine what kind of phlebotomy needle I’d need to draw a person’s blood by staring at the backs of their hands or their arms while waiting in line behind them at the grocery store.
I’m addicted to staring at people’s veins. It’s creepy, I know. 
I always wait for one of them to notice and give me a sort of ‘Stay away from me, you serial-killer’ kind of look.
I fearfully await the day I step in line behind some particularly venously-endowed person and forget myself, exclaiming aloud, “God, I wouldn’t even need a tourniquet!”
I can tell when someone will be dead soon (in about a month). Even when they don’t have a fatal diagnosis.
I also have a stupid job skill I love- I am the fastest freehand face painter in these parts. I have done 600 individual paintings a day, and have been clocked at less than 30 sec to paint a dolphin, from start to glitter and showing the picture in a mirror.
Editor’s eye in three languages. I’m currently acquiring it in French, which I guess means my French is getting to the level of decent-ish at least for reading proficiency.
I can translate from several more languages into Spanish or English. Also, I can translate S-E or E-S much better and faster than most “professional translators” (as mentioned by several “professionals” who had to recheck my work when some of theirs got divested to me and who found it depressing that my translation could have passed for the original and theirs were stilted). But because I don’t have the proper diploma, I can’t get an official job as a translator. I’d love to be able to do translations at home… if they gave me the same schedules as everybody else, given the speed at which I translate and assuming no flu (I’ve got a head cold today and I’m blaming it for all my typos), I’d be able to spend 1 week out of three on vacation.
I keep giving micro-seminars on “how to make your files smaller before you email them”.
I’m a data-cleansing genius. Sadly, there aren’t many jobs where that comes handy. The worst downside though is that sometimes I have to spend more time explaining to morons exactly how I reached my final analysis and why they should trust it than I spent doing the work.
One I absolutely wish I didn’t have: I can use Excel formulas.
But in English.
The company I work for has Excel in Spanish.
And because of the way they do installations nobody knows where the hell the original disks are, so I can’t get it installed in English.
Guess I’ll have to learn to do BUSCARV instead of VLOOKUPS and use ; instead of , but it’s a royal pain.
My coworkers from IT agree that the people who do MS Localizations should get shot, but because shooting is relatively fast, it should be done after having them on top of an anthill for three days.
The shortcuts change too. I’ve found out a place where I can change the ones I use often to be the same and in English, but when I’m in a computer that’s not “mine”, I keep hitting ctrl+b and seeing stuff broken into strange paragraphs instead of bolded.
I think all lab techs might have that - I know that 15 years later, I still notice peoples’ beautiful, huge veins (especially on guys). My husband, the needlephobe, doesn’t particularly like it when I stroke the veins on the inside of his elbow, because he knows that I’m enjoying how big and fat they are. 
You’d love the big fat veins on my arms, then. They love me at the blood center.
All you editor-eyes – you are appreciated by someone like me, who knows what I mean to say and often miss the mistakes that I actually type! So this leads me to my now-useless skill – since I no longer work for a newspaper … I can write a story based on the number of column inches needed.
This was useful back on the olden days, on deadline, when I would race back to the office from a meeting and was told they’d left 9 inches for me to fill. (Geez that sounds dirty )
Anyway, I tried it out the other day, and sure enough I can still do it. I am also pretty speedy on deadline; I could produce said 9 inches in probably about 10 minutes, if that.
Today, with word processors, they tell me I need to write 250 words on something. How long is that? I have no idea. I have to keep doing a word-count.
I was a kennel girl over 20 years ago, and I also had “parvo nose.”
Working in admissions I got really good at remembering details about high schools–and after I’d visited it would just get completely cemented. From Raleigh, North Carolina to Fort Worth, TX–I could remember all kinds of stuff (affiliation, counselor’s name, past students who had applied, what the school looked like). This took years to fade. I guess this wasn’t a stupid skill to have, but it was odd and didn’t translate to other work.
Sadly, I’m reporting on things from prior jobs because I can’t think of any stupid job skill from this particular job. Maybe this: I’m good at office party planning, enough so that my boss just expects I will have put together a game or trivis quiz for every special lunch we have. I can throw together an entertaining trivia game around just about any theme in very short notice.
It’s generally a nice skill to have, but every once in awhile I’d like to play the game instead of running it. The office had a potluck (previously scheduled) that occured the day I got back from my mom’s funeral. And they STILL expected me to have a game (and acted like it was a favor that they let me off the hook).
I can match paint or stain to just about anything, including an aggregate. The contrators at the paint store were amazed that I could match aggregate, but their customers were always happy. I never did tell them that the trick is that you have to be nearsighted. Place the sample at the far end of the workbench, take off your glasses, and voila! The mishmash of colors blurs into a single color that I can match.
I can write backwards - from right to left with the letterforms reversed - quickly and without mistakes. It’s something I picked up as a result of several printmaking projects I did in high school and college. It’s kind of a cool skill to have, but it’s never useful.
I can tell how much postage a letter will need before placing it on the meter scale.
I am a GOD when it comes to removing staples from documents without tearing the paper.
I, too, can make office machines get up and dance. Not that I can dance, mind you.
I also possess the perfect trifold talent.
I am also very good at deciphering English spoken in extremely thick accents. Though with my job that’s not exactly a “stupid” skill.
I am very quickly building a vast mental library of area codes and ZIP codes. Last week I took one look at an address and said, “that doesn’t look like a correct ZIP code for Houston.” I was right. And, no, I don’t work in a post office.
I have lately developed a disturbing tendency to place exactly the right number of sheets into my bubblejet printer to handle the number of print jobs I will be sending to it.
The “PC” in “PC Load Letter” stands for “Paper Cartridge”. So the error message translates to “load more letter-sized sheets into the paper cartridge.”
I can insert foreign and accented characters into Word documents without using Alt+nnnn codes or the Insert menu.
While I’m working the phone shift, the chemical reactions that create within my brain the urge to take a bite of my breakfast simultaneously travel hundreds or even thousands of miles and trigger within the mind of some randomly selected customer the need to call our main number.
I used to write up orders across a counter for a customer. As a result, I can write upside-down and backwards so they can read it rightside-up as I was composing the order.
And that comes in handy in this computer age because… because… uh…
I can remember multiple short strings of numbers for long periods of time.
I know what counties different neighborhoods are in houston.
I know the median house prices for various neighborhoods throughout Texas.
I know which counties in Texas have online CAD’s and which are too dinky and backwards to have made my job easier by having one.
(yes, all of the above were for the same job, those below are from others):
I can still scoop out a perfect 12oz, 16oz, 24oz, and 32oz scoop of ice cream.
I can tell with somewhat certainty whether that “asian antique” is real or not.
Thats about it, most of the other skills I picked up are still somewhat useful.
My stupid job skill is with Google. So I can answer this for you. SAP stands for “Systems, Applications & Products in Data Processing”. It is an (ancient) human resources system made by a German company. (Rumor has it that it is never completely installed anywhere. 
)
I thought I was unique with this one. :eek: Comes from spending childhood counting & sorting coins for my father’s vending machine business.
And my stupid job skill with an even narrower application allows me to say… technically, since about 3 months ago, it doesn’t even stand for this officially 
Along with this, I have an ability to remember (complex) menu paths for obscure customising options and I can look at the contents of a training course and tell you how long it will really take to deliver. Useful exactly nowhere apart from my current job…
It’s not a job skill, but I acquired it at work - a previous job used to involve a lot of travel by car. I learned to identify plants at a distance; crops, weeds, trees, wild flowers.
Hijack for a pet peeve. You know how they say women are all wearing the wrong size bra and should get measured for the right one? How can that help when two different models of bra in the same size fit very very differently?
I can look at your shoes and tell you what size they are. Just american sizes though. I spent my last two years of college working in the shoe department of a Monkey Ward store. I can also lie with a straight face while telling a woman that even though she normally wears a size 6, these particular shoes run about a size and a half small, and she really needs to try the 7 1/2 or her feet will hurt. I can lace a pair of shoes in about 30 seconds.
I can identify by sight, with about 95% accuracy, the diameter and pitch of screw threads, USS, SAE, and metric included. I worked in hardware stores, and MW hardware department for 3 years prior to the shoe gig.
I can mix paint colors at the rate of 3 gallons/minute on one of the old manual mixing machines. I can also identify the slurping sound of a low colorant resivoir in time not to ruin any paint. I also can do two gallons a minute if an idiot manager insists I use the silly assed press gizmo instead of whacking the lid down with a rubber mallet. I can still do 1 gallon/minute when same IM insists that I write formula on each lid. Related to HW gigs above. (shoe gig strongly related to idiot hardware manager)
I can tell you the manufacturer and part number of the op-amp most appropriate for almost any application. Diodes too.
I can avoid making pukey faces when the family of the deceased ask that I play Amazing Disgrace on my pipes.