Digglebop I think you want the companion thread.
I was hired at a gold mine to patrol the perimeter of a pond (filled with cyanide-laced water) and shoot at ducks, crows and other birds that landed on the water with an air-rifle to frighten them away. The mine got steep fines for each animal that died from cyanide poisoning so they tried all kinds of crazy stuff to keep the birds and other animals away, including blasting heavy metal music 24/7 (the birds seemed to like it after a couple of days), streamers of colorful flags like car lots use, and the air rifle method.
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately…) for me, someone finally figured out that floating a couple of inflatable alligator-shaped pool toys kept the birds away best, so I never got to use the air rifle. Instead, I got to work with two other summer hires to do various jobs like paint buildings (inside and out), pull weeds, wash the management team’s trucks, help the janitors, work on the survey and blasting crews, and help office staff with filing.
The weirdest thing we had to do that summer was re-lettering signs. Apparently, the company bought a bunch of signs (with driving instructions on them…green with reflective letters…like exit signs on the freeway) that were not up to some OSHA standard of reflectiveness or something. Enter three lowly summer-hires with a case of reflective tape (that met the standard) and exacto-knives. We drove around in a crummy truck and climbed up onto the flatbed to tape over and cut out the letters on each sign.
I’m one of the few people in the world who ever had a full-time job doing kerning (the horizontal adjustment of characters in a font) . . . for every font that existed at that time (literally thousands and thousands).
And back in college, I had a job in a die-casting plant, making the bases for bronzed baby shoes.
Well, I watch birds for a living.
I’ve also worked as a botanical artist in Madagascar.
I had a job one summer that consisted of collecting grass samples with a pair of scissors all across Wyoming and Montana.
I used to work as an exhibition developer in Washington DC. I like to tell people I used to be an exhibitionist at the Mall, and got paid for it.
I also had a temporary job as a quality-control inspector in the Ball Computer factory. I like to tell people I was a Ball Inspector.