# Unusual Job Duties **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 22, 2025, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unusual-job-duties/1025046 "2025-11-22T01:43:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2025, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unusual-job-duties/1025046/21 "2025-11-24T22:27:48Z")
> [@Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](#): > > Yup. I think it had something to do with the encoding and size of the video they were showing. “wasn’t reproducing elsewhere” may be too strong a statement - Whoosh. ---
**Author:** ![Paintcharge](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/paintcharge/32/7946_2.png) [@Paintcharge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paintcharge)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2025, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unusual-job-duties/1025046/22 "2025-11-25T00:19:41Z")
I have spent the past few weeks trying to get ping pong balls to fly around like in a lotto machine, but I need a much bigger population of balls. Then they need to be returned to said machine once they fly out. So I’m making an Archimedes screw to pick up ping pong balls. I once met Gonzo the Great on the job. Had to make sure he could fit through the hole in a rock (foam) I had carved. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2025, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unusual-job-duties/1025046/23 "2025-11-25T00:42:30Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Is there any other job with this weird quirk–where you link faces to names, but not the name that normally goes with the face, and you don’t know the correct name for that face, or the correct face for that name? My job for the past 11 years. I do IT support for state government, and I have a lot of customers that come and go. Every person has a login ID that consists of four letters and then a 3 digit number that references our agency within the state (so everyone has the same 3 digit number). So, for a person’s network/login ID, I just need to remember a 4 letter combination. That’s usually derived from some combination of letters from their first and last name, and perhaps a middle initial, chosen by computer algorithm. Though sometimes it just replaces a letter with another random letter to avoid duplications. (As an example, my own ID has a letter that doesn’t appear in my first, middle, or last name, anywhere. It was just the next letter in alphabetical order from what it “should” have been.) Anyway, I deal with spreadsheets and charts and lists of user IDs all day long. They are referenced in trouble tickets I receive. They are used as a person’s email address prefix. They appear **everywhere**. I use them as shorthand for people all the time, because It’s what I can use to quickly look them up in our employee directory and various databases. I inevitably memorize every single person’s user ID (sometimes using a mnemonic to do so, but often just automatically without trying). I will at times, almost like as a party trick, just point to random people in the office and quickly rattle off their user names like Rain Man. But… I will sometimes forget people’s _real_ names. Usually their last names, but sometimes even their first names. It’s kind of embarrassing, but I’ll see them and know exactly who they are from their user ID, but not their actual name. Even worse, is if someone’s user ID happens to be close to a real name, I will call them by that name. (For example, someone whose last name starts with “Daw” and their user ID has those same 3 letters, I start calling them “Dawn” because it’s very close to their user ID, but that’s not at all their real name.) So I would say… I actually _do_ know most of my coworkers’ names. In fact, I probably know more of my coworkers personally than any other person at my work, because as their IT guy I speak to every single person on a regular basis and get to know them. But now and then, I _just_ remember the user IDs of some people I don’t interact with in-person as much as other people, and don’t have a real life name to connect to a face (at least not right away). ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2025, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unusual-job-duties/1025046/24 "2025-11-25T01:17:51Z")
I want your job. ---
**Author:** ![Spiderman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiderman/32/230_2.png) [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2025, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unusual-job-duties/1025046/25 "2025-11-25T12:44:47Z")
> [@Paintcharge](#): > > but I need a much bigger population of balls So your balls aren’t big enough? 😳 ---
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2025, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unusual-job-duties/1025046/26 "2025-11-25T18:26:16Z")
In a short stint in the Insurance industry in IT in the 90s I was assigned the task of integrating our claims system with a central fraud detection service that was used by the industry at the time. Hundreds of insurance companies would send standardized metadata for all of their claims for a day to the service, and they would cross check across all companies and send the hits back. So, if State Farm had a slip-and-fall accident claim from the McDonalds at a certain street corner in Philadelphia, with the injured person named J. Smith, and Allstate handled a “trip” and fall, by “Joan Smyth” at “Micky D’s” at the same street corner, at about the same time, the two claims would be flagged and both claims’ metadata would be sent to both insurance companies for the individual adjusters to handle. The boring part was working through the three-ring binder that I was given with the full protocol and mapping our claims system to the “A” record, “B” record, and so on. The fun part was verifying that the data transfers were working. Every morning at, say, 10am my job would kick off and package up all of our new claims from the previous day and send them to the agency. At around 11am I had another job that would kick off and retrieve the potential-fraud hits from the agency. Today nobody would be allowed to simply read through data like this, with PII all over the place, but back then I looked forward to 11am, where I would get all of the previous day’s hits, and it was fun reading. It wasn’t my job to handle the hits–they were already passed on to our claims adjusters to handle in whatever way they saw fit–but the weird things that happened and obvious fraud attempts sure made for interesting reading. ---
**Author:** ![Humbagger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/db5fbb/32.png) [@Humbagger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Humbagger)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2025, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unusual-job-duties/1025046/27 "2025-11-25T20:12:30Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > But the folks at that site were reproducing? They certainly seemed to be trying very hard, but invariably blew their chances just when their efforts were almost finished… ---
**Author:** ![Treppenwitz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treppenwitz/32/3445_2.png) [@Treppenwitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Treppenwitz)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2025, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unusual-job-duties/1025046/28 "2025-11-25T22:23:53Z")
Here’s a one-off. I used to do medicines licensing in the EU. The contents of an application for a license are defined in law with, broadly speaking, no ifs or buts. One of the required components is an Environmental Impact Assessment - generally speaking, drugs are designed to have pharmacological effects, and often metabolized and unmetabolized drug will enter the environment via waste water, so all of this makes sense. It’s required for every drug license application. People with breathing difficulties are sometimes treated with medical oxygen. Yep, you’re way ahead of me here - medical oxygen does qualify as a drug, and I have written an Environmental Impact Assessment for oxygen. (I’m now wondering if I can find a copy). j ---
**Author:** ![pullin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c57346/32.png) [@pullin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pullin)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2025, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unusual-job-duties/1025046/29 "2025-11-26T13:29:49Z")
I fired a cannon at a Yacht Club. It was small, and used 12 gauge blanks. It was mounted on a boat and triggered via a lanyard, to signal the start (and end) of sailboat races. Let me assure you that no 1%-er MC enforcer or cartel leader could ever match the fury of owners of these wet-assed wasp Winnebagos, when told they were inches shy of winning the race. My co-worker was one of those people who are too stupid to survive without supervision. He was afraid of the noise from the cannon, so kept trying to hold fingers in both ears and fire the damned thing by spinning around rapidly (winding the lanyard around himself). He was finally sacked after these antics caused the cannon to re-aim itself, blowing off a portion of our boat’s bow, and damaging a nearby sailboat. He was astonished, and said he thought “nothing came out” because they were blanks. And if you thought the the aforementioned “Winnebago” owners got furious about losing a race, you should see them after a hole is blown in their sails. I had some good pirate-based comments about “boarding the enemy” in my mind, but decided I was the only one who thought this was hilarious. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2025, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unusual-job-duties/1025046/30 "2025-11-26T14:55:30Z")
> [@pullin](#): > > My co-worker was one of those people who are too stupid to survive without supervision. He was afraid of the noise from the cannon, so kept trying to hold fingers in both ears and fire the damned thing by spinning around rapidly (winding the lanyard around himself). He did know of the existence of foam ear plugs, right? Let’s see… I once had to refill dinosaur drool for a job. Well, sort-of-job. I was working as a volunteer at the local natural history museum for a few weeks, and at the time, they had one of those animatronic dinosaur exhibits. One of the dinos (I don’t remember which one; a predator about the size of a human) had, as part of its mechanics, drool dripping from its jaws. Which, of course, had to be replenished every so often. And which job, of course, fell to the unpaid, untrained volunteer. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2025, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unusual-job-duties/1025046/31 "2025-11-26T18:51:31Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Let’s see… I once had to refill dinosaur drool for a job. I once had to transport a giant foam dinosaur head across town from the repair shop to the concert hall where I was working as a summer intern. (It was part of a costume for the hall’s mascot, who appeared at children’s concerts and so forth.) Trying to flag down a cab that day was no picnic… ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2025, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unusual-job-duties/1025046/32 "2025-12-04T14:51:38Z")
About 40 years ago, I hand painted geomorphic (think geology/soil types) maps. It was oil paint on linen. Incredibly detailed using a tiny brush. One map would take weeks to produce. Something you can now push out on a plotter in a minute. Basically ‘paint by number’ The where sold to geologists, petroleum companies for thousands of dollars. And, they where quite beautiful. It was quite possibly the most boring job I’ve ever had. TPTB understood that and just let us make our own hours ‘Here are the keys to the building kid’. It got me into the mapping business though. Oh man though. There where some twin sisters that worked there. They always worked together at the same time on the same map. And they lived together. THAT was just a little weird. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2025, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unusual-job-duties/1025046/33 "2025-12-04T15:03:49Z")
Also had a job where I ran a log chipper all day. Not the type you see getting hauled around by tree companies. This sucker was huge. Big Caterpillar diesel engine. Logs where first cut to 4-5 feet in length, and then dropped into it with a tractor from above. Sometimes the thing would jamb and you would have to shut it down and climb down into it (I always removed the keys). Not dangerous at all 🤨 ---
**Author:** ![ZonexandScout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zonexandscout/32/544_2.png) [@ZonexandScout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZonexandScout)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2025, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unusual-job-duties/1025046/34 "2025-12-04T15:24:46Z")
In the 80s, I worked PT as a revenue auditor for UPS. When I reported for my late-night shift at the distribution center, I would start climbing all over the belt systems looking at packages. (I was not SUPPOSED to climb on the belts, but it was really the only way to get the work done and everyone else did it.) When I saw a package that looked oversize, I would measure it with my chain and then check to make sure the proper oversize charge had been applied. If not, I would write up a slip to have the shipper billed the additional oversize charge. It may sound kind of silly, but I typically billed several hundred additional dollars every night for just a few hours of work…easily enough to pay my meager temp wages. ---
**Author:** ![mixdenny](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mixdenny/32/2962_2.png) [@mixdenny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mixdenny)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2025, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unusual-job-duties/1025046/35 "2025-12-04T17:45:03Z")
I had to look for a bomb once. We got a call from the guards that someone had phoned in a bomb threat for our wind tunnel (NASA). The guards said they had questioned the caller and, “He didn’t seem to know what he was talking about but look around anyway.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unusual-job-duties/1025046.md?page=1)