Said it before but my favorite and least favorite was a few months I spent as a honeydipper. Septic tanks and 90+ heat made for an interesting combination.
Unique would probably be developing mascot costumes and backstories for different places and organizations. I did the one for our state Ducks Unlimited and I’ve done a couple amusement parks. And in case you were wondering, no – I’m not a furry. But I have been to a couple of the conventions trolling for ideas.
I was a submarine junior officer. That’s not terribly unusual (in the Navy, at least), but there were a couple of unusual jobs I had while serving: first, Senior Supervisory Watch for nuclear reactor plant testing after an upgrade to the control system – a small team of reactor technicians goes through a digital simulation of all the possible actions of the new reactor control system, and I watch it. That’s pretty much it – I watch it and make sure everything goes correctly. I don’t give any orders unless something goes wrong, for the most part. It was incredibly boring – it was so intricate that we couldn’t talk or, but still rote enough that it was not interesting at all.
My other slightly unusual job was similar – Navigation Supervisor. This one was at sea (the other was in a maintenance facility) – while testing various whole-boat capabilities after an overhaul, I watch the QMOW (quartermaster of the watch, who plots our position on nautical charts) and make sure we’re staying within the testing area without going deep enough to risk grounding.
This was far less boring, since we’re actually moving around, but it was exhausting, since we only had two qualified Navigation Supervisors available – me and the Assistant Navigator (ANAV), so we swapped 9 hour shifts (called “port and starboard” watches). Typically for one 9 hour off period I would be so tired I’d sleep the entire time, and for the other I wouldn’t be able to sleep and I’d maybe eat a single meal. I lost about 20 lbs in 2 or 3 weeks.
I got incredibly lucky when I was offered a full-time job running chess at a private school.
I had a decent budget and freedom to run things how I wanted. My brief was simply “make us well-known for our chess achievements.”
After I got started, I was told that all teaching staff should help by running a couple of Activities each week. (This was a boarding school, so we needed to offer pupils such things.)
I was told “pick something you’re interested in”, so I chose:
So for 27 years I was paid to play chess, computer games and roleplaying. 
I did all right - we won the National Schools Chess Championship, the World U-18 Chess Championship and the National Schools Roleplaying Championship. I got Kasparov to visit the School three times and appeared on the Derren Brown TV show as part of a chess thing.
Great stuff. There’s nothing like the Alaska (true) wilderness to make you realize how vulnerable you really are as a human.
One of my most interesting (to me) jobs was flying out to Alaska’s remote radar sites as a facility manager. Other than the facilities themselves, there was literally nothing in the way of ‘civilization’ anywhere nearby. The coastal sites were like standing on the edge of the planet, with storm winds routinely exceeding 100 knots, and rime ice a foot thick.
Pyro-Technician assistant. Fancy term for “guy who helps the guy lighting the big-ass fireworks”
I don’t think you can find a large fireworks display that isn’t triggered/ignited via electronics anymore but years ago it was done by a guy holding a flare, touching it off to a mortar.
We had banks of mortars that we would have to reload during the display and then launch. The mortar lighter was a short guy wearing a flannel shirt in 90 degree weather who would crouch down and light the fuse. The mortar shot would send a small shower of sparks around the perimeter of the mortar base and our pyro guy would get covered in sparks.
My job was to follow him around crouched down and use a bug sprayer filled with water to spray down his back if he took some sparks. I would also spray down around the base to put out any ground embers I could find.
It was loads of fun. I thought that being at ground zero for a firework launch would be cool because the displays would go off right over our heads (actually angled out over a “no people” zone)but the best part was feeling the ground shake when the mortars launched. Kind of like feeling the bass during loud music the launch thump was quite addicting.
Hey iiandyiiii, glad to see another nuke about…
Usually when telling people about unusual jobs, the time as a nuke ELT on the Nimitz comes to mind.
But that really wasn’t my favorite or most enjoyable, or most unique job (IMHO).
I spent three years as a projectionist at a nine-theater cineplex: running all nine projectors; maintaining the machines; assembling the new movies from the 6 twenty-minute reals into the single large platter; breaking down the old movies from the platter back into the original six reels, reattaching the heads and tails and packing them up to go; putting on trailers, and so on.
Perhaps the most …interesting… part of the job was changing the projector bulbs.
Note the protective gear the fellow is wearing. The bulb is made of quartz, about as thick as bottle glass, and under high pressure. When one of them wears out, instead of just flickering out like normal light bulbs, they explode like hand grenades.
Most projector lamphouses have a 45-degree mirror redirecting the light from a vertical lamp assembly towards the projector. That mirror is a special one that reflects visible light while letting infrared pass through, to a chunk of firebrick to be absorbed. When the bulb explodes, not only did it fill the salad-bowl metal reflector at the bottom with nicks and cuts, but it always smashed the uber-expensive 45-degree mirror.
There’s nothing quite like having a projector lamp explode when you are five feet away, even if it is in its armored lamphouse. The sound is tremendous.
Now, to change them, you were supposed to suit up like that fellow in the picture, but they didn’t have that fancy gear for us. The warning on the lamphouse door specified all of that gear, but we were stuck with an apron and a faceshield only.
Since bulbs explode at end-of-life, and you are changing them when they are close to end-of-life, well…you want to handle them carefully.
I always wondered just how badly my hands would have been torn up had one gone off during the changeout.
I’m kind of surprised to hear that a job with such a high probability of…if not death, then at least significant physical unpleasantness, doesn’t pay well. Lord knows you’d have to pay me a shitload of money to do that.
How do they train you to extract snake venom?
Gross!
I did a little bit of that at a drive-in theater. The main projectionist was an old guy called Stumpy. He was a Korean War vet missing his legs below his knees just like Hank Hill’s father. Pretty often one of the projectors would be down for some reason and he’d climb up on a chair and do single projector reel change. He’d unreel the remaining film from the feeding reel out onto the floor, mount the next reel and when the dots flashed on the screen in and instant he’d flip open the lens assembly, slap the leader right on top of the remaining film and slam it all shut with barely a flicker on the screen. Then he’d climb down, take another swig from his bottle and fall asleep again. He had those naps timed perfectly for the reel changes.
[Proof my brain is not working this afternoon]
At first I thought, hey if you don’t like Klondike bars no need to …then it hit me
Selling helium filled balloons with Praise The Lord written on them, outside a concert venue where Billy Graham was speaking. As easy as shooting fish in a barrel!
“Hey, I started out mopping the floor just like you guys. But now - now I’m washing lettuce!”
How many points do I get?
Burning out irrigation ditches in Colorado. Lighting fire to the dry grass in the ditch, making sure the fire doesn’t get away. Playing with fire!
Working cleanup at a meat packer. Hosing down band saws, hoppers for the hamburger, etc. Also helped out making burger, sausage, packing roasts with rub and putting them in an overnight bath, cutting out pork tenderloins.
I worked, as a part-time lab assistant for 3 years, at a job that combined computer programming with dolphin training and caretaking. We were doing a language acquisition project with dolphins. The lab was in an enclosed compound with two huge open-air saltwater tanks, right on the beach in Honolulu, in one corner of a marina. It was just a few blocks from that porn shop where Siam Sam worked.
The lab had a few cinder-block buildings, which were divided into a few rooms. I, along with one of the co-directors and a few grad students, lived in some of those rooms. My room had a window that looked out directly onto the beach. Next to the lab was a huge public park (directly across the street from Ala Moana Mall), which of course had lots of concession stands selling box lunches.
There was a vagrant living in or around the marina, known to everybody as Bonzai. He was observably crazy, but didn’t hurt anybody. Everybody who was a “regular” around the marina knew who he was. He subsisted largely (or maybe entirely) – and quite sumptuously – on the other halves of the half-eaten box lunches that the tourists threw in the trash cans.
One day I saw him and some buddy of his sitting on the ground in the marina parking lot, eating a grand meal off of beat-up hubcaps that they found somewhere. It looked like quite a banquet.
Since I lived at the lab, I was there most of the time even when only the other residents were also around. I entertained myself mostly by playing with the dolphins. I got up early most mornings and set a block of frozen fish out to thaw, then played with the dolphins for an hour or two. They had a volleyball (among other toys) and they loved to play catch with that. They also played with frisbees too. They could toss frisbees (with excellent aim!) but I never saw them catch a frisbee, or even try. I never understood why they wouldn’t even try to catch a frisbee.
Enough to buy stuff on the internet.
But you have to use your own money.
I was a worm farmer for a while. I was working at an appliance repair shop, picking up and delivering refrigerators, washers and dryers. The owner decided he could make big bux raising redworms in his vacant lot next door. So I became his worm farmer, building plywood worm beds, shoveling them full of cow shit, rinsing all the urine out of it, and picking up the redworms to start the beds. Every once in a while he would send me out to pick up a load of exotic shit like rabbit or goat to feed the worms. It turns out worm farmers make money by selling worms to other would-be worm farmers. It was an experience.
Standardized test scorer. I’m sure all the students wonder who was reading the essays they wrote. It wasn’t pipe smoking professors in a lounge, that’s for sure
Street busking in San Francisco, playing tuba with a piccolo player in Ghirardelli Square for the Christmas season.
I wouldn’t have even thought of some of these jobs.
Like I said before, I was lead management at the sexual chocolate and toy company. We sold all sorts of chocolate, from naughty holiday chocolates (santa or a leprechaun with a hard-on and witty joke), to simple chocolates like white-chocolate seashells to decorate a wedding cake with. We also sold bondage kits, lubricants, sex toys, and blow up dolls. We were internet-only, so I didn’t deal with people face-to-face. But I handled all customer service via e-mail and phone, and that led to a lot of interesting conversations. I learned a lot there, since it was my first management position. If anyone had any questions about the products I had to be able to ‘sell’ it to them, and I got a lot of calls from ladies wanting suggestions for vibrators, or men wanting to know when their blow up dolls would arrive.
I’ve also worked in Alaska at a fish processing plant, which wasn’t very strange, except that there were only about 3 fluent english speakers in the plant and the rest weren’t really American-friendly. We worked 16 hour shifts gutting, separating, packaging, and shipping Salmon. I remember one of the ladies from Kazakhstan asking me why an American would choose this type of work, since we are privileged and can find easier work elsewhere. It was an eye-opener hearing stories of what other countries were like.
Wow! This thread has been fun to read! I wish I had something to contribute. I have worked in various places, but nothing that stands out as weird or unique.
I did work for a mom-n-pop pet shop for 3 years in my 20s. I force-fed pinkies (newborn mice) to four young Red Tail boas that refused to eat for longer than they should have. I also walked around the store with “Max” on my shoulder quite often - a Yellow Headed Amazon. Sometimes when the door opened and he heard the bell go off, he would say, “Helloooo! Wanna smoke a joint?” over and over again. 
I did not teach him that. I swear.