All of them.
In high school, my summer job was breading hamsters at a local pet supply distributor. 100's of 'em.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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In college, I worked for the probation department. (Not by choice, but to get my bachelor's degree we had to intern somewhere, and the probation department was chosen for me.)
I was a pee tester. Yup. If you were arrested for drugs, and drug testing was part of your probation, you peed into a little plastic cup and I put a litmus paper-type stick into it to see if you'd been naughty.
For $8.00 an hour. Fun times.
In college, I once had a job to raise and maintain an ant colony.
Long ago, I had the overnight shift at Dunkin' Donuts on Hampton Blvd, Norfolk, VA, on Fri and Sat nights. Spent the wee hours of the morning cheerfully handing out donuts to gang members.
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-Carwash attendent- people leave some weird stuff in their car. Also, putting your $30-40K car in a highschool teen's hands, not a good idea.
-Proofreader-I would spend hours with another person reading aloud legalese stuff for law firms to make sure the paperwork matched properly.
-I helped build a Barnes and Nobles store.
I work at Paizo...
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I spent a summer as a bodyguard for Scooby Doo.
The local theme park hired teens to dress up as cartoon characters and greet the children in the park. Unfortunately, these characters would regularly be targeted by other teens who thought it would be fun to "kick Scooby's @$$."
My job, protect Scooby, which I did rather well.
On some weekends, I would moonlight as Captain Caveman.
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does the Army count? ;)
kidding aside.....Staff Announcer for a daylight radio station...we had to be off the air by sunset, and couldnt broadcast before dawn's early light...A staff announcer means I said the every half hour blurb
"You are listening to KVLI Lake Isabella, serving the communities of the Kern River Valley, 1140 on your AM Radio Dial" right before the news feed...but I couldnt mention my name ;) because then Id get the big bucks :D..also meant I put the reels on and played the music...a fun but simple job...
High Volume Lure Machine operator making biological pest control lures and traps. There are not words to describe the vile smell of the chemical concoctions designed to dissuade bugs from mating. Heaven forbid if you got even a single drop of the substance on your clothes, for they would persist and stay with you through three trips through the washing machine.
I worked in a printshop for 6 months (and actual offset printer machine). So if anyone ask, I can design and PRINT adventures (jejeje)Ink under your nails is a killer...
Psychic and medium. Technically two different jobs but I'm unsure which is weirder, reading tarot and crystal gazing or twirling in a circle in a haunted house trying to get possessed by a dead guy.
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Wayfinder, PaizoCon Founder
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In my younger days...summer jobs:
I was a corn-detasseler for a season.
Then I got a summer job in a produce warehouse unloading semi-trucks loaded chest-high with watermelons. In the downtime, we often sorted crates of fruit (apples, oranges) to find the spoiled ones. (and yes, one bad apple CAN make the lot go bad).
Writing a handbook of angelic advice for a mail-order psychic.
I based most of what I wrote on the Heresy: Kingdom Come CCG.
I ran a haunted house with my then best friend when we were 8 or 9. Did surprisingly well for two kids with nothing but a basement, back woods, cardboard, masks and spooky voices.
Material Handler at Goodwill. There's a kind of dirty that transcends filth. It comes from working at Goodwill.
I dragged and dressed Christmas trees at a local tree farm, stood by a barrel with a fire in it and gave directions and drove around in a truck with Andreas, the Hungarian exchange worker picking up trees for people. We listened to the Hungarian Spice Girls as we worked.
My current job: I make dummies for a publisher. For example, before the Star Wars Fandex is put out, the sales people want something to show Barnes and Noble to get them to double their usual order. So I cut out sample cards with an x-acto knife, bulk up an existing fandex (usually Africa, because the facing card resembles Tatooine) to the right "Deluxe" size, put a plastic screw in it. Then I fold cardstock and slap a print-out of the box design on top to make the cardboard box it sits in, then make an acetate cover. Repeat at least 200 times. That's how I earn money now.
Art school opens up all kinds of doors.
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There was this guy who had some bags of trash or something (I never really checked or asked, but it smelled really bad). They were huge -- about 6 feet long by maybe two feet wide. Apparently he had nowhere to throw them away, so he paid me to take them out on a boat and dump them the ocean. I must have gone through about 20, one per week. The pay was pretty good, but they smelled horrible.
The strangest job that I want is to be the guy that makes up the erotic connect the dots games. Best Denny's placemat ever.
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Trying to get measurements, accurate to the thousandth of an foot, when your measuring device is on a flexible, 12-foot rod, putting the level bubble twelve feet away from you horizantally, and about 8-feet down from you. Try and balance that crap and hold it steady while you are leaning over a crumbling, dirt bluff ten to twelve feet above a metal piece of pipe.
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Raising big cats for a wild animal 'safari' in Bentonville Arkansas (or possibly Gentry? Just tried looking it up online).
Getting up at six in the morning because you have to bottle-feed the baby lions or tigers, so tiny that they would fit in your hand, before you go to school was vaguely cool.
The not-so-fun part of farm life was butchering our own animals. Who knew that cutting a chicken's throat was a skill and you could do it wrong? Gosh, that was a mess...
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Raising big cats for a wild animal 'safari' in Bentonville Arkansas (or possibly Gentry? Just tried looking it up online).
Getting up at six in the morning because you have to bottle-feed the baby lions or tigers, so tiny that they would fit in your hand, before you go to school was vaguely cool.
The not-so-fun part of farm life was butchering our own animals. Who knew that cutting a chicken's throat was a skill and you could do it wrong? Gosh, that was a mess...
My grandpa was bucthering chickens one time, and he threw one out on the lawn as my uncle walked out. He was 12 and had never seen a headless chicken run around before, so he ran into the house and grabbed a shotgun, to make sure it was dead.
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The not-so-fun part of farm life was butchering our own animals. Who knew that cutting a chicken's throat was a skill and you could do it wrong? Gosh, that was a mess...
Bah, my Grandmom would decide to have chicken for dinner, walk out to the coup, grab on the chickens by it's neck and spin it like a hooker spins a purse until it's head came off. She'd then toss the head to the cats and wait for the chicken's body to hold still(somewhat) before plucking the carcass. Yer first mistake is usin' a knife! A hatchet is more like it if the grab and spin method isn't such a hot idea though (some people have trouble doing it).
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 8
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Bah, my Grandmom would decide to have chicken for dinner, walk out to the coup, grab on the chickens by it's neck and spin it like a hooker spins a purse until it's head came off. She'd then toss the head to the cats and wait for the chicken's body to hold still(somewhat) before plucking the carcass. Yer first mistake is usin' a knife! A hatchet is more like it if the grab and spin method isn't such a hot idea though (some people have trouble doing it).
The not-so-fun part of farm life was butchering our own animals. Who knew that cutting a chicken's throat was a skill and you could do it wrong? Gosh, that was a mess...
I'm pretty sure that's not halal. ;-)
Sawing a hatch into a turtle shell (live... and it survived and yet lives).
Bartender in a curry house... and being the only white dude there.
House sitting for people with 4 parrots, 1 deranged cockatoo, 2 iguanas (1 was seriously f##$ing hostile and weighed in over two of the dogs), and that's 3 dogs (1 blind Malamute with only 3 legs), 8 turtles and 2 tortoises.
Bah, my Grandmom would decide to have chicken for dinner, walk out to the coup, grab on the chickens by it's neck and spin it like a hooker spins a purse until it's head came off. She'd then toss the head to the cats and wait for the chicken's body to hold still(somewhat) before plucking the carcass. Yer first mistake is usin' a knife! A hatchet is more like it if the grab and spin method isn't such a hot idea though (some people have trouble doing it).
The not-so-fun part of farm life was butchering our own animals. Who knew that cutting a chicken's throat was a skill and you could do it wrong? Gosh, that was a mess...
One word. Scythe. Don't even have to pick it up.
While I was a U.S. Army Reserve combat medic, I had to do a two week tour at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, working at a troop medical clinic that serviced the Marines attending artillery training at this Army base. I've never given so many penicillin shots in my life, back when that still worked to cure the clap. I don't know if the Army guys visited the same hooker over the weekend or if the Marines were just outrageously unlucky, but it seems like every 3rd Marine that came in complained of "pissing needles or a foul discharge or both."
This was 'ca 1987, in case you're wondering.
Carrying bones of dead people in big blue plastic sacks into my office across the market square full of people in broad daylight, and praying that the damn sacks will not burst open just then...
We were restructuring a historic church square, and dug up countless bones from the former churchyard, all disturbed earlier. Talk about deference...
We put them in our office to get them out of sight from the church square and waited for them to get picked up by our graveyard administration so that they could get properly buried.
Stefan
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I worked Asset Recovery for a towing company, aka Repo-man. Working midnights driving through neighborhoods where I was not welcome, trying to find cars and trucks hidden by people that didn't want me to get them. Some people would leash their dogs to the cars, others would threaten to kill me, and some people were inclined to shoot at me from their bedroom windows. I don't recommend trying to earn a living this way.
cheers
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I worked Asset Recovery for a towing company, aka Repo-man. Working midnights driving through neighborhoods where I was not welcome, trying to find cars and trucks hidden by people that didn't want me to get them. Some people would leash their dogs to the cars, others would threaten to kill me, and some people were inclined to shoot at me from their bedroom windows. I don't recommend trying to earn a living this way.
cheers
I WAS A TEENAGE DINOSAUR, STONED AND OBSOLETE!
I DIDN'T GET F%~!ED AND I DIDN'T GET KISSED,I GOT SO F!%*ING PISSED!
NOW I'LL TELL YA WHO I AM!
I'M THE REPO MAN!
AND I'M LOOKING FOR THE JOKE WITH A MICROSCOPE!
Sorry. Had to do it, or my head would have exploded.
One day, I had to vacuum a parking lot. Apparently, my employer wanted to paint new parking lines on the pavement, and the paint wouldn't stick on top of years of pavement dirt. So I got to stand there, vacuuming a parking lot all day long.
I got some seriously weird looks from people driving by.
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A few years ago, my wife managed a "Get Your Picture with the Easter Bunny" set at the local shopping mall.
One Saturday, the guy she hired to wear the bunny suit called in sick (probably hung-over). She called me at home and begged me to come down and "be the bunny."
Building on my past experience as Captain Caveman (see my first post above), I spent the day in the bunny costume.
Biggest surprise. The number of teen and twentysomething girls who like to flash and/or grope men in bunny costumes.
Fortunately for me, my wife found it funny.
Worked on the Human Genome Project.
As ever,
ACE
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Necro-ing this thread to add that I was a telephone psychic.
does the Army count? ;)
kidding aside.....Staff Announcer for a daylight radio station...we had to be off the air by sunset, and couldnt broadcast before dawn's early light...A staff announcer means I said the every half hour blurb
"You are listening to KVLI Lake Isabella, serving the communities of the Kern River Valley, 1140 on your AM Radio Dial" right before the news feed...but I couldnt mention my name ;) because then Id get the big bucks :D..also meant I put the reels on and played the music...a fun but simple job...
I worked in radio for about 10 years. Two of the stations I worked at had the same set up as yours. Tape on. Rewind. Tape off. Replace. Overnights...all night.
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Well, I'm still pretty young, and only had a couple of jobs. The first "job" is as a private teacher, which I guess is pretty normal.
The second was in a LARP summer camp for children's aged 6 - 12. Might sound like fun, but the summer was hot as hell, and I was basically an armored nanny.
I DID get to play a prophet of a fire god, and prophesies that the world will burn, which resulted in me and the rest of the adult crew tossing ourselves into a volcano to save the world, which resulted in all of us having new characters to play and the power balance in the setting to shift significantly.
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Park ranger at a pool. Amounted to being a bouncer/janitor. Doing first aid on the hernia for the guy trying to pick me up to throw into the pool was hilarious.
Wolf masseuse: Intern at a wolf center, which consisted of making sure the wolves stayed in the center, giving tours, fixing the place and extended time giving bellyrubs to the wolf that was on his own and more than a little down after losing his brother.
bat catcher: caught bats in whats essentially a bunch of big volleyball nets. ID em, weigh em , measure them and let them go.