What was your oddest job?

[Dan Nicholls]

I subjected myself to a summer's worth of traveling around (more often than not sleeping in the truck between driving) helping one of my ex-teacher/friend sell his novelty items at concerts. It was a cool idea, but it ended up being a big PITA (pain in the um...asterisk) and I didn't bail when I had the chance. Actually maybe that fits under the "oddest job done for getting the heck outta town" category. What was really fun was walking through the uber-white midwest with a few Mexican friends to the amazement of those around. Apparantly they have laws against that kind of thing.<P>------------------
<A HREF="http://gunz.keenspace.com" TARGET=_blank>http://gunz.keenspace.com</A>
The sound of a joke falling squarely on its face.

[Tim Broderick]

Confess!<P>We've all had to do really bizarre things for money - what was yours? <P><P>------------------
Tim Broderick
Someday, all jobs will be<A HREF="http://oddjobs.keenspace.com" TARGET=_blank> Odd Jobs</A>

[BoxJam]

I was the overnight weekend "personality" at
a small-town easy-listening station.<P>"When the listening is easy, your dial is
set at 96.5 fm, Soft-96." (but don't
pronounce the 't' in soft!)<P>------------------
Here comes <A HREF="http://www.boxjamsdoodle.com" TARGET=_blank>BoxJam's Doodle</A>!
Good ol' <A HREF="http://www.boxjamsdoodle.com" TARGET=_blank>BoxJam's Doodle</A>...Yes, sir!
There goes <A HREF="http://www.boxjamsdoodle.com" TARGET=_blank>BoxJam's Doodle</A>.<P>How I hate it.

[Kitsune76]

I was a credit controller for three months. Basicallyi t's a baliff/debt collector but in business clothes and at the end of a phone. Three months of trying to get money from students who hadn't paid their accommodation fees. It involved being brutal and unfeeling and sadly I was a naturasl, although I heard some *real* horror stories on occasion that brought me back to reality <IMG SRC="http://www.keenspace.com/forums/frown.gif"><P>Kitsune<P>------------------
<A HREF="http://kitsune76.keenspace.com//" TARGET=_blank>C.Ulture Shocked</A> <P>It's British.<P>But not in a good way...

[Jmilfred]

I spent a year working in the UW-Madison Primate Research Center. I basically cleaned up monkey shit all day, but for awhile the contact with the animals was somewhat rewarding. I worked with the breeding colony mostly and then one day I had to take one of my favorite animals to become part of an experiment. I quit right after that.<P>Jason Milfred<P>The temporarily dormant INK at <A HREF="http://www.inkography.com" TARGET=_blank>http://www.inkography.com</A>

[Michael]

Does it have to be a job for money? I played banjo on stage once because nobody else could. I <I>learned</I> to play the banjo for this play. (The Cotton Patch Gospel, if y'all ever heard tell of it.) Sang some good bluegrass licks, too.<P>------------------
<A HREF="http://www.vivtek.com/toonbots.html" TARGET=_blank>Toonbots.</A> Only the coolest of people like it. You want to be cool, don't you?

[Russ]

I did contract work for a few years with a company that scientifically researches the game of golf. It was founded by a former NASA engineer who quit NASA to pursue his true love (golf). We did statistical analysis on data gathered by pro and amateur players, and created a simulator that let us predict how different players would perform with different strategies, clubs, etc. on various real-world courses. This was for the most part an odd but pleasant job, and they were very nifty people to work with. I don't play golf, but I eventually decided I knew more about the game of golf than anyone else who doesn't play it. <P>

[Tim Broderick]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Somebody Strange:
<B>I know this thread is four months old and then some, but I was just pointed to Odd Jobs by the Keenspace Box. I really dig it; I'm a mystery writer working on my first novel myself.--Strange<P></B><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>Welcome Strange! If you're an aspiring mystery writer, allow me to point you a couple of places:<P>thrillingdetective.com
bluemurder.com <A HREF="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WickedCompany" TARGET=_blank>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WickedCompany</A> <P><P>------------------
Tim Broderick
Someday, all jobs will be<A HREF="http://oddjobs.keenspace.com" TARGET=_blank> Odd Jobs</A>

[Somebody Strange]

I know this thread is four months old and then some, but I was just pointed to Odd Jobs by the Keenspace Box. I really dig it; I'm a mystery writer working on my first novel myself.<P>Anyway, the oddest job I ever did for pay was helping a music store to move their library of sheet music from their "old" building to their "new" building. What made the job so odd was (a) the music was in no particular order in their old library; (b) what wasn't moldy or musty was faded and yellow; (c) they had no real use for this sheet music at all in the NEW place, but they had to get it out of the OLD place; and (d) I wasn't actually MOVING anything -- I was helping to sort the music.<P>To top it all off, pages of sheet music would become separated from the rest, and the names of the piece and the composer were inevitably absent from the random scraps of paper. I was in the Classical section with a musician friend of mine; every time I'd come across one of these orphan pages, I'd quickly sightread the first couple bars and either whistle them or bum-ba-ba-bum them, and my buddy would inevitably, amazingly, call out the correct piece and composer -- sometimes even the year the piece was written.<P>It took twelve hours, but a group of eighty of us managed to sort the orphans. I was only hired for one day, so I never saw them actually move any of it.<P>--Strange<P>------------------
Neurotic -- sane, but unhappy about it.