People Get Paid for This?

Andrew Kemmis
February 23, 2009
Filed under Archives, Opinion/Editorial

So often, the unwashed masses of high school students have (this may shock you) no idea what career they want to pursue. If this is you, good news! If you, like so many others, have no idea how you want to spend the rest of your life and don’t find cardboard boxes all that intriguing as a housing possibility, there are many occupations that no one seems to look at as a viable career choice. I’m sure you, like me, have thought of taking a job like potato chip inspector, or shepherd, or even safe cracker (yes, it is in some cases, a legal profession. However, you do get more money from the shadier side of the law [you did not hear me say this]). Well if these don’t catch your eye, here a few other random jobs:

• Card Dealer: If you like to play cards, are manually dexterous, hate working a 9-to-5 day and have an unusual love of green felt, you have the qualifications for a casino card dealer. Contrary to the stereotyped shady gambler myth, casinos prefer to hire responsible people, train them carefully, pay them middle-class incomes, and let them figure out the shadiness themselves.
• Odor judges: Odor judges smell nasty morning breath or breath influenced by strong scents, like garlic or coffee. They rate the breath on a scale from one to nine, one being the worst. To test odor-reducing products like gum or mouthwash, they smell the breath again and assign it a new rating. This is not a job for the faint-hearted. Come to think of it, it’s not really a job for the strong hearted either. How they get people to apply for this job is a mystery we may never solve.
• Diener: Prepare dead bodies for the officer before autopsies are performed in hospitals by cutting that Y-incision you see on TV shows and doing some basic cleaning. Basically, it’s useless to try and joke around. No one will understand your jokes, because it’s like your audience is dead! (ba dum tish)
• Ribbon Candy Puller: After a heated combination of sugar, corn syrup, water and coloring agent has cooled, batches of different colors of candy are laid out side by side. Someone then pulls the candy thin until it’s about an inch wide. The final product is a multicolored hard candy. I know, I’ve never heard of ribbon candy either.
• Ocularist: In short, they paint artificial eyes. In long, they paint artificial eyes with such excruciating detail that you can’t tell the difference until they come slightly “askew.”
• Crack Filler: Insert favorite vulgar joke here. Using a silicone sealant, they repair the wear and tear inflicted on monumental structures, like Mount Rushmore.
  Admit it. You’ve always wanted to climb up Lincoln’s nose.
• Video Game tester: For eight hours a day, five days a week, you play video games. Nonstop. Sounds great? Where’s the  ? Oh wait, they have to actually work. They repeat levels, games and characters, looking for any bugs and/or glitches in the software. And just when I thought it was fun…
• Dog sniffer: that’s right. Some people are paid to sniff dogs. Once a week, they analyze the odor of a dog’s breath to test the effect of their diet on their teeth. Breath is graded on a scale of zero to 10 and is categorized as sweaty, salty, musty, fungal or decaying. This is another job I assume they give to hobos off the streets.
• Porta Potty Servicer: I’m just going to stop right here. You can figure it out from the title; I’m not talking about it.
• Paper Towel Sniffer: Paper towel manufacturers prefer their products to be odorless before, during and after their use. Naturally, paper towel sniffers ensure that once a paper towel is used, there is no noticeable scent. Have you noticed how many career opportunities you have if you have a powerful shnozz?
• Foley Artist: these guys use whatever they can find to create and record the noises used to make the sound effects in films, like heavy footsteps, rolling thunder or creaking doors. I’m not even going to try and make this funny. It’s just cool.

Remember, you aren’t limited by the amount of jobs there are out there. This is just a list of some of the stranger ones. There is nothing you can do that someone won’t pay you for.

Sources:

http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2009/01/26/americas-most-unusual-jobs/

http://www.unusualwaystomakemoney.com/unusualjobs.html

http://www.boston.com/jobs/galleries/cameos_2007/