Friday OT: Can I Do That?

[Angie]

Thanks so much to @wxman1 for this topic! Your example is so perfect, I'm SO sorry to take it, but here's how wxman1 wrote it:

So we enjoy the show Friends and last night an episode we had on was the one where they realize that condoms are not 99% effective. For whatever reason this time I started thinking. Stuff along the lines of "wait designing, testing etc. condoms are actual jobs." Who are these people? What do you put on your resume? What do you tell people that you do?" and the like.

Then I got to thinking what are other jobs that you can't believe are actual jobs and how do those that have them explain them away sort of thing?

 

[FarminCy]

Maybe not to the level of condom tester. But as someone that was obsessed with fishing as a kid (still am) my parents took me to tour the Berkley facility in Spirit Lake. I was blown away that there were jobs where people got to test lures and fishing line in tanks, etc. 13 year old me thought how cool it would be to play with lures all day.

 

[coolerifyoudid]

I'm constantly amazed by how rich some teens get by being influencers

On the other end of the spectrum, dog food taster and odour judge are two jobs that would be hard to brag about at a cocktail party.

 

[ISUCyclones2015]

Remember “Unwrapped” on Food Network?

They had one on Ben and Jerry’s and the idea of being an Ice Cream taste tester, at 7 years old or whenever that episode came out, seemed like the world’s greatest job.

On something I deal with every day, there’s many IT systems in the world that one random guy in Elko Nevada (or throw a dart on a map) is the last “all knowledge knower” of that system. The Paris airport comes to mind…

Lastly I’ve been in a hotel where the person’s entire job was elevator operator and they had done it 40+ years. It was one of those old timey elevators that had manual doors and what not. Really cool but damn it were the elevators slow lol

 

[AltoonaFish]

My step brother used to be a tea taster. He would travel the world going to places most Americans have never been. Seemed like a great gig, but he had to have had tasted some awful awful stuff.

 

[Clonehomer]

Other end of the spectrum as condom tester, my kids asked about one profession that I could not explain, slap fighting.

 

[CYCLNST8]

I am extremely jealous of Josh Gates from Expedition Unknown. He gets to live his Indiana Jones fantasy.

 

[FancyRex]

In order to increase the likelihood that captive pandas will breed they literally show them Panda... How to put this in a PG format... Spicy videos. Which means it was someone's job to edit together videos of pandas mating specifically for the purpose of getting pandas to mate.

There are a litany of weird jobs similar to this in zoos. But this one will always take the cake for me

 

[qwerty]

Every furniture manufacturer tests their products (or should). HNI has a full lab with dedicated, special purposes machines to test the limits of their products. I had heard Lazy Boy hired college students to test some of their products. One person lost over 20 lbs "just" sitting in their chairs. In reality, that is a lot of plopping, moving, etc. for 8 hours a day.

 

[Cyientist]

Best paying side gig I had was to collect late season N stalk samples to test how efficient the corn was using the nitrogen. There would be 4 samples per field with 10 stalks per sample based on soil types. The compensation was $20 per sample so $80 per field or $2 per stalk that I cut. I could typically knock out a field in an hour.

My friends couldn't believe that I was skipping the Iowa vs Iowa State football game for a side gig. It was the 2007 game when Shaggy hit the 5 field goals (I was a grad student at the time). I listened to Walters make the call in a random field entrance in north central Iowa, and I made enough that weekend to write a check for my engagement ring.

 

[cycloner29]

As an intern in soybean research, we had thousands of small 3-10 lb bags of seed in cotton bags that we had to get into a wagon, but reuse the bags.

When I was looking for a job, I put on my resume, "Supervised the disposition of unselected genetic material", under my job experience. When asked what that meant by a prospective employer, I told them I was in charge of dumping seed. Guy thought it was pretty clever. I didn't really want the job but used it more as interviewing experience.

 

[madguy30]

I'm constantly amazed by how rich some teens get by being influencers

On the other end of the spectrum, dog food taster and odour judge are two jobs that would be hard to brag about at a cocktail party.

Especially the ones that have made it big by being completely awful to other people in order to get clicks.

Repeating but I have a dream of starting something like that but showing how to simplify or do things on the cheap for outdoor stuff.

Problem is I don't know how to profit from telling people not to spend much money on things; it seems like anything out there is basically advertising for a product some how or making sure you need to buy a bunch of materials.

 

[Ms3r4ISU]

As an intern in soybean research, we had thousands of small 3-10 lb bags of seed in cotton bags that we had to get into a wagon, but reuse the bags.

When I was looking for a job, I put on my resume, "Supervised the disposition of unselected genetic material", under my job experience. When asked what that meant by a prospective employer, I told them I was in charge of dumping seed. Guy thought it was pretty clever. I didn't really want the job but used it more as interviewing experience.

I'd probably have another question after that answer.

 

[qwerty]

Early in my career, I was the sole salary position/engineer in support of a new, trial manufacturing cell and thus had to do all roles (engineering, schedule, material control, etc.). Since production was controlled and monitored by themselves I didn't have that responsibility. I listed this period on my resume as "lead a self directed work cell". Others gave me a hard time for that wording (how can you lead a cell that is self directed?).

 

[cyclones500]

Early in my career, I was the sole salary position/engineer in support of a new, trial manufacturing cell and thus had to do all roles (engineering, schedule, material control, etc.). Since production was controlled and monitored by themselves I didn't have that responsibility. I listed this period on my resume as "lead a self directed work cell". Others gave me a hard time for that wording (how can you lead a cell that is self directed?).

Heh-heh, that makes me chuckle.

Almost like "overseeing an oversight committee."

 

[coolerifyoudid]

A number of years ago, a co-worker got me on a focus group list. I would get called a couple times a week to go to an office at night and participate in a study, getting paid usually $25-$50 for each session.

It wasn't life-changing money, but when minimum wage hovered around $8-$9/hour, getting paid cash to do things like test various flavors of ice cream, try a new Applebees appetizer or taste a new smoothie flavor was a sweet gig for some side money.

 

[jcyclonee]

I knew an engineer who's job was to test the tensile strength of ketchup packets.

 

[fcclone]

I interviewed a gal a few years ago that listed previous experience as a Product Model on her resume. When I inquired about what product she was modeling she said ‘it sounded better than stripper’.

 

[jcyclonee]

I interviewed a gal a few years ago that listed previous experience as a Product Model on her resume. When I inquired about what product she was modeling she said ‘it sounded better than stripper’.

I assume that you hired her.

 

[cowgirl836]

Best paying side gig I had was to collect late season N stalk samples to test how efficient the corn was using the nitrogen. There would be 4 samples per field with 10 stalks per sample based on soil types. The compensation was $20 per sample so $80 per field or $2 per stalk that I cut. I could typically knock out a field in an hour.

My friends couldn't believe that I was skipping the Iowa vs Iowa State football game for a side gig. It was the 2007 game when Shaggy hit the 5 field goals (I was a grad student at the time). I listened to Walters make the call in a random field entrance in north central Iowa, and I made enough that weekend to write a check for my engagement ring.

oh man I remember the FB groups that came out of that game "How many touchdowns does it take to beat the Hawkeyes"

My ticket actually got stolen on the way to the game and I got to watch outside with the drunks, super fun. But I was one of the first on the field!