Are you looking for a new line of work? Maybe you should consider some of these professions. The fact that they exist at all might just surprise you!
This piece is based on an AskReddit thread. Link on the last page.
1/28. I organize funerals on behalf of the state for people without any family. I have to search through their homes for any information about them, and I often turn up odd and interesting stuff.
I had one for a guy who had lived in the same flat for over 30 years, didn’t have any family and only knew his landlord and maybe one or two neighbours. ‘Nice man, but very private, always kept to himself’ is a common thing I hear and it applied to this person – I’ll call him Harry Smith.
I searched the property, found nothing unusual and the funeral was held with a minimal attendance. A few weeks later, when his estate was being wrapped up, we discovered that ‘Harry Smith’ (same name, same date and place of birth) had died years earlier in a different country.
How could someone have died twice? More investigation turned up the fact that Harry had had a brother who had gone AWOL from the army in the 50s and never been heard from again.
The real Harry had died first, and his brother must have assumed his brother’s name and lived in virtual isolation for half a century, I assume terrified of being caught.
-rpg_wodehouse
2/28. I attempt to read addresses on mail that machines can’t.
-LillianRollins
3/28. You know those fire evacuation maps that are entirely useless because no one’s gonna stop and look at a map on their way out of a burning building? Yeah, I design those
-EvelynMurley
4/28. I work as an activities director at an Alzheimer’s unit. A lot of places just let their residents sit in their rooms and wait to die, but at my place of work, we do tons of stuff like set up concerts, host church services, and organize wine tastings. It’s the most fun/rewarding job I’ve had.
-knockaround122
5/28. I was a tissue recovery specialist. No, that doesn’t have anything to do with Kleenex. (continued…)
Keep reading on the next page!
Basically when people die you don’t just take their important organs. You take cornea, bones, ligaments, ribs, heart valves and even blood vessels.
All of this is done by a group of five to six people who come in a few hours after death, prep the body, cut it open, take everything out, and place plastic bones. Yes, we replace what we took with plastic placeholders!
-Celesmeh
6/28. I am a red team penetration tester. I am hired by companies to break into their buildings and steal all of their data then write reports about how terrible their security is.
I usually wear a janitor hat, carry a broom, and wear some fake badge and BAM I am in their building walking straight to a server room with my flash drives to take all the things!
It’s a fun job that kinda just fell into my lap.
-novazilla
7/28. For a while I worked night security at specifically abandoned buildings, one of them being a waterpark kids liked to sneak into in the middle of the night.
Yes, terrifying people is fun.
-[deleted]
8/28. You know how Legoland is full of huge models with millions of bricks?
People design, build and glue those by hand, one brick at a time. I’m a model builder for Legoland, and I absolutely love what I do.
-Invader_Zirk
9/28. I find and keep track of submarines from an airplane.
-GATOR7862
10/28. I just came off the road as a Semi truck driver and going to be starting as a “drive-away” driver. If you’ve never heard of that, it’s an awesome job. (continued…)
Keep reading on the next page!
Basically, you pick up a semi, school bus, city bus, boom truck, straight truck, coach, ambulance, fire truck, RV, or even just a normal car/truck. You pick up the keys, papers, and inspect the vehicle before heading off. You do a daily log like a normal trucker would do, but you don’t carry cargo.
You basically just drive across the United States, and drop the vehicle off. Sleep in a hotel for 10 hours and do it again. If you don’t feel like working next week, ask dispatch for a vehicle that needs to be near where your house is located.
The best part is, you make your own days off, because you are your own boss.
-Flunkerdunk
11/28. I was a funeral musician for quite a long time. 4-6 funerals a week, mainly Catholic services. I made approximately $40k a year just in funeral service fees. Most people I know think I’m joking when I tell them I did that as a job.
Basically, I show up at funerals and play and/or sing religious service music. I could do it almost without thinking since there are really only 20-25 songs/hymns that people want to hear at a funeral.
You show them a list of suggestions and they get their service music, easy peasy. The tomes where you got an odd request were exciting by comparison. Show up 15 minutes before, leave 10 minutes after, collect your check on the way out.
It sounds pretty heartless the way I describe it. Perhaps it is a bit. That sort of mindset is needed, however, to have any shot at being able to do the job.
I call it the best worst job I’ll ever have.
-Blargattack
12/28. Biological environmental pest consultant I look for and find bats.
-Neuroticmuffin
13/28. I fix grammatical errors in Microsoft help pages. For real.
-mcormack
14/28. When I would tell people I worked for a real estate company they always assumed I was a realtor. Nope. (continued…)
Keep reading on the next page!
My job was a product of the housing crash, and now that the housing crisis has gotten a bit better this kind of work has dried up.
Every morning I would get a list of houses going to trustee sale that day. My job was to drive to each house, determine whether is was occupied or vacant. Then, write a report on the condition of the house, noting all that would be need to be repaired before we could flip the house.
If it was vacant, I would have to find a way inside. I pretty quickly learned to pick locks, made my job much easier. After I finished the list, I would drive to the auction and buy the houses the company wanted.
Normally they would send me out with between $800,000-1,500,000, all in cashier checks written to me that I would sign over to a third party.
It was fun at times, but knowing each house belonged to someone who had been screwed over in their life was really depressing.
-Pau1_Dashner
15/28. I am a mosquito inspector. I travel to mosquito breeding habitats, look for larvae, then treat accordingly; also, some adulticiding.
-GummyPie
16/28. This is a job I had in high school and early college years.
But I was a lifeguard response tester. I would go to public pools or lakes with a lifeguard. Then I would “drown”, and see how well they handled the situation. It was fun, except when they would fail, and I had to walk over telling them “I was drowning for about ten minutes.”
-khaldrogoisbae
17/28. Every day, I go into a big vault for the reserve bank of New Zealand and burn money. Daily, we destroy thousands of bank notes to phase out the old ones to make way for the new.
-sinsinsalabim
18/28. I’m a professional cannabis tester. And yes, that is a real job which I get paid for. (continued…)
Keep reading on the next page!
But to be honest, it is really much less fun than you think (unless mass spectrometry is your thing). Smoking generally occurs off-hours and my job is primarily to look through a microscope and find pesticides in the cannabis sold in my state.
-CorporateTruth
19/28. I used to be a food taster! I worked for a multi-brand, global company, and my job was to eat the R&D food all day. The best bit was, in between 8 solid hours of eating whatever food we were tasting that day, we used to get a lunch break.
-janeybabygoboom
20/28. I’m an IT guy at a Buddhist retreat center.
-James_Ward
21/28. I do lighting for amusement parks. People generally tell me they never realized you could do that for a living. I remind them that everything was done by somebody.
-adrienneira
22/28. I work in Legionella Risk Assessment. My job is to assess the likelihood that Legionella bacteria will grow in a water system.
It largely involves explaining how someone’s water isn’t safe to use, and then I get called horrible things.
-Cheesbaby
23/28. Therapeutic horseback riding instructor. Providing horseback riding lessons to people with special needs as a form of therapy.
-asha_means_hope
24/28. I’m the one who watches the GPS traces for people with ankle devices. I get to call your PO when you leave or cut your strap.
-strangely-wise
25/28. For a while, when I was pretty fresh out of school and living my lifelong dream of being an artist, I was working for an artist who was renowned. My job, among many other things, was basically making his paintings for him. (continued…)
Keep reading on the next page!
There are more than a few pieces that he was paid handsomely for, or that currently hang in a museum, that is not his work, but mine.
It’s okay, though, because we were great friends and I loved the work. I don’t need my name on something to know that it’s my work. I have the absolute satisfaction of knowing that I did that, and although he already had an established career, it took off during that time that I worked for him. We both learned a lot from each other.
I am definitely not saying he couldn’t have done it without me; that would be wrong and arrogant. But we did inspire each other as artists and I was happy to learn from him and basically make a few of his most successful pieces for him.
This is something not widely recognized in the fine arts. A lot of credit is not given to the people who do stuff like make the initial sketch, stretch the canvas, grid it all up, transfer the drawing, and do most of the actual work.
Not to say that most of the artist’s work is done by someone else, but never assume that the artist who signed their name is actually responsible for the majority or any of the work of the final product.
-becauseusoft
26/28. I work wildlife control at an airport. Basically, I drive around with a shotgun and kill birds.
-throwawayvexa
27/28. I started the first football team in China. American football. Full gear, tackle. Now there are over 70 teams. I run a non-profit organization that helps the development of that sport.
-erwinhero
28/28. I’m a patient safety assistant at a large hospital. I sit for hours at the bedside of patients who pose some sort of threat to themselves, for example if they’re suicidal or have severe dementia.
-xangelxbelowx