First or Weirdest Job?

[aqutalion]

One summer, I worked for a temp agency, and the first assignment they sent me on was to a hardware store. They either suspected an employee of embezzling, or had actually caught him, I forget which, and wanted me to go through two sets of books and find discrepancies. I have no accounting training, at all, and had no idea what I was looking at, or if I was even finding useful things. Not a bad job, by any stretch, but really weird that they'd hire some random from a temp agency, rather than an actual accountant.

[Nunavut Pants]

2) the last 2 shifts i worked, some old guy drove up to the store on his riding lawn mower.... that one made me go WTF.

I've seen a Youtube video of someone getting busted for DUI on a riding mower. He was driving the mower to the store because he had lost his driver's license.... for DUI.

[ZumZum]

Two jobs in my teenage years come to mind.

#1: My mom got me a job cleaning a house (house was owned by a friend of a woman my mom was a nanny for).
Went in to clean the house. Got a huge tour, told where the cleaning supplies were, and what was expected. No problem.

Women left the house while I got started. I found dollar bills and loose changed everywhere. I KNEW this was a test. So I collected the money I found and made sure to tell her about it when she got back.

I cleaned everything as expected. I followed the directions on all the cleaning supplies she left for me (what to dilute, what to leave full strength).

She came home. Inspected. Said everything was fine and pays me.

Later on, she calls her friend (the one my mom works for) RANTING about how I missed finding $.50. She was not only testing to see if I took the money, but seeing if I was cleaning everywhere. Not sure where that $.50 was.
Also, she was furious that I didn't use up all the floor cleaner for the kitchen. Ya know, the stuff that had to be diluted?!?!? Apparently if I didn't use all of it, I suck at cleaning.
Yup, she fired me. Oh well.

#2: Got a job in a call center, circa 1986-87. They gave us phone lists to call and conduct surveys.
Gotta love the day they gave me a West Coast list (we were on the East coast) for my 9AM shift. The list only had names and numbers, no addresses.

Took 10 callers for one nice person to call to my attention that I was calling the West Coast. All previous 9 gave me an earful.....
Only perk, we could smoke cigarettes while working. That way they didn't have to give us breaks.
Lasted less than three weeks there.

[CyberLurch]

Gotta love the day they gave me a West Coast list (we were on the East coast) for my 9AM shift. The list only had names and numbers, no addresses.

Took 10 callers for one nice person to call to my attention that I was calling the West Coast. All previous 9 gave me an earful.....

LOL... I held a telemarketing job for a short time in the early 1990s, and had a similar incident. One of the so-called 'managers' had been promoted a little too soon and, eager to show his bosses how industrious he was, he put the entire team onto a west coast radio project first thing in the morning. We, too, were in the Eastern time zone, and he kicked this all off at 8am OUR time.

On two occasions, I tried to warn this newbie supervisor that we were carpet-dialing a time zone three hours BEHIND us. But he was one of those arrogant types who thinks that because he's the boss, he can do no wrong.

Fortunately, our target was businesses. But it took nearly two hours of almost non-existent 'hit' numbers, along with a lot of 'no answer' or voicemail responses, to convince our fearless, newly-minted leader that we were calling a region of the country where it was only 5-7am. I wonder why our numbers were so low?

Why, it was almost like the businesses we were calling were closed or something.

Yeah, he got chewed out. Technically, we hadn't actually done any harm, but the nearly two hours we were calling a 'dead' region could have been used for an east coast project. But although it wasn't a 'public' confrontation, rest assured the entire cubicle farm heard it.

He tried to blame the snafu on US. SOMEBODY, he claimed, should have 'said something'. No dice, though. HE was a supervisor, HE should have known.

Oh, how I wanted to tell them that I had said something about it. I never did like the guy anyway. But nobody asked me.

[Racket_Man]

So unlike your current job, the dirty bitches and sons-of-bitches you had to deal with there were literal, rather than figurative.

OH HECK YEAH

That could work out. I'm betting most of the dogs were nicer than a lot of human customers.

You would not believe how much I like working with/dealing with the dogs rather than humans. Most of the times the dogs I bathed were a HECK of a lot more cooperative and even enjoyed bath time. The one or two who did not were easily handled. There were enough who would just hop up into the wash sink and wag their tails as if to say "OK let's get this done NOW.".

The down side was draining their anal glands. For a description of this body part: (see the dog section) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anal_gland.

For a description of what the procedure was for taking care of said gland highlight : You had to literally squeeze the dogs butt hole to get the excess stuff out of said gland

It was also fun when a couple of standard Hawaiian Poodles would come in and would just love to pop their front paws up on my shoulders and lick the top of my head for some reason.

[BPFH]

I've seen a Youtube video of someone getting busted for DUI on a riding mower. He was driving the mower to the store because he had lost his driver's license.... for DUI.

Doesn't surprise me. One of the blogs I read (Lowering the Bar) has a category called DSUWI (that's "Driving Something Unusual While Intoxicated"). Horses, motorized picnic tables, and a Barbie jeep have all been featured.

Trivia: about 1 in 17,925,000 Canadians have been arrested for driving a Zamboni while intoxicated, but only about 1 in 107,000,000 Americans have been arrested for the same.

[Crai]

Doesn't surprise me. One of the blogs I read (Lowering the Bar) has a category called DSUWI (that's "Driving Something Unusual While Intoxicated"). Horses, motorized picnic tables, and a Barbie jeep have all been featured.

Trivia: about 1 in 17,925,000 Canadians have been arrested for driving a Zamboni while intoxicated, but only about 1 in 107,000,000 Americans have been arrested for the same.

Ha Ha So when I was a kid around age of 10 I was at my grandparents for the summer. Well my Grandmother worked nights and my grandfather went off to the bar and left me to my own devices. At some point I get a call from the bar telling me I needed to come pick him up as he was too drunk to drive. I tell them I cant drive either but I would be over in a while to get him. So I saddle up two Horses and ride the 2 miles over to the bar and with the bartenders help get him in a saddle and I lead him back home. He passed out in the hay in the barn I put the horses up and went to the house to watch TV and go to bed.

[greek_jester]

That was an incredibly elegant solution! Horses get exercised, gramps gets home safely and no-one has to worry about extra clean-up of unfortunate alcohol by-products as they can get chucked out with the hay!

[dalesys]

... no-one has to worry about extra clean-up of unfortunate alcohol by-products as they can get chucked out with the hay!

Except the horses ask "Who puked on my dinner?"

[RealUnimportant]

First job was pretty normal... I've got 2 contenders for weirdest though:

1 - Cold-calling door-to-door selling Y2K "solutions" in mid-1999. It was all on one floppy, covered nothing more than BIOS issues, and I sold exactly zero copies - on commission. I already knew I wasn't cut out for sales, but this really drove it home!

2 - Being hired back to a company that I'd parted ways with voluntarily rather than have them organize a special trip (complete with pretty disco lighting on the top )... So I could use my knowledge of their security flaws to try and figure out how my replacement was screwing them over for way more than I ever did. No animosity, no recriminations, just "we know what you did, and we know you know we know, so let's let bygones be bygones." I figured it out, and he did get the full disco-light treatment.

[greek_jester]

Except the horses ask "Who puked on my dinner?"

Given the number of mice, rats and cats that use haylofts as toilets (not to mention other fluids from various amorous mammals) I'm not sure they'd even notice.

[WishfulSpirit]

My first job was a pretty standard "teenager" one: lifeguard. Hubby, however, had a more interesting job: tour guide on an ostrich farm. They sold the eggs, and there was one Blueneck female named Phillis who apparently kept stealing his hat.

It was also fun when a couple of standard Hawaiian Poodles would come in and would just love to pop their front paws up on my shoulders and lick the top of my head for some reason.

My dachshund does that. Now granted the highest part of a person he can reach while said person is standing up is the knee. That doesn't stop him from climbing up on the bed and licking Hubby's bald head for about 15 minutes a night (this is something he does every evening and won't settle down until he does). Doggies just like forehead / head skin I guess.