Bizarre Jobs

PET FOOD TASTER

Few people have ever sniffed a can of wet dog or cat food and thought, ‘yum’. But Simon Allison tastes pet food for a living – and likes it. The senior food technologist for Marks & Spencer in the UK won’t allow anything that doesn’t pass his taste-test to go on store shelves. “You have to chew it a bit. I have trained my palate to look for materials that we will not allow in the recipe, such as tripe – pet owners react badly to the smell of tripe. I’m looking for a paté texture, almost to the point where you could spread it on crusty bread. It has a very slightly gritty texture but overall it should be

smooth – and studded with peas and carrots.” His favourite? Organic luxury dinner with vegetables for cats. YUM!

FURNITURE TESTER

For any layman, this job seems like an easy going one where you can make your living by sitting. In fact many people call it as a ‘couch potato’ job. But it’s actually not so. For this job you have to sit in various sorts of rocking chairs, couches, love seats, and recliners; move them back and forth, wiggle around, rock them, lean back, lean forward and assess your level of comfort. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Not quite. Once done with one chair, you have to move to the next piece of furniture and the next and the

next and repeat the same thing all over again at least 200 times in a single day of work. Not such a “cushy” job after all!

GOLF BALL DIVER

Have you ever wondered what happens to all the golf balls that go into the water on golf courses? There are actual golf ball divers who go in occasionally to retrieve them. Golf equipment stores selling ‘gently used’ golf balls often pay several independent golf ball divers to gather as many of the errant balls as they can, usually for about 6 cents each. Some estimates put golf ball divers’ salaries at over $100,000 a year, but it can be a dangerous job – a 75-year-old man died while diving for golf balls, 27 years after his son perished the same way.

GUM BUSTER

You know when you’re chewing gum and you get that uncontrollable urge to stick it under something? Yeah, I know you do. We all do it. Well, did you know that there’s a team of cleaners called Gum Busters whose sole job it is to remove our carelessly discarded chews from assorted surfaces? It all started back in 1998 when a Dutch chemist created the Gum Cart, a little dry steaming machine that conveniently removes gum from its eclectic locations in just 5 seconds. That’s pretty quick cleaning considering all the wayward gum that’s out there!

FORTUNE COOKIE WRITER

“You will soon be asked to pay for a Chinese meal.” This and other gems could be yours for the writing if you can persuade fortune cookie manufacturers of your incredible clairvoyance (or ability to translate Chinese into

English, either is good).

This falls into the same category as cracker joke writer and greetings card message creator, as jobs which sound like fun the first time, but just wait until you’re struggling to find that thousandth innovative way to tell somebody they’re about to meet a tall dark stranger, while not insinuating that it could be death.

http://itthing.com; http://www.prdaily.com

See more on CD.

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BIZARRE

JOB INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

Interviewing for a new job can be tough. It can be even tougher when the person asking the questions starts throwing curveballs at you.

Development Dimensions International recently conducted a survey of 2,000 people to

find out, “What was the strangest question you were ever asked in a job interview?”

The list is long and predictably bizarre:

•Have you ever been to a disco?

•Do you wish you were a famous person?

•Can I see your wallet?

•How much do you love money?

•Discuss the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin

Wall. (for a retail management job)

•Do you have a bird?

•Do you whiten your teeth?

•Do you believe there is life in outer space?

•Are you expecting to get married or have children in the next year?

•Are you a Muslim?

•Are you a racist?

•What leadership skills are required to cook a chicken?

•What would you do if someone spat on you?

•How do you get along with your mother-in-law?

•How do you feel about cats?

•Are you good at picking up women?

•What is your dog’s name?

•How much can you drink?

•What would make you want to leave your husband?

•Are you willing to put your job before your family?

•How many Beatles can you name?

•If you would commit a crime, what would it be?

•Would you go out with me?

•Many of our employees are Catholic. Would you have trouble fitting in here?

•Can I have a copy of your birth certificate?

•What would you do if your spouse got a job in another state?

•Are you expecting?

•Is there anyone else you would recommend for this position?

•Do you believe in ghosts?

•Can you give me a small photo of yourself?

•Did you ever have trouble starting your car?

•Can I get a recommendation from your pastor?

•Can you turn around?

•Can you count to 50?

•Will you keep other people sober at the Christmas party?

•Are you willing to add some toxicity to your life?

By Kevin Allen

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36			Career Movies
May 2013

HUMOUR

Mistakes on a Resume

These are from actual resumes:

•“I am extremely loyal to my present firm, so please don’t let them know of my immediate availability.”

•“Qualifications: I am a man filled with passion and integrity, and I can act on short notice. I’m a class act and do not come cheap.”

•“I intentionally omitted my salary history. I’ve made money and lost money. I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. I prefer being rich.”

•“Note: Please don’t misconstrue my 14 jobs as ‘job-hopping’. I have never quit a job.”

•“Number of dependents: 40.”

•“Marital Status: Often. Children: Various.”

•“Here are my qualifications for you to overlook.”

Reasons

for Leaving the Last Job:

•“Responsibility makes me nervous.”

•“They insisted that all employees get to work by 8:45 every morning. Couldn’t work under those conditions.”

•“Was met with a string of broken promises and lies, as well as cockroaches.”

•“I was working for my mom until she decided to move.”

•“The company made me a scapegoat – just like my three previous employers.”

Job Responsibilities:

•“While I am open to the initial nature of an assignment, I am decidedly disposed that it be so oriented as to at least partially incorporate the experience enjoyed heretofore and that it be configured so as to ultimately lead to the application of more rarefied facets of financial management as the major sphere of responsibility.”

•“I was proud to win the Gregg Typting Award.”

Special Requests & Job

Objectives:

•“Please call me after 5:30 because I am selfemployed and my employer does not know I am looking for another job.”

•“My goal is to be a meteorologist. But since I have no training in meteorology, I suppose I should try stock brokerage.”

•“I procrastinate – especially when the task is unpleasant.”

Small Typos that Can Change the Meaning:

•“Education: College, August 1880-May 1984.”

•“Work Experience: Dealing with customers’ conflicts that arouse.”

•“Develop and recommend an annual operating expense fudget.”

•“I’m a rabid typist.”

•“Instrumental in ruining entire operation for a

Midwest chain operation.”

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA

Plot: As given away by the title the film focuses on the world of haute culture, and what an exciting insight it provides! The film is centered on a naïve young girl Andy (Anne Hathaway) who moves to New York with her boyfriend in order to make her break in the world of journalism. However it isn’t quite as easy as she originally thought to secure her dream job and so ends up working as an assistant to the editor (Meryl Streep) of one of the world’s biggest fashion magazines. Andy soon discovers that the job is far more than a simple 9-5 office job and quickly looses her faith in the somewhat false world that is fashion.

Lesson: The plot continues and shows how Andy changes due to the demands of the job and the subsequent pressure this puts on her own life.

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

Plot: In this real life rags-to-riches tale, Will Smith plays the role of Chris Gardner, a homeless salesman turned broker. After his wife leaves him, Chris is left with his son, several portable bonedensity scanners which he had bought as a family investment, and no roof over his head. When he meets a manager from Dean Witter, he manages to convince him to keep him as an intern. From making sales calls in the morning and picking his son up from the nursery (which can’t even spell the word “Happiness” right), to sleeping in the buses, toilets, and public shelters during the night, Chris Gardner roughs it out till he finally achieves his heart’s desire, a job at Dean Witter.

Lesson: There is no alternative to hard work, if you want to achieve your dream.

UP IN THE AIR

Plot: The guy has a job that involves firing people. His home is essentially – wait for it – up in the air. He’s all lonely and empty and stuff.

Valuable career lesson: Even with a job as glamorous as constant travel, coming back to a proper home is worth more than you’d think. There’s something to be said for downtime and, we rarely get that in the workplace. Which means home needs to be a place where you feel safe, relaxed and chilled out. We promise it will make you more productive and better at your job in the long run.

OFFICE SPACE

Plot: The group of friends hate their jobs. Layoffs affect the office place. The group plants a virus to steal money from the company but it all goes horribly wrong! And by “wrong” we mean “oh-so-right.” (This is easily one of the best movies ever and so perfectly depicts what it’s like to be in a job you hate.)

Valuable career lesson: Co-workers are everything. The best thing about this movie is the cast and how the characters work together (and sometimes completely mess with each other). They teach us how you can stand even the worst job when there are awesome people involved. And also that if you don’t have awesome people, you may or may not “set the building on fire.”

JERRY MAGUIRE

Plot: Sports agent has an epiphany about the future of his industry and gets fired because of it.

Valuable career lesson: It is, in fact, possible to love what you do, make a difference and have an “important” career without being a completely asshole in the process.

Sources: http://blog.brazencareerist.com; http://www.ahajokes.com

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Celebrities Had Before They Became Famous

MURPHY’S LAWS ON WORK

ROD STEWART WAS A GRAVEDIGGER

Before Stewart charmed audiences with his British accent, he worked as a gravedigger at Highgate Cemetery in London during his teens.

According to Rod Stewart: The New Biography, he hoped working at the cemetery would rationalize his fear of dying: “He had suffered from nightmares about death from a very early age and so thought, as an impressionable teenager, that perhaps getting as close as he could to death, actually digging out holes to be filled by real bodies, he could rid himself of that fear.”

HUGH JACKMAN WAS A PARTY CLOWN

Jackman’s natural comedian tendencies would make him the perfect candidate for a party clown. At about $50 per show, he’s come a long way.

“I just love making a fool out of myself,” he said. “I made my living as a clown at kids’ parties for about three years. I was Coco the Clown and I had no magic tricks and I remember a six-year- old standing up at a party saying ‘Mummy this clown is terrible, he doesn’t know any tricks’ – and he was right.”

CHRISTOPHER WALKEN WAS A LION TAMER

At the age of fifteen, Walken joined a traveling circus and was briefly a lion tamer. He’s modest about his lion-taming days; he claims Sheba, the lion, was very old and “really more like a dog.”

MICK JAGGER WAS A PORTER AT A MENTAL HOSPITAL

Long before joining the Rolling Stones, this rocker carried around luggage at the Bexley Mental Hospital while he was a student at the London School of

Economics. He earned about 90 shillings per week (equivalent to almost 7 U.S dollars – worth roughly $52 during 1961).

MEGAN FOX WAS A BANANA MASCOT

One of Hollywood’s vixens was once a banana. The actress/model used to wear a banana costume to attract customers to a smoothie shop in Florida.

On the Ellen DeGeneres show, she admitted that it was the only real job she had. As a joke, DeGeneres had a man dressed as a banana sneak up from behind and scare her.

SYLVESTER STALLONE WAS A LION CAGE CLEANER

We’re not sure who had it worse: Walken, who tamed a lazy lion, or Stallone, who cleaned up after them. While waiting for his acting career to take off, the Rambo actor cleaned

up lion cages at the Central Park Zoo.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY WAS A CHICKEN COOP CLEANER

While McConaughey was living in Australia as a Rotary exchange student, he earned money by cleaning chicken coops. On the side, he washed dishes as well. Still, he doesn’t regret his odd-end jobs while travelling. “Those types of trips are really ones that leave a lasting impression,” he says.

http://finance.yahoo.com

See more on CD.

•Don’t be irreplaceable, if you can’t be replaced, you can’t be promoted.

•You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry a clipboard.

•Never ask two questions in a business letter. The reply will discuss the one you are least interested in, and say nothing about the other.

•When the bosses talk about improving productivity, they are never talking about themselves.

•If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.

•Everything can be filed under “miscellaneous.”

•Never delay the ending of a meeting or the beginning of a cocktail hour.

•To err is human, to forgive is not company policy.

•Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing.

•Important letters that contain no errors will develop errors in the mail.

•If you are good, you will be assigned all the work.

If you are really good, you will get out of it.

•You are always doing something marginal when the boss drops by your desk.

•People are always available for work in the past tense.

•If it wasn’t for the last minute, nothing would get done.

•At work, the authority of a person is inversely proportional to the number of pens that person is carrying.

•When you don’t know what to do, walk fast and look worried.

•You will always get the greatest recognition for the job you least like.

•No one gets sick on Wednesdays.

•The longer the title, the less important the job.

•Machines that have broken down will work perfectly when the repairman arrives.

•An “acceptable” level of employment means that the government economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.

•Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it makes it worse.

•All vacations and holidays create problems, except for one’s own.

A peculiar interview (a joke)

Reaching the end of a job interview, the Human Resources Person asked a young Engineer fresh out of MIT*, "And what starting salary are you looking for?"

The Engineer said, "In the neighborhood of $225,000 a year, depending on the benefits package."

The interviewer said, "Well, what would you say to a package of 5-week vacation, 14 paid holidays, full medical and dental insurance, company matching retirement fund to 50% of salary, and a company car leased every 2 years – say, a red Corvette?"

The Engineer sat up straight and said, "Wow!

Are you kidding?"

And the interviewer replied, "Yeah, but you started it."

* MIT – Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a prestigious private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. It has five schools and one college.

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WORK & JOB QUOTES

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.

Thomas Carlyle

One of the saddest things is that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can’t eat eight hours a day, nor drink for eight hours a day not make love for eight hours.

William Faulkner

If you have a job without aggravations, you don’t have a job.

Malcolm S. Forbes

The best career advice given to the young is

‘Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it.’

Katharine Whitehorn

The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.

Logan Pearsall Smith

Work and love – these are the basics. Without them there is neurosis.

Dr. Theodore Reik

If a man does not work passionately (even furiously) at being the best in the world at what he does, he fails his talent, his destiny and his

God.

George Lois

Few men ever drop dead from overwork, but many quietly curl up and die because of undersatisfaction.

Sydney J. Harris

Why the hell had I ever decided to become a country vet? I must have been crazy to pick a job where you worked seven days a week and through the night as well.

My mind went back to the school-days and an old gentleman talking to the class about careers. He had said: “If you decide to become a veterinary surgeon you will never grow rich, but you will have a life of endless interest and variety.”

James Herriot

Work is more fun than fun.

Noel Coward

People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up.

Ogden Nash

Nobody goes to the teaching profession for money.

Famous Writers

Who Worked Other Jobs to Pay the Bills

The most famous literary geniuses weren’t always writers.

In fact, a lot of time, these gifted writers had to hold down several odd jobs to pay the bills while they tried to get their writing careers off the ground.

From janitor, “oyster pirate,” plumber and mailman, we compiled a list of authors who didn’t give up on their writing careers and eventually made it.

KURT VONNEGUT worked in the first Saab dealership in Cape Cod

Before he published masterpieces such as Cat’s Cradle

(1963), Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), and Breakfast of Champions (1973), he sold cars in a Saab dealership in the 1950s.

In his article titled “Have I Got A Car For You,” Vonnegut writes: “I used to be the owner and manager of an automobile dealership in West Barnstable, Massachusetts, called “Saab Cape Cod.” It and I went out of business 33 years ago. The Saab then as now was

a Swedish car, and I now believe my failure as a dealer so long ago explains what would otherwise remain a deep mystery: Why the Swedes have never given me a Nobel Prize for Literature.”

Before The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. SALINGER worked on a Swedish luxury liner

In 1941, Salinger took a job to be the entertainment director on the H.M.S Kungsholm, a Swedish luxury liner, when there were few cruise liners due to World War II. It was during this time that he continued writing and even published a few short stories.

The winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, WILLIAM FAULKNER was once a mailman

Before fame from The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner was a postmaster, which enabled him to read magazines that he delivered. And he was apparently not very good at his job losing mail and spending his shifts “playing Mah Jong and sometimes going on a round of golf,” according to a piece in Marketplace.

He’s known for his legal thrillers, but JOHN GRISHAM was once a plumber

In his piece in The New York Times, Grisham writes: “Then, during the summer of my 16th year, I found a job with

a plumbing contractor. I crawled under houses, into the cramped darkness, with a shovel, to somehow find the buried pipes, to dig until I found the problem, then crawl back out and report what I had found. I vowed to get a desk job. I’ve never drawn inspiration from that miserable work.”

“My father worked with heavy construction equipment, and through a friend of a friend of his, I got a job the next summer on a highway asphalt crew.”

It was during college that Grisham decided he wanted to become a lawyer, and his best-selling novels are based from his experience in law.

ROBERT FROST worked a lot of odd jobs before winning four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry

Before he was one of America’s most popular poets, Frost helped his mother teach at her school, delivered newspapers and worked in a factory as a light bulb filament changer.

Unknown

Sources: http://www.businessinsider.com

A Man of

Adventure

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

The proper function of man is to live, not exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them, I shall use my time.” Jack London, 1876–1916

JACK LONDON (1876–1916)

His early life was scarred by the bitterness of poverty. At the age of ten the boy was on the street selling newspapers to supplement the family’s meager income. For fourteen years thereafter – until his first writing success at twenty-four – life was one vicious, downward cycle of toil, escape, toil, escape, toil. He became a “work beast” laboring in a cannery, a jute mill, a laundry, and shoveling coal in a power station. He worked for ten cents an hour, thirteen to fourteen hours a day, six and seven days a week. He hungered for knowledge and success that would lift him above the degrading poverty.

He spent time in the Klondike during the Gold Rush and at various times he was an oyster pirate, a deep-sea sailor, a sealer and a hobo. But most important of all Jack London’s adventures was his struggle to become a writer. Without guidance, writing under almost impossible circumstances, for the most part educating himself, and faced with continual economic hardship, he stumbled and groped for three long years in the literary wilderness. In the beginning the rejection slips followed one another with monotonous regularity. Had he been a weaker man he might have succumbed. Certainly the odds were against him. But at the end of his three-year travail success was his. He had conquered his Everest; the world was at his feet!

He ascribed his literary success largely to hard work – to “dig,” as he put it. He tried never to miss his early morning 1,000-word writing stint, and between 1900 and 1916 he completed over

fifty books, including both fiction and non-fiction, hundreds of short stories, and numerous articles on a wide range of topics. Several of the books and many of the short stories are classics of their kind, well thought of in critical terms and still popular around the world. Today, almost countless editions of his writings are available and some of them have been translated into as many as seventy different languages.

Martin Eden is the hero of a very popular novel by Jack London, resembles in many ways his author.

First published in 1909, the story tells about a sailor and labourer who falls in love with a college educated girl. Moved by his love for her, he educates himself so that he might become a part of the wealthy bourgeoisie. Ruth loves him, too, but she and her parents want him to find ‘a position’. Meanwhile Eden feels a desire to write fiction. He keeps writing and sends his works to different magazines who will not accept them.

Much loved by writers who identify with Martin’s frustration and belief that when he posted a manuscript, ‘there was no human editor at the other end, but a mere cunning arrangement of cogs that changed the manuscript from one envelope to another and stuck on the stamps,’ that automatically returned it slapped with a rejection slip.

Martin Eden’s struggle for literary success makes a fascinating reading.

‘…he often tried to make do with no more than four or five hours of sleep at night.’

In Vladimir Nobokov’s Pnin, the title character asks for Martin Eden in a bookstore, describing it as “a celebrated work by the celebrated American writer Jack London”, but nobody has heard of it, and they only have a copy of The Son of the Wolf. Pnin comments, “Strange! The vicissitudes of celebrity! In Russia, I remember, everybody – little children, full-grown people, doctors, advocates – everybody read and re-read him.”

Some extracts from Martin Eden maybe found on the disc.

Compiled by Olga Sventsitskaya

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May 2013

CREATIVE WRITING PROMPTS:

Find Your Character Through Their Profession

For many people, work defines aspects of their lives. The same is true of characters. Who would Jane Rizzoli (in Tess Gerritson’s books) be without her job as a homicide detective? Would Harry Dresden be as interesting as a wizard if he weren’t a private detective? Probably not. If Lisbeth Salander wasn’t so adept at computer research and job as a surveillance agent with Milton Security, would The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo have been the same? Easy answer. Nope. Atticus Finch had to be a lawyer bent on racial justice in To Kill a Mockingbird, didn’t he? Absolutely. His job adds meaning and power to the story and depth to his character.

What your character does is an important piece of who he is. Below are some writing prompts to help you dig into your character and find your story through your character. Answer these questions as the author, the narrator, or go into character and use his or her voice to reveal what is within. Use these prompts as exercises, basis for a discussion with your character, interview questions (to get the answers in your character’s voice) for entries into a character voice journal.

What is your character’s job?

Who is his employer? (Big corporation, small company, or is he his own boss?)

What drew him into this line of work? Is this his chosen career?

Did he need schooling for this career? What was that like for him?

Was he happy learning the job?

Were there challenges for a newbie? What were they?

Is this his first job, or has he had others in this line of work?

If others, why did he leave his last position? Was there trouble? Was he dissatisfied?

Or is he climbing up the ladder?

Does he have career dreams and aspirations beyond this job?

What does he do to that end?

How is he thwarted? How is he successful? Or does he see himself here forever?

Does he feel this job is a stepping stone? Or dead end?

Does he enjoy this work?

Why or why not?

What does he get (other than a salary) from his work?

What need (or lack within) does this job fill? What does his work mean to him?

Does he have a sense of accomplishment?

Frustrations? Of what nature?

Is he good at this job?

Is he suited to this job? To this career? Why or why not?

What skills does he have to make him suited for this job?

What skills does he lack that cause him challenges?

How does he get along with his boss?

Are their interactions satisfying? Conflicting?