What's the weirdest job someone you know does?

[BowerOfBramble]

I mean the ones that you'd never heard of until someone you met/a friend of a friend said "oh yes I run a bat sanctuary/teach maths to prisoners/paint portraits of dead hamsters".

A friend of a friend smells people's hair for a shampoo company. He travels all over the world sniffing people's heads.

video tape rewinder- after school in the local video store

A duck sexer

An avalanche technician - gets to drop bags of explosives out of a helicopter to create avalanches to help keep highways clear and safe. DS(10) currently thinks this is the coolest job ever.

Piracy negotiator . I think @Kendodd and I might be in the same industry

Also- handwriting expert, and someone who investigated whether companies were abusing Covid funding

Not the most titillating job but an old neighbour used to work in procurement of paper for the NHS. Someone needs to do it!

Also know a professional disney princess (children's parties) and a professional zombie (stag does and the like where they enact a zombie apocalypse experience).

Friend of mine is a fighter pilot, in his younger days when he was dating he’d never tell women his job, he’d always make something up as they’d never believe him.

There was a random ad up in my uni once for mortuary photographer who had experience in children's photography. No-one dared ask what the job would physically entail day to day.

I do a job which I didn't know existed until I was 28

Compliance for commercial pornographic films. The legal type with regular health screening, strict rules about what can and can't be done, hinted at or shown for different markets, proper payment, etc. He has to watch for any sign of drug use or or intoxication, violent/painful/risky acts rather than acted ones, whether intentional or accidental, any signs the people are being hurt, whether there is a sneaky removal or slippage of condoms, a loss of erection, if a participant (who are all age checked) looks too young in relation to the scene setting, etc. Since he's been doing it, there have been a few canned and participants fired/other participants contacted for follow up because the rules have been broken, but in general, the commercial companies stick to the guidelines/laws.

He reckons the money is good but it's one of the most boring jobs he's ever done - but he does think that it's important there is monitoring/comeback to stop additional pressures on the participants or sailing close to illegality/pushing the limits too far.

The other thing he said was it's made him realise how crap he is in bed because he's seen so many acted orgasms from both sides.

I am a tailor and I used to teach blind people how to sew (on sewing machines with a clear plastic safeguard attached to front of the needle)

I know a Druid who does hand-fastings.

Butterfly man. He does butterfly surveys and counts different species in a nature reservr.

I have a relative that designs the costumes for sadler’s wells.
My husband’s uncle is an electrician for film production companies, he’s worked on everything from James Bond to Harry Potter and the vicar of dibley.
My work colleagues daughter works for the rspb counting and studying rare birds in the UK.

@Houseofvelour

In the navy, checks fish for bombs.

Is there a big issue with fish smuggling bombs?

A friend of mine develops garlic bread for supermarkets. She travels around the country trying garlic bread and the goes back to the test kitchen with the chefs and recreates the best ones.

I think I have had a pretty unusual job, I managed country estates for wealthy families. Basically modern day downtown abbey, lots of tweed involved.

Stonemason, he is fixing a cathedral, apparently that work is never finished.

Birdman - like the counting BatPeople, but birds.

Professional gambler, betting on horse races.

Of course, all the bookies had banned him, so he employed a handful of people at a time to go up and down the country placing bets on his behalf. He made it clear to his agents that their job was temporary: once the bookies started recognising them, they were useless to him and he needed new faces. He said it was quite a fun psychological game of cat-and-mouse as the bookies tried to identify the patterns of his betting and he constantly changed his approach to outwit them!

It was a coordinated action with many of his operatives going in to place bets at roughly the same time, before the odds changed in response to their bets.

He was able to retire early, but is now getting bored and plans to write a book about the life of a professional gambler.

I know someone who is an expert on beards and wrote a dissertation on them. She’s worked with costume departments and historic dramas. I also know someone who is an expert on retro TV. They regularly carry out research work for those crap Channel 5 shows like ‘100 forgotten sitcoms of the 80s’ or whatever.

I also knew someone who was a buyer for bags for a supermarket. Their entire day revolves around plastic and reusable bags. Takes all kinds I guess.

I work in a facility that assesses smells, there are many very specialised jobs, e.g.:

• people who make and rate bad smells (stinky feet, rotting bin, sewer smell, dirty toilet etc)
• people who smell & rate other people's armpit odour
• someone who washes & dries laundry all day, so that others can then smell the washing
• people who have their breath smelled before & after cleaning their teeth, and the people who smell their breath!

I know someone who tests urine samples to see if a women is pregnant.

Not for medical reasons but because they work at a fish farm and the pregnancy hormone helps fish breed

My friend is a police hostage negotiator

Regulator/compliance/miderator person for Google or youtube(can't remember which) has to watch videos of all sorts to ban and remove and report violent/abuse/terrorist/illegal activity seen some horrific sights

Not as weird as some other jobs here but I work in my family business we have made Hearses and Limousines plus other funeral vehicles for over 70 years.

I do get some raised eyebrows from people especially when I say about going to a funeral conference.

A relative is a world renowned Civil Engineer and former President of a huge global company and has close links with the US Government - from very humble beginnings.

Computer bod at MI5, several in fact, none will talk about it obviously

Horse rug washer - must be lucrative judging by the house :-)

Bonsai tree specialist

@villanova you have reminded me of a guy I knew who used to have to smell under people's arms to check whether deodorants were working.