Love the idea of this book - it's definitely going on my TBR list!
My weirdest job - I grew up at a rafting company so once I was 16 I was allowed to guide rafts. I knew the river like the back of my hand and probably could have navigated the raft downstream without any input from the guests, but I don't think I inspired much confidence as a quiet, small teenager so I constantly had to put up with guys who thought I needed their help. I learned where to put them in the raft so I could counteract their macho over-paddling. Also where they might be the first to fall out. It was a great job though - sometimes I was amazed I was getting paid to be outside on a gorgeous day down in the bottom of the river gorge.
The oddest job I ever had was probably cotton candy and funnel cake maker at a water park. I couldn’t eat either for years! I also sold hams during one holiday break (didn’t even eat meat at the time) during college and was a cocktail waitress at bar whose claim to fame was having the largest selection of bottled beer in the world.
I can’t decide which weird job to share! Here are three: As a teenager, I used to sell concessions at Little League baseball games, where I served up such delights as Taco in a Bag (ground meat + nacho cheese + Fritos, served in the Fritos bag). Later, I worked in a department library at my university where the ceiling was literally crumbling on our heads — we had to put boards up on the stacks. 😬 Then I worked as a leadership consultant for an international sorority — I traveled around the country and stayed in various sorority houses, doing leadership workshops and teaching them recruitment songs and generally getting mixed up in collegiate chaos.
* this comment written while literally wearing an American Apparel t-shirt I bought in the mid-aughts
When I was in high school in California, my best friend and I worked in an aviary. It was just in some guy's backyard, but it had all sorts of exotic birds that we thought he sold to pet shops or privately. We had to haul these heavy buckets of seed mixtures and fruity stuff to the birds who lived, not in cages that you would normally think of birds living in, but cages like in the zoo, where you could walk upright into a bird-appropriate environment and dump your bucket in the bird's bowls. Back and forth we hauled these buckets. Over time, my friend and I invented a sort of armor which protected us from any and all bird poop that would come from on high. As I remember, there were a lot of bandanas involved. There was a bird, a Pea Hen (?), that was so territorial, one person had to hold a broom to keep the hen away from whichever one was feeding it. It was like a carefully choreographed SWAT operation. We had to say, "3.,2.,1" and immediately upon the cage door, one person had to hold the broom to fight off this ferocious football-sized bird, while the other dumped the food in the bird's bucket. The broom's plastic bristles looked like it had been put into a garbage disposal and pulled back out again. We had to do this every single day, so it became rote. We would be talking about biology class while holding back a vicious pea hen. My friend had started working at the aviary before me and on my first day, she told me there was a swan. I ooh and aahed because I had never seen one up close and really wanted to see it. My friend smirked and said, "Oh yes. Let's do go meet the swan." It was beautiful and as I approached speaking in a high squeaky voice, it freaked out and attached itself to my knee and would not let go. I tried walking away screaming my head off, but the thing just flapped and bit harder. I still blame that damn swan for problems with my right knee. The best part of the job was the toucan who would hop down his branch to get his neck scratched when I came into his cage to feed him. The other best part was that the guy had air conditioning and HBO. He was never there when we were, so we would escape from the hot California sun and our heavy buckets into his air-conditioned living room, still wearing our bird poop prevention outfits and watch movies.
Great interview, and as for weirdest job: selling knives (basically) door to door. You are taught this whole pitch and then you start with family/friends and then they give you people who might be interested and you semi-cold call them (They had to agree to the call first) to set up a demo. Just thinking about going to strangers houses with a bag of knives and weird demos (These scissors can cut a penny!), it seems even more bizarre now. The knives were actually really good quality but the company was called Cutco and I could never feel any sort of dignity saying that name out loud.
My weirdest job was working promotions for a country radio station in Houston. We drove the station branded vans out to car dealerships, horse racing tracks, bars, and little remote towns' county fairs to give away t-shirts, buttons, and stickers. While it was fun (and felt very cool in 2005) to hang with the radio DJs, we also had a lot of wild characters gathering free swag from our booths. My favorite part of the gig was doing "van hits," where we took the branded vans and rode around in/found a spot to chill near traffic during rush hour (basically a driving billboard) -- I always took the 6-9am shift because I could squeeze a nap in if I found a good spot to park the van.
Love this interview and cannot wait to read the book! Oh, the jobs I've held in my life. I've worked as a bartender, barista, cater waiter, magazine editor, yoga teacher, and art model. I worked at an amusement park as a bumper-boat manager. (Most of what I write is about work of some kind or another.) I guess my weirdest job was my stint as an "escort" in the campus security department at the University of Pittsburgh. I walked students across campus late at night. It was a unique job, providing some measure of safety to (mostly) women-identified people. I broke up a drunken fistfight once, helped find a missing person (who was passed out in the bushes), and jump-started an old car. It was very hardboiled. And I loved the walkie-talkie.
Weirdest job- working as a bartender during "Bike Week" in Daytona Beach, Florida. I know nothing about motorcycles, am super liberal, and don't like ACDC. I was a fish out of water but was good at telling people to not be rude! made a lot of $$
Loved this interview. The whole AA controversy began shortly after we moved to SoCal and I followed it like a soap opera. As for jobs? Nude model for art students abd bidding photography students in the 70s preceded by a stunt mowing greens and other maintenance stuff at a fancy Florida golf course where I learned to drive a tractor and spot alligators. I was regularly admonished for accidentally reshaping the putting greens when I dropped the blade in the wrong places.
I cannot wait to read this one. I’ve had a LOT of jobs in my life: camp counselor, professional framer, bookseller, but the weirdest has to be “caramel apple girl” at the farm during fall season! Running the caramel apple stand.
None too weird, but the fact that I spent the summer that I was 13 providing full-time child care for a baby I had no relation to seems very of-the-times.
Depends on your definition of "weird," but I used to be a professional ballet dancer & a lot of stuff goes down in the dance world. Barely got out with my sanity in tact 😵😅
One of my weirdest jobs was working as a brand ambassador for Cracker Jack snack mix at the Country Jam music festival in Grand Junction, Colorado. We (all women) wore cowboy hats and skimpy shorts and dragged a wagon around the festival filled with snack mix samples. Rumor was that the motorhome that was our home base had been built on “Pimp My Ride.” It had a dunk tank on the back, so drunk festivalgoers could throw bean bags at a target on the bus, and if they aimed well it made the girl in a bikini, propped up at the dunk tank, fall into the water. All the men cheered. Alas, after one girl had to leave for a family emergency, I volunteered to become the new dunk tank girl because I knew it made more money than snack girl. I still have a scar from the mechanism malfunctioning and dropping me into the tank too soon.
Love the idea of this book - it's definitely going on my TBR list!
My weirdest job - I grew up at a rafting company so once I was 16 I was allowed to guide rafts. I knew the river like the back of my hand and probably could have navigated the raft downstream without any input from the guests, but I don't think I inspired much confidence as a quiet, small teenager so I constantly had to put up with guys who thought I needed their help. I learned where to put them in the raft so I could counteract their macho over-paddling. Also where they might be the first to fall out. It was a great job though - sometimes I was amazed I was getting paid to be outside on a gorgeous day down in the bottom of the river gorge.
The oddest job I ever had was probably cotton candy and funnel cake maker at a water park. I couldn’t eat either for years! I also sold hams during one holiday break (didn’t even eat meat at the time) during college and was a cocktail waitress at bar whose claim to fame was having the largest selection of bottled beer in the world.
I can’t decide which weird job to share! Here are three: As a teenager, I used to sell concessions at Little League baseball games, where I served up such delights as Taco in a Bag (ground meat + nacho cheese + Fritos, served in the Fritos bag). Later, I worked in a department library at my university where the ceiling was literally crumbling on our heads — we had to put boards up on the stacks. 😬 Then I worked as a leadership consultant for an international sorority — I traveled around the country and stayed in various sorority houses, doing leadership workshops and teaching them recruitment songs and generally getting mixed up in collegiate chaos.
* this comment written while literally wearing an American Apparel t-shirt I bought in the mid-aughts
When I was in high school in California, my best friend and I worked in an aviary. It was just in some guy's backyard, but it had all sorts of exotic birds that we thought he sold to pet shops or privately. We had to haul these heavy buckets of seed mixtures and fruity stuff to the birds who lived, not in cages that you would normally think of birds living in, but cages like in the zoo, where you could walk upright into a bird-appropriate environment and dump your bucket in the bird's bowls. Back and forth we hauled these buckets. Over time, my friend and I invented a sort of armor which protected us from any and all bird poop that would come from on high. As I remember, there were a lot of bandanas involved. There was a bird, a Pea Hen (?), that was so territorial, one person had to hold a broom to keep the hen away from whichever one was feeding it. It was like a carefully choreographed SWAT operation. We had to say, "3.,2.,1" and immediately upon the cage door, one person had to hold the broom to fight off this ferocious football-sized bird, while the other dumped the food in the bird's bucket. The broom's plastic bristles looked like it had been put into a garbage disposal and pulled back out again. We had to do this every single day, so it became rote. We would be talking about biology class while holding back a vicious pea hen. My friend had started working at the aviary before me and on my first day, she told me there was a swan. I ooh and aahed because I had never seen one up close and really wanted to see it. My friend smirked and said, "Oh yes. Let's do go meet the swan." It was beautiful and as I approached speaking in a high squeaky voice, it freaked out and attached itself to my knee and would not let go. I tried walking away screaming my head off, but the thing just flapped and bit harder. I still blame that damn swan for problems with my right knee. The best part of the job was the toucan who would hop down his branch to get his neck scratched when I came into his cage to feed him. The other best part was that the guy had air conditioning and HBO. He was never there when we were, so we would escape from the hot California sun and our heavy buckets into his air-conditioned living room, still wearing our bird poop prevention outfits and watch movies.
Great interview, and as for weirdest job: selling knives (basically) door to door. You are taught this whole pitch and then you start with family/friends and then they give you people who might be interested and you semi-cold call them (They had to agree to the call first) to set up a demo. Just thinking about going to strangers houses with a bag of knives and weird demos (These scissors can cut a penny!), it seems even more bizarre now. The knives were actually really good quality but the company was called Cutco and I could never feel any sort of dignity saying that name out loud.
My weirdest job was working promotions for a country radio station in Houston. We drove the station branded vans out to car dealerships, horse racing tracks, bars, and little remote towns' county fairs to give away t-shirts, buttons, and stickers. While it was fun (and felt very cool in 2005) to hang with the radio DJs, we also had a lot of wild characters gathering free swag from our booths. My favorite part of the gig was doing "van hits," where we took the branded vans and rode around in/found a spot to chill near traffic during rush hour (basically a driving billboard) -- I always took the 6-9am shift because I could squeeze a nap in if I found a good spot to park the van.
Love this interview and cannot wait to read the book! Oh, the jobs I've held in my life. I've worked as a bartender, barista, cater waiter, magazine editor, yoga teacher, and art model. I worked at an amusement park as a bumper-boat manager. (Most of what I write is about work of some kind or another.) I guess my weirdest job was my stint as an "escort" in the campus security department at the University of Pittsburgh. I walked students across campus late at night. It was a unique job, providing some measure of safety to (mostly) women-identified people. I broke up a drunken fistfight once, helped find a missing person (who was passed out in the bushes), and jump-started an old car. It was very hardboiled. And I loved the walkie-talkie.
Weirdest job- working as a bartender during "Bike Week" in Daytona Beach, Florida. I know nothing about motorcycles, am super liberal, and don't like ACDC. I was a fish out of water but was good at telling people to not be rude! made a lot of $$
Loved this interview. The whole AA controversy began shortly after we moved to SoCal and I followed it like a soap opera. As for jobs? Nude model for art students abd bidding photography students in the 70s preceded by a stunt mowing greens and other maintenance stuff at a fancy Florida golf course where I learned to drive a tractor and spot alligators. I was regularly admonished for accidentally reshaping the putting greens when I dropped the blade in the wrong places.
Counting wooden rods for an art company!!
I cannot wait to read this one. I’ve had a LOT of jobs in my life: camp counselor, professional framer, bookseller, but the weirdest has to be “caramel apple girl” at the farm during fall season! Running the caramel apple stand.
None too weird, but the fact that I spent the summer that I was 13 providing full-time child care for a baby I had no relation to seems very of-the-times.
Calzone shop in college that was the only place open after the bars closed. Yes, everything you can imagine drunk college people doing happened.
Depends on your definition of "weird," but I used to be a professional ballet dancer & a lot of stuff goes down in the dance world. Barely got out with my sanity in tact 😵😅
I just came across this book the other day and fell in love with the cover. Great interview, friend!
I think you'll really likely. Some sharp critiques of 2000s feminism.
One of my weirdest jobs was working as a brand ambassador for Cracker Jack snack mix at the Country Jam music festival in Grand Junction, Colorado. We (all women) wore cowboy hats and skimpy shorts and dragged a wagon around the festival filled with snack mix samples. Rumor was that the motorhome that was our home base had been built on “Pimp My Ride.” It had a dunk tank on the back, so drunk festivalgoers could throw bean bags at a target on the bus, and if they aimed well it made the girl in a bikini, propped up at the dunk tank, fall into the water. All the men cheered. Alas, after one girl had to leave for a family emergency, I volunteered to become the new dunk tank girl because I knew it made more money than snack girl. I still have a scar from the mechanism malfunctioning and dropping me into the tank too soon.