- So everybody's got to have a job, right?
Did you think that summer job you had
selling Kool-Aid pickles out of a van was weird?
I mean, it was, but there are entire career paths
that are even weirder.
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- That is one big pile of--
- So, first, we've got the paleoscatologist,
and that's what it sounds like.
It's somebody who professionally studies
fossilized fecal matter.
You know, like dinosaur poop.
Like, a brontosaurus poops.
Million years later, they find it.
I'm kidding.
There's no such thing as a brontosaurus.
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If you want to impress some people
when you're talking about fossilized fecal matter,
call it coprolite.
This term comes from two Greek words:
copro, which means dung,
and lithos, which means stone.
It's a small field, surprisingly,
and there aren't many specialists.
That's because there's not really that much
fossilized fecal matter around.
Most of it is going to be eaten by an insect.
Cockroaches, for instance, love this stuff,
and then a lot of it is going to decompose,
so it can be pretty difficult to find
this fossilized fecal matter.
Keep hustling, though.
(speaking simultaneously)
So maybe being a paleoscatologist isn't for you.
Don't give up yet 'cause you could also be
a professional mourner.
Yeah, it's a real thing,
and it's been going on like 2,000 years in China.
These people are hired to perform something
called kusang, which is a mix of crying and singing
that's part of traditional funeral rights in China.
I'd do an impression for you,
but I want you to keep watching the video.
So there's a costumed dance tradition,
and there's also this practice where one of the mourners
falls to the ground and crawls toward the coffin,
begging for the deceased to be resurrected.
And this isn't just in Chinese culture.
In England, there's a company called Rent a Mourner,
and they do what their name says.
You can hire professional mourners
to fill out a funeral service,
especially if you're worried about low attendance.
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Well, how about gold stacking?
Yeah, true story.
Just stacking gold.
You see, the largest reserve of gold bars
is located beneath Manhattan in a vault
owned by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York,
or FRBNY for short.
FRBNY, it turns out, has so many gold bars
coming in and out that they have to employ people
just to stack them.
That is literally what they do.
In a stack.
Not that it's the easiest job on Earth
because each gold bar weighs
around 27.4 pounds,
and when these people are working,
they have to wear special protective footwear
so that their foot aren't crushed by the gold bars,
and they have to work in shifts
so that their arms don't get tired
from all the stacks on stacks on stacks of gold.
Or what if you spend a lot of time thinking,
"You know, I would like to shove people for a living.
"Like, I want to professionally push people."
It's fine, you don't have to tell me,
but, just in case you were wondering, that is a job.
Subway pushers.
You see, Tokyo is notoriously crowded,
and this carries over to its train system
so much so that it's this massive Herculean effort
to pack as many people as possible into the subway cars,
so there are professional people who stand outside,
wait 'til the train is pretty much packed
and then just push more people in
until the doors can close.
These white-gloved people-pushers
are known as the oshiya,
and they've been at this since the 1950s,
so it's safe to say they push it.
They push it real good.
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If you've ever been in a city, then you've seen it.
Cities are filthy with millions of tiny pieces of gum
thrown on the sidewalk and on the road.
What happens to that stuff?
Does it just stay there forever
or does someone come along
with the courage and the fortitude to remove it?
That's right.
A gumbuster.
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It's true, they use specialized equipment.
We're talking high-powered steam
along with chemical additives
to soften the material of the gum
so that it's easy to remove,
and this is kind of a big business.
In fact, there's an outfit in D.C.
known as Gumbusters D.C.,
and they reportedly rake in $100,000 a year
just removing gum.
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Why is the camera down here?
And this is just scratching the surface
of a wide world of bizarre occupations
that could be one of your future careers.
I mean, I don't know, maybe you've already had
a weird job in the past.
If so, let me know down here in the comments
or let me know about the weirdest job you've ever heard of.
And if you want to learn more, check out our article
10 Weird Careers You Won't Believe Exist
at HowStuffWorks.com.
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Is she still there or...
- [Voiceover] She's still there.
- All right.