From milking snakes to eating dog food, here are 11 of the weirdest jobs in the world!
11.)
Netflix Viewer This job sounds pretty awesome!
Netflix employs people called "taggers," which are part-time employees who get paid to watch
TV shows and movies on the streaming service.
Taggers associate Netflix content with various tags, helping the service recommend other
shows and movies to viewers after they finish watching.
If you have Netflix, this is why it will suggest another horror movie if you watched “The
Conjuring.”
Sometimes you will get super weird recommendations that have nothing to do with what you were
watching but I think that’s what they were trying to fix.
Not too long ago, Netflix was hiring for a tagger in children’s movies.
The job description stated, “The ideal candidate has in-depth knowledge of kids’ (ages 0–12)
movies and television content.
Our team is responsible for determining, across the United States and worldwide: 1) which
content belongs in Kids profiles and how it evolves as kids grow up, and 2) tagging Kids
shows and movies with an eye toward accuracy and consistency.”
The jobs are also listed as remote, so you can watch them from the comfort of your own
home.
Are you interested?
10.)
Drying Paint Watcher There is probably nothing more boring than
watching paint dry but there is an actual person who does this for a living.
For example, there was an article about a man in the UK who spends his days painting
sheets of cardboard to test how long new paint mixes take to dry and watching for changes
in color and texture.
In fact, this man has had this job for over 30 years and states that he has yet to get
tired of the task.
While it is described as the most boring job in the world, it is also extremely important.
As the man states, the people who buy the products want paint that is going to dry quickly
and his job is to make sure this happens.
Professional paint watchers can make anywhere from $40,000 to $60,000 a year.
Pretty weird!
I wonder how you get recruited for that?
9.)
Train Stuffer If you think the London Underground is bad,
you should see the trains in Japan.
‘Oshiyas’ are hired to help cram as many people onto a train as possible by pushing
them from the outside and stuffing everyone in quickly until the doors close.
Their job is literally to make sure the train is fully utilized.
There is an art to this!
In fact, there are videos on Youtube of people in white gloves helping to stop people from
falling out, especially during peak hours.
If you live in a large city and taken public transportation, you might actually appreciate
this.
They generally work during the morning and evening rush hours and if you look at images
floating around the internet, you will see people crammed right up to the door.
They are literally touching the door and it looks like they are barely able to move until
the doors open at the next stop.
8.)
Golf Ball Diver Golf ball divers do exactly as their name
suggests.
Dive for golf balls!
Officially they have to search for the lost golf balls in the waters of golf courses.
They can be seen wearing scuba gear and driving around the golf course in a golf cart.
It is stated that around 2,000-5,000 balls can be collected by a golf ball diver every
day.
Some people get this job by starting their own business, while others work under another
company.
In fact, over the past couple of decades, golf ball retrieval and recycling has become
a multimillion-dollar industry, in which hardworking divers can earn between $50,000 and $100,000
annually, depending on the economy and a diver's stomach for harsh conditions.
They usually only get paid a few cents per golf ball they retrieve but they have to have
a lot of skill.
The lakes and ponds and other bodies of water on golf courses can be pretty dangerous.
There can be all kinds of stuff on the bottom and golf ball divers have to work through
the garbage, branches, leaves, and muck often on their hands and knees.
There can be wires, cables, and pipes where they can get stuck and of course don’t forget
the other dangers like snakes, alligators, and toxic fertilizers.
7.)
Professional Sleeper A hotel in Finland hired a member of staff
as a ‘professional sleeper’ to test the comfort of their beds.
This person sleeps in a different hotel bed every night and writes a review about her
satisfaction with each one.
Sounds kind of fun right?
The rest of the day you can just hang out at the hotel.
And there are several other professional sleeper jobs as well for research on the human body.
However, it might not all be as glamorous as you might think.
For example, professional sleepers are often hooked up to a lot of machines so your heart
rate and brain activity can be recorded.
Scientific studies will pay depending on what type of job you do.
For example, a professional sleeper for a hotel gets paid about $1,000 a month, but
of course your nightly stay and other amenities are included.
You might be able to make double or triple that amount if you take part in a study and
it depends on how long it lasts and how invasive it might be.
6.)
Professional Mourner It is tradition in Southeast Asia and many
other parts of the world that a loud funeral will assist the dead as they travel to the
afterlife.
Professional mourners are hired to cry and weep loudly throughout the service to help
support the family.
Professional mourning is a growing industry, most recently London has seen a huge boom.
A mourner who was asked about his job said that “People like me get hired to play the
part of mourners at funerals and wakes for any number of reasons.
Maybe the family is worried about embarrassingly low attendance, or they want to make their
deceased parent seem more important.”
I guess it’s true people want to keep up appearances, even at a funeral and if there
aren’t many people there, it could be pretty embarrassing.
Professional mourners have also gone on to say that they are like actors because they
have to play different characters, depending on the type of personality or career the person
had.
Like wedding crashers, but they were actually invited.
They also end up doing some research on their own time and will even learn how to play different
sports in order to fit in with the family and participate in any activities.
5.)
Odor Judge Odor judges often test the effectiveness of
odor-reducing products.
This is a very particular job because you are literally smelling people or things all
day long.
You need to have an excellent nose and be able to handle smelling things like people’s
armpits.
Possible employers include manufacturers of products designed to reduce, mask or eliminate
odors.
This could be anything from deodorant to Febreeze and how they work under different conditions.
The salary in this field ranges from $19,000 to $52,000 a year, varying with experience
and seniority.
Other than an obvious job like an armpit sniffer, whose job is to make sure that the deodorant
will work once it hits the shelves, another example of an odor judge is a paper towel
sniffer.
Paper towel companies want their products to be odorless.
The human nose can determine if there are any smells coming from the towel before, during
or after its use.
So you can kind of be as creative as you want.
4.)
Snake Milker This one sounds really weird but it’s not
exactly what is sounds like since snakes don’t produce milk clearly.
The job of a snake milker is to collect the venom of poisonous snakes in jars for use
in anti-venoms and other medication.
It’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it!
With over 2,000 different kinds of snakes on earth, about 400 of them are venomous and
might be useful for all kinds of scientific research.
To “milk” the snake, you grab it from behind the head in such a way to expose its
fangs, which probably makes it kind of mad.
The snake is then encouraged to bite down on a special container which collects the
venom that drops from the fangs.
The venom is then freeze-dried and sent out to various other labs and research centers.
Most snake milkers have a Bachelors or Masters Degree in Biochemistry or Herpetology (the
study of reptiles and amphibians).
They often work in labs where several different types of venomous snakes are housed.
This job is extremely dangerous since they are basically making the snakes angry and
stressing them out all day long.
At any moment the snake could lash out and attack the snake milker.
However, many claim that it is an extremely rewarding job because the venom has helped
create antivenoms and medications that are saving lives around the world.
3.)
Fart Smeller Believe it or not, there are people out there
being paid to smell others' farts and diagnose physical health based on their various odors.
It is a very serious job.
And not only that, it pays well, with reports of professional fart smellers in China being
paid up to $50,000 per year, in U.S. currency.
By picking up on traces of sweet, savory, bitter and even meaty aromas, these brave
anal analyzers are allegedly able to identify illnesses and pinpoint their location in the
body.
To even be considered as a fart smeller, you must be between the ages of 18 to 45.
You must be free of any nasal impairment or disease and refrain from all smoking and alcohol.
Humans aren’t the only ones that can be professional fart smellers.
Dogs, for example, have been trained to detect the presence of prostate cancer from smelling
patients' urine samples.
In another study, dogs were able to identify the stool samples of colorectal cancer patients
with 97% accuracy.
2.)
Worm Picker Have you ever gone to a convenience store
to pick up some worms before a fishing trip?
If you have, you can thank a worm picker for this convenience.
Worm pickers work at night and during rainy days to look for worms and sell them to fishermen
in markets worldwide.
With the help of a headlamp, they look for worms that have come to the surface to eat
or mate.
On a decent night, they hardly have to move more than a yard to grab about 50 worms.
Worm pickers say that you have to move very slowly but react quickly to grab a worm before
it gets back in its hole.
Sometimes they have their own worm farms which makes picking them even easier.
The amount of money a worm picker makes per night pretty much varies.
Of course, it depends on the number of worms they pick, but on a good night, they can make
up to $600.
However, in some places they make an hourly rate.
In Canada, they can make around $13 an hour.
1.)
Dog Food Taster So one thing is eating a dog biscuit by accident,
but it’s a whole other thing to eat dog food.
But there are actually real, professional dog food testers.
And yes, this is their daily job.
In fact, they make around $40,000 a year testing the quality and taste of pet food.
The dog food tester’s job is to taste new dog food products, including bones, tinned
meat and biscuits.
The trick is they don’t actually swallow the animal food, they taste it and then spit
it out.
Like at a wine tasting.
They do this to test for flavor and texture in comparison to rival dog food brands and
human food.
However, their days do not just fill up with testing dog or other pet food.
Most days, they’re writing reports and thinking of new ideas on how to put a nutritional spin
on a new line of food.
The requirements for this job include being a methodical thinker who appreciates details,
a creative person who can think outside the box and a person who will give honest, constructive
feedback for how to improve a product in preparation for it being sold.
You obviously also need to be comfortable with the idea of putting dog or cat food in
your mouth and chewing on it for an extended period of time.