• From collectors of deer urine to professional cuddlers¬, we count thirteen strange and
unusual jobs that pay surprisingly well!
13 – Professional Patient, (Pringle) • If you think every throat tickle is tuberculosis
and every scraped knee requires amputation, then maybe you should consider becoming a
professional patient.
Even if you aren’t a hypochondriac, this is still a noble profession that will help
the next generation of doctors.
• Basically a professional patient volunteers their time and body so that med school students
can hone skills as physicians and improve their bedside manner.
• In one session, you might receive seventeen physicals or, if you want to be paid more,
you can volunteer for more invasive procedures, like pap smears or getting your prostate examined
multiple times by teams of inexperienced doctors.
12 – Deer Urine Collector,(Pringle) • Apparently, deer urine is packed with
pheromones that drive bucks completely loco.
This makes it the lure of choice for deer hunters and creates a weird market for animal
pee.
• Deer farmers actually collect and sell the undiluted pee of their white-tailed deer.
Since there are more than seventeen million deer hunters in the US, there is plenty of
demand and plenty of opportunity to make serious coin.
• A single deer has between $93,000 to $300,000 worth of pee in it each year.
11 – Roadkill Collector,(Pringle) • Deer farmers may weep at this, but over
one and a half million deer are hit by cars each year.
All that urine money down the drain.
Plenty of other animals get collected by cars, too.
Usually while scurrying across the road in poor weather conditions.
It’s the roadkill collector’s job to pick them up.
• Collectors must scan the roads for animal carcasses, play Frogger with traffic, and
dispose of what they find at landfills or compost heaps.
• If you’re game, roadkill collection can be pretty lucrative job , with a minimum
wage of $25,000 a year.
10 – Furniture Tester,(Pringle) • If your mum keeps giving you grief about
spending fourteen hours a day on the couch, tell her you’re training for a career as
a furniture tester.
This unusual job exists because robots haven’t yet developed the ability to give feedback
about how comfortable furniture is.
• As you might have guessed, testers sit for long periods on manufacturers’ furniture
to give feedback.
This human touch gives furniture makers insight into what is comfortable and tells them what
material they should use and how high or low to build something.
• For their efforts, furniture testers average $31,000 a year.
Probably get freebies too.
9 – Ice Cream Taster,(Pringle) • Ice cream tasters are employed by dairy
companies to taste and assist in the creation of different flavours of ice cream.
• John Harrison is the official taste tester for a company called Dreyer’s.
He goes by the alias ‘The Ice Cream Man’ and has tasted a few hundred million gallons
of the stuff over the years.
His taste buds are reportedly insured for a million dollars.
• Seems like a pretty cool job then.
For their efforts, ice cream tasters make a whopping $56,000 a year on average.
I guess they would be subjected to gross flavours like liquorice and wasabi, though.
You couldn’t pay me enough to eat those.
8 – Crime Scene Cleaner, (Shima) • The police may clean the streets of crime,
but they don’t clean crime scenes; that would be a job for the crime scene cleaner.
• Taking apart meth labs, hosing down horrific bloodbaths that would make Dexter pause, or
cleaning up the latest anthrax “whoops,” makes this an... unpopular job choice.
Being plenty dangerous, it's important that the workers are well-compensated.
For surrounding themselves with all that gore and tragedy, crime scene cleaners bring in
around $600 an hour.
• Obviously, this isn't a job for the squeamish types.
7 – Golf Ball Divers, (Shima) • Despite what you may think about those
guys scuba diving in the lake at the local driving range, that's actually their job.
• Golf ball divers make anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 a year, but it’s not as easy
as it looks.
According to Dick Smith, owner of the diving school Midwest Diving Specialists—yes there's
a school for this—a golf ball diver must love treasure hunting, be full of testosterone,
and complete an actual golf ball diving course.
• The testosterone is apparently to help divers deal with the snapping turtles, water
moccasins, and alligators, which...
you'll regularly see if you follow this thrilling career path.
Oh goodie!
6 – Elevator Mechanic, (Shima) • It might seem... less than glamorous,
but elevator mechanic is one of the best-paying blue-collar jobs around.
An elevator mechanic is responsible for repairing and installing elevators, escalators and any
other kind of lift.
• No work experience is usually required; just a good attitude and high school diploma.
Most technicians rise up through the ranks by completing an apprenticeship.
• Although their careers have many ups and downs, money sure isn’t one of them, with
most earning a minimum of $75,000 a year.
The top percent earn upwards of a $100,000 a year, but the likelihood of this is as elusive
as... the thirteenth floor.
5 – IMAX Screen Cleaners, (Shima) • If you’ve always wondered how screens
at IMAX theatres stay so immaculately clean – and you like, know you have – it might
interest you to learn that it isn’t magic pixies or those weird lawn gnomes that seem
to be everywhere you look.
No, it’s someone’s actual job to come in and clean those massive screens.
• These screens get surprisingly dirty – not just because of natural dirt and dust, but
because lovely patrons often throw soda and gummi bears at them.
What a waste of gummi bears...
• For an average salary of $45,000 a year, IMAX screen cleaners use lamb’s wool, an
aluminium pole, and a specialised electronic cleaning device, to clean the screens in horizontal
and then vertical sweeps.
Essentially these guys have to clean the screens twice, so maybe think twice before chucking
your snacks at the screen.
4 – Sommelier, (Hellbent) • Sommeliers – also known as ‘wine stewards’
or ‘professional wine snobs’ – handle everything to do with wine at an upscale restaurant.
In short: fermented grapes are their jam.
• For an average salary of $50,000 a year, sommeliers answer customer queries, provide
recommendations and travel to vineyards to scout and buy wine from distributors.
• They must have many years of wine-tasting experience and complete training and a certification
program.
If you’re looking to get into this field, employers like it if you talk a lot of pretentious
bullshit during the interview.
3 – Professional Snuggler, (Hellbent) • Not to be confused with escorts, professional
snugglers are platonic companions who cuddle strangers for money.
Professional snugglers make around sixty dollars an hour for spooning and offering conversation
and emotional intimacy.
• Their cuddle-deprived clientele is mostly made up of people who feel unworthy of physical
intimacy, like those suffering depression, social anxiety, abuse victims and those with
disabilities or physical disfigurements.
• It’s an unusual job with a sexual stigma, but, hey, everyone needs a good cuddle sometimes!
2 – Sex Toy Tester, (Hellbent) • If you’re a chronic masturbator who
can’t stop flicking the bean or making the bishop cry, you may be thinking there aren’t
any jobs out there tailored to your unique skill set.
You’d be wrong.
• Sex toy testers are employed by manufacturers to test out the functionality and safety of
their products before they hit the mass market.
• According to an AOL report, these professional wankers – I mean workers – make $39,000
a year.
They certainly wouldn’t come home moaning about having a hard day at the office either.
Or maybe they would…
1 – Professional Sniffer, (Hellbent) • Those blessed with a superior sense of
smell might follow the example of Labradors and other sniffer dog breeds and turn their
gift into a full-fledged career.
• Odour testing is very important to a lot of manufacturers.
That’s why they employ professional smellers to whiff perfumes, wines, candles and air
fresheners.
• Workers in this field have been known to sniff out as much as $39,000 a year.
However, there are some drawbacks.
Those who work for deodorant companies might have to spend the day smelling strangers’
armpits.