Oddest Job

[chevygirl55]

What is the oddest position you have held?

Mine was not a bad one, just odd.  I was hired as a temp at a very large international company to be the assistant to one of the vice presidents.  I spent 6 weeks in my cubicle and saw him once, at which time he asked me to type his resume for him.  He was the acting manager of operations in Turkey!  (I was located in Ohio of the good old USA).  All I did was package up the mail that came for him and ship it to Turkey twice a week.  Oh, yeah and answer his phone, which I think rang twice while I was there.  There were dozens of assistants at this location.  I never did figure out why one of them couldn't send him his mail.

chevygirl55

[msmarieh]

I was the babysitter to the Swiss Ambassador to the United States (or the US Ambassador to Switzerland - never could keep it straight). Kept getting calls from the Mayor of Chicago, the Australian Ambassador and various other dignitaries.

I was in high school at the time. What a hoot!

Marie

[patphi]

This is not particularly odd - just different and a lot of hard work.

I was a Playboy Bunny - the cocktail waitress kind - not the centerfold.

[cocookie]

Worked at a country club after school and on Sundays and then 6 days a week in the summers during high school and college.  Answered a switchboard - the old fashioned kind with cords.  It was an interesting building because it was used as the house in the movie "The Philadelphia Story" with Katherine Hepburn.  There were lots of trees around the building and when there were lightening storms I had to step away from the swithboard becasue the electricity would get conducted through the trees and then into the old wiring and sparks would come out of the holes in the board.  

In that job I had to mimeograph the daily menu (messy job) and I used a very old Addressograph machine.

Throughout the years I also did lots of whatever needed to be done, like waiting cocktails when I was old enough, taking care of the coat check when someone didn't show up, etc.  One day I even sewed emblems on the pockets of sport coats.

[bethalize]

On my first day in a temp job I wrote a "best man's" speech for the boss to give a wedding the following weekend.

Bethalize
Deskdemon Forum Board Staff

[vegasadmin]

Don't know if it's really an odd job but it certainly qualifies as the most boring one I've ever had, bar none.  We're talking please give me a gun so I can shoot myself boring.  I sat at a microfilm camera for eight hours a day and ran documents through it, slowly (so they wouldn't jam), one at a time.  For four bucks an hour.  Second job (after McDonald's) right out of college.  It was 1983 and I'd left without a degree at a time when even degreed people weren't able to find well-paying jobs, so I didn't complain out loud.  But I hated every minute of it, all four months!

Also, one time I worked in a plant nursery, picking and packing plant roots.  Dirty work - my nails never did get clean and (pardon the grossness) when I blew my nose at the end of the day, the Kleenex would be black.  Ick.

When I lived in Texas, I worked for a company that wrote and published educational materials for Christian schools and homeschools - all self-study work.  Part of my job required reading and working through each individual workbook as if I were a student.  That was actually pretty fun, and when I made it through 12th grade physics, I was rather pleased with myself, since it required greater mathematical skills than I thought possible for me.  I couldn't go back and do the same work now (15 years later) without a lot of review, but was pleased to know that I could do something I'd thought beyond me.

Fun thread!  Next?

[Susan V]

My oddest job and the most boring was stuffing circulars in newspapers.  The other had to deal with newspapers again.  Helping my parents deliver them.  Sunday's were the worst.  To this day I can't stand the smell of newspaper ink.

Gator

[deedee]

I'm not sure this qualifies as odd, but it was interesting for me.  I was a Mystery Shopper, mostly in banks.  I would get assigned to go to a particular bank branch and do complicated transactions, then complete reports on how I was treated, how knowledgeable the staff was, were they helpful, etc.  Also working for this company I "mystery shopped" department stores for mens' clothing, usually ties, for some reason unknown to me.  They used this information to improve customer service and marketing for the stores, and I had fun because my children (now 25 and 21) were small and I could take them with me to make the shopping experience even more realistic!  Also got to use someone else's money to shop.  The worst job I ever had, even worse than being a hotel chambermaid (!) was taking phone orders for a mail-order catalog company that sold mostly inexpensive housewares and gifts.  What a nightmare!  I got some very peculiar calls, even though most people were nice and only wanted to order an Ab Roller or a Santa suit for their dog!