obscure job titles

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Salty seadog

Space Cadet...(3rd Class...)
Housewife, I mean, logically.......
 

DRM

Guru
Location
West Yorks
How about being the “willey ‘Oil lad” no, not some sort of gigolo, The willey Oil (Oil in West Yorkshire means hole, usually in reference to a place) is probably the worst job going in the shoddy mills, where rags were blended with oil to be made into the type of cloth called shoddy, it was where young boys started work in the mills and it was thought that if they hadn’t progressed in two years they were basically useless and only fit to stay in the Willey Oil for the rest of their working days, I seem to recall there is a song probably dating from 1890/1900 era, where a young lady is warned off marrying a willey oil lad, by her dad.
 
Housewife, I mean, logically.......

Our local vicar once told the story of his wife being asked her job, and saying she was a stay at home mum. The prson asking the question wrote "Housewife".
Next uestion was the "Spouses occupation".
When she heard "Vicar" she crossed out "housewife" and wrote "Vicar's wife".
While more accurate I'm not sure if it was a promotion or demotion in her eyes...
 

kapelmuur

Veteran
Location
Timperley
Job title inflation can be amusing. I went from being a manager to a senior executive over a 20 year period without the scope of my job changing.

I’m sure there are 100’s of examples. Why on passenger trains do we have a train manager instead of a guard? I think guard is a better description of the duties involved.
 

Salty seadog

Space Cadet...(3rd Class...)
Our local vicar once told the story of his wife being asked her job, and saying she was a stay at home mum. The prson asking the question wrote "Housewife".
Next uestion was the "Spouses occupation".
When she heard "Vicar" she crossed out "housewife" and wrote "Vicar's wife".
While more accurate I'm not sure if it was a promotion or demotion in her eyes...

Yes, more accurate in that she was the married to a vicar not a house.
 
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