Obscure jobs you'd never thought about ...

[Mrs M]

Blockages?

No, SS’s

 

[Mugshot]

In the days before bar codes, I worked for Edenvale pricing up yoghurts with a price gun. Arrive at supermarket early doors, unpack yogurts, put in fridge cabinet, price gun. That's it.
Except that your fingers got so freezing you couldn't feel them so you used to get little cuts from the metal lids without noticing so lots of yoghurts got sold with little bits of blood on them! Ewwww!

That reminds me of a job I'd forgotten I had. Working part time in Tesco butchery dept it was my job one year to price the frozen turkeys for Christmas. They had freezer containers out the back of the store and I spent several happy weekends working through box after box after box of birds, poring over a folder that had all the prices for the different weights in, cleaning a patch of ice off the bird so the label would stick, fiddling about with a price gun and generally freezing

Not particularly obscure though, sorry about that.

 

[Venod]

We once had a contract at Hartlepool Nuclear Power Station, for some reason they employed a contractor as a lift attendant (not a particularly unusual job) he was on permanent 12 hour night shifts but used to start an hour early so his mate on the other shift could get off early, it was a seven nights a week job, he was as mad as an hatter, he used to lock the lift so you couldn't use it without him, god knows how he got away with that.
The job had its ups and downs.

 

[Joey Shabadoo]

Got a job labouring at a coal power station once. They were replacing the furnaces one at a time and I had the job of digging out the reinforced concrete foundations with a jackhammer - with the other furnaces still running just feet away. You could only do twenty minutes at a time because the heat was just intense, like nothing I've ever known. Made me smile when I saw the other thread where people couldn't work cos the aircon was off.

 

[machew]

Cannon loader at Rolls-Royce (firing frozen chickens into running jet engines)

 

[Drago]

I'm a freelance beer taster. No clients yet, so I'm busy keeping my skills sharp in my own time.

 

[gbb]

At 17 I was a geophone layer and a 'dynamite' blaster. (It wasn't dynamite but some explosive in toilet roll sized tubes)
Vale of Belvoir, circa 1976, I worked for a surveying company mapping what became Harby and Hose superpits . Miles of 50 core cable laid out, geophone, instruments capable of picking up seismic activity, connected to those cables, terminated in a mobile truck with instruments on board, then they (eventually I got this job) detonated explosives at 10ft depth along a predetermined line, creating shockwaves that allowed them to map underground via the instrumentation.
It paid extraordinarily well, it was fabulous in the summer, awful in the winter, a 17 YO driving a 3.5 ltr Land rover across country having the time of his life with like minded idiots
It was a rare job I suspect, some years later I saw some trucks with vibrating pads underslung doing the same thing, technology moves on I guess.

Interesting or mediocre things blown up while messing around, some intentional, some not.
A coal bunker in a rural house garden.
The line passed near this house. I blasted quite normally but as it went I heard another noise, turned to see the concrete coal bunker collapse as it imploded with a puff of black dust. It must have been just some slabs or similar that didn't take the (Not big by any means) shock of the explosion.

Me...nearly.
Some of the guys used to pull up the det cord to bring the explosive near to the surface, it then created a big bang and a big crater maybe 10ft diameter....a bit of fun
I blasted one they hadn't told me they were playing with....clumps of earth went flying, nearly me with them as it went off the earth rose, compressing my neck...

Put a bunch of 17 to 25 year olds in charge of a load of landrovers, off road, with little or no supervision...games were played, endlessly.

 

[alicat]

From 9, I had a job each Christmas putting two holes in stand pies (large pork pies for the uninitiated) then pouring jelly in until jelly bubbled up out of the other hole. My small fingers were just the right size. Can't remember ever washing them first!

 

[Dave 123]

Mrs Dave works in the whirly world of potato breeding. It had not occurred to most people that this would be a

 

[GM]

Mrs Dave works in the whirly world of potato breeding. It had not occurred to most people that this would be a

Saw this in N.I, I did think it was unusual.....

 

[Slick]

[QUOTE 5296165, member: 259"]I once met a bloke who was a lighthouse keeper in Scotland. He was a pretty sociable, outgoing type, so it seemed an odd job for him, but he said he loved it. I suppose there aren't any of them left nowadays.[/QUOTE]
Probably over 20 years since they were manned.

There’s a few of them where I work

I didn't realise you worked in construction.

 

[Crackle]

Mrs Dave works in the whirly world of potato breeding. It had not occurred to most people that this would be a

.... mashed up career?

 

[classic33]

Probably over 20 years since they were manned.

I didn't realise you worked in construction.

Or farming.

 

[classic33]

Once a shoot stirrer, always a shoot stirrer...

Voice of the expert here.

 

[Mugshot]

Voice of the expert here.

Here, or there?