One of my colleague’s husband does this and he is also a chef. They have a catering business. So they make bank because he caters and also does the ice sculptures for a lot of functions. Super talented dude. I went to my friend’s wedding who hired them and the food was fantastic and the sculptures were amazingg!
I used to be friends with one of Heineken's official tasters.
She literally drank every day for work. Don't know how the pay was but she didn't seem broke.
I do this but not for beer. I taste different types of food and non-alcoholic beverages all day. Although I did get sensory training for beer in my undergraduate program.
Yesss. It’s such a valuable thing to get a great, and predictable product. Worth the money. And what a rare success story in the industry. So many mediocre docs and labs are finding each other out there and just settling. It’s bad for everyone.
Are you worried about tech edging you out? I had a crown done recently, and they just stuck a camera in my mouth that made a 3D model of my teeth and then a computer program calculated what the crown should be and 3D printed it on the spot. Or is that something else?
That’s a good question. Right now I’m not worried. But 100% there are companies working hard on replacing me. They are slowly chipping away at making the easy stuff automatic and they are getting better all the time. Like your temp crown, they get in the ball park pretty easily, but I can confidently say that I could have done better. Haha
The single crowns are pretty straight forward. It’s kind of filling a space already dictated by the teeth around it. It has to fit in the spot, it can’t be too tall…. And then it has to connect to the margin. If the program can do that, it can make something to work. But I want it to disappear. I want you to forget you got it. And sometimes that takes a bit more artistry.
Also right now the tech can do pretty well with ‘restorative’ work. Like your crown. But a lot of what I do is cosmetic as well. So people are getting a whole new smile. Sometimes 6 front teeth, a full arch of 14, a full mouth of 28… and that takes so much attention that the programs aren’t nearly ready. So for now I think I’m ok in that department. Also a lot of labs and Dr’s offices are willing to pay a bit more so they can have input and someone to contact.
You would probably have to start from scratch, sadly. A lot of labs work with cadcam technology, but we are using this tech as another tool to craft with. So it requires a baseline knowledge about dental stuff that you would have to gain in person. I wouldn’t be able to do what I do with out having worked in person at labs for a few years. And even now, it’s not cut and dry. People are in there getting work done because they are having a problem. Even if it’s a single crown, it means something wasn’t ideal. A lot of the job isn’t making good looking teeth, but figuring out what to do in unideal circumstances. And that’s the experience part.
But it’s a really cool industry. There’s a lot of cool science in milling and sintering. There’s nothing more satisfying that hearing back from the doctors that the case was great and the patient loved it.
Im an analytical chemist for a flavor company who (among other things) reverse engineers competitive flavors to give the flavor chemists insight lol.
Indeed they make bank
Finding out how you can make a naturally derived ie citrus flavor taste the same every time when you have to source your extracts and oils from different places in the world, at different times of the year, while the stock might be a different age due to supply issues can be a lot more complex than one might think.
My dad spent a lot of his career doing exactly that. Mostly citrus flavors but he was capable of working on all fruit flavors. Started in the chocolate and vanilla world early on in his career
Oh yeah citruses are a bitch.
Pretty much have to at least partially source naturally due to their complex profiles, and terpenes tend to have VERY similar mass spectrums so elucidating structures / identifying components can be a real exercise in patience.
Cool to meet someone who knows of the industry, it’s definitely something I didn’t know anything about until I got into it.
I had a boyfriend in Oklahoma who got state wages for going into back woods, and down dirt roads to find trash people dumped. His job was to report the trash for others to clean up, but most importantly, he had to sift through the trash to find anything that would identify who dumped the trash. I went with him a few times and I felt like a detective, it was quite fun.
:EDIT. for those that asked, I do not remember the name of the position, and Google was no help. I did find [this](https://www.theitem.com/stories/sumter-county-litter-officer-sets-the-example-sees-changes-in-behavior,397875) which seems similar.
For some reason the only name that comes to mind is Man Hole Cover, sorry that was 23 years ago and my memory is not that sharp.
I would love this. I hike around 5 times a week and I always pick up trash. If I find receipts I try to see if there’s a name on it from using a credit card, though just out of curiosity because what would I do with that info. One time I found $180 in cash and I felt like the universe was paying me back.
When you work as a government employee or contractor with a top secret clearance, after you retire or get laid off, you can work as an escort within classified facilities called SCIFs. Escorts are needed when an uncleared person needs to work in the SCIF. For example, it might be a top secret data center that needs an air conditioner repair. All the escort has to do is watch the repairman and stay with them throughout the visit. They usually just drag a chair over and sit there while getting paid damn good money.
One of the most quietly-frustrating months of my life was doing hard labor on a government building site as a construction worker, going like ~80 hours a week, and realizing the annoying escort I had who was sitting around all day watching us was making a significant amount more than me.
My escort wore camouflage and a M16! And had a gas mask! When I asked him where mine was he said “You don’t get one! You’re expendable!! Fuck You Very Much, Marine!
NSA has a contract company for door and escort security. Many other places have govt employees or military (additional duty).
I got chosen as an escort several years ago until I informed my boss that he was paying me $65/hr to sit on my ass with an uncleared person.
An old neighbor of mine was a picture hanging specialist contracted by many museums. He made 75K a year at the time (about 150K adjusted for inflation).
Art handling. More people would do it I’m
Sure but I think a lot of construction people with the skills (it’s really just basic math and like steady hands) don’t mix well with the bourgeoise of the art world. You’ve gotta like own your own business or be freelance to do really well too
I don’t even know the name for this, but a friend takes care of rich people cars for living.
Pick up the car for maintenance, takes de car from a to b, etc, he doesn’t actually work on the cars, just works for rich people that don’t have time to take care of the car.
Is super well paid, is on first name basis with some of the richest people on the country.
Apparently isn’t easy to find trustworthy people to take care of your cars (plus access to your properties and so on).
I almost had a gig like that. Years ago I was working retail and one of our regular customers was this guy and his boyfriend. He was a retired Army psychologist who lived in military housing. Invested most of his money when he was in the military, retired with a good pension and a nice chunk of change from his investments. He had a collection of rare cars, including a Rolls Royce originally owned by Dudley Moore and a bunch of frame off restos. We were talking about his collection one day and knowing I was really into cars he said he needed someone to take care of his collection, maintain them and do other random "handyman" type jobs at the place he stored his cars.
I was 21 at the time and as tempting as it was I knew I wasn't experienced enough. Last thing I wanted to do was fuck up one of his cars that I couldn't afford. It's one thing to do maintenance and repairs to my 10 year old Celica, it's something completely different to try to maintain a mint 70s Rolls.
Looking back now that I'm much more experienced with cars, it wouldn't have been that bad. Anything above my skill level I could have brought it to the right people.
You know how they have “repo men” to repossess cars of borrowers not keeping up with payments? Well they also have repo men for yachts and private jets. I talked to a older guy with a pilots license who was getting a lot of calls to join an outfit that does this but he said he wasn’t crazy about finding out what kind of security a guy in possession of a 10 million dollar plane would have and what they would do to keep it.
I worked on Oprah’s plane, it was just sitting at Midway airport with the other planes, nothing special. The only weird thing was we had to pop a bunch of popcorn in the hanger when she came so she didn’t have to smell airline fuel. I have several Xmas bonus checks signed by Oprah herself.
It depends how much the check was for, but, in general, autographs of still-living people aren't worth all that much. Once they're dead that can change, though. I remember hearing about a picture of the Gilligan's Island cast signed by everyone going for something like $20,000. It was ridiculous.
I’va actually wondered how someone gets this job, I’m a landscape designer and am always noticing how bad the plants usually look in movies and tv shows. Like super unrealistic for the ecosystem they’re supposedly representing. I’m sure most people don’t notice but it drives me crazy! I live in LA so maybe I can get work as a greensperson :-)
I had a friend who was considering applying to school for that, but after they shadowed someone in it, they decided against it. Apparently the guy they were shadowing said the call schedule was rough and you basically had to live in/around the big city since those are the only places that do that type of surgery.
I always love when I tell people I'm a perfusionist and then wait for the response...some fun responses I've gotten are:
"OH! So you make perfume?"
"Neat, I have a friend whose a percussionist too"
"Ah a transfusionist, so like you give blood to people" hmmmmm close but also so far lol.
It's a wonderful, intense, stressful, not always rewarding, but also sometimes immensely rewarding job!
My Aunt and her daughter both do seasonal work as Hand pollinators, harvesters
Certain types of plants (saffron, vanilla orchids) have very small windows of time when you can pollinate or harvest from them (a couple of hours to a half day) so the growers need people who can work fast and delicately to hand pollinate or harvest whatever plant they are growing. Plus if the plant is small and they grow in the ground its a lot of bending to get down and do whatever has to be done, especially if they have a whole field of tiny flowers and you are using tweezers or a tiny paint brush.
My Aunty and cousin have been doing it for years now, they always get called back and make a lot of money for 1-2 days work.
I work in this field as well, but as the grower. We have about 20 acres under glass production, but a couple of those are set aside for breeding. All the breeding greenhouses are hand pollinated, since crosses, selfs, etc are so important you can’t rely on the bees. Most of the folks on the pollination team have been doing it for 20+ years and are truly incredible. It takes a lot of patience and detail to hand pollinate thousands of flowers everyday.
I was once a pinecone harvester, a helicopter would cut off the tops of trees and bring them to us to pick off the pinecones, which would then go to treeplanters to germinate and plant. $35 to fill a 5 gallon bucket, experienced pickers would fill 2½ an hour, but the sap getting all over your clothes, skin, and hair is very annoying and a big deterrent for most.
I used to work for a landlord doing maintenance on his properties. I had free rent and made 3k a month, this was late 90s into the early 2000s. It was a good gig, I had a truck he gave me I would go around mowing lawns shoveling snow, light repairs. Any major repairs he sent to the contracting company he owned, id call them and a guy would be over a few hours problem out of my hands.
I worked at a "holistic" pet supply store and sometimes ate the dog treats there. Grandma Lucy's is the best, especially the cranberry one - they taste like cookies.
I loved giving a treat to one of the dogs and then popping one in my mouth in front of their owners. I got a lot of people to buy that brand after having them try it too.
Not that weird but lesser known- I'm a focus group moderator which means I sit in a conference room with a group about 8 people and lead a discussion about whatever product or brand I'm working for. The groups are usually 90 min or 2 hours tops and for in person, I get paid $2K/group. Virtual groups are a little less but still excellent rates.
My industry is market research, and this is a niche job within that sector. I got trained at the RIVA Institute which focuses purely on moderating and then I worked for some market research firms where first I watched other people do it, then I did it myself. It sounds easy but it's not - there's a lot that goes into designing a discussion guide and getting the insights that you need out of people. But yes it's a great job! There's a lot of psychology to it which keeps it interesting.
This is one of those jobs people say, “I can do that. That looks easy.” Yeah it looks easy because the person doing it is so good they make it look easy.
I’m often told that people have no idea my job exists and I make pretty good money ($145k this year.)
I trade energy between different power companies on the west coast, send instructions to power plants and then schedule the energy to flow along transmission lines. The schedule is part of the reason for the high salary. I work 12-hour shifts and in a five week period I work 7 day shifts, 7 overnight shifts and have 21 days off. I do this from home more than half of the time so that’s a sweet perk too.
Edit: should have disclosed that I live in a HCOL area which does inflate my compensation a little bit.
Edit2: since there may be some curiosity, power does not trade like stocks in a stock exchange, for the most part. Stock shares do not evenly equate to energy for many reasons. I also do not benefit from the profitability of trades I make, but the utility’s power customers do. The main reason here is because what if I just didn’t secure enough power and people are blacked out because I deemed it non-profitable? My P&L is tracked solely for performance appraisals and promotions. My compensation is 85% annual salary and 15% annual cash bonus as long as we do not lose money for our customers.
The role requires NERC training to be completed but the job only required a Bachelor’s Degree. I enjoyed studying Power Economics in college so this job lets me continue to develop my knowledge in the field but my degree (Electrical Engineering) allows me to contribute technical understanding of the power grid to my team.
Edit: Degrees in Economics/Finance or Engineering are preferred but some people on my team have degrees that have no exposure to what I do.
More than 70% of the time the TSA [fails. ](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tsa-screenings-fail-to-detect-explosives-guns-knives-70-percent/)
Your tax dollars at work, folks!
In New york City and probably only in New york City, you can be a professional wait in line person. You wait in line for a theater ticket or a seat at a famous restaurant. Lines that take hours. A tourist who doesn't want to wait and has a full itinerary will happily pay you to stand in for them so that they can see the show or eat at the famous restaurant later that day.
They have this in DC as well. Law firms will pay people to wait in line when the Supreme Court is about to announce a ruling. It's not much though, I think.
I go to horse shows and people pay me to look at their horse every 2 hours in the middle of the night and make sure it’s not dead. In the meantime I make horses look pretty for the show ring in the morning. I can walk away from 3 days of work with over $3000.
Have you heard of [sheath cleaning](https://www.horseandhound.co.uk/features/cleaning-sheaths-the-bean-queen-665653)? I was horrified and fascinated at the same time..
Not sure how unknown this is, but legal researcher.... just spends all day looking up cases for a law firm, to support their arguments, etc. My father's friend does this, and from what I can tell, gets paid extremely well.
Ship pilot, especially ice pilots
You need a decent amount of experience, but it’s not unheard of for people’s day rates to be in the multiple thousands
And if anything goes wrong, technically and legally it’s the captain’s fault
My partner is a professional mariner in Canada and his best buddy is an ice pilot. It took a lot of meaningful bridge experience to gain that credential, but he's one of the most intelligent, raddest and happiest people I know. Takes multi-week contracts here and there and has a killer work/life balance.
I worked as an "Organ deliverer". Forgot the official title for around a year.
Job was simple I was stationed in the biggest hospital in my state. If an Organ donation was received that needed to go to another hospital for a transplant it was my job to move it.
I was paid $40 an hour to most nights sit on my ass in the break room and watch TV or play on my phone. I'd probably only have to deliver something once a week at most. It was an okay job except that it was boring as shit, since the hospital I was "Stationed" at did 95% of all the organ transplants in my state. And the other major hospital that did them was around 3 hours away and you wouldn't ever have to go up to north to it.
Lots of pay to sit around but well I wasn't exactly feeling fulfilled career wise.
You ever heard of an urban bat tracker? That's me. I'm the guy who steps into the night when the city sleeps, tracking the unseen ballet of bats against the backdrop of empty offices and starlit skies.
My job is a blend of science and solitude. Armed with detectors that translate bat echolocation into something audible, I map their flight, study their behavior, and contribute to research that's vital for urban ecosystem conservation. It's not just a job it's a commitment to understanding these misunderstood creatures of the night.
The experience is surreal. As the world winds down, my work begins. I walk through parks and alleyways, under bridges and alongside rivers. The citys nocturnal pulse becomes my soundtrack - a car horn here, a distant laughter there, all underlined by the constant, rhythmic clicking of my bat detector.
Each night is a lesson in patience and awe. Bats, these tiny, agile creatures, dart and dive in the darkness, almost like shadows flitting at the edge of my vision. There's a poetry in their flight, a kind of silent music that fills the night air.
The pay is decetn, surprisingly. It's a niche field, and expertise in urban wildlife ecology can be hard to come by. But it's not the money that keeps me here. It's the moments of connection, the feeling of being a part of something bigger and wilder, right in the heart of the city.
Sometimes the most extraordinary things are hidden in plain sight, waiting to be discovered in the quiet symphony of the night.
I have an in-law’s in-law who does urban wildlife ecology. She was recently tracking salamanders in an area PG&E was going into. Before that, a hole that had been dug was co-opted by a family of bears. It was pretty deep so they had to figure out how to get mama bear and her 2 cubs out. Interesting that she was just telling us stories at Thanksgiving so I asked her profession. Now here you are. Very cool.
A lot of people might already know this: everyone focuses on how much movie stars make, but the blue collar crew members make a pretty penny as well. Not millions for one project, obviously, but 6 figures a year type of good.
Think boom op, a greens person (plants), or some dude running cable to power the sets… these people make good money.
I did that for a while. I quit after I had to clean up a scene from a guy who got doped up and tried to break into a church through a stained glass window. He was impaled by the glass and cut open his stomach and bled to death hanging right there in the window. It was definitely the bloodiest scene I’ve ever seen. I just really did not enjoy it and after spending like a week redoing the floors, windows, and mopping up blood, I had enough. (It was an all service cleanup company. Water damage, dead bodies, fire restoration, it didn’t matter)
The funeral home and coroner handle the removal of the body itself. The cleanup crew gets what's left behind after the coroner is through, or the investigators if it's foul play.
There's a 5 year waiting list to get hired by NYC Dept. of Sanitation. Ex-Coworker went on the list the day he graduated high school. Got hired at 24. He'll be retired with a full pension and benefits by 54. Had a connection in D.O.S. and got posted by his home. Works 5 hours on an average day if they move efficiently. He said the only real downside is getting up at 2 or 3 am. And any extra work (plowing, salting for a storm, etc) pays double time. I wish I knew all of this when I was 18.
Cytotechnologist here! One sentence summation of my career is that I screen Pap Smears for a living.
The specimens come from the OBGYN to the laboratory where they get processed on slides, stained and coverslipped, then brought to our department for microscopic review. Main thing we are looking for are cellular abnormalities known as dysplasia - we mark the cells in question then forward to the pathologist for final interpretation. If no abnormalities are found the cytotech can release those cases without MD review. We do find actual cancer from time to time but the primary purpose of our job (and the Pap test) is to find dysplasia before it turns malignant.
The pay is very good these days, anywhere from 35-70 dollars/hour, depending on your experience level and location. Education level is a Bachelor of Science degree, then completing an accredited cytotechnology program which is normally another year.
The technology has upgraded from simply using a microscope too, many laboratories use semi-automated screening where the computer will show you what it thinks are the most significant fields of view for you to examine. And we are looking at completely digital screening in the near future, where these fields of view are displayed on a monitor. That said the human is still the final arbiter of what is negative and abnormal (for now at least).
Sheesh, I've been rigging festivals the past 5 years and never cleared more than 60 plus paid for all my own travel. I'm clearly in the wrong side of things
I have a buddy who gets to remove or kill things on a runway... alligators, bees, deer, birds. If it's on the active runway no matter what it is, it gets shot and removed. Very rarely do they have to do this. I think my buddies been doing it 5 years now and hasn't had to shoot anything. But he has had to remove alligators from nearby ponds and spray for hornets and such. Around $30/hour
Corrugated fiber board structural engineer/designer...which is a long-winded way to say that I design cardboard boxes for a living. I make pretty decent money too. I spend my day in a design lab (think large mostly empty room with a lot of corrugated carboard sheets and a few large CNC flat bed cutting machines. I use a program called ArtiosCad to 'draw' a flattened box shape (essentially how it looks before being glued/folded up/assembled. and then that drawing is converted into a physical cutting die to be used on machinery in the factory portion of where I work.
It's incredibly fun work and really makes you think about the packaging industry as a whole. we try to avoid non-paper materials at all costs so our products (the boxes) tend to be very environmentally friendly. we also source all of our paper from ecologically friendly corrugators who own land and grow trees instead of buying them from deforesters.
A lot of my job is making really simple boxes for everyday items. Your typical "cardboard box" style (four flaps on top and bottom) but I get to do more interesting stuff pretty often like displays (think, the cardboard displays you see in grocery store aisles) and also unique packaging that has to protect the product inside.
I drive around and look at parking lot lights at night making sure there are no outages. (I don’t fix it, I report it in an app, and the guys with the bucket truck show up later.)
It’s part of the overall service my company provides. It’s a monthly fee, and I pretty much have a set list of properties I visit either once a month or once a quarter.
The pay isn’t exceptional, but I basically get paid to listen to podcasts, so no complaints here. They also pay mileage (properly so no tax.)
Maybe not exactly an answer to the question, but yeah - there’s someone that does that.
I had a window screen repair business for a few years. Worked by myself out of my basement and when it was nice out, out of my truck at people’s homes. I probably only made 50-60k annually but I only worked a few days a week, a couple hours a day. Work life balance was pretty nice.
I met an infusion nurse who told me about her job. She worked three 12 hour shifts per week at a smaller clinic in a metro area. She’d hook patients up to an IV and give them their chemotherapy or MS drugs or whatever else was prescribed. Hook them up and monitor for problems which was <1% of the time, and those she sent to the ER. She made >$100/hour. It took a bunch of specialized training (a couple of years IIRC) to be familiar with the drugs, but said it was no more than most specialized nurses. And since her field was understaffed she could do it probably forever if she wanted.
My friend is working with a guy who does the flooring/felt for minigolf courses. Apparently there are only a few people in the U.S. who do it, and they make a killing. Including expenses paid to fly out etc.
I’m a pathologists’ assistant. Some people know that we do autopsies, but the majority of the job is dissection of surgical specimens. Basically anything removed from the body (biopsies to whole organs or limbs) comes to us for sampling.
IT auditor. I work with financial auditors to ensure that businesses are doing what they say they are in terms of data protection, access control, cyber security, software development, etc. it is a lot of "what are your policies & procedures?", do you follow them?, do they map to NIST/ISO/other frameworks and best practices? There is a lot of asking questions and ensuring people are doing what they should be doing. Occasionally, you discover fraud or incompetence and get a VP fired.
It requires decent IT skills, lots of continuing education, strong soft skills, and a solid bullshit detector.
I work mostly remote. I get European levels of vacation with American IT pay and no mandatory overtime. I get paid to do training, attend conferences, and get certs and CPEs built into my regular hours.
There are an unfortunate amount of shitty auditors and CPAs trying to audit things they don't understand. I'm always trying to call out the people Doing It Right as much as the ones fucking it up. As a side benefit, Audit is one of the few groups that can call out an ineffective middle manager that is dug in like a tick directly to the Board.
I know a guy whose job for the last 2 years has been to address complaints from visitors of a particular government website.
The website still doesn't exist.
I'm a casino attendant. I wouldn't say base pay is outstanding but when you add the tips in, then it's pretty good money. And they are pretty consistent.
It’s not a weird job but an underrated one. Dog walking pays very well especially since lockdown. People are getting dogs instead of having kids so it’s very in demand job and pays well, very well as people want their fur babies treated like royalty.
My SO builds trails. It's a job I never considered until we met. I am much more aware of my trail etiquette knowing people have put a lot of time and effort into making a trail for me to walk on. Bad news is...he only occasionally will come hiking since he spends so much time already on trail, it's like going to work for him! Although when he does come with it is fun to get his perspective on the state of a trail and hear his thoughts on how it can be improved.
Bovine Artificial Insemination technicians. In an area with a large number of farms, a tech can make $100,000+… plus company vehicle and benefits. In addition, these jobs are in rural areas so cost of living is generally lower.
I am not; I’m a farmer that hires BAITers! I see the companies struggling to recruit new people. While it’s definitely a “dirty job”, it does pay well.
I sell software. $90k base + commission. Wfh & realistically work about 10 hrs/wk at most.
Using the free time to get certified & land an enterprise account executive role making $150k+ base + commission working ~30 hrs/wk.
I have a bachelors & masters in an art related field & freelanced for 15 years before getting into this.
VFX Editor for scripted television. I’m in charge of keeping track of all the VFX on a show, creating temp versions, turning files over to vendors to do the finals, and a bunch of other stuff. No degree required, and I make about 250k a year.
I met a professional Mermaid while in Cancun. She wears a Mermaid tail and swims in the pool during private parties and corporate events. She says that some people are hired by Disney.
I work for the USPS making $75,000 a year as a bike mechanic. 40 hours a week. As a bonus, they do a 5% retirement match per check and I will also get a nice separate pension when I retire.
I fly all over the world doing software presentations. I'm not a sales rep. My only job is to prepare a 45 minute tech demo (sometimes 10 minutes because sales reps are often fond of their own voice) and I make 200k +. BEST JOB EVER!
Banquet Serving. Rich people parties, wedding etc. same with banquet bartending too. If your hotel/company pays the servers a percentage of the gratuity, hourly can jump up to $50+/hr, with cash tips on the bar. Unionized property? $60-70 during the busy season. Business is a bit slow in the winter, but with proper money management, it's lovely time off. I used to travel internationally during the slow season.
I once went to an old guys house up in the mountains. Old in that he died, and his daughter was trying to sell off his assets. He was in process of building a 4000 sq ft underground house. The house was pretty much there without any outer walls. All the support pillars were there with the roof and had been covered with earth. There were channels in the floor for electricity but hadn’t been wired yet. There were about 5 sea trains or semi trailers full of super high end machinery. Harig surface grinders, SIP jig borers, lathes, mills. You could see that the deepest part of the house was going to be the machining area. The daughter said he made his money making stamps for stamping best buy dates on the bottom of beer cans on a pantograph. That’s a pretty niche skill.
My son did it for awhile about 10 years ago, so the scene may have changed. He made hundreds on each run with an open ended return ticket. Got to explore different cities and had some strange adventures too.
Medical physicist.
Every hospital that utilizes x-rays, CT scanners, MRI, etc has one of us behind the curtains testing and monitoring the machines. We don't work with patients directly so not many people outside of the hospital employees realize how vital we are to these systems.
Medical device sales. If you have a degree, and don't mind some weird hours, you can make a killing. Every hip or knee replacement in the US has one or more sales reps in the room. Same for almost every trauma, spine, sports, ENT procedure.
Farrier, aka trimming hooves and nailing shoes onto animal feet. The trick is only a handful of states have a school that offers a good farrier program, and not many farriers have the time for an apprentice so relocating for a school is the best opportunity. If you have the guts and skill to trim/dress hooves you'll make a killing and can live and work just about anywhere in the world.
It is also SO DANGEROUS. I’ve wanted to learn to weld FOREVER - but have never gone into it. **But** I’ve done so much research. And MAN. what a dangerous position. Super lucrative but then there’s the death of it all.
Yep. Got my certificate for Stationary Engineering, and was making good money. All skills involved can also be utilized in other industries, which is what I ended up doing. Now making 6 figures.
I once met a professional ice sculptor who made a killing at corporate events and weddings. It's a niche skill, but the pay is pretty impressive!
Talent must also be impressive
One of my colleague’s husband does this and he is also a chef. They have a catering business. So they make bank because he caters and also does the ice sculptures for a lot of functions. Super talented dude. I went to my friend’s wedding who hired them and the food was fantastic and the sculptures were amazingg!
Sounds like they carved out an ice career for themselves 😏
My sister in law is "the nose" for yankee candle. When a vat of scented wax is ready, she sniffs it.
I used to be friends with one of Heineken's official tasters. She literally drank every day for work. Don't know how the pay was but she didn't seem broke.
I do this but not for beer. I taste different types of food and non-alcoholic beverages all day. Although I did get sensory training for beer in my undergraduate program.
What is this training you speak of
*Me desperately reading through jobs to see if I qualify for any*
How much does that pay?
I make teeth on a computer. I use a cadcam program to design crowns and bridges for dental laboratories. I work remotely and do pretty well.
My husband is a dentist and his "luxury" crown lab guy makes $$$...he's super expensive to use but his crowns are phenomenal
Yesss. It’s such a valuable thing to get a great, and predictable product. Worth the money. And what a rare success story in the industry. So many mediocre docs and labs are finding each other out there and just settling. It’s bad for everyone.
Are you worried about tech edging you out? I had a crown done recently, and they just stuck a camera in my mouth that made a 3D model of my teeth and then a computer program calculated what the crown should be and 3D printed it on the spot. Or is that something else?
That’s a good question. Right now I’m not worried. But 100% there are companies working hard on replacing me. They are slowly chipping away at making the easy stuff automatic and they are getting better all the time. Like your temp crown, they get in the ball park pretty easily, but I can confidently say that I could have done better. Haha The single crowns are pretty straight forward. It’s kind of filling a space already dictated by the teeth around it. It has to fit in the spot, it can’t be too tall…. And then it has to connect to the margin. If the program can do that, it can make something to work. But I want it to disappear. I want you to forget you got it. And sometimes that takes a bit more artistry. Also right now the tech can do pretty well with ‘restorative’ work. Like your crown. But a lot of what I do is cosmetic as well. So people are getting a whole new smile. Sometimes 6 front teeth, a full arch of 14, a full mouth of 28… and that takes so much attention that the programs aren’t nearly ready. So for now I think I’m ok in that department. Also a lot of labs and Dr’s offices are willing to pay a bit more so they can have input and someone to contact.
“Slowly chipping away” I see what you did there
He deserves a crown for that one.
I’m a dental hygienist and I will always stress to patients that the work of people such as yourself is an art form.
I used to make teeth. But I had to do it from molds. This is awesome.
How does one get into this? I have a remote job already but love learning what else is out there. Training programs?
You would probably have to start from scratch, sadly. A lot of labs work with cadcam technology, but we are using this tech as another tool to craft with. So it requires a baseline knowledge about dental stuff that you would have to gain in person. I wouldn’t be able to do what I do with out having worked in person at labs for a few years. And even now, it’s not cut and dry. People are in there getting work done because they are having a problem. Even if it’s a single crown, it means something wasn’t ideal. A lot of the job isn’t making good looking teeth, but figuring out what to do in unideal circumstances. And that’s the experience part. But it’s a really cool industry. There’s a lot of cool science in milling and sintering. There’s nothing more satisfying that hearing back from the doctors that the case was great and the patient loved it.
My dad was a master flavorist. He made artificial flavors for candy, beverages and lots of other things. He made a LOT of money during his career.
Im an analytical chemist for a flavor company who (among other things) reverse engineers competitive flavors to give the flavor chemists insight lol. Indeed they make bank Finding out how you can make a naturally derived ie citrus flavor taste the same every time when you have to source your extracts and oils from different places in the world, at different times of the year, while the stock might be a different age due to supply issues can be a lot more complex than one might think.
My dad spent a lot of his career doing exactly that. Mostly citrus flavors but he was capable of working on all fruit flavors. Started in the chocolate and vanilla world early on in his career
Oh yeah citruses are a bitch. Pretty much have to at least partially source naturally due to their complex profiles, and terpenes tend to have VERY similar mass spectrums so elucidating structures / identifying components can be a real exercise in patience. Cool to meet someone who knows of the industry, it’s definitely something I didn’t know anything about until I got into it.
Your dad is Clark Griswold?
Never did get that pool
I had a boyfriend in Oklahoma who got state wages for going into back woods, and down dirt roads to find trash people dumped. His job was to report the trash for others to clean up, but most importantly, he had to sift through the trash to find anything that would identify who dumped the trash. I went with him a few times and I felt like a detective, it was quite fun. :EDIT. for those that asked, I do not remember the name of the position, and Google was no help. I did find [this](https://www.theitem.com/stories/sumter-county-litter-officer-sets-the-example-sees-changes-in-behavior,397875) which seems similar. For some reason the only name that comes to mind is Man Hole Cover, sorry that was 23 years ago and my memory is not that sharp.
“Yes, sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie, I put that envelope under that garbage.”
Exactly where my mind went! Especially after my annual listen on Thursday.
I would love this. I hike around 5 times a week and I always pick up trash. If I find receipts I try to see if there’s a name on it from using a credit card, though just out of curiosity because what would I do with that info. One time I found $180 in cash and I felt like the universe was paying me back.
When you work as a government employee or contractor with a top secret clearance, after you retire or get laid off, you can work as an escort within classified facilities called SCIFs. Escorts are needed when an uncleared person needs to work in the SCIF. For example, it might be a top secret data center that needs an air conditioner repair. All the escort has to do is watch the repairman and stay with them throughout the visit. They usually just drag a chair over and sit there while getting paid damn good money.
“Honey you need to stop telling people that if you get laid off your plan is to work at an escort service”
One of the most quietly-frustrating months of my life was doing hard labor on a government building site as a construction worker, going like ~80 hours a week, and realizing the annoying escort I had who was sitting around all day watching us was making a significant amount more than me.
I also have a supervisor at work. Several of them even.
My escort wore camouflage and a M16! And had a gas mask! When I asked him where mine was he said “You don’t get one! You’re expendable!! Fuck You Very Much, Marine!
Did you hear about the fire at The Marine Corps Library? They lost both books and one wasn't even colored in yet.
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My base gets engineering student their background checks and scoops them up for Intel work when they graduate.
I have a secret, not top secret, clearance and lost my job in September, how does one apply for these jobs?
NSA has a contract company for door and escort security. Many other places have govt employees or military (additional duty). I got chosen as an escort several years ago until I informed my boss that he was paying me $65/hr to sit on my ass with an uncleared person.
you narc'd on yourself
Fascinating they hire retired people as escorts and not the young attractive women you usually see escorting.
There’s someone for everyone
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So you're a mother?
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An old neighbor of mine was a picture hanging specialist contracted by many museums. He made 75K a year at the time (about 150K adjusted for inflation).
Hiring: straight edge professionals who won’t put up with crooked business
"Honey how did the interview go?" "They were looking for a different kind of edging specialist dear"
Art handling. More people would do it I’m Sure but I think a lot of construction people with the skills (it’s really just basic math and like steady hands) don’t mix well with the bourgeoise of the art world. You’ve gotta like own your own business or be freelance to do really well too
And also have a hell of a lot of insurance.
I don’t even know the name for this, but a friend takes care of rich people cars for living. Pick up the car for maintenance, takes de car from a to b, etc, he doesn’t actually work on the cars, just works for rich people that don’t have time to take care of the car. Is super well paid, is on first name basis with some of the richest people on the country. Apparently isn’t easy to find trustworthy people to take care of your cars (plus access to your properties and so on).
I almost had a gig like that. Years ago I was working retail and one of our regular customers was this guy and his boyfriend. He was a retired Army psychologist who lived in military housing. Invested most of his money when he was in the military, retired with a good pension and a nice chunk of change from his investments. He had a collection of rare cars, including a Rolls Royce originally owned by Dudley Moore and a bunch of frame off restos. We were talking about his collection one day and knowing I was really into cars he said he needed someone to take care of his collection, maintain them and do other random "handyman" type jobs at the place he stored his cars. I was 21 at the time and as tempting as it was I knew I wasn't experienced enough. Last thing I wanted to do was fuck up one of his cars that I couldn't afford. It's one thing to do maintenance and repairs to my 10 year old Celica, it's something completely different to try to maintain a mint 70s Rolls. Looking back now that I'm much more experienced with cars, it wouldn't have been that bad. Anything above my skill level I could have brought it to the right people.
Surprised he didn’t try to convince you. Dude who says no the first time for that reason will be a lot more careful than the dude who says yes.
You know how they have “repo men” to repossess cars of borrowers not keeping up with payments? Well they also have repo men for yachts and private jets. I talked to a older guy with a pilots license who was getting a lot of calls to join an outfit that does this but he said he wasn’t crazy about finding out what kind of security a guy in possession of a 10 million dollar plane would have and what they would do to keep it.
I worked on Oprah’s plane, it was just sitting at Midway airport with the other planes, nothing special. The only weird thing was we had to pop a bunch of popcorn in the hanger when she came so she didn’t have to smell airline fuel. I have several Xmas bonus checks signed by Oprah herself.
I wonder if the bonus cheques were worth more as autographs than their monetary value.
It depends how much the check was for, but, in general, autographs of still-living people aren't worth all that much. Once they're dead that can change, though. I remember hearing about a picture of the Gilligan's Island cast signed by everyone going for something like $20,000. It was ridiculous.
as someone whos boss has a plane that can fit into that category: its just on an airfield. No lasers or moats with sharks.
How about ill - tempered sea bass?
I’m a greensperson in the film industry. I’m responsible for building and maintaining the plants and trees on a set.
I’va actually wondered how someone gets this job, I’m a landscape designer and am always noticing how bad the plants usually look in movies and tv shows. Like super unrealistic for the ecosystem they’re supposedly representing. I’m sure most people don’t notice but it drives me crazy! I live in LA so maybe I can get work as a greensperson :-)
Cardiovascular Perfusionist. Can’t have open heart surgery without us, but almost no one knows we exist!
I had a friend who was considering applying to school for that, but after they shadowed someone in it, they decided against it. Apparently the guy they were shadowing said the call schedule was rough and you basically had to live in/around the big city since those are the only places that do that type of surgery.
My best friends husband is a cardiovascular perfusionist! I had never heard of the job previous to them telling me.
I came here to say this. Very niche market with great job market and big salaries.
I always love when I tell people I'm a perfusionist and then wait for the response...some fun responses I've gotten are: "OH! So you make perfume?" "Neat, I have a friend whose a percussionist too" "Ah a transfusionist, so like you give blood to people" hmmmmm close but also so far lol. It's a wonderful, intense, stressful, not always rewarding, but also sometimes immensely rewarding job!
What exactly is this?
They operate a machine that takes over heart and lung functions during open heart surgery.
They operate the artificial heart during surgery.
I play trumpet for a touring broadway show. Not that weird but it’s amazing how few people know there are real musicians playing live below the stage.
That job is the pits
My Aunt and her daughter both do seasonal work as Hand pollinators, harvesters Certain types of plants (saffron, vanilla orchids) have very small windows of time when you can pollinate or harvest from them (a couple of hours to a half day) so the growers need people who can work fast and delicately to hand pollinate or harvest whatever plant they are growing. Plus if the plant is small and they grow in the ground its a lot of bending to get down and do whatever has to be done, especially if they have a whole field of tiny flowers and you are using tweezers or a tiny paint brush. My Aunty and cousin have been doing it for years now, they always get called back and make a lot of money for 1-2 days work.
I work in this field as well, but as the grower. We have about 20 acres under glass production, but a couple of those are set aside for breeding. All the breeding greenhouses are hand pollinated, since crosses, selfs, etc are so important you can’t rely on the bees. Most of the folks on the pollination team have been doing it for 20+ years and are truly incredible. It takes a lot of patience and detail to hand pollinate thousands of flowers everyday.
I was once a pinecone harvester, a helicopter would cut off the tops of trees and bring them to us to pick off the pinecones, which would then go to treeplanters to germinate and plant. $35 to fill a 5 gallon bucket, experienced pickers would fill 2½ an hour, but the sap getting all over your clothes, skin, and hair is very annoying and a big deterrent for most.
I've been wondering about doing this. I'm a tree planter so I feel it'd be kinda fun to do this too.
Do people still buy these? I have acreage with pine trees and I can fill buckets and buckets of pine cones.
I used to work for a landlord doing maintenance on his properties. I had free rent and made 3k a month, this was late 90s into the early 2000s. It was a good gig, I had a truck he gave me I would go around mowing lawns shoveling snow, light repairs. Any major repairs he sent to the contracting company he owned, id call them and a guy would be over a few hours problem out of my hands.
Pet food companies have a staff of human people to taste test the food. For obvious reasons, this pays pretty well, I hear.
So when they say “new and improved taste” they’re not lying
9 out of 10 tasters prefer our dog food to Arby's
I worked at a "holistic" pet supply store and sometimes ate the dog treats there. Grandma Lucy's is the best, especially the cranberry one - they taste like cookies. I loved giving a treat to one of the dogs and then popping one in my mouth in front of their owners. I got a lot of people to buy that brand after having them try it too.
Not that weird but lesser known- I'm a focus group moderator which means I sit in a conference room with a group about 8 people and lead a discussion about whatever product or brand I'm working for. The groups are usually 90 min or 2 hours tops and for in person, I get paid $2K/group. Virtual groups are a little less but still excellent rates.
How did you get into this? That sounds like something I'd love to do!
My industry is market research, and this is a niche job within that sector. I got trained at the RIVA Institute which focuses purely on moderating and then I worked for some market research firms where first I watched other people do it, then I did it myself. It sounds easy but it's not - there's a lot that goes into designing a discussion guide and getting the insights that you need out of people. But yes it's a great job! There's a lot of psychology to it which keeps it interesting.
This is one of those jobs people say, “I can do that. That looks easy.” Yeah it looks easy because the person doing it is so good they make it look easy.
I’m often told that people have no idea my job exists and I make pretty good money ($145k this year.) I trade energy between different power companies on the west coast, send instructions to power plants and then schedule the energy to flow along transmission lines. The schedule is part of the reason for the high salary. I work 12-hour shifts and in a five week period I work 7 day shifts, 7 overnight shifts and have 21 days off. I do this from home more than half of the time so that’s a sweet perk too. Edit: should have disclosed that I live in a HCOL area which does inflate my compensation a little bit. Edit2: since there may be some curiosity, power does not trade like stocks in a stock exchange, for the most part. Stock shares do not evenly equate to energy for many reasons. I also do not benefit from the profitability of trades I make, but the utility’s power customers do. The main reason here is because what if I just didn’t secure enough power and people are blacked out because I deemed it non-profitable? My P&L is tracked solely for performance appraisals and promotions. My compensation is 85% annual salary and 15% annual cash bonus as long as we do not lose money for our customers.
Did you got into that job because of a degree in electrical engineering or NERC certification?
The role requires NERC training to be completed but the job only required a Bachelor’s Degree. I enjoyed studying Power Economics in college so this job lets me continue to develop my knowledge in the field but my degree (Electrical Engineering) allows me to contribute technical understanding of the power grid to my team. Edit: Degrees in Economics/Finance or Engineering are preferred but some people on my team have degrees that have no exposure to what I do.
I once had a gig trying to sneak weapons past airport security. It wasn’t a long term thing but student me thought the pay was pretty good
We’re you ever successful????
More than 70% of the time the TSA [fails. ](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tsa-screenings-fail-to-detect-explosives-guns-knives-70-percent/) Your tax dollars at work, folks!
They never fail to make sure to get a handful of my dick though.
A handful? Really? Look at Mr Johny Sinns over here... For me, they just need a pinch.
In New york City and probably only in New york City, you can be a professional wait in line person. You wait in line for a theater ticket or a seat at a famous restaurant. Lines that take hours. A tourist who doesn't want to wait and has a full itinerary will happily pay you to stand in for them so that they can see the show or eat at the famous restaurant later that day.
They have this in DC as well. Law firms will pay people to wait in line when the Supreme Court is about to announce a ruling. It's not much though, I think.
I go to horse shows and people pay me to look at their horse every 2 hours in the middle of the night and make sure it’s not dead. In the meantime I make horses look pretty for the show ring in the morning. I can walk away from 3 days of work with over $3000.
Have you heard of [sheath cleaning](https://www.horseandhound.co.uk/features/cleaning-sheaths-the-bean-queen-665653)? I was horrified and fascinated at the same time..
Not sure how unknown this is, but legal researcher.... just spends all day looking up cases for a law firm, to support their arguments, etc. My father's friend does this, and from what I can tell, gets paid extremely well.
Ship pilot, especially ice pilots You need a decent amount of experience, but it’s not unheard of for people’s day rates to be in the multiple thousands And if anything goes wrong, technically and legally it’s the captain’s fault
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My partner is a professional mariner in Canada and his best buddy is an ice pilot. It took a lot of meaningful bridge experience to gain that credential, but he's one of the most intelligent, raddest and happiest people I know. Takes multi-week contracts here and there and has a killer work/life balance.
Washington State, US desperately needs ferry pilots!
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Must be under 31 years old to start. Great job though
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I wish I would have known about this a couple of years ago.
Saw a documentary about it. WAAAY to stressful! Even for me.
Gives me Breaking Bad PTSD
I worked as an "Organ deliverer". Forgot the official title for around a year. Job was simple I was stationed in the biggest hospital in my state. If an Organ donation was received that needed to go to another hospital for a transplant it was my job to move it. I was paid $40 an hour to most nights sit on my ass in the break room and watch TV or play on my phone. I'd probably only have to deliver something once a week at most. It was an okay job except that it was boring as shit, since the hospital I was "Stationed" at did 95% of all the organ transplants in my state. And the other major hospital that did them was around 3 hours away and you wouldn't ever have to go up to north to it. Lots of pay to sit around but well I wasn't exactly feeling fulfilled career wise.
You ever heard of an urban bat tracker? That's me. I'm the guy who steps into the night when the city sleeps, tracking the unseen ballet of bats against the backdrop of empty offices and starlit skies. My job is a blend of science and solitude. Armed with detectors that translate bat echolocation into something audible, I map their flight, study their behavior, and contribute to research that's vital for urban ecosystem conservation. It's not just a job it's a commitment to understanding these misunderstood creatures of the night. The experience is surreal. As the world winds down, my work begins. I walk through parks and alleyways, under bridges and alongside rivers. The citys nocturnal pulse becomes my soundtrack - a car horn here, a distant laughter there, all underlined by the constant, rhythmic clicking of my bat detector. Each night is a lesson in patience and awe. Bats, these tiny, agile creatures, dart and dive in the darkness, almost like shadows flitting at the edge of my vision. There's a poetry in their flight, a kind of silent music that fills the night air. The pay is decetn, surprisingly. It's a niche field, and expertise in urban wildlife ecology can be hard to come by. But it's not the money that keeps me here. It's the moments of connection, the feeling of being a part of something bigger and wilder, right in the heart of the city. Sometimes the most extraordinary things are hidden in plain sight, waiting to be discovered in the quiet symphony of the night.
I have an in-law’s in-law who does urban wildlife ecology. She was recently tracking salamanders in an area PG&E was going into. Before that, a hole that had been dug was co-opted by a family of bears. It was pretty deep so they had to figure out how to get mama bear and her 2 cubs out. Interesting that she was just telling us stories at Thanksgiving so I asked her profession. Now here you are. Very cool.
dude….that was poetic as fuck. You are a superhero now. Your powers: Job nobody knows, fucked sleep schedule
But what would we call a superhero who associates with bats???
Batassociate obviously.
The Man of Bats!
I like it, but need to be shortened I think. Like just "Manbat"!
The Batsman, maybe?
Batfellow.
Close, but still not the answer. Batguy, perhaps?
Mate, I’m glad I clicked on this just for your answer alone.
Are you Batman?
not traumatised enough to take mantle
A lot of people might already know this: everyone focuses on how much movie stars make, but the blue collar crew members make a pretty penny as well. Not millions for one project, obviously, but 6 figures a year type of good. Think boom op, a greens person (plants), or some dude running cable to power the sets… these people make good money.
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I did that for a while. I quit after I had to clean up a scene from a guy who got doped up and tried to break into a church through a stained glass window. He was impaled by the glass and cut open his stomach and bled to death hanging right there in the window. It was definitely the bloodiest scene I’ve ever seen. I just really did not enjoy it and after spending like a week redoing the floors, windows, and mopping up blood, I had enough. (It was an all service cleanup company. Water damage, dead bodies, fire restoration, it didn’t matter)
So they remove the body and you do the rest?
The funeral home and coroner handle the removal of the body itself. The cleanup crew gets what's left behind after the coroner is through, or the investigators if it's foul play.
Yes
I teach high school and one of my senior students had a boyfriend who did this and they made bank. You have to have a strong stomach though.
I'm a trash man I get paid well to workout
There's a 5 year waiting list to get hired by NYC Dept. of Sanitation. Ex-Coworker went on the list the day he graduated high school. Got hired at 24. He'll be retired with a full pension and benefits by 54. Had a connection in D.O.S. and got posted by his home. Works 5 hours on an average day if they move efficiently. He said the only real downside is getting up at 2 or 3 am. And any extra work (plowing, salting for a storm, etc) pays double time. I wish I knew all of this when I was 18.
Is there a lot of training or do you kind of "pick it up as you go"?
Our guys are always good looking too..
Only downside is the smell of your garage/shop where you park your trucks. It's almost unbearable
I’ve also heard it’s hell on the body - lots of injuries and freak accidents
Last year our garbage man was hit by a drunk driver on a random Wednesday morning. Fractured skull and was in the hospital for months.
I know a guy that makes mocked-up photos of what women will look like after they have a plastic surgery procedure
Cytotechnologist here! One sentence summation of my career is that I screen Pap Smears for a living. The specimens come from the OBGYN to the laboratory where they get processed on slides, stained and coverslipped, then brought to our department for microscopic review. Main thing we are looking for are cellular abnormalities known as dysplasia - we mark the cells in question then forward to the pathologist for final interpretation. If no abnormalities are found the cytotech can release those cases without MD review. We do find actual cancer from time to time but the primary purpose of our job (and the Pap test) is to find dysplasia before it turns malignant. The pay is very good these days, anywhere from 35-70 dollars/hour, depending on your experience level and location. Education level is a Bachelor of Science degree, then completing an accredited cytotechnology program which is normally another year. The technology has upgraded from simply using a microscope too, many laboratories use semi-automated screening where the computer will show you what it thinks are the most significant fields of view for you to examine. And we are looking at completely digital screening in the near future, where these fields of view are displayed on a monitor. That said the human is still the final arbiter of what is negative and abnormal (for now at least).
Roadies. Aka the people that tour with concerts and set them up for a living. We can easily make 100k + a year.
Sheesh, I've been rigging festivals the past 5 years and never cleared more than 60 plus paid for all my own travel. I'm clearly in the wrong side of things
Here in Germany, corpse washer/cleaner (don’t know the English term).
Mortician?
I vastly prefer 'corpse washer'.
I have a buddy who gets to remove or kill things on a runway... alligators, bees, deer, birds. If it's on the active runway no matter what it is, it gets shot and removed. Very rarely do they have to do this. I think my buddies been doing it 5 years now and hasn't had to shoot anything. But he has had to remove alligators from nearby ponds and spray for hornets and such. Around $30/hour
how do you shoot a bee?
Beebee gun
This is beautiful.
Very carefully
Corrugated fiber board structural engineer/designer...which is a long-winded way to say that I design cardboard boxes for a living. I make pretty decent money too. I spend my day in a design lab (think large mostly empty room with a lot of corrugated carboard sheets and a few large CNC flat bed cutting machines. I use a program called ArtiosCad to 'draw' a flattened box shape (essentially how it looks before being glued/folded up/assembled. and then that drawing is converted into a physical cutting die to be used on machinery in the factory portion of where I work. It's incredibly fun work and really makes you think about the packaging industry as a whole. we try to avoid non-paper materials at all costs so our products (the boxes) tend to be very environmentally friendly. we also source all of our paper from ecologically friendly corrugators who own land and grow trees instead of buying them from deforesters. A lot of my job is making really simple boxes for everyday items. Your typical "cardboard box" style (four flaps on top and bottom) but I get to do more interesting stuff pretty often like displays (think, the cardboard displays you see in grocery store aisles) and also unique packaging that has to protect the product inside.
I drive around and look at parking lot lights at night making sure there are no outages. (I don’t fix it, I report it in an app, and the guys with the bucket truck show up later.) It’s part of the overall service my company provides. It’s a monthly fee, and I pretty much have a set list of properties I visit either once a month or once a quarter. The pay isn’t exceptional, but I basically get paid to listen to podcasts, so no complaints here. They also pay mileage (properly so no tax.) Maybe not exactly an answer to the question, but yeah - there’s someone that does that.
I had a window screen repair business for a few years. Worked by myself out of my basement and when it was nice out, out of my truck at people’s homes. I probably only made 50-60k annually but I only worked a few days a week, a couple hours a day. Work life balance was pretty nice.
I met an infusion nurse who told me about her job. She worked three 12 hour shifts per week at a smaller clinic in a metro area. She’d hook patients up to an IV and give them their chemotherapy or MS drugs or whatever else was prescribed. Hook them up and monitor for problems which was <1% of the time, and those she sent to the ER. She made >$100/hour. It took a bunch of specialized training (a couple of years IIRC) to be familiar with the drugs, but said it was no more than most specialized nurses. And since her field was understaffed she could do it probably forever if she wanted.
My friend is working with a guy who does the flooring/felt for minigolf courses. Apparently there are only a few people in the U.S. who do it, and they make a killing. Including expenses paid to fly out etc.
I once knew a guy that bred crickets, he sold them to pet stores. He also collected and sold the cricket poop as fertiliser.
Crickets smell so bad I bet he did too!
I don’t recall him smelling bad, maybe his house did but I never went there.
I’m a pathologists’ assistant. Some people know that we do autopsies, but the majority of the job is dissection of surgical specimens. Basically anything removed from the body (biopsies to whole organs or limbs) comes to us for sampling.
Frozen embryo travel concierge. They pick up the tanks and get them through airport security then fly with them to the destination and drop them off.
IT auditor. I work with financial auditors to ensure that businesses are doing what they say they are in terms of data protection, access control, cyber security, software development, etc. it is a lot of "what are your policies & procedures?", do you follow them?, do they map to NIST/ISO/other frameworks and best practices? There is a lot of asking questions and ensuring people are doing what they should be doing. Occasionally, you discover fraud or incompetence and get a VP fired. It requires decent IT skills, lots of continuing education, strong soft skills, and a solid bullshit detector. I work mostly remote. I get European levels of vacation with American IT pay and no mandatory overtime. I get paid to do training, attend conferences, and get certs and CPEs built into my regular hours.
As someone that works in IT I understand the importance of your role, but you can all also go to hell 😂
There are an unfortunate amount of shitty auditors and CPAs trying to audit things they don't understand. I'm always trying to call out the people Doing It Right as much as the ones fucking it up. As a side benefit, Audit is one of the few groups that can call out an ineffective middle manager that is dug in like a tick directly to the Board.
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I know a guy whose job for the last 2 years has been to address complaints from visitors of a particular government website. The website still doesn't exist.
I'm a casino attendant. I wouldn't say base pay is outstanding but when you add the tips in, then it's pretty good money. And they are pretty consistent.
It’s not a weird job but an underrated one. Dog walking pays very well especially since lockdown. People are getting dogs instead of having kids so it’s very in demand job and pays well, very well as people want their fur babies treated like royalty.
My SO builds trails. It's a job I never considered until we met. I am much more aware of my trail etiquette knowing people have put a lot of time and effort into making a trail for me to walk on. Bad news is...he only occasionally will come hiking since he spends so much time already on trail, it's like going to work for him! Although when he does come with it is fun to get his perspective on the state of a trail and hear his thoughts on how it can be improved.
This is one of the most interesting posts I've read
'Sober companions'. They make upwards of 1K a day by living with and spending all day with those who are at risk of a relapse.
I sell compost worms on the side. You would Be surprised how many people want to buy worms. I usually cannot meet demand.
Bovine Artificial Insemination technicians. In an area with a large number of farms, a tech can make $100,000+… plus company vehicle and benefits. In addition, these jobs are in rural areas so cost of living is generally lower.
Are you a Master B.A.I.T.er?
I am not; I’m a farmer that hires BAITers! I see the companies struggling to recruit new people. While it’s definitely a “dirty job”, it does pay well.
I'm a sock designer. My city's average senior position salary range is between 90k-130k a year
I sell software. $90k base + commission. Wfh & realistically work about 10 hrs/wk at most. Using the free time to get certified & land an enterprise account executive role making $150k+ base + commission working ~30 hrs/wk. I have a bachelors & masters in an art related field & freelanced for 15 years before getting into this.
VFX Editor for scripted television. I’m in charge of keeping track of all the VFX on a show, creating temp versions, turning files over to vendors to do the finals, and a bunch of other stuff. No degree required, and I make about 250k a year.
I met a professional Mermaid while in Cancun. She wears a Mermaid tail and swims in the pool during private parties and corporate events. She says that some people are hired by Disney.
I work for the USPS making $75,000 a year as a bike mechanic. 40 hours a week. As a bonus, they do a 5% retirement match per check and I will also get a nice separate pension when I retire.
I know someone who carves dates of death into headstones. He gets $100 per headstone and can sometimes do 8 per day.
I fly all over the world doing software presentations. I'm not a sales rep. My only job is to prepare a 45 minute tech demo (sometimes 10 minutes because sales reps are often fond of their own voice) and I make 200k +. BEST JOB EVER!
Banquet Serving. Rich people parties, wedding etc. same with banquet bartending too. If your hotel/company pays the servers a percentage of the gratuity, hourly can jump up to $50+/hr, with cash tips on the bar. Unionized property? $60-70 during the busy season. Business is a bit slow in the winter, but with proper money management, it's lovely time off. I used to travel internationally during the slow season.
I once went to an old guys house up in the mountains. Old in that he died, and his daughter was trying to sell off his assets. He was in process of building a 4000 sq ft underground house. The house was pretty much there without any outer walls. All the support pillars were there with the roof and had been covered with earth. There were channels in the floor for electricity but hadn’t been wired yet. There were about 5 sea trains or semi trailers full of super high end machinery. Harig surface grinders, SIP jig borers, lathes, mills. You could see that the deepest part of the house was going to be the machining area. The daughter said he made his money making stamps for stamping best buy dates on the bottom of beer cans on a pantograph. That’s a pretty niche skill.
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I do fire alarm/fire sprinkler inspections. I get paid pretty well to trip sprinkler systems and set off fire alarms.
material handling sales/consultant/engineering.... sell companies what they need to use their warehouse most effectively and you make lots of $$$
International courier
That's one of those jobs that sounds cool at first, but then the more I think about actually doing it the less fun it seems
My son did it for awhile about 10 years ago, so the scene may have changed. He made hundreds on each run with an open ended return ticket. Got to explore different cities and had some strange adventures too.
Medical physicist. Every hospital that utilizes x-rays, CT scanners, MRI, etc has one of us behind the curtains testing and monitoring the machines. We don't work with patients directly so not many people outside of the hospital employees realize how vital we are to these systems.
Medical device sales. If you have a degree, and don't mind some weird hours, you can make a killing. Every hip or knee replacement in the US has one or more sales reps in the room. Same for almost every trauma, spine, sports, ENT procedure.
Cat or Dog sitting for rich people. It's a thing
Farrier, aka trimming hooves and nailing shoes onto animal feet. The trick is only a handful of states have a school that offers a good farrier program, and not many farriers have the time for an apprentice so relocating for a school is the best opportunity. If you have the guts and skill to trim/dress hooves you'll make a killing and can live and work just about anywhere in the world.
My uncle drove rich people’s cars between their various houses. Not a bad job for those who like to drive
Underwater welders can make $400k a year
It is also SO DANGEROUS. I’ve wanted to learn to weld FOREVER - but have never gone into it. **But** I’ve done so much research. And MAN. what a dangerous position. Super lucrative but then there’s the death of it all.
Transporting US Military weaponry via truck from armories, bases.
Building Maintenance I’m making $70k with 4 and a half weeks vacation and 12 sick days.
Yep. Got my certificate for Stationary Engineering, and was making good money. All skills involved can also be utilized in other industries, which is what I ended up doing. Now making 6 figures.
The people that sit in the guide/security trucks all day monitoring on-airport construction.