•  Job Profiles and Hazards •  Work & Health

Despite the fleeting dot-com past of Consumer Health Interactive (CHI) -- producer of the health web site you're reading right now -- for the staff it hasn't been champagne and caviar. Au contraire. At some point in our careers, we've packaged chewing gum, gutted fish, and served as human trash compactors. We've written one-liners for radio DJ's, rolled steel, worked in grape fields where 105 degrees F was considered a mild day, and interviewed people claiming to have contact with UFOs.

As we were launching our Work and Health channel and contemplating the many risks and joys of working, we thought it would be fun to celebrate the diverse, memorable -- and sometimes downright odd -- occupations we've all had at one time or another. Jobs we took when we were young, or broke, or just curious. Jobs that promoted good health and others that were plainly unhealthy. Here are some unusual types of employment culled from the annals of our work lives. Most of us have had an odd job or two (or ten) and some, like playing in a mariachi band, we would love to have even now. Others we will always remember fondly -- just as long as we never have to do them again.

Diana Hembree, Editor in Chief, CHI

Chris Woolston, CHI contributing editor; Memorable job: Human trash compactor

Not too many years ago the owner of the KOA Kampground in Bozeman, Montana, discovered an ingenious way to save money. Instead of paying to have his huge dumpster emptied every week, he could hire a college student for $5 an hour to stomp on the garbage until it reached the desired density. In fact, if he found the right person, he could make that trash pile last all summer.

At 6'2" and 158 pounds, I didn't have the physical gifts to be a top-notch human compactor, but I had the hunger. Every day, I would put on big rubber boots and a pair of gloves before lowering myself into the detritus of the American vacation. Lots of half-eaten food and empty wrappers. A little reading material, including porn magazines. I jumped and stomped until it all melded together. One mass of garbage. One unforgettable smell. One job well-done.

Benj Vardigan, CHI contributing editor; Memorable job: Temporary courier

In a sense, all temp jobs are odd jobs. You bounce around a lot, and end up doing a variety of tasks. During my many temping stints in Michigan and San Francisco, I've inspected cigar humidors, packaged holiday fruit baskets, assembled goalposts, painted buildings, and planted trees. Temping is not all copying, filing, faxing, and answering phones (although I've done my share of that, too). In some of these cases I knew what to expect, but often I had no idea what I was in for.

One assignment had me doing "courier" work for a company (that shall remain nameless) in the incredibly tall Bank of America building in San Francisco. Everyone in the mailroom greeted me with ominous looks, and there was talk of "the last guy" having come down with some mysterious ailment. Then they scattered, leaving me alone with a pile of sorted mail.

As courier, I wheeled this mail around the office in a basket, distributing it. The catch is that the "office" spanned dozens of floors, and even extended across the street to another building that was almost as incredibly tall. Doing the route several times a day, I went up and down in elevators an unfathomable number of times, clocking thousands of floors in the process. After a couple days of this, I developed what I decided to call vertigo, but to this day I don't really know what it was. Whenever I got up from a chair or walked through a doorway in my apartment, I had the distinct sensation of being in an elevator. I became disoriented and felt a plummeting under my feet whenever I walked anywhere. I called my agency and quit the job on the grounds that I couldn't "continue to go through life in such a discombobulated manner."

Slowly, after quitting, this sinking and rising feeling faded away. But I still walk by that tall building from time to time, look up, and momentarily see the lit-up floor numbers above the sliding doors: 29... 28... 27... 26...

Catie Murphy, Web producer; Memorable job: Fish thrower

Between the ages of 14 and 17, I worked in an Alaskan cannery during the summers. Twelve-hour days, seven days a week, to make less money in an entire summer than I do in a week now. It was cold, miserable, smelly, awful, and all-around dreadful. But in its own warped way, it was also incredibly fun. I'd work in shirtsleeves while everyone around me wore three layers of sweatshirts. (No one ever understood that thick cotton held the icy water against your skin, but bare arms got wet and dried, so actually kept me warmer than the rest of my co-workers were.)

My first year in the cannery, I worked on the spooning line gutting fish. From using a metal tool to repeatedly gut one fish after another all day, my wrists disappeared as my arms swelled from the forearm to the back of my hand in one puffy line. The next year I graded fish, sorting them on the conveyor belt for weight and quality, and for the last couple of years, I graduated to the job of racker -- the person who threw the fish onto giant racks to be rolled into the freezers. That was my favorite job: the racks were seven feet high and it took two people to load one. While I tossed the fish up -- left, right, left, right -- with their heads always facing the outside of the rack, the guy climbing down the back of the rack straightened them out and let me know when it was time to move on to the next row. Throwing or catching were both fun jobs, but catching was best because then you got to stand up on the racks and see everything else that was going on in the cannery. (Not that we were supposed to be standing on the racks, but there you go.) Then we'd push the racks into the freezers, and half the time all the water on the upper shelves of the racks would sluice down and soak you with a freezing, fish-flavored shower. It was awful. And it was great.

Steve Tomas, technical engineer; Memorable jobs: Millwright and flashing amber light guy

I was the "flashing amber light guy" at a store called Murphy's Mart, which means I basically ran around giving people coupons. I also made in-store announcements like: "Shoppers, find the flashing amber light and for the next 10 minutes only, we'll have plastic dancing flowers on sale for 75 percent off!" Then I would defend myself against the horde of screaming shoppers who would practically knock my cart over to get to the sale items.

I was also a millwright at a plant in Pittsburgh, where we manufactured big steel bars. When they came out of the furnace, they were cherry-red from the heat and pliable as Play-Doh -- too hot to get within 30 feet of. My job was to fix anything mechanical that broke, and my tool set was an overhead crane, an acetylene torch, and a sledgehammer. Usually what I had to do was run out onto the mill when anything broke on the rollers. When something broke, a big whistle would go off and I would have to go out there and burn the bolts off the roller with a torch. But you couldn't stand between the rollers too long because they would get too hot: I had to dance between them. It was like being a mechanic on a racecar team -- every minute you were down was like time lost in the mill.

What I really wanted to be was the guy who stuck the dynamite in the brick plug in the back of the steel furnace. You ran out there with a stick of dynamite and some big silver tongs, and shoved it in the hole, shouting something like, "Fire in the hole!" Then the molten steel would roll out into a big urn. It looked cool because it flowed right out. It was just so satisfying.

Deepi Brar, CHI multimedia editor; Memorable job: Usher for Caltech

During all four years of college, I was an usher for Caltech's public events. There's an interesting rhythm to the work -- the expectant wait before doors open, the rush to take tickets and seat everyone, and then the time spent standing in the back during the performance. At intermission, the ushers also worked the refreshment stands, pouring coffee and soda into plastic cups.

What made it more than just a job was the fact that we saw many world-class performers for free, including the Shanghai Acrobats, the Guarneri Quartet, Patrick Stewart's one-man A Christmas Carol, Kodo, and Mummenschanz. The list could fill pages! It was also very exciting to be in a place where people would pack the auditorium to hear Kip Thorne lecture on superstring theory and wormholes, Stephen Hawking talk about the origins of the universe, or Tom Stoppard muse about the intersection of art and science. For me, the most memorable event was the day Linus Pauling walked through my door, alone and unannounced, for his own 90th birthday celebration. I was too tongue-tied to greet him.

Eric Turner, Artist and Web designer; Memorable job: Vineyard scale boy

When I was 16 or 17, my grandfather got me a job with some grape growers he knew near Bakersfield, California, where I lived. My job was "scale boy." It was my responsibility to spot-check the grape pickers to be sure that they neither packed too many or too few grapes in the boxes. This involved repeatedly lifting 30 pound "lugs" of grapes onto the scale in summer heat that was always above 100 degrees F. (I think 110 to 120 degrees was average.) The water truck was never far away.

The most interesting thing about the job was that the pickers were all Latino, making me the minority for a change. All the scale boys were white high school kids like myself. I could go all day without hearing a word of English, and I spoke almost no Spanish. The workers were very organized and seemed to have a good amount of power -- regular breaks, set hours, and so on. All in all it was a good experience, however much I hated it at the time. I definitely got an appreciation for hard labor. Maybe that explains why I work inside at a computer now...

Dr. Toni Martin, Physician and CHI writer; Memorable job: Moonlighting with mouse

When I was a third-year medical resident, I moonlighted at the Chinese Hospital in San Francisco for extra cash. In those days, they employed residents to have a doctor on hand to cover emergencies. (Almost every patient in Chinatown had his own private physician.) The patients were all Chinese and the nurses were all Filipino. The nurses spoke a little more English than the patients, but no more Chinese than I did. Somehow we muddled through. Most of the time, the hospital was quiet and I could catch up on my reading. I remember that one physician kept writing entries in a doctor's log about hearing a mouse in the call room. These escalated until a final exclamation: "I'm quitting! I can't stand the mouse anymore!" I never heard the mouse.

Nancy Montgomery, CHI senior editor; Memorable job: Radio humor writer

By far the most unusual job I've had was writing jokes for a daily humor subscription that went to about 65 radio stations in the United States and Canada. While some radio DJ's try to get laughs on their own, most subscribe to some sort of joke service. Ours was called "Topical Punch," and the emphasis was on current events and human-interest news stories. It was a lot of work, but great fun. My partner and I combed the wire services, looking for news stories we could write jokes about. We'd even crack each other up sometimes! Every day we wrote five pages of material and faxed them to the stations overnight, so the DJ's would find their jokes waiting for them in the morning.

Psyche Pascual, CHI executive editor; Memorable job: Temping at the Wrigley gum factory

Long before I became a journalist, I had a lot of different jobs: children's book illustrator, movie extra, fast-food worker, file clerk, photographer, and greeter at a tradeshow booth for an interior design magazine, among other things. But my job at a Wrigley's plant in Santa Cruz, California, home of underemployed college students, was by far the most memorable.

I remember when I liked gum. Don't get me wrong: I still carry a pack of peppermint in my purse. But every time I look at it, I think of the cavernous warehouse, with windows so high you couldn't look out. Despite the hairnet and the 7 a.m. start time, the money seemed okay -- $20 a day, at least! The downside was the haze of gum dust that hung in the air from morning to night. One person was assigned to sweep the dust into the corner so that it could be cleaned away, but it never was. And because there were no windows, the flecks would just land on your hair, your lips, and your eyelashes. We had no masks, so this sickeningly sweet dust would also end up in our lungs. My job was to stand at a folding table packing packs of gum into a six-inch square box. There were exactly 24 packs in one box. When I was done with these, I packed them into a bigger box of 12, and when I finished that, I had to start over again. After two days, the temp job was over, and I was relieved. I also didn't chew gum again for at least a year.

Kristin Kloberdanz, CHI contributing writer; Memorable jobs: Drugstore clerk and X-Files magazine writer

I've been working since I was 15. My first job was working the cash register at my neighborhood drugstore. I was only there for a summer, and left right after I gave a customer about $295 change when he paid for a tub of ice cream with a check for $300. Unfortunately, the check turned out to be bad. Soon after that, I had to pick the rubber check writer out of a line-up at the police station. I haven't stepped into that drugstore since, and still have to resist the urge to duck beneath the windows whenever I pass. I also worked as a tennis instructor, reservation clerk, short-order cook, popcorn and beer vendor at a hockey rink, and telemarketer for an ad agency. My first "professional" job after grad school was writing for the Official X-Files Magazine. Once I had to interview Whitley Strieber, author of Communion, about his reported experiences with UFOs. It's really tough to keep a straight face while asking a man three times your age what it's like to shower with a bunch of aliens.

Stephen Levine, research editor; Memorable job: Furniture warehouse "manager"

If someone made a movie of my summer job in a furniture warehouse, the credits for my five overloaded senses would read like this: Visuals: Madison Avenue. Taste: Juan's Taco Wagon. Touch: Paul Bunyan. Sound: 1970's head-banger metal music. Smell: Bandini Fertilizer.

I was working deep in the southeastern section of the Los Angeles basin. Back then, a popular TV commercial regularly featured a skier slaloming down a mountain of manure -- an advertisement for Bandini fertilizer. At the time, I was "managing" a furniture warehouse not more than 100 yards away from a giant, malodorous Bandini fertilizer plant.

Managing meant I was responsible for unloading the Southern Pacific railcars containing up to three tons of furniture and hauling the goods into the store. The problem was that this was the summer of the ill-conceived Paul Bunyan Collection, in which a dining table alone weighed 350 pounds and chairs were as big as a family-size Yugo.

Hey, I could handle furniture three to four times my own weight, and work in temperatures that regularly reached 110 degrees F. Dehydration, hernias, heat exhaustion, muscle fatigue -- no problem. But what really made the job "stink" was that open air, five-story-high mound of Bandini fertilizer -- without a skier or a snowflake in sight.

Jon Leeke, sales; Memorable job: Sewage plant rebuilder

In the small Indiana farming community where I grew up, every summer offered a reality check for returning college students like me. It was called getting a "summer job." The downside was that the choice jobs were already taken by former high-school classmates who had stayed in town. Everyone else was left to scramble for the opportunity to bag groceries at the local A&P or work the night shift as a security guard, where the biggest danger was boredom.

I spent most summers stoking the furnaces at the local foundry and delivering coal to farms and businesses that still used it for heat. But the real trouble started the year I asked my dad to help me get a head start on landing a summer job. I was hoping for something exciting, like launching boats at the local marina, but my dad, who ran the public works department in our town, found me a job in construction instead. No problem! I envisioned myself being outside all day, building up some muscle, making good money. Unfortunately, my dad had failed to mention that we were rebuilding the local sewer plant.

The general contractor and labor foreman were both ex-Marines who loved to punish smart-alecky college kids, and they were sure I was one before they ever met me. The work didn't start out too bad, just digging trenches with the aid of a jackhammer. (Did you know that if you wear a watch while using a jackhammer, it will stop and can never be fixed?) I also helped finish concrete walls by rolling small balls of cement in my hands and pushing them into the holes after the support rods were removed. (Did you know that lime poisoning will take all the skin off your fingertips?) It was after my hands healed up that the fun really began. Next we had to lay pipes and crawl through them to check for leaks.

Now for the grand finale: At the end of the summer, it was time to open the site for use. And since I'd been such a good sport, I was elected to do the honors. (Looking back, I realize that the contractor had probably conspired with my dad to give the college boy a lesson on working with his hands.) I wasn't aware that "opening the site" meant I was about to go to the main sewer line and physically remove the sandbags that were blocking the flow of raw sewage to the intake pipe. I had to climb down a 10-foot manhole that measured 36 inches in diameter, step into raw sewage just slightly deeper than my hip boots, reach down into the brown smelly ooze, grab a sand bag (there were three in all), climb back up the ladder, and drop it on the ground because no one else would touch it. This was in the days before the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) even existed, so no respirators or protective bodysuits were available.

After the noxious job was over, I was sprayed with a firehose and washed with a strong disinfectant soap that removed more skin than dirt. Next I was hailed as the worker of the day and given a cold beer. (This was a big deal as I was only 19.) My boss then asked if I'd like to help on a similar project as a foreman. I had just enough time to decline gracefully before excusing myself to go throw up.

Diana Hembree, CHI editor-in-chief; Memorable job: Mariachi player

One of my all-time favorite jobs was that of mariachi violinist. As a child, I had played a rented violin in the school orchestra, and in my last year of college, I decided to take a Mexican music class. So I bought an inexpensive little violin and eventually learned dozens of mariachi songs. It turned out that my professor was the leader of a local mariachi band that needed violinists, and the next thing I knew, I was playing in a Mexican restaurant in full mariachi regalia. Most members were from Mexico and the three great lead singers (who were cousins) had the best harmonies I've ever heard. We usually played in Watsonville, Santa Cruz, and San Juan Bautista, California, doing gigs that ranged from huge weddings to restaurants and small cantinas. I loved the music, especially the corridos, topical songs about everything from the Border Patrol and corrupt politicians to homesickness. Whenever we played "Cancion Mixteca," a song about exile and longing for Mexico, men drinking in the bars would often get tears in their eyes. I probably looked a little unusual in my outfit, since I had blonde hair. If I had a nickel for all the times that tourists said, "Funny, you don't look Mexican!" I'd be rich today.

What's your favorite odd or memorable job? Tell us about it.

First published November 8, 2000
Last updated April 25, 2008
Copyright © 2000 Consumer Health Interactive

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