People With Little-Known Jobs Break Down What They Actually Do

"What a lovely thing to do," said Thomas

Train Controller.

People ask me if I drive trains. I am in the habit now of just pre-empting people and saying "It is like air traffic control but for the rail network". In the U.S.A. I believe it is called Train Dispatch. People are generally sort of impressed and want to ask questions about the railway.

IfIWereATardigrade

Helping People Work

Dunno how unknown my job is as a whole, but it isn't well known in my area. I'm a job coach. I help people with disabilities do their jobs. I can aid in physical tasks they cannot do properly, teach them occupational skills, be there for moral support and supervision, and other stuff like that. I also make sure they aren't exploited in the workplace by people without disabilities.

It's a really fulfilling job, tbh. It's wonderful seeing clients learning how to do things and just enjoying their jobs. All of my clients are wonderful people and I can't wait until the world stops ending so I can go back to work and see them again. I miss them terribly.

LaunchesKayaks

Navigating The Cinematic Waves

I used to work as a film festival consultant/strategist. Filmmakers would contact our company, send their films in and we would assess its fitness for the festival circuit. If we thought it'd do well, we designed a strategy (1 or 2 year) with all of the festival's it will be submitted to keeping in mind premiere statuses and submission deadlines.

Film festival submissions are weirdly complicated and there's a lot of stuff you have to know about the festival landscape in the first place. But I also think that company was running a bit of a scam in hindsight. Also we helped an anti vax documentary get onto the festival circuit, which signalled my cue to leave.

kfeelz

Something Small To Something Large

I work in R&D at a company that makes resins for OSB boards and plywood. Let's say that we create a resin which will still hold the board together at 2.8% resin instead of 3.1%. Or it will hold together after being cured for 110 seconds instead of 125. That makes a huge difference when you're a company pressing 1 million boards a year.

It sounds really boring and most people zone out when I start talking about it, but it's pretty exciting when we patent an improved resin and sell it to another company for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

FragrantLetterhead

Something You've Never Considered

I work in sterile services. You know all those instruments used in medical procedures and surgery? Well, they need cleaning, inspecting, packing, and sterilising. My department is for a small hospital, so we only recieve mostly dental and podiatry, but a few other one off instruments also. The worst is coil insertion kits, they're covered in bloody minge goo. There's also forceps and luxators that tend to get quite bloody, and on more than one occasion have had pieces of human gum attached.

Most people have the exact same reaction when I talk about my job, usually it's "oh yeah, I never really thought about that".

TheReasonIBreathe

Written In Ectoplasm

I'm a ghostwriter. It's not necessarily an unknown career but people are usually interested when they ask about my work. Basically, I write books for people (autobiographies, memoirs, some fiction) and when it's complete they publish it in their name.

woohooforyoohoo

Ah, So You're To Blame?!

I'm in VDP—variable data printing. Basically, I put your name and address on personalized junk mail, letters, certificates, invoices, etc. I usually get a blank stare when I tell people this, so I switched to "programmer," even though I feel like that's an overblown title for what I actually do, though it does require programming knowledge. Most of my day is putting a salutation on a letter, but it is enjoyable when something more complex comes in that requires a lot of conditional logic!

Naysie101

Getting Paid To Read??

Audiobook Proofreader

Reactions were "Wait, you get to listen to books all day and be paid?" Yup. "That can't be a full-time though?" It is. "I bet it's temporary with no paid time off or benefits." I get benefits and more pto than I've had in all other positions.

CurrentlyNobody

This exists!? My long standing joke is my dream job being paid to read!? (Or listen!) How does one go about switching to such amazing career?

VintageLilly317

Monitoring Other People's Work

Sometimes I literally get paid to watch paint dry. I'm a security escort for secure areas where contractors must be escorted. My job is boring AF but, I get paid to watch other people work.

karimmer71

Examining Seeds At A Close Level

I'm a seed analyst. I do purity and germination testing. Every time you purchase seed, or seed is sold for commercial production, if there's a label on it that says "X% pure seed, X% Weed seed, X% Inert material, X% Germination"- that information came from a lab where people specialize in seed testing, germination, and identification. I can ID hundreds of species on sight by the seed, but if it's bigger than about 2 inches, I have no idea what plant it is.

argleblather

How Else Will We Save On A 3 Taco Plate?

I make coupons on the back of receipts.

You know that Mexican place coupon on the back of the Kroger receipt? You're welcome.

Separate-The-Earth

You Have To Study For This?

I had a brief stint as a "junior cheese evaluator." People loved hearing about the cheese tasting part, but what is less known is the business analytics side of things — we have to know what good cheese is and what consumer tastes are like and how to influence those tastes to make room for company products that maximize profits for the cheesemaker and retailer.

There's a whole national certification exam I was studying for before I decided to take a drastic career shift because the whole cheese thing wasn't paying the bills and it was too much work holding down three jobs.

applepiepirate

Don't Blow It...Blue It...?

I'm an operations manager for the Blue Man Group show, a lot of people don't realize how many people it takes behind the scenes to put on that show!

CooledSlushy

How many "Blue Men" are there in reserve for each tour/show? Is it the same folks out there on stage every night, or is there a pool of people that rotate?

Moctor_Drignall

My location (at time of closing) has 7 full time guys and 3 part timers. Sometimes they'll even change in between shows, so if there's two performances in one day it may be different performers for each show. Once or twice we've gotten stand-ins from other locations, but this is usually a last ditch save as every show has a unique scene. This means every location has one piece of the show that no other location has. To have a stand-in from a different location's show means filling them in on a section of show they don't normally perform at their home venue!

CooledSlushy

I Know They're Only Dummies But...

I work on a truck doing simulated emergencies with high fidelity mannequins . The mannequins have pulses they breathe, you can listen to lung sounds, and their eyes move back-and-forth. We take the truck to fire departments and critical access hospital's in our state to provide emergency training at no cost to the fire departments and hospitals. There are only five states that I know of in the nation that do this training.

Medic-32

Typing Up What Everyone Says

I produce subtitles, for TV and now for online learning at a university. It's been amazing how many people have thought that either A, a computer does it or B, I'm a sign language interpreter.

I was also a teleprompter / Autocue operator for a while, when I first left uni, and it was one of the best jobs I've had. Though again, people thought a computer did it. And I've had likes of actors literally laugh in my face because they consider it beneath the lowest of the low apparently (until it breaks...)

QuokkaMocha

Buy. BUY. BUY!

Im a procurement officer for an airline, I order parts for planes.

No one seems to realise my job exists but everyone gets it when I tell them what I do.

Reaction is generally wow that's so cool! In reality I raise purchase orders all day. But it's pretty cool to wander out to the hangar when a plane is in

jennabenna84

The Art Of Foam

Not me, but a longtime friend of my dad's was/is(?) a professional carbonated beverage pourer. (Spellcheck's not happy with 'pourer', is it 'pourist'? ...'pourmaster'?)

It was for closeup shots, mostly for commercials for sodas or beers, and sometimes for movies or TV shows.

At one point I asked my dad (not wanting to be rude to the guy), "Is that one of those jobs where some studio exec just picks one of their buddies to get paid a salary for basically nothing?"

According to my dad, this was NOT the case - apparently it was very specialized, precision work. They'd be like "Okay, we need a 5-second pour with a 1-inch head that settles into a 3/4" head in 2 seconds," and he could make it happen. Mistakes were a big deal because studio time's expensive, if he messed up too many times one of the crew would be drunk, etc.

As a kid I always imagined this guy at work to look like someone diffusing a bomb or something, dramatic music, everyone staring anxiously, bead of sweat on the forehead etc. As far as I know, that imagining is completely accurate.

babble_bustle_din

You Have One Job And You Do Very Well At It

I was an enucleator.

When people passed and wanted to donate their corneas I would retrieve their eyes from their body and take them to the lab to process for transplant. When people found that out they were either completely grossed out or thought it was really interesting.

ratwood99

Best "Job" or Greatest "Job?"

Once upon a time I worked at a boarstud. I got hired in the lab preserving semen for sale. Dull, morning headachy work staring at semen under a microscope.

Buuut the shed often needed help collecting semen and a fun, well paying, easy job. Go get the pig, get him to mount, grab a penis and then nap as they ejaculate for ten to fifteen minutes. Repeat.

I got paid $27 an hour to sit on a stool and hold a curly penis three days a week. I now work 6-7 days, collect blood samples, monitor surgery, take phones, do inventory and handle angry clients with a smile for $16 as a vet tech. Hmm.

Bushtuckapenguin

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