Just for fun, match the job with the author who worked it (no cheating with Google):
1. Caddy
2. Deputy Forester
3. Doctor
4. Pharmacy worker
5. Raymond Chandler's Screenwriter
6. Silver Miner
7. War Correspondent
A. Agatha Christie
B. John Steinbeck
C. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
D. PBW
E. Geoffrey Chaucer
F. William Faulkner
G. Mark Twain
Answers will be provided in comments later today. Also, if you don't mind sharing, what's the oddest job you've ever worked?
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Okay, I know Agatha Christie was a pharmacy worker because that's where she first learned a lot about poisons (and even modeled one of her murderers on a pharmacist she worked with).
ReplyDeleteIt has to be Faulkner that was Raymond Chandler's screenwriter...
After that I'm really guessing.
My oddest job? Gawd. They've all been odd. I sewed Indian bedspread dresses when I was in High School (does anyone remember those?) I rolled puris at an Indian Restaurant. I worked at an answering service (awful, awful job). And now I work as an Associate Director/Stage Manager which isn't so odd but I have a staff job, which puts me in the dinosaur category. There aren't many of us left.
Just off the top of my head:
ReplyDelete1 D
2 B
3 E
4 A
5 F (he was also postmaster for awhile)
6 G
7 C
This was a toughie; I wouldn't be surprised if I get them all wrong.
In college, I volunteered for medical experiments. I inhaled air pollution and watched p0rn for money.
I paint art on windows...that's kinda odd...
ReplyDeleteI think Chaucer was a doctor.
ReplyDeleteOddest job - I worked in a candy factory where they let us eat as much as we wanted. Put me off chocolate caramels for the longest time.
Ironing someone's business shirts while they were still on the hanger ... at the wife's insistence.
ReplyDeleteBlueberry picker, which I am SLOW at. Jewelry assembly. Many, many moons ago, I was paid a penny a pinecone for picking them up.
ReplyDeleteConan Doyle was a doctor, but beyond that I'm really not sure. I should have paid more attention in English lectures.
ReplyDeleteWere you really a caddy?
My most unusual job has to be collecting faecal samples from sheep (for the purpose of parasite monitoring, you understand - this is work, not leisure). Making 5000 tiny nylon bags, weighing and filling them with precisely measured quantities of modified starch has to be perhaps the most boring, though at least I didn't have to analyse them once they'd been through the horse.
1. A
ReplyDelete2. E
3. C
4. D
5. F
6. G
7. B
I won't try guessing on the authors.
ReplyDeleteMy oddest job, without a doubt, was working as a salesperson in a religious book and knick-knack store. You wouldn't believe the number of crazies that wandered in and confided their conspiracy theories, mystical experiences, end-times revelations, ghost stories, UFO plots, etc. to me. I was young and I'm sure they thought I was impressionable. "Hey, I've GOT to tell this kid all about the UFO anti-christ plot to smuggle guillotines into the U.S. in order to behead Christians!" (No joke on that last one).
Though I must say, my next job at the public library had an equal number of odd encounters.
1. Caddy D
ReplyDelete2. Deputy Forester G
3. Doctor C
4. Pharmacy worker A
5. Raymond Chandler's Screenwriter B
6. Silver Miner F
7. War Correspondent E
A. Agatha Christie
B. John Steinbeck
C. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
D. PBW
E. Geoffrey Chaucer
F. William Faulkner
G. Mark Twain
All guesses, based on what I know of the authors.
I don't think I've ever had a strange job.
Oddest job?
ReplyDeleteHouse sitting for a professor who let her animals do their business all over the hardwood floors of her historical home.
She also requested I clean her kitchen counters with Pledge. They were not made of wood, btw.
My oddest job was updating the Dept of Transporation's sign inventory. You know, the signs that tell you how much farther the next city is? Yeah...those. After about three weeks, I could look at a sign and tell you it's dimensions (scout's honor).
ReplyDeleteIf I told you, then...
ReplyDeleteStop looking at me like that.
Someone had to say it.
I was a tour guide in a chocolate factory for two summers during college. Once, I had a little kid think I was an oompa loompa. *shudder*
ReplyDeleteMy oddest job was being a dental nurse - and it WAS so very odd in so very many ways. It was odd having to scrub the floors in the dental surgery because it wasn't in the cleaner's contracts, it was odd having to wear a white uniform dress and white wooden cogs that made my friends and family laugh hysterically every time they saw me, it was odd taking and developing X-rays with no qualifications, it was odd being spat on, stabbed with possibly infected needles, and cleaning up bodily fluids, and it was very, very odd, after doing this for nearly three years to be told that I needed to spend five hours a week of my own time for a year taking a training course (so that they could put 'Qualified Dental Nurse on their surgery brochure) which I would not be paid for, and be asked to shell out for the £1000 cost of the course myself. Especially when I wasn't even being paid minimum wage. Oh, yeah. Sometimes I think it was all a dream...no, actually, I mean a nightmare.
ReplyDelete1. Agatha Christie worked as a nurse, so I'm guessing perhaps a pharmacy worker as well?
ReplyDelete2. Steinbeck was a war correspondent in WW2.
3. Doyle was a doctor.
6. Faulkner was a screenwriter, but not sure if for Chandler
7. Twain did mine for silver.
5. Chaucer was a deputy forester? (strictly a guess)
4. Which leaves PBW being a caddy by the process of elimination! Unless 5 and 4 are reversed. :-)
I've had a lot of different jobs, but I'm not sure you'd call any of them odd. :)
ReplyDelete2. Deputy Forester E. Geoffrey Chaucer
ReplyDelete3. Doctor C. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
6. Silver Miner G. Mark Twain
7. War Correspondent B. John Steinbeck
5. Raymond Chandler's Screenwriter F. William Faulkner
1. Caddy D. PBW
4. Pharmacy worker A. Agatha Christie
Unless 1 and 4 are off...
I was a Caddy one summer.
ReplyDeletePainting parking lot lines at 4.00am
Building an obstacle course for senior Boy Scouts to use.
I picked cotton in my Grandpa's cotton fields when I was a kid, and played keyboards in a rock 'n roll band.
ReplyDeleteWthout google I can't even hazard guess about the jobs/authors.
ReplyDeleteHowever... *G* I do have an dodd job.
I get paid to write storis. That's gotta take the cake.
oops... stories, not storis. and odd, not dodd.
ReplyDeletethat's what happens when you type while holding a baby.
Match Game answers follow (which some of you smart people already guessed):
ReplyDelete1D. Caddy -- D. Yours Truly. I earned extra money during my high school years by caddying for semi-pro golfers on weekends.
2E. Deputy Forester -- Geoffrey Chaucer served as deputy forester in the royal forest of North Petherton, Somerset.
3C. Doctor -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave up practicing medicine in 1890 so he could write full time.
4A. Pharmacy worker -- Agatha Christie, where no doubt she got plenty of inspiration for her mysteries.
5F. Raymond Chandler's Screenwriter -- William Faulkner co-wrote the script for Chandler's The Big Sleep with fellow writers Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman.
6G. Silver Miner -- Mark Twain spent almost a year prospecting for silver in Nebraska with his brother Orion.
7B. War Correspondent -- John Steinbeckwas a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune during WWII.
Was caddying your oddest job?
ReplyDeleteAs for me? Chemical plant painter and toy drum maker are probably my oddest jobs.
Jean wrote: Was caddying your oddest job?
ReplyDeleteConsidering how much I hate golf, pretty much. :) I used to paint houses (the house itself, not paintings of) and that put me in the best shape of my life outside the military. Now I'm going to wonder how you make toy drums...
Oddest job -- answering the phone in the emergency road service office at AAA. Sample quote: "I'm very sorry, sir, but Triple A cannot provide towing service for a vehicle that is on fire."
ReplyDeletePBW wrote: Now I'm going to wonder how you make toy drums...
ReplyDeleteWell, at Noble and Cooley (http://www.musicaltoys.net/products.asp?Category=drums), just like people make tin cans only with Tyvek heads instead of metal tops and bottoms.
At Ohio Art (not the place I worked), they didn't want to risk lawsuits by parents whose kiddies had taken the drums apart and cut themselves on the sharp edges inside, so they used different construction materials and methods and had far less realistic toys.
I still have a faint scar on my right index finger where a sliver of sheet metal sliced through it one day.
But I also have scars on my arms where printed circuit boards managed to maim me in my early years doing electronic maintenance (back in the days when you could replace components on circuit boards). They're mostly faded now, too. (As I recall reaching into KY-3 and KG-13 drawers was a killer, but, alas, that stuff exists only in museums now.)
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ReplyDeleteOh, and here's some history about the company (started in 1854) and a picture of the building I used to work in. (Yes, the boredom of manufacturing work drove me to the military as a way out.)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.noblecooley.com/about_history.html
(Deleted the earlier post, because I posted it without the URL I indicated I was including)
I worked in a aerosol can factory once as a temp. The fancy brand and the generic brand really are the same stuff.
ReplyDeleteBut imagine fifty thousand metal cans rolling on metal ramps. Without ear plugs. I worked there three days and I was so out of there.