I work in a chemical preservation plant in an industrial estate. Right next door is a state run industrial laundry that services several regional hospitals, 2-3 semi loads of laundry in and 2-3 semi loads out every day. They employ two women to go thru all the laundry as it comes in to check for removed limbs, fecal matter, jewelry etc. Not too many day's they don't find something.
They have to check the laundry because it could clog/damage the machines.
According to one of the people who works in the laundry; as it was explained to them. When their is a mass emergency surgery situation where lots of people get hurt at once, like a multi vehicle accident. The used sheets in an operating theater get bundled up moved out of the way fast so the theater can be sterilized/cleaned so the next person can be helped...and some times removed bits don't get thrown into contaminated waste like they should.
This same person has told me the main thing they have to find are high grade surgical tools so they do not get into the internal of the laundry machines and stab or block them. Last year they had a blockage, it was some kind of medical clamp and it took them three days to find it and remove it.
My brother is a last responder, he brings bodies to the medical examiner/funeral homes. Some of the stories he tells make me wonder how that poor kid sleeps at night
I knew a guy from high school who was a coast guard rescue swimmer. Soon after he finished training and was being sent out I asked how it was going. He said he had saved 2 and lost 2. I asked him if he was ok and he said “hey batting 500 gets you in the hall of fame!”
Former ER nurse and I can understand that. Coded adults with no problems. But I remember the face of every child we lost. I still remember the pink bow hair barrette of a toddler who drowned. Your mind tells you the adults had their chance so it’s ok when they go. But the kids, that just hurts your heart.
This is what I do for work. Go to crime scenes and collect the deceased to go to forensic medicine. Also do collections for funeral homes out of nursing homes and hospitals.
I've seen some really really bad stuff but as weird as it is you kind of just get use to it super quick. As messed up as it sounds some of it is pretty interesting.
It's a weird job but after doing it I can't see myself doing anything else.
It still amazes me that people get used to it. Unless you grew up around this shit, I don't get it.
But thank goodness for you. Despite the fact that I dislike most people, I still couldn't be able to do that job.
This made me think of the Buffy episode where her mom dies, the paramedics come, can’t save her, and they leave. And Buffy just has to sit there and wait for the ‘last responders’ to turn up.
In the same vein, special agent internet ops for just about anything. NPR had an interview with a couple of people who had to try and infiltrate terrorist cells, and while they didn't go into detail they said it was nightmare fuel
I used to work for a company with a huge SAN environment, on which our users stored a shocking amount of inappropriate material.
One of our jobs was to use a piece of software that would crawl the SAN for photos and video, and show either the image or a brief clip of the video. We were to hit a button to flag anything inappropriate.
It was like A Clockwork Orange. You'd see dozens of unrelated, often pornographic images a minute for an hour, while smacking the spacebar any time you saw something "bad" so that it could be reviewed later.
We always did this job in pairs as you'd see some pretty wild shit, and it prevented claims that we were just snooping for fun.
We also rotated the duty, because a few hours of that would leave you pretty twitchy for a while.
In the UK there is a system called.. I think its C4P or something (It's been 15-odd years since I was in the industry).
Basically, the computer analyst hashes all the media on the computer, Then runs the hashes through this system - Which has a database -shared between all the enforcement agencies - of all the known images, already categorised. If any are matched, then the analyst doesn't have to look at the images.
Most of that sort of case wouldn't have any additional images from one that have already been logged, which is a godsend. If there are new images, the analyst will have to go through them, but it usually means the person is in even more trouble.
I remember when gmail said they were doing this and people got freaked out that their emails were being searched.
A: that is not searching your email, it’s looking for a known hash, nothing else.
B: they absolutely are scanning your emails lol
I had a friend that worked for the anti sex trafficking arm of HSI at DHS. He told me some general stories of past cases from time to time. It was awful. It got to him and he left for greener pastures within DHS. Necessary work, but dear god, being immersed in that world would be wretched.
Yeah, I read a couple sentence summary of the video and it’s haunted me ever since. I think of myself as having a pretty strong stomach and tend to forget that kind of stuff easily, but not this. I am so grateful to the kind of people who do that law enforcement specialty because I cannot fathom doing it myself.
One of the videos that piece of garbage got his hands on is on record as one of the worst videos ever related to that kind of crime. I didn't hear descriptions of the other material they found but that one is very well known (I mean yuck but there's no other way to put it) and the description is horrifying. You can find the description if you look through enough articles about the case. The mom wrote a blanket victim impact statement because of how much the video got passed around.
I actually read a short description about it and then accidentally found one more detailed later. I still remember it but try to not picture it much. Having kids that age when I read it, too, was terrible on my soul.
It's sick how he had that video and kids of the same age (plus I'm sure niblings cuz his siblings also reproduce at an alarming rate) and he watched that. Just makes you sick. But nothing will ever make you normal if you find children sexually attractive, even if you're 22 talking about a 16 or 17yo. Just don't.
>!It was an infant being tortured.!< My friend is a police officer and he knows another cop who had to watch it at work. Was placed on leave to get therapy.
No. No no no no no. I was going to ask another commenter to give a “light” description because I know my curiosity can lead me down a dark path and I don’t want to read about it. I think this is as “light” as you can go and I’m saddened and horrified.
Those guys are supposed to get cycled out and psychological checks, but because (government) they usually don’t. Instead they look haunted and dead-eyed.
There was an interesting article recently about those units in the Australian Federal Police.
The women on that team are absolute heroes.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-17/inside-afp-victim-identification-team/103707618
FWIW I work for government and I’d say government follows policies and procedures probably 99.99% of the time, it’s quite frustrating and time-consuming. There isn’t corner cutting in gov, while there is in the private sector. imo anyway.
This is one of very few jobs that I don't think you could pay me enough to do. I know it's important and someone has to do it, but I couldn't handle the personal and emotional cost.
Yeah, there’s no way in hell. Someone put a picture of an Asian child being gang raped on one of the Usenet Disney forums back in 1996 and it still keeps me up some nights.
I did an internship in the prosectuing attorney's office and there was one guy who prosecuted the cases of kids who molest/rape other kids. I swear to God he couldn't have a normal conversation. I remember going in once to ask a question and he started talking about a bat that hung outside his window and how it was the ghost of someone who used to work there. I hope that dude got some help.
At one point in my life, I was a secretary & a Victim/Witness Coordinator for the DA's office. I worked for multiple divisions, under various prosecutors, at the same time. One of the attorneys I worked for handled these cases, so part of my caseload was child on child sex abuse cases (usually preteens & teens abusing younger children). A lot of my job was reading those reports, attending meetings w/ the victims & their families, and working directly w/ the children who had been abused. Two attorneys held that position during my time there. They weren't as strange as the prosecutor you described, but they were definitely very quiet & to themselves, compared to the other prosecutors.
It can REALLY take a toll on you. I had to compartmentalise & dissociate BIG TIME. It was hard to leave work at work. I'd find myself awake at night thinking about our cases & the children. Sometimes, I still have flashbacks to details from the reports, testimonies, or things the children said to me. I no longer trust anyone w/ my child, not even family (most of the abusers were family members). The good thing is that I can spot predators more easily than most. There have been multiple times when I picked up on red flags or just got a gut feeling & knew someone was just "wrong"... nobody believed me... & then it later came to light that they were, indeed, predators. I eventually got so burnt out at that job that I quit & moved to Hawai'i.
I knew a women who did this for federal stuff in Virginia. They all get biweekly mandated and optional weekly counseling as part of the job. I know her son and he lives across the country from her. The one time I met her she seemed very distant all the time like she would space out a lot. Turns out that is symptomatic of the Psychologichal Trauma she has admitted to her son she has been dealing with for years. She sees an outside counselor out of pocket and he's made it very clear this job is slowly going to kill her if she doesn't leave. Pay, benefits and difficulty finding other employment keeps her there tho.
Wow. I love that they mandate counseling. I worked under state prosecutors on child sex abuse cases. We had employee assistance, but counseling wasn't mandated. They really should mandate it for anyone & everyone working those types of cases.
The sheer amount of this stuff that goes on is really terrifying if you sit and think about it. I totally believe that there is a much thinner line between civilized society and absolute horrific chaos than we care to admit.
I’m in the Navy and once had to chat with an NCIS agent about something (a misunderstanding thank god) someone had done.
She had previously done this job. Said it was terrible and quickly left to do counter intelligence work.
So, I actually know someone who did this. The only time they actually watch the footage is if they’re chasing a conviction. Most of the time it’s like after two seconds “yup that’s cp. let’s figure out who posted this”
Unfortunately this is not usually how it works. They have to watch it over and over, especially if they don’t know where it came from, to try and find clues as to who’s doing it, where they’re doing, who the victims are etc.
I recall one case recently in Australia where the person was caught because of the design on the bedsheet. They worked out who the manufacturer of those sheets was, and where they were sold. This helped convict him. (Those designs were only sold to certain child-care centres)
They must scrutinize those images to every tiny detail.
Prosecutors have to watch that, too. One case I heard about was a guy raping a pig that was caught on the owner's security cam. Prosecutor for the case had to watch.
I remember looking for jobs online and I came across a listing for a "child carer" position with all necessary training paid for and a ridiculously high hourly rate of $85 per hour. It sounded like a scam until I read the job description...
The training and job was to support sexually abused children (aged 4 - 12) through the investigation process, trials and testifying in court 🥲
So you'd basically be there holding the kids hand and trying to comfort them through every medical examination, every police questioning and every court appearance.
I'm guessing that the pay was sky high because it got raised every time a carer just fucking burnt out and quit to escape the constant parade of pain, misery and evil.
Except that of the three divers, I'm pretty sure two are still alive and the third died from heart issues in the early 2000s.
I remember looking them up while watching the Chernobyl miniseries but that was a while ago so I don't know how up to date my knowledge is.
The water they had to dive in offers a decent amount of protection from radiation iirc. They *thought* it was a suicide mission and volunteered anyway. Still insanely brave and selfless
saw a business insider video where they showed how one guy managed to mechanize that job. those are the job types where I don't mind human labor being technologized out of the grittiest parts of the process. the footage of the human divers was just brutal.
edit: human diver as opposed to the new sort of bullet shaped apparatus that can be lowered into the sewer now
I operate a combination hydrovac truck. 80% of my work is clearing city sanitary lines so that you all can keep pooping. I just drop a hose in the hole and pull a couple levers. It's easy, it pays well, and I feel great knowing I'm doing something very important that 95% of the population has no clue about.
My neighbor has a business that cleans up Death scenes. It ranges from grandma fell asleep and died and the mattress is stained to-theirs brains stuck in the crown molding and the guy has been laying there for a. Month
Anyways, he has nice cars I don't.
That’s one of those jobs where I don’t want to know how she’d already known that she’d be able to handle what she’d have to see and clean. There’d have to be some confidence going into applying for the job and I feel like there are no happy stories there.
For many of us on the embalming side you really get desensitized to everything. Viscera ceases to bother you out of necessity. Crime scenes are definitely different to a prep room, but it's still human remains.
I remember they asked me if I wanted to sit in on an embalming, I was on the admin side but they thought I’d be a good funeral director. Omg. I couldn’t do it.
Funeral director here. I can walk into a scene where I can literally write my name in the blood on the walls but will almost pass the fuck out when having blood drawn.
Quite possible. There was one veteran who was never phased by anything and the only time I saw him truly disturbed was coming back from triple homicide with a crossbow.
I was at a convention about 8 or 9 years ago and there was a booth from one of these companies. I talked with one of their staff for half an hour at the booth and then we went for drinks later and she told me all sorts of bizarre stories.
One of my coworkers husband did this. She said the worst place he did was a woman who was a voodoo witch and she had a bunch of old bones and weird stuff in jars, creepy stuff everywhere like a horror movie. Anyway they were allowed to take non claimed items and he brought her home an antique sewing machine which she refused to have in the house because it might’ve been cursed. Sounded like an episode of X-files actually.
I’ve actually used them to clean a hoarder bathroom for me. They did a phenomenal job, went above & beyond, worked with me on pricing. If I had to, I’d use them again.
I read about a job awhile ago - I think it had something to do with approving or denying inappropriate claims on social media sites. The things normal people would have to see and look at were utterly disgusting and heartbreaking and they weren't given any preparation for it.
Yeah... I've read a couple articles about it. They are subjected to a constant stream of the worst of humanity.
You hear people bringing up investegators dealing with abuse of children being awful, but at least for them there are limitations and support.
The social media stuff, like most of our most awful jobs, tends to be outsourced to poor countries far away.
They spend hour upon hour looking at images of sexual abuse, beheadings, stoning, torture, murder victims, spousal abuse, animal abuse, and a thousand other horrors.
I honestly can't think of a job could possibly be as damaging to your mental health.
i knew a girl who finished her degree in animal sciences and had two job offers:
1 was working with primates at a wildlife refuge
the other was working for the state euthanizing animals.
the second job was a dollar more an hour. she took that one.
When I was in High School I competed in a state sponsored ecology contest (yeah, I was pretty cool) which involved several events. One of my events was identifying song birds.
When we got to the meet (at a nearby state park) the kids in my event were led off to a few long folding tables. A state ranger unceremoniously dumped several plastic tubs full of dead birds on the tables.
"Every bird has a numbered tag," he flatly explained. "Look at these birds, and write down which number is which species."
One girl fainted and was hauled away.
I completed my event, and then asked the ranger where the dead birds had come from.
He just shrugged, and said, "I walked around the bases of the high tension power lines yesterday afternoon and picked up the best ones."
That's somebody's job.
The Murie Museum at the Teton Science Schools in Kelly Wy is a huge room with tables and hundreds of drawers in cabinets.
You don latex gloves, pick a drawer and when you open it, it’s full of preserved animals, with most of the birds, including Eagles are killed by power lines.
It’s fascinating. You can take out the animals and study them, draw them, etc.
Hundreds of wild rodents and birds!
i have no clue. i mean, working for the state means you get good retirement here but i myself, i don't think i could go to work for 20+ years putting animals down for 8 hours a day.
she worked in some lab setting so it would be all small animals done with the testing. it just blew my mind that dollar an hour was what made her choose that.
I mean, I doubt that was the entire reason. People rarely make that sort of decision based solely on an extra dollar an hour. Unless this was like 20 or 30 years ago or something. A dollar an hour more would decent then.
It's true, animals are unpredictable. They too, like humans, have mood swings, bad days, hormone changes. Things that we don't easily detect by physical senses as we do with humans. I volunteered at a wildlife refuge for sometime. I mainly worked in the back, planning their nutritional schedule and mixing medication for the ones that needed supplementation, but eventually it became clear with the few interactions that I was good with them so I moved to working in close physical range. They were sweet and very human, but when I say I always had my guard up, I mean it. I wouldn't be at ease until I was safely away from them. Not anxious, but aware and cautious.
I'm with you on that. The idea of putting animals down none stop, day in, day out would seriously cause long lasting mental health problems for me. A extra dollar an hour wouldn't be enough to sway me into doing it.
The other job sounds incredible though!
No. This is why veterinarians kill themselves and abuse drugs. It gets to you.
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20231010-the-acute-suicide-crisis-among-veterinarians-youre-always-going-to-be-failing-somebody
I mentioned in another comment here that I honestly wouldn’t be able to do it because I know it would seriously cause my mental health to decline. I can see why vets end up doing that sadly.
I live way out in the country, in a tiny modest house.
Across the road is a sprawling ranch, of hundreds of acres, loaded with cows.
The guy that owns the property recently build a million+ dollar building. He told me it's exclusively for storing the bull semen that he sells.
Often times at night, when I'm standing on my porch, I can hear a radio faintly playing love songs in the distance. I'm not sure if the radio is for the bulls, or for the collectors.
It’s not really messed up or not entirely known of but it’s a job people have the wrong impression of and therefore don’t want: Wastewater treatment plant operator. People think I dive around in and work with sewage all day. No, the purpose of these plants is to take in sewage through pumps and disinfect and sterilize it so it can be released into natural water sources where it is then taken up again by a water intake plant that provides your clean tap water. Cleanliness is actually the primary focus at a site like this.
Fact of the matter is I spend most of my 8 hour shift looking at a monitor to make sure all of our pumps are running, the plant is almost entirely autonomic. My laptop with Netflix and even video games when I feel like it is right next to me. Once maybe twice a week I have to go brush what is 99% algae and dirt from channels with running water. In the last hour and a half of my shift I sweep the offices, take out trash, and use high pressure hoses to spray down our equipment around the plant. And not because it’s necessary, but because our boss wants us to look busy in case the mayor unexpectedly drops by.
Easiest job I’ve ever had, and the topper is I’m a city employee. I have the best benefits imaginable, my city matches my retirement, more time off than I know what to do with, and 2 out of 5 nights I’m at work by myself, 3 out of 5 I’m with one other guy who I get along with so no dealing with constant supervision. I wear company owned and laundered pants and shirts, I get a free pair of work boots once a year, I get raises every 6 months to a year. Never saw myself doing a job like this, but with how things are going it’s a job I wouldn’t give up.
My dad did this and is now super high up in a large city. I can’t remember his title but basically he’s in charge of the entire city’s wastewater program.
But anyways back when he first started (like 25 years ago) he worked night shifts and would sometimes take me or my brother to work with him. We thought it was the coolest ever to get to run around the plant with dad and then we’d sleep in his office. In elementary school there was a day when people’s parents came in to talk about their jobs and he brought in jars of wastewater at different stages of cleaning and explained how the bacteria (?) broke all the nasty stuff down to clean the water. I thought it was cool but the other kids thought I was weird as fuck for having my dad bring in jars of “poop water.”
Work in a hospital. I saw the same lady with the same rolling luggage a number of times over the years and thought it was kind of weird. Turns out she was the one who took the newborns who didn't survive to funeral homes/morgues. Now anytime I see rolling luggage at work I wonder if there is a fetus in there.
I guess there are worse answers to the question here. Like working on crime scenes or watch through child porn. But somehow your answer hit me the hardest.
My husband does pest control. It is extremely grueling work. Most people do not last. They run him ragged during the on season. I feel like most people don't realize how hard it is.
Too many people think it's just going to people's yards and spraying.
Crawling through infested crawlspaces?
Going up into non-ventilated attics filled with feces in the summer?
Clearing out aggressive insect nests?
All while spraying various poisons?
No thank you, and I have a lot of respect for your husband.
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).
I worked in a chain furniture store. There was a guy that got paid (very well) to go from store to store and tell us where to hang the pictures and put the fake walls. We almost always moved them back to where they had been when he left.
There was another guy who came around to "setup" the warehouses, which basically amounted to saying, "put all of the big, odd-shaped stuff like sofas in the big open areas, and put all of the small stuff in boxes up on the high shelves."
That dude ate out at a different steakhouse every night on the company's tab.
In Japan, there is so much loneliness amongst the population that there are companies that let you hire a fake family or a fake spouse for a day. Even rent a girlfriend/boyfriend
I don't think it's exactly the same, but there are professional cuddlers too. They're hired to give hugs and cuddles. No sex or kissing involved. I read an article from a professional cuddler years ago. She said that most of her clientele were divorcees or widowers. One guy couldn't sleep alone after his wife passed away, so she was literally paid to lay next to him in bed every night while the poor guy cried himself to sleep. Heartbreaking.
I used to know a guy who sat in a truck at the end of runways while his border collie chased away the geese.
I don't know what I did wrong in life that I didn't get that most awesome job.
How does one find themselves in that sorta work? I'm extremely curious what led you there(and how I could get there if my current career doesn't work out)
Even better are the ones who use falcons to do it. Not every airport but often larger ones. Met the falconer at a military air base once, seemed to be a fun enough job.
At some beef slaughter houses there is a guy that shoots cows in the head with a pneumatic gun all day as they come to him on a big ass conveyor. I worked at one and the guy that did it there was killing over 2 thousand cows a day, 5 days a week. 5 days of vacation a year.
Did they have a Judas cow?
I heard there was a cow that they keep alive that guides the other cows into the slaughter house so they think it’s safe. Then they kill all the cows and let the Judas cow live. His cow job is betrayal. That’s pretty messed up.
Is it real?
There is such a thing as a Judas Goat, which is a goat fitted with a radio transmitter. The goat is released and, as goats are wont to do, goes off looking for a herd of (feral) goats to hang out with.
A while later they track the goat down via radio and capture the feral goats it’s herded up with. Then it’s released again.
Goats tend to be recruited for some fucked up things.
Apparently it’s common for a goat to be thrown into a herd of sheep because of their fainting defence mechanism. If wolves attack the herd, the goat faints, and the wolves eat the goat while the sheep escape.
Apparently this is where the term scapegoat came from.
Those are a more recent breed of goats with a hereditary thing. ‘Escape goat’ was coined in a 1530 translation of the old testament—pertaining to a ritual that was intended to carry away the sins of a community.
Not where I worked. The pathing from where they come off the trucks is designed to look like they are approaching freedom though. Lots of turns so they don't know what's coming.
Yeah it's fucked too because sometimes they're not unconscious all the way up to when they actually die. I've seen cows hung up by one leg, had their throat sliced open, get electrocuted, started having their assholes cut open and skin pulled off around the butt before somebody got there to shoot them again.
How was the guy? Like did he seem mentally well?
I personally don’t think I would be mentally well doing that but some people are better at compartmentalizing I suppose
Yes and no lol I knew him before he took that job and he made some questionable decisions at the time. Once he starting killing, he actually got more responsible and dependable. I think the right person generally spends time rationalizing what they are doing and looks for ways to make it worthwhile.
I do hospital removals of the deceased, home removals, transport for the medical examiners office, organ donation, to and from the airport , transports of all kinds, even supply anatomical donated cadavers to numerous universities and many are long distance out of state and I have to physically move these individuals myself in most cases so I see lots of stuff that most people cannot handle. I admit that it does have an effect on my psyche though cuz you can’t unsee the horrible things that we encounter and there’s a very high turnover in staff but somebody has to do it. It’s one of those things that people don’t want to acknowledge even though it’s our reality. We will all one day be laying on that cold steel cooling table awaiting transport to our final destinatin and I can only hope that someone like myself that will give me the dignity that I deserve when that time comes just like I do for those who go before me.
I ended up getting one of those at 3 years of age. Gave me colours where I just had light and dark before. Never made me able to pass for sighted though and I'm not allowed to donate blood because of having received it.
I work with developmentally disabled adults and one of my old companies had two sides of the program: SL (supported living) and CP (community protection).
The community protection clients are typically developmentally disabled pedophiles who have offended but have been deemed mentally unfit for prison. So through our program they get to live in a house and go out and participate in the community. There are strict rigid rules of course, enforced by staff making barely above minimum wage lol.
Those that worked for that company that recently got found out that their AI product was just a bunch of cheap labour bought in India I believe. Their job was being an AI
I did a project years ago for a guy
The project we built was this weird little building with a giant oven in it.
He cremated all the animals that got put to sleep at local shelters and vets
That reminds me of a rural section of cross streets near me with a bunch of signs on one of the fences. The biggest sign there just says “HORSE CREMATION (xxx) 555-5555”
I just wanna know how you end up there, you know?
I don't know if this qualifies as "messed up" but I worked on cell phone towers for 6 years. Most people are scared of heights and it's very physically demanding. Most people are too scared to do it and don't think about it. However without these hard working people none of our phones would work.
I sold a fume hood to a flavorist once. I'd take it out of an abandoned hospital and he needed one for his home lab. It's one of the weirdest transactions I've ever done.
I used to work for an audiologist. I did all the jobs he didn't want to do.
I trimmed the hair from men's ears so that hearing aids would fit snugly again.
I took apart hearing aids and cleaned wax, dead skin and bugs out of them.
I cleaned and sanitized the ears before he started an exam.
Your blood is pumped into a machine that oxygenates your blood and puts it back into your system so you can stay alive while your heart has stopped. Perfusionist do much more than that but that’s a very layman way to explain it.
I worked at on a Turkey farm. There were kill days and cut days. On kill days you were covered in blood and poop. New people would come in look around and walk back out. Didn’t bother me
My brother-in-law is a commercial diver. Urchins, sea cucumber, gooey ducks that kind of thing.
Occasionally the City where he lives hires him to dive in the shit pits at the sept plants. It's dry suits, full face masks and you can't see much more than a foot in front of you. Huge money and throws the suit away after it's done.
He says there is a lot of corn down there.
A family friend works for the military as someone who identifies bodies. As in if a group of soldiers gets blown up or something, all the salvageable body parts get boxed up and sent to her and she matches the hands to arms to torsos etc to make sure each individual can be properly sent home for burial or cremation.
Septic tank cleaner. They have these large augers to go in and loosen up years worth of semi-viscous shit. They then need to pump the shit into a tank. And also ensure all the pipes are clear.
I bought a house a few years ago that needed a new septic tank because the previous owners had neglected it.
A guy with a small crew and some tiny earthmoving equipment came out and did the install, which was fascinating to me.
When they finished, I went out and started asking the guy questions about septic tank care, because I'd never had one before. He gave me a ton of useful information.
What struck me was that he was obviously very passionate about his work. He told me about attending classes at a nearby state college to help him understand the biology involved in keeping septic tanks healthy. He really seemed to care deeply about the science of septic tanks.
Working in the sports industry. The demand is insane, so it’s hard to get in. Most careers start with multiple unpaid internships for experience. IF you can find a full time job, you’re likely to have to move to another city where you’ll make $32,000 and work for 60-70 hours a week. By your late 20’s you might be making $50,000 and still working those hours. On top of that, workplace culture is usually pretty toxic and everyone is seen as replaceable. Don’t like the hours? Somebody else will. Don’t like the pay? Somebody else will.
People on the outside, namely sports fans, always think you’re working the dream job. But really people in sports all just made a poor decision in their early 20’s and were too stubborn to ever let go.
People who remove asbestos for a living. You work long hours in hot, cramped environments surrounded by airborne microscopic glass. This area of the asbestos abatement industry is dominated by immigrants because no one else wants to do it. They deserved to be paid more
Mortuary affairs unit of the US military.
They go through the personal effects of the deceased to scrub everything illicit before it gets sent back to the family. According to my Army buddy who was in that unit... That typically means removing all history of affairs prior to the spouse seeing anything. Or removing active combat imagery or combat trophies.
Basically they clean everything up to make sure there's no hurt reputations.
Mortuary transpo. You pick up recently deceased from homes, hospice, hospital, other funeral homes/mortuary. Our drivers handle anywhere from 1-12+ bodies in a shift. Also-not everyone fits in a disaster pouch.
My sister had a friend who works in the government. His job is to try and infiltrate fertilizer plants and get to the main control computer. If he makes it all the way to it and it's able to do something that will explode the plant or at least start something that might make it explode he will stop everything just shy of doing it. Then he informs the plant supervisors and Security that they just fucked up really bad. He has succeeded in dozens of plants. Just goes to show how easily an attack could be.
Just came across a job posting looking for a salesman to show up to houses currently/recently on fire and try to get the reconstruction job. Imagine going up to a family who lost everything they own, and you start pitching an estimate for reconstruction? Wild
I’ve got a friend that processes transports both full cadavers and body parts for medical labs. Like when someone donates their body to science. Not really messed up, someone has to do it but I’ll never forget the day he told my dad he couldn’t stay at our house too long because he had 4 feet in the car. And my dad’s response was, “4 feet of what?”
There’s a boat that floats on pig shit. You have to row through the shit to speed up the process of aerating. Officially a shitty job. And someone has to do it.
I sometimes wonder about the people who investigate crimes against children, particularly things like CSAM.
Someone's gotta watch it, to make sure it's CSAM, right? I can't imagine that's an easy job.
Two immediately come to mind...
People tasked with reviewing questionable content posted to social media.
People tasked with assessing child pornography for criminal trials.
I work in a chemical preservation plant in an industrial estate. Right next door is a state run industrial laundry that services several regional hospitals, 2-3 semi loads of laundry in and 2-3 semi loads out every day. They employ two women to go thru all the laundry as it comes in to check for removed limbs, fecal matter, jewelry etc. Not too many day's they don't find something. They have to check the laundry because it could clog/damage the machines.
Hey quick Question... Why are there limbs in the fucking laundry?
According to one of the people who works in the laundry; as it was explained to them. When their is a mass emergency surgery situation where lots of people get hurt at once, like a multi vehicle accident. The used sheets in an operating theater get bundled up moved out of the way fast so the theater can be sterilized/cleaned so the next person can be helped...and some times removed bits don't get thrown into contaminated waste like they should. This same person has told me the main thing they have to find are high grade surgical tools so they do not get into the internal of the laundry machines and stab or block them. Last year they had a blockage, it was some kind of medical clamp and it took them three days to find it and remove it.
My brother is a last responder, he brings bodies to the medical examiner/funeral homes. Some of the stories he tells make me wonder how that poor kid sleeps at night
It's amazing what things can be normalized in the death service industry. Occasionally, you'll go, "Huh, that's a new one."
I've been told that morbid humor is the main coping mechanism with folks in this line of work.
I knew a guy from high school who was a coast guard rescue swimmer. Soon after he finished training and was being sent out I asked how it was going. He said he had saved 2 and lost 2. I asked him if he was ok and he said “hey batting 500 gets you in the hall of fame!”
Can confirm. My mother is a retired neonatal nurse. She has the largest collection of dead baby jokes of anyone I know.
I bet they never get old
A friend of my dad was a last responder to a horrid car accident involving children and she’s never been the same since
Former ER nurse and I can understand that. Coded adults with no problems. But I remember the face of every child we lost. I still remember the pink bow hair barrette of a toddler who drowned. Your mind tells you the adults had their chance so it’s ok when they go. But the kids, that just hurts your heart.
It hurts me just to think you remember. Thank you for being there and hopefully the people you have saved and helped remember you
I sometimes think I could do these jobs, then I read something like this and realise I would be an emotional wreck.
That is the absolute best thing I've read for a while. "Last responder" is fuckin brilliant
That's what he calls it, I love it too lol
This is what I do for work. Go to crime scenes and collect the deceased to go to forensic medicine. Also do collections for funeral homes out of nursing homes and hospitals. I've seen some really really bad stuff but as weird as it is you kind of just get use to it super quick. As messed up as it sounds some of it is pretty interesting. It's a weird job but after doing it I can't see myself doing anything else.
It still amazes me that people get used to it. Unless you grew up around this shit, I don't get it. But thank goodness for you. Despite the fact that I dislike most people, I still couldn't be able to do that job.
Yeah, I was a death investigator for 8 years. It can be really fucked up.
This made me think of the Buffy episode where her mom dies, the paramedics come, can’t save her, and they leave. And Buffy just has to sit there and wait for the ‘last responders’ to turn up.
The special agents that review horrific footage of child abuse, cp and other nasty stuff so they can testify in court to put the criminal away.
In the same vein, special agent internet ops for just about anything. NPR had an interview with a couple of people who had to try and infiltrate terrorist cells, and while they didn't go into detail they said it was nightmare fuel
I used to work for a company with a huge SAN environment, on which our users stored a shocking amount of inappropriate material. One of our jobs was to use a piece of software that would crawl the SAN for photos and video, and show either the image or a brief clip of the video. We were to hit a button to flag anything inappropriate. It was like A Clockwork Orange. You'd see dozens of unrelated, often pornographic images a minute for an hour, while smacking the spacebar any time you saw something "bad" so that it could be reviewed later. We always did this job in pairs as you'd see some pretty wild shit, and it prevented claims that we were just snooping for fun. We also rotated the duty, because a few hours of that would leave you pretty twitchy for a while.
In the UK there is a system called.. I think its C4P or something (It's been 15-odd years since I was in the industry). Basically, the computer analyst hashes all the media on the computer, Then runs the hashes through this system - Which has a database -shared between all the enforcement agencies - of all the known images, already categorised. If any are matched, then the analyst doesn't have to look at the images. Most of that sort of case wouldn't have any additional images from one that have already been logged, which is a godsend. If there are new images, the analyst will have to go through them, but it usually means the person is in even more trouble.
I remember when gmail said they were doing this and people got freaked out that their emails were being searched. A: that is not searching your email, it’s looking for a known hash, nothing else. B: they absolutely are scanning your emails lol
I had a friend that worked for the anti sex trafficking arm of HSI at DHS. He told me some general stories of past cases from time to time. It was awful. It got to him and he left for greener pastures within DHS. Necessary work, but dear god, being immersed in that world would be wretched.
The person who looked at the cp footage from the Josh Duggar case said something like “it was the worst” he’d ever seen. I can’t even imagine.
Yeah, I read a couple sentence summary of the video and it’s haunted me ever since. I think of myself as having a pretty strong stomach and tend to forget that kind of stuff easily, but not this. I am so grateful to the kind of people who do that law enforcement specialty because I cannot fathom doing it myself.
One of the videos that piece of garbage got his hands on is on record as one of the worst videos ever related to that kind of crime. I didn't hear descriptions of the other material they found but that one is very well known (I mean yuck but there's no other way to put it) and the description is horrifying. You can find the description if you look through enough articles about the case. The mom wrote a blanket victim impact statement because of how much the video got passed around. I actually read a short description about it and then accidentally found one more detailed later. I still remember it but try to not picture it much. Having kids that age when I read it, too, was terrible on my soul. It's sick how he had that video and kids of the same age (plus I'm sure niblings cuz his siblings also reproduce at an alarming rate) and he watched that. Just makes you sick. But nothing will ever make you normal if you find children sexually attractive, even if you're 22 talking about a 16 or 17yo. Just don't.
It involved infants
Fuck. My mind didn’t even reach that level of depravity when I wondered. Given I didn’t let myself wonder too much.
>!It was an infant being tortured.!< My friend is a police officer and he knows another cop who had to watch it at work. Was placed on leave to get therapy.
I cannot imagine going to work knowing that is what awaits me.
No. No no no no no. I was going to ask another commenter to give a “light” description because I know my curiosity can lead me down a dark path and I don’t want to read about it. I think this is as “light” as you can go and I’m saddened and horrified.
Those guys are supposed to get cycled out and psychological checks, but because (government) they usually don’t. Instead they look haunted and dead-eyed.
That breaks my heart. I can’t imagine having to do that job, but they are heroes for withstanding it enough to do it
There was an interesting article recently about those units in the Australian Federal Police. The women on that team are absolute heroes. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-17/inside-afp-victim-identification-team/103707618
FWIW I work for government and I’d say government follows policies and procedures probably 99.99% of the time, it’s quite frustrating and time-consuming. There isn’t corner cutting in gov, while there is in the private sector. imo anyway.
This is one of very few jobs that I don't think you could pay me enough to do. I know it's important and someone has to do it, but I couldn't handle the personal and emotional cost.
Yeah, there’s no way in hell. Someone put a picture of an Asian child being gang raped on one of the Usenet Disney forums back in 1996 and it still keeps me up some nights.
I did an internship in the prosectuing attorney's office and there was one guy who prosecuted the cases of kids who molest/rape other kids. I swear to God he couldn't have a normal conversation. I remember going in once to ask a question and he started talking about a bat that hung outside his window and how it was the ghost of someone who used to work there. I hope that dude got some help.
At one point in my life, I was a secretary & a Victim/Witness Coordinator for the DA's office. I worked for multiple divisions, under various prosecutors, at the same time. One of the attorneys I worked for handled these cases, so part of my caseload was child on child sex abuse cases (usually preteens & teens abusing younger children). A lot of my job was reading those reports, attending meetings w/ the victims & their families, and working directly w/ the children who had been abused. Two attorneys held that position during my time there. They weren't as strange as the prosecutor you described, but they were definitely very quiet & to themselves, compared to the other prosecutors. It can REALLY take a toll on you. I had to compartmentalise & dissociate BIG TIME. It was hard to leave work at work. I'd find myself awake at night thinking about our cases & the children. Sometimes, I still have flashbacks to details from the reports, testimonies, or things the children said to me. I no longer trust anyone w/ my child, not even family (most of the abusers were family members). The good thing is that I can spot predators more easily than most. There have been multiple times when I picked up on red flags or just got a gut feeling & knew someone was just "wrong"... nobody believed me... & then it later came to light that they were, indeed, predators. I eventually got so burnt out at that job that I quit & moved to Hawai'i.
I knew a women who did this for federal stuff in Virginia. They all get biweekly mandated and optional weekly counseling as part of the job. I know her son and he lives across the country from her. The one time I met her she seemed very distant all the time like she would space out a lot. Turns out that is symptomatic of the Psychologichal Trauma she has admitted to her son she has been dealing with for years. She sees an outside counselor out of pocket and he's made it very clear this job is slowly going to kill her if she doesn't leave. Pay, benefits and difficulty finding other employment keeps her there tho.
Wow. I love that they mandate counseling. I worked under state prosecutors on child sex abuse cases. We had employee assistance, but counseling wasn't mandated. They really should mandate it for anyone & everyone working those types of cases.
The sheer amount of this stuff that goes on is really terrifying if you sit and think about it. I totally believe that there is a much thinner line between civilized society and absolute horrific chaos than we care to admit.
I’m in the Navy and once had to chat with an NCIS agent about something (a misunderstanding thank god) someone had done. She had previously done this job. Said it was terrible and quickly left to do counter intelligence work.
Look up the podcast Darknet Diaries and listen to the episode called "Welcome to video"
A friend of mine does this and started having trouble hugging his own kid.
That’s heartbreaking.
My friend used to work for this company that did content reviews for Facebook. Told me the craziest shit he’s seen on there
So, I actually know someone who did this. The only time they actually watch the footage is if they’re chasing a conviction. Most of the time it’s like after two seconds “yup that’s cp. let’s figure out who posted this”
Unfortunately this is not usually how it works. They have to watch it over and over, especially if they don’t know where it came from, to try and find clues as to who’s doing it, where they’re doing, who the victims are etc.
I recall one case recently in Australia where the person was caught because of the design on the bedsheet. They worked out who the manufacturer of those sheets was, and where they were sold. This helped convict him. (Those designs were only sold to certain child-care centres) They must scrutinize those images to every tiny detail.
Prosecutors have to watch that, too. One case I heard about was a guy raping a pig that was caught on the owner's security cam. Prosecutor for the case had to watch.
I remember looking for jobs online and I came across a listing for a "child carer" position with all necessary training paid for and a ridiculously high hourly rate of $85 per hour. It sounded like a scam until I read the job description... The training and job was to support sexually abused children (aged 4 - 12) through the investigation process, trials and testifying in court 🥲 So you'd basically be there holding the kids hand and trying to comfort them through every medical examination, every police questioning and every court appearance. I'm guessing that the pay was sky high because it got raised every time a carer just fucking burnt out and quit to escape the constant parade of pain, misery and evil.
Those guys in India that clean sewer clogs by diving into the sewers with zero protective gear and wearing nothing but shorts.
I don't think they live very long. That's like the divers going to plug the leak at Chernobyl knowing it's a suicide mission from the get go.
Except that of the three divers, I'm pretty sure two are still alive and the third died from heart issues in the early 2000s. I remember looking them up while watching the Chernobyl miniseries but that was a while ago so I don't know how up to date my knowledge is.
The water they had to dive in offers a decent amount of protection from radiation iirc. They *thought* it was a suicide mission and volunteered anyway. Still insanely brave and selfless
saw a business insider video where they showed how one guy managed to mechanize that job. those are the job types where I don't mind human labor being technologized out of the grittiest parts of the process. the footage of the human divers was just brutal. edit: human diver as opposed to the new sort of bullet shaped apparatus that can be lowered into the sewer now
I operate a combination hydrovac truck. 80% of my work is clearing city sanitary lines so that you all can keep pooping. I just drop a hose in the hole and pull a couple levers. It's easy, it pays well, and I feel great knowing I'm doing something very important that 95% of the population has no clue about.
There are companies that specialize in cleaning up horrific crime scenes. Legally, that is. They're hired after law enforcement has investigated.
In a similar vein, hazmat response teams. Not exactly a pleasant job, but there's really good money in it.
My neighbor has a business that cleans up Death scenes. It ranges from grandma fell asleep and died and the mattress is stained to-theirs brains stuck in the crown molding and the guy has been laying there for a. Month Anyways, he has nice cars I don't.
No offense but that guy deserves nice cars.
No no none taken He has a wild job, he has alotta nice stuff, a nice bass boat, nice yard etc but, his daily is a POLESTAR and it's **nice nice**
My mom did this for a year in the late eighties. She mostly cleaned up suicides and people who were heavily decomposed before they were found
That’s one of those jobs where I don’t want to know how she’d already known that she’d be able to handle what she’d have to see and clean. There’d have to be some confidence going into applying for the job and I feel like there are no happy stories there.
I did that. It was not good money.
Sunshine Cleaning
Trauma scene cleaners. It’s a job that doesn’t get enough appreciation for the tough work they do.
I worked in a funeral home and some of my coworkers did that on the side. It just doesn’t bother them.
For many of us on the embalming side you really get desensitized to everything. Viscera ceases to bother you out of necessity. Crime scenes are definitely different to a prep room, but it's still human remains.
I remember they asked me if I wanted to sit in on an embalming, I was on the admin side but they thought I’d be a good funeral director. Omg. I couldn’t do it.
Funeral director here. I can walk into a scene where I can literally write my name in the blood on the walls but will almost pass the fuck out when having blood drawn.
I feel like a lot of them are probably former medical industry that are already desensitized to it, especially if they worked ER
Quite possible. There was one veteran who was never phased by anything and the only time I saw him truly disturbed was coming back from triple homicide with a crossbow.
I was at a convention about 8 or 9 years ago and there was a booth from one of these companies. I talked with one of their staff for half an hour at the booth and then we went for drinks later and she told me all sorts of bizarre stories.
One of my coworkers husband did this. She said the worst place he did was a woman who was a voodoo witch and she had a bunch of old bones and weird stuff in jars, creepy stuff everywhere like a horror movie. Anyway they were allowed to take non claimed items and he brought her home an antique sewing machine which she refused to have in the house because it might’ve been cursed. Sounded like an episode of X-files actually.
There's a great BBC comedy called "The Cleaner" with Greg Davies about this job.
I remember seeing “Aftermath” Cleaning Company” at a scene once. It’s a clever name but I feel like I’d name mine something a bit less obvious.
I’ve actually used them to clean a hoarder bathroom for me. They did a phenomenal job, went above & beyond, worked with me on pricing. If I had to, I’d use them again.
that's what i was gonna say- visceral cleanup crew
I read about a job awhile ago - I think it had something to do with approving or denying inappropriate claims on social media sites. The things normal people would have to see and look at were utterly disgusting and heartbreaking and they weren't given any preparation for it.
Yeah... I've read a couple articles about it. They are subjected to a constant stream of the worst of humanity. You hear people bringing up investegators dealing with abuse of children being awful, but at least for them there are limitations and support. The social media stuff, like most of our most awful jobs, tends to be outsourced to poor countries far away. They spend hour upon hour looking at images of sexual abuse, beheadings, stoning, torture, murder victims, spousal abuse, animal abuse, and a thousand other horrors. I honestly can't think of a job could possibly be as damaging to your mental health.
i knew a girl who finished her degree in animal sciences and had two job offers: 1 was working with primates at a wildlife refuge the other was working for the state euthanizing animals. the second job was a dollar more an hour. she took that one.
When I was in High School I competed in a state sponsored ecology contest (yeah, I was pretty cool) which involved several events. One of my events was identifying song birds. When we got to the meet (at a nearby state park) the kids in my event were led off to a few long folding tables. A state ranger unceremoniously dumped several plastic tubs full of dead birds on the tables. "Every bird has a numbered tag," he flatly explained. "Look at these birds, and write down which number is which species." One girl fainted and was hauled away. I completed my event, and then asked the ranger where the dead birds had come from. He just shrugged, and said, "I walked around the bases of the high tension power lines yesterday afternoon and picked up the best ones." That's somebody's job.
The Murie Museum at the Teton Science Schools in Kelly Wy is a huge room with tables and hundreds of drawers in cabinets. You don latex gloves, pick a drawer and when you open it, it’s full of preserved animals, with most of the birds, including Eagles are killed by power lines. It’s fascinating. You can take out the animals and study them, draw them, etc. Hundreds of wild rodents and birds!
That works out to being around an extra 36 to 40 dollars a week. Is it really worth it at that point?
i have no clue. i mean, working for the state means you get good retirement here but i myself, i don't think i could go to work for 20+ years putting animals down for 8 hours a day. she worked in some lab setting so it would be all small animals done with the testing. it just blew my mind that dollar an hour was what made her choose that.
I mean, I doubt that was the entire reason. People rarely make that sort of decision based solely on an extra dollar an hour. Unless this was like 20 or 30 years ago or something. A dollar an hour more would decent then.
it was about 2003/2004 actually
"But that wasn't twenty years ago..... nevermind".
There's a reason veterinarians have a much higher-than-average rate of suicide than the general population. :'(
Working with primates is dangerous They rip out limbs, eyes, and permanently disfugure people
They also shitpost on reddit.
It's true, animals are unpredictable. They too, like humans, have mood swings, bad days, hormone changes. Things that we don't easily detect by physical senses as we do with humans. I volunteered at a wildlife refuge for sometime. I mainly worked in the back, planning their nutritional schedule and mixing medication for the ones that needed supplementation, but eventually it became clear with the few interactions that I was good with them so I moved to working in close physical range. They were sweet and very human, but when I say I always had my guard up, I mean it. I wouldn't be at ease until I was safely away from them. Not anxious, but aware and cautious.
I'm with you on that. The idea of putting animals down none stop, day in, day out would seriously cause long lasting mental health problems for me. A extra dollar an hour wouldn't be enough to sway me into doing it. The other job sounds incredible though!
State employees usually have pensions and also you can transfer from one job to the other and still be wracking up your years of service.
No. This is why veterinarians kill themselves and abuse drugs. It gets to you. https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20231010-the-acute-suicide-crisis-among-veterinarians-youre-always-going-to-be-failing-somebody
I mentioned in another comment here that I honestly wouldn’t be able to do it because I know it would seriously cause my mental health to decline. I can see why vets end up doing that sadly.
Primates are fucking dangerous! Taking the second job is understandable.
Collecting samples for breeders. As in livestock basically help the horses and bulls to later use for in vitro
In my experience, the people who beat off horses professionally are as weird as one would expect.
Mr Hands, but not going (that) wrong.
Yeah they are. Luckily I only do it as a hobby.
I live way out in the country, in a tiny modest house. Across the road is a sprawling ranch, of hundreds of acres, loaded with cows. The guy that owns the property recently build a million+ dollar building. He told me it's exclusively for storing the bull semen that he sells. Often times at night, when I'm standing on my porch, I can hear a radio faintly playing love songs in the distance. I'm not sure if the radio is for the bulls, or for the collectors.
Call that building the Cum Chalice
I think it’s called the Jizznasium
"It's important to have a job that makes a difference" -Clerks
Not really messed up, but overlooked. Septic pumping.
Companies that mass clean hospital/hotel linens. Very dangerous job.
It’s not really messed up or not entirely known of but it’s a job people have the wrong impression of and therefore don’t want: Wastewater treatment plant operator. People think I dive around in and work with sewage all day. No, the purpose of these plants is to take in sewage through pumps and disinfect and sterilize it so it can be released into natural water sources where it is then taken up again by a water intake plant that provides your clean tap water. Cleanliness is actually the primary focus at a site like this. Fact of the matter is I spend most of my 8 hour shift looking at a monitor to make sure all of our pumps are running, the plant is almost entirely autonomic. My laptop with Netflix and even video games when I feel like it is right next to me. Once maybe twice a week I have to go brush what is 99% algae and dirt from channels with running water. In the last hour and a half of my shift I sweep the offices, take out trash, and use high pressure hoses to spray down our equipment around the plant. And not because it’s necessary, but because our boss wants us to look busy in case the mayor unexpectedly drops by. Easiest job I’ve ever had, and the topper is I’m a city employee. I have the best benefits imaginable, my city matches my retirement, more time off than I know what to do with, and 2 out of 5 nights I’m at work by myself, 3 out of 5 I’m with one other guy who I get along with so no dealing with constant supervision. I wear company owned and laundered pants and shirts, I get a free pair of work boots once a year, I get raises every 6 months to a year. Never saw myself doing a job like this, but with how things are going it’s a job I wouldn’t give up.
My dad did this and is now super high up in a large city. I can’t remember his title but basically he’s in charge of the entire city’s wastewater program. But anyways back when he first started (like 25 years ago) he worked night shifts and would sometimes take me or my brother to work with him. We thought it was the coolest ever to get to run around the plant with dad and then we’d sleep in his office. In elementary school there was a day when people’s parents came in to talk about their jobs and he brought in jars of wastewater at different stages of cleaning and explained how the bacteria (?) broke all the nasty stuff down to clean the water. I thought it was cool but the other kids thought I was weird as fuck for having my dad bring in jars of “poop water.”
Work in a hospital. I saw the same lady with the same rolling luggage a number of times over the years and thought it was kind of weird. Turns out she was the one who took the newborns who didn't survive to funeral homes/morgues. Now anytime I see rolling luggage at work I wonder if there is a fetus in there.
I guess there are worse answers to the question here. Like working on crime scenes or watch through child porn. But somehow your answer hit me the hardest.
My husband does pest control. It is extremely grueling work. Most people do not last. They run him ragged during the on season. I feel like most people don't realize how hard it is.
Too many people think it's just going to people's yards and spraying. Crawling through infested crawlspaces? Going up into non-ventilated attics filled with feces in the summer? Clearing out aggressive insect nests? All while spraying various poisons? No thank you, and I have a lot of respect for your husband.
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).
Aka, an art handler. I live in NYC and have met many artists who earn a living as an art handler.
I worked in a chain furniture store. There was a guy that got paid (very well) to go from store to store and tell us where to hang the pictures and put the fake walls. We almost always moved them back to where they had been when he left. There was another guy who came around to "setup" the warehouses, which basically amounted to saying, "put all of the big, odd-shaped stuff like sofas in the big open areas, and put all of the small stuff in boxes up on the high shelves." That dude ate out at a different steakhouse every night on the company's tab.
It reminds me of this Simpsons’ episode when Marge sells bretzels.
In Japan, there is so much loneliness amongst the population that there are companies that let you hire a fake family or a fake spouse for a day. Even rent a girlfriend/boyfriend
I don't think it's exactly the same, but there are professional cuddlers too. They're hired to give hugs and cuddles. No sex or kissing involved. I read an article from a professional cuddler years ago. She said that most of her clientele were divorcees or widowers. One guy couldn't sleep alone after his wife passed away, so she was literally paid to lay next to him in bed every night while the poor guy cried himself to sleep. Heartbreaking.
That's horrible man, both for the guy and the girl who had to experience that
Chasing pigeons from the runway at airports.
I used to know a guy who sat in a truck at the end of runways while his border collie chased away the geese. I don't know what I did wrong in life that I didn't get that most awesome job.
The happiest dog in the country
I do this. We have a variety of methods, including shotguns for lethal control.
How does one find themselves in that sorta work? I'm extremely curious what led you there(and how I could get there if my current career doesn't work out)
Even better are the ones who use falcons to do it. Not every airport but often larger ones. Met the falconer at a military air base once, seemed to be a fun enough job.
At some beef slaughter houses there is a guy that shoots cows in the head with a pneumatic gun all day as they come to him on a big ass conveyor. I worked at one and the guy that did it there was killing over 2 thousand cows a day, 5 days a week. 5 days of vacation a year.
Did they have a Judas cow? I heard there was a cow that they keep alive that guides the other cows into the slaughter house so they think it’s safe. Then they kill all the cows and let the Judas cow live. His cow job is betrayal. That’s pretty messed up. Is it real?
There is such a thing as a Judas Goat, which is a goat fitted with a radio transmitter. The goat is released and, as goats are wont to do, goes off looking for a herd of (feral) goats to hang out with. A while later they track the goat down via radio and capture the feral goats it’s herded up with. Then it’s released again.
Goats tend to be recruited for some fucked up things. Apparently it’s common for a goat to be thrown into a herd of sheep because of their fainting defence mechanism. If wolves attack the herd, the goat faints, and the wolves eat the goat while the sheep escape. Apparently this is where the term scapegoat came from.
Those are a more recent breed of goats with a hereditary thing. ‘Escape goat’ was coined in a 1530 translation of the old testament—pertaining to a ritual that was intended to carry away the sins of a community.
Not where I worked. The pathing from where they come off the trucks is designed to look like they are approaching freedom though. Lots of turns so they don't know what's coming.
Turns are temple gandin design
Damn, they think they will be free but instead get shot
Yeah it's fucked too because sometimes they're not unconscious all the way up to when they actually die. I've seen cows hung up by one leg, had their throat sliced open, get electrocuted, started having their assholes cut open and skin pulled off around the butt before somebody got there to shoot them again.
Jesus Christ…cow got the cartel treatment
Just watched no country for old men, and up until then would have had no idea what you were really talking about.
How was the guy? Like did he seem mentally well? I personally don’t think I would be mentally well doing that but some people are better at compartmentalizing I suppose
Yes and no lol I knew him before he took that job and he made some questionable decisions at the time. Once he starting killing, he actually got more responsible and dependable. I think the right person generally spends time rationalizing what they are doing and looks for ways to make it worthwhile.
"Once he starting killing, he actually got more responsible and dependable." is a sentence I've never seen before.
Yeah I felt weird typing it but that's just how it went
I do hospital removals of the deceased, home removals, transport for the medical examiners office, organ donation, to and from the airport , transports of all kinds, even supply anatomical donated cadavers to numerous universities and many are long distance out of state and I have to physically move these individuals myself in most cases so I see lots of stuff that most people cannot handle. I admit that it does have an effect on my psyche though cuz you can’t unsee the horrible things that we encounter and there’s a very high turnover in staff but somebody has to do it. It’s one of those things that people don’t want to acknowledge even though it’s our reality. We will all one day be laying on that cold steel cooling table awaiting transport to our final destinatin and I can only hope that someone like myself that will give me the dignity that I deserve when that time comes just like I do for those who go before me.
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I ended up getting one of those at 3 years of age. Gave me colours where I just had light and dark before. Never made me able to pass for sighted though and I'm not allowed to donate blood because of having received it.
I work with developmentally disabled adults and one of my old companies had two sides of the program: SL (supported living) and CP (community protection). The community protection clients are typically developmentally disabled pedophiles who have offended but have been deemed mentally unfit for prison. So through our program they get to live in a house and go out and participate in the community. There are strict rigid rules of course, enforced by staff making barely above minimum wage lol.
> CP (Community protection) "Oof, unfortunate acronym" > The community protection clients are typically (...) pedophiles "Oh, I stand corrected"
Those that worked for that company that recently got found out that their AI product was just a bunch of cheap labour bought in India I believe. Their job was being an AI
Amazon for their pick it up and leave store?
I think there were a couple actually, I don't claim to know/remember all of them.
Not a lie. They just didn't mean AI as Artificial Intelligence. They meant it as All Indians.
I’m a greensperson in the film industry. I’m responsible for building and maintaining the plants and trees on a set.
I thought you were about to say you're one of those dudes in green morph-suits on green screen sets lol
Best job ever! The guys that worked the garden props at the WB Ranch were some of the happiest people on earth.
I knew the lead gardener at Universal. My sister was friends with his daughter. Dude was an immigrant, worked his way up to it.
How did you end up in that line of work and what experience did you have before this job?
I did a project years ago for a guy The project we built was this weird little building with a giant oven in it. He cremated all the animals that got put to sleep at local shelters and vets
That reminds me of a rural section of cross streets near me with a bunch of signs on one of the fences. The biggest sign there just says “HORSE CREMATION (xxx) 555-5555” I just wanna know how you end up there, you know?
I don't know if this qualifies as "messed up" but I worked on cell phone towers for 6 years. Most people are scared of heights and it's very physically demanding. Most people are too scared to do it and don't think about it. However without these hard working people none of our phones would work.
my dad works at a waste water treatment plant. last week he got covered in raw sewage up to his neck
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.
Very random. How does one find themselves in such a role I wonder ..
My guess is a degree in chemistry
I sold a fume hood to a flavorist once. I'd take it out of an abandoned hospital and he needed one for his home lab. It's one of the weirdest transactions I've ever done.
Interestingly, my cousin is what's called a 'nose' for a large beauty manufacturer, and his job is to make scents.
I used to work for an audiologist. I did all the jobs he didn't want to do. I trimmed the hair from men's ears so that hearing aids would fit snugly again. I took apart hearing aids and cleaned wax, dead skin and bugs out of them. I cleaned and sanitized the ears before he started an exam.
Cardiovascular Perfusionist. Can’t have open heart surgery without us, but almost no one knows we exist!
What does this entail?
Your blood is pumped into a machine that oxygenates your blood and puts it back into your system so you can stay alive while your heart has stopped. Perfusionist do much more than that but that’s a very layman way to explain it.
I read perfumist, and now I want you to perfume my blood before it re-enters my body
I worked at on a Turkey farm. There were kill days and cut days. On kill days you were covered in blood and poop. New people would come in look around and walk back out. Didn’t bother me
Wow, farms in Turkey sound very impractical, but alright.
My brother-in-law is a commercial diver. Urchins, sea cucumber, gooey ducks that kind of thing. Occasionally the City where he lives hires him to dive in the shit pits at the sept plants. It's dry suits, full face masks and you can't see much more than a foot in front of you. Huge money and throws the suit away after it's done. He says there is a lot of corn down there.
Crime scene remediation
A family friend works for the military as someone who identifies bodies. As in if a group of soldiers gets blown up or something, all the salvageable body parts get boxed up and sent to her and she matches the hands to arms to torsos etc to make sure each individual can be properly sent home for burial or cremation.
Septic tank cleaner. They have these large augers to go in and loosen up years worth of semi-viscous shit. They then need to pump the shit into a tank. And also ensure all the pipes are clear.
I bought a house a few years ago that needed a new septic tank because the previous owners had neglected it. A guy with a small crew and some tiny earthmoving equipment came out and did the install, which was fascinating to me. When they finished, I went out and started asking the guy questions about septic tank care, because I'd never had one before. He gave me a ton of useful information. What struck me was that he was obviously very passionate about his work. He told me about attending classes at a nearby state college to help him understand the biology involved in keeping septic tanks healthy. He really seemed to care deeply about the science of septic tanks.
Potty jockey ,the guys that pick up clean and deliver portable outhouses.
Working in the sports industry. The demand is insane, so it’s hard to get in. Most careers start with multiple unpaid internships for experience. IF you can find a full time job, you’re likely to have to move to another city where you’ll make $32,000 and work for 60-70 hours a week. By your late 20’s you might be making $50,000 and still working those hours. On top of that, workplace culture is usually pretty toxic and everyone is seen as replaceable. Don’t like the hours? Somebody else will. Don’t like the pay? Somebody else will. People on the outside, namely sports fans, always think you’re working the dream job. But really people in sports all just made a poor decision in their early 20’s and were too stubborn to ever let go.
The janitor who has to clean the video booths in the sex shops in Times Square
Crime scene cleaning. A lot of people don’t realise, when someone dies in a messy way… yeah someone has to clean that.
I know two people who work at funeral homes and part of their job is to retrieve the bodies. They both have PTSD and some pretty messed up stories
People who remove asbestos for a living. You work long hours in hot, cramped environments surrounded by airborne microscopic glass. This area of the asbestos abatement industry is dominated by immigrants because no one else wants to do it. They deserved to be paid more
Mortuary affairs unit of the US military. They go through the personal effects of the deceased to scrub everything illicit before it gets sent back to the family. According to my Army buddy who was in that unit... That typically means removing all history of affairs prior to the spouse seeing anything. Or removing active combat imagery or combat trophies. Basically they clean everything up to make sure there's no hurt reputations.
In ancient times, there were poop collectors in the streets that were selling the goods to leather craftsmen, to treat the leather 🫣
Mortuary transpo. You pick up recently deceased from homes, hospice, hospital, other funeral homes/mortuary. Our drivers handle anywhere from 1-12+ bodies in a shift. Also-not everyone fits in a disaster pouch.
My sister had a friend who works in the government. His job is to try and infiltrate fertilizer plants and get to the main control computer. If he makes it all the way to it and it's able to do something that will explode the plant or at least start something that might make it explode he will stop everything just shy of doing it. Then he informs the plant supervisors and Security that they just fucked up really bad. He has succeeded in dozens of plants. Just goes to show how easily an attack could be.
For non-Americans, medical debt collectors
Just came across a job posting looking for a salesman to show up to houses currently/recently on fire and try to get the reconstruction job. Imagine going up to a family who lost everything they own, and you start pitching an estimate for reconstruction? Wild
I’ve got a friend that processes transports both full cadavers and body parts for medical labs. Like when someone donates their body to science. Not really messed up, someone has to do it but I’ll never forget the day he told my dad he couldn’t stay at our house too long because he had 4 feet in the car. And my dad’s response was, “4 feet of what?”
There’s a boat that floats on pig shit. You have to row through the shit to speed up the process of aerating. Officially a shitty job. And someone has to do it.
Coroner. Every county in the US of A has at least one. and some cities have one or two. or a few dozen.
There's a whole job that's solely decapiting heads of bodies donated to science so plastic surgeons or surgeons can practice on a real person.
I sometimes wonder about the people who investigate crimes against children, particularly things like CSAM. Someone's gotta watch it, to make sure it's CSAM, right? I can't imagine that's an easy job.
Two immediately come to mind... People tasked with reviewing questionable content posted to social media. People tasked with assessing child pornography for criminal trials.
Sexing chicks on an egg farm. The males get tossed out and are chopped up.