A job is something all of us Just have to do to get by with life. Those at the top tell other people what to do. Everyone else has to obey in order to take care of pesky things like rent and food. Not everyone is cut out for all the positions out there, though most of us try to do our best with the one we have.
Then there are the weird jobs that you’ve never heard of. In fact, you probably wouldn’t know where to begin if you got one of them. Nevertheless, all of them exist and are consistently looking for applicants—if you know where to look. These aren’t run-of-the-mill, nine-to-five affairs. Instead, they require specific sets of skills that you can only obtain once you get them.
Professional Sleeper
“I wish I could be paid for sleeping” is something most of us have thought at some point in our lives, mostly right after we have to wake up to go to work. It makes sense, too, as sleeping is amazing. But what if we were to tell you that you could actually get paid to sleep? In some cases, you’ll earn a lot (depending on where you sleep).
A professional sleeper is a serious occupation and provides services that are required in many modern industries. Although it’s not your typical full-time job, you could earn a sizable income if you land the right gigs.
From researchers (who regularly need sleep testers for various experiments) to mattress brands that need sleepers to test their products and artists who require sleeping subjects, professional sleeping could be a lucrative career if you advertise yourself well enough.
Professional Mourner
The death of a loved one can be difficult to deal with, and everyone copes in his own way. Some people mourn for days before getting their lives back to normal. Others shut themselves away until they can be around people again.
Still others take it one step further and get professional mourners to do their grieving. Although it may sound weird to the rest of us, these mourners are dedicated professionals in quite a few parts of the world.
Professional mourning has been a thing for thousands of years in many regions, including Africa, China, and ancient Egypt. However, China is mostly where it’s still big business.
The job consists of showing up to the funeral and staging a believable session of mourning—complete with physically breaking down and wailing. This may sound alien to the rest of us, but it’s completely normal in Chinese culture. These pros can also earn quite a bit depending on how good they are.
Futurist
Many current jobs have never existed before, including that of a futurist. If it sounds like someone who sits around all day and makes predictions like a fortune-teller, it absolutely is—except that the predictions have to be backed by data.
It is one of the more accessible jobs on this list (though not for scientific fields). In fact, anyone can apply to be a futurist as many New Age firms are starting to see the importance of the position.
A futurist’s role is to study current data and make reasonable predictions about future trends based on that information. A government may employ a futurist to predict social changes in order to estimate taxes in the future. An advertising firm may try to find out what kind of messaging consumers are likely to respond to 20 years from now.
Depending on your field, a job as a futurist can be as awesome as it sounds or just entail data crunching all day like your old job.
Food Stylist
Over the years, food advertising has come a long way. If you’ve ever seen a food ad and thought “wow, that looks good,” it’s not because that’s how it’s supposed to look. Instead, a highly specialized type of professional called a food stylist made the food look good for the camera.
If “food stylist” sounds like a joke, we assure you that it’s absolutely not. You can go to your local employment listings website and find a posting for one of these right now.
The job is not easy to do, either. Apparently, styling food is an art form that you master after years of persistent practice, which also involves know-how of photography and videography.
If you do get your foot in the door and become a food stylist for a local firm, you may work your way up and someday get to style food for the big brands. Needless to say, that pays quite well.
Shark Tank Cleaner
Most people visiting a shark tank (not the TV show) have a great time, maybe have a snack or two, and then return home. However, the curious ones look at the whole setup and think, “I wonder who cleans that?”
There’s no way to keep the artificially created ecosystem healthy without someone actually going into the tank and manually cleaning it. In fact, there are shark tank cleaners tasked with doing exactly that.
The job is dangerous because the sharks are always in the aquarium. You can’t just make an expensive secondary tank to house the animals until the cleaning is done.
However, the cleaning isn’t what makes this a badass job. It’s getting used to being around sharks that are already angry at all humans for keeping them in captivity. The cleaners have to learn shark behavior and be good at diving—as well as knowing when to get out—to even be considered for the role. They spend around 30–40 hours in the tank per week as a part of their job.
Odor Judge
Smell is an important sense, which is apparent by how many products rely on it to make sales. From soaps to deodorants to candles, how a product smells is as much a part of its commercial success as its appearance. So, who is in charge of making sure that things smell the way they should?
You guessed it (presumably from the title of this entry). Odor judges determine the best smell for a particular product. Obviously, they have to go through plenty of bad odors, like those from armpits, to come up with a deodorant to counter the smell.
It may sound like a horrible job, but it’s also a crucial one. They also deal with issues like whether a particular type of seafood is contaminated by a nearby oil spill. Of course, you must have a keen sense of smell to qualify for this job, and it may end up paying quite well if you work at a large organization.
