My stepdaughter just got her first job. She's bussing tables at the Cottonwood Grille, and she expects to work her way into a serving position eventually. It's not a fulltime job, so she doesn't have a lot of benefits, but her health insurance is still taken care of by my job, so at least she's covered.
I wasn't surprised that she got a job in food service. She's a teenager, and it's common for them to get jobs at restaurants or fast food joints without necessarily having any relevant experience.
So what do you do if your teenage years are far behind you and you're still looking for a job? Most people don't want to waste their years of experience, so they continue to look for jobs in familiar fields. And some of those fields don't have a lot of openings right now.
Here's some good news. There may be jobs out there in the world (the entire world) for which you are perfectly qualified, and you may not have realized that some of them even exist. Here are some examples of real jobs that you can learn to do in a short amount of time.
ELECTRO-SHOCK GIVERS: In Mexico, some men lug around battery-operated boxes that dispense electrical charges and offer shocks of electricity for between two and four dollars a pop. They're popular around bars and clubs. Some people believe an electric shock will sober them up. Others believe it heightens their buzz, which is pretty much the opposite. But they pay either way.
PEOPLE PUSHERS: If you thought your morning commute was crowded, be glad you don't live in Japan. Those who run public transportation there hire professional pushers to work during rush hours. Their job is to literally shove as many people onto subway and other train cars as quickly as possible before the doors close.
PROFESSIONAL SNUGGLERS: You may have heard about Japan's cat cafes, where you can borrow a cat to hold while you're waiting for your food. Japan also has cuddle cafes, where for about a dollar an hour you can snuggle with and fall asleep next to a real live person.
PROFESSIONAL MOURNERS: It's just as it sounds. Men and women get cash in exchange for their tears and vocal weeping. The goal is to create a more mournful atmosphere during a funeral. It's an actual job in Africa, China and the Middle East. And in England now you can rent mourners to make a funeral seem better attended.
CAR WATCHERS: In Costa Rica and Brazil you can hire people to watch your car to make sure it's not stolen while you're gone. The watchers only get paid if you return and find your car still there. Some will take whatever you offer. Others have a set price of about ten dollars.
BICYCLE FISHERMEN: Amsterdam is one of the most bicycle-friendly cities in the world. But a lot of Dutch people have a habit of disposing of their old bikes by tossing them into one of the city's 165 canals. A company called Waternet employs people year-round to retrieve the bikes, and they typically find more than a thousand every month.
LICENSE PLATE BLOCKERS: Authorities in Iran place restrictions on the number of cars allowed on roads there in a given day, and there are lots of rules regarding how often your personal vehicle can be seen in public. So those who want to stretch the rules a bit often hire people to loiter near their parked cars so the license plate numbers can't be easily seen by police.
OSTRICH BABYSITTERS: This job sounds easy but might not be. You're hired by an ostrich farm, most likely in South Africa, to keep an eye on baby ostriches and make sure they don't peck each other to death.
STANLEY CUP KEEPERS: The Stanley Cup is a large trophy awarded each year to the champion of the National Hockey League. It's traditional for each member of the team to keep the cup at their home for a few days during the off-season before passing it onto the next person. The keeper is a representative of the league who is charged with accompanying the cup wherever it goes.
PROFESSIONAL EAR CLEANERS: In India, this is as common as getting your shoes shined. You wait in line at a stand on the street, pay a few dollars and have a guy clean the wax, dust and whatever else they can find out of your ears.
There are weirder jobs out there. Chicken processing plants hire people to determine whether baby chicks are males or females. They're called chick sexers. And deodorant companies often employ armpit sniffers to judge new scents.
Then there's the guy I worked with years ago who had once been employed to do odd jobs on a farm. Each day he was given a half hour for lunch, which was served to him free by the farmer's wife. The farmer insisted that my friend continue to be paid during that half hour, not to eat but to compliment the farmer's wife on her cooking.
Nice work if you can get it.
