It’s becoming more common, but I work in the cannabis industry. People don’t tend to know much about exactly what I do and how weed sales works. The education and certification side of this is actually super unique. You do have to get a basic agent ID, but it’s really more of a background check than anything. But, because the rec market is so very new here, you are basically required to have broken the law extensively to have the knowledge and experience needed to sell weed. Everyone I work with has a criminal past, even if they never got busted. I talked about buying psychedelics on the darkweb in my interview, and my HR person knew exactly what the fuck I was talking about. It’s just one of the many wonderful things about working in cannabis <3

I used to work as a line stander on Capitol Hill in DC. You get paid to stand in line for lobbyists for hearings and committees. Many times your there a day before and camping out overnight with all the other line standers. It’s like an old school concert ticket environment, if you ever camped out for concert tickets back in the day.

I’m a metals engineer. I design and monitor processes to make metals with the right properties for a given application. That means lots of testing to prove it was done right, and testing usually means breaking shit to make sure it has enough strength and ductility.

It has pros and cons. The money is good and demand is higher than supply so it is pretty easy to find a good job, but it is a niche field so I have to go where the work is and aw(mm usually they put these places in the middle of nowhere in shitty republican states that have great corporate tax policies. It is also pretty much exclusively on-site work which means I have very limited choices of where I live.

I am a polymath and am good at lots of mathy sciencey things, I’m hindsight I probably would have picked something that allows for remote work. TBF remote work wasn’t much of a thing in 1995 when I chose this field but I wish now that I could work remotely.

All that said it is a good time and has treated me well so far.

I work in disaster planning - so if you want a really good disaster to happen then give me a call.

To be more serious:

I write disaster response plans mostly for the medical field, e.g. hospitals, nursing homes. That starts with ordinary fires and flooding, but also includes things like “IT outtakes”(which kill far more people than fire each year), “supply line collaps”, etc.

We also train staff, mostly management, and conduct full scale exercises. Additionally I write medical intelligence and evacuation reports. These are basically “plans” for aid workers, expats. that go to risky places: “Oh, I broke my leg in bumfuck nowhere South Sudan! What now? Is there a hospital? Which one do I go to? Which one has actual doctors? Is there a chance that a medical evacuation plane can reach me?”

Originally I am a critical care paramedic and I am currently studying towards (another) master degree in healthcare management. Before I founded my current company I worked as a consultant for various healthcare related firms, before that as an ambulance service director.

But mass casualty situations always were “my thing” and the multi-stakeholder approach I take during planning talking to basically all roles in a hospital, from the higher ups to the guy in charge of waste disposal, is something I enjoy immensely.

For one glorious summer I was a small boat sailing instructor at a summer camp. My life was sitting on the beach and teaching kids to sail. I had a wonderful tan, and sun bleached hair. My life was stress free and wonderful. I got into it by learning how to sail at that very camp, and applying for the job. It paid minimum wage, but it also came with free room and board, and I was a kid, so I didn’t really need any money anyways.

This is an absolutely boring one, but did you know part of your seatbelt, right now, could just be colored in?

How about your seat cover? Your steering wheel? Some poor bastard had to go get that out of stock, bring it into repair, go over the entire lot, and take a special pencil to color in those little scratches, or mark it as unrepairable.

I was that bastard for awhile. It sucked. 10 hours going over whatever needed checking that day. An “exciting” day meant a defect hit the line and we needed to hunt it down, hopefully without stopping production.

“Repair” can cover a lot of things, and that was the worst repair work I’ve ever done.

I’m a kiln operator. I run a giant oven to dry red and white pine.

Dropped out of uni. Various retail and tech jobs for about 12 years. 4 years disability. Took an interview at a lumber mill because ‘cool tour’, took a job because ‘paycheck for a little while anyway’. Ran a planer for about 6 weeks and then offered kiln operator when their previous was poached.

On the job learning for me with the caveat that it was not a reasonable expectation to set. Typically one works under a senior operator for about two years not ‘you’re on your own but you’re good at google right?’

Certified by my work for government heat treatment programs, front loader/forklift operation and working at heights. One of those jobs where mindset is more important than education.

Would I do it again? Yes? I’d want more money for the work. There’s not a lot of people who will write an algorithm to interpret the data they gather in a 50c box. It’s a really intense combination of intellectual and manual labor and the compromise seems to be to plop the pay in the middle. Good pay for a lumber mill but shit pay for developing processes, an inventory system and an entire goddamned iOS app(that my boss didn’t even understand much less appreciate).

I wouldn’t expect the door to be open again in the future. There’s not a lot of kilns to run, they are increasingly automated and it’s a job people hold til retirement. The manager who hired me took a massive gamble on a physically disabled but intelligent person so that’s not easy to find either. Owner runs under the ‘warm body is better than no body’ premise. There’s not even any other mills close enough with kilns that I have other employment opportunities. I’ve got a very specific and reasonably lucrative skill set for a rare job.

I stumbled into the field of construction cost estimating, because I wasn’t watching where I was going, and it has been good to me. There’s only an education/certification requirement for the companies that do the largest commercial projects (at least in my region). However, there’s a pretty large job market because there are a ton of smaller commercial & residential builders.

I’ll never be wealthy, but I make a decent living, and my work/life balance is good. I primarily work in the office, but get out in the field enough to keep it from getting boring. There is also a good ability to move up into project management, which can pay better, but also has a higher stress level in general.

I’m a designer, which is a well-known profession, but I design substations, which almost no one I’ve run into has heard of.

Substations are like giant jungle-gyms for electricity. They’re a grouping of electric structures that transfer high-voltage electricity to low-voltage, or low voltage to high voltage. They’re a major part of our electricity distribution system. You drive by at least one every day, most likely.

I got into it by chance. Right place, right time. I went back to school and got my AS in drafting for industrial design and manufacturing. I applied to this job on accident, thinking it was for manufacturing, then when I was offered an interview, accepted it despite the mixup. Why not? They offered about double what other jobs were for a drafter, so I took it.

8 months into the job, a designer position opened up, so I interviewed for that and got the promption!

Door is still wide open, despite the general idea that drafters are becoming less of a demand. Based on my experience, they’re sorely needed, especially for civil jobs. Also I get paid higher than a friend of mine who got her masters in interior architecture (also a drafting/design gig), with just my AS. I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat. Totally worth it.

I’m a software sales engineer. I was a systems administrator that learned a really in demand product front to back, and incidentally had good people skills and presentation skills. The company contacted me when I left that job and I joined on.

I scope installs, perform architecture reviews, compete with other products, give presentations/demos/conference talks, do hands on training, happy hours, dinners, triage and escalate support issues…

It’s been life changing. No more oncall, West Coast / Silicon Valley benefits, lots of fun with customers, and absolutely stupid money in a good year.

Not everyone is cut out for it. It can be very stressful and high pressure, but those who can do very well for themselves.

I work at a ski place, partially with making snow.

No certs needed, mostly learn on the job type stuff.

A snowmobile license is very useful but hardly required.

I think given the choice I’d pick this again.