10 Weirdest Jobs Around the World

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” When you’re young, those answers might be a tad unrealistic: “Space Cowboy,” “Princess,” or, if you’re me, “Philosopher by day, astronaut by night.” Once you enter high school, however, that question gets asked more frequently. And by the time you enter college, you’re expected to at least have somewhat of an idea of what realistic career path you want to pursue.

If you’re in high school thinking about your career options, it may lighten things up to take a break from these serious considerations and remind yourself that, no matter what you end up doing, there’s somebody out there doing something weirder than you. Here are ten hilariously odd jobs that real people do around the world.

10 Weirdest Jobs Around the World 

1. Golf Ball Diver

If you’ve ever played any form of golf, whether it be mini-golf or professional golf, you may have encountered a situation where your ball, or someone else’s ball, gets hit the wrong way and ends up in some lake or pool, seemingly lost forever.

As it turns out, those golf balls are not lost to the world. Many golf courses around the world will hire divers to go into the waters on their golf courses and fish those golf balls out. Golf Ball Divers can collect anywhere from 2,000-5,000 submerged golf balls every day. So the next time your golf ball ends up in the water, don’t worry! An experienced diver will save it later.

2. Gumologist

When you eat a piece of chewing gum, all you taste are the great flavors bursting through your mouth. As it turns out, creating that tiny one-gram stick requires a whole scientific process. That’s why there are gumologists who employ science and technology to give you that bubble-blowing burst of flavor.

A gumologist needs to have a certain amount of scientific expertise in chemistry. Some are even engineers! Depending on where a gumologist is in the gum-developing process, a typical day may involve working with scientific equipment, or blowing bubbles with the gum for hours on end to test the formula.

3. Chicken Sexer

Don’t worry, it’s not what you’re thinking.

When chickens are born, they tend to huddle together to stay warm. However, farmers need to distinguish between the male and female chicks, especially since the female chicks will eventually grow up to lay eggs. So, it is often someone’s job to determine the sex of each chick and separate them so that they can serve their respective purposes on the farm.

Chicken sexers need to be well aware of the anatomy of baby chicks, and they usually have some experience with farming or ranching practices. If you want to be a chicken sexer, just make sure you don’t ruffle too many feathers.

4. IMAX Screen Cleaner

Those giant cinema screens for IMAX movies can get surprisingly dirty over time. Some people will throw food like popcorn or candy at the screen when they don’t like what’s happening in the movie, and those food items stick. More commonly, these movie screens tend to collect quite a bit of dust.

With that in mind, there are a few people whose job it is to clean these screens so that your movie-watching experience remains crystal clear. Each screen cleaning ends up taking a few hours due to the sheer size of the screens and the amount of debris that can collect on them.

So next time you go to the movies, be sure to silently thank the screen cleaners who made it possible for you to watch the latest hits.

5. Dice Quality Inspector

Unbeknownst to most people, dice have to have very specific measurements and weight balances so that when you roll a die, you have a fair chance of seeing any of the numbers face up. Even the smallest imbalance could throw off the probabilities, making any game you play with the die effectively rigged.

How do you ensure that each die created is completely perfect? There is usually a Dice Quality Inspector whose job it is to do professional quality control tests to make sure that the dice meet all of the requirements. Only after the dice been inspected will they be packaged and deemed appropriate to sell.

6. Full-time Netflix Viewer

Imagine binge-watching your favorite shows all day, and then getting paid for it! That’s more or less what happens in this position that Netflix recently created. Netflix has hired someone to watch all of their content and tag it with the appropriate genre before it is released to the public. This person is the reason you can always find the right type of content that you’re looking for, like a romantic comedy or a murder mystery.

7. Train Pusher

You think the NYC subways are overcrowded? Try Japan’s subways, especially during peak hours. The Japanese subways can get so packed that the government has stepped in to help with crowd control—by hiring staff to push passengers into the subway train and ensure that every inch of space is filled before the train leaves.

8. Dog Food Taster

In the same way that human food is tasted before it is offered for sale, dog food has to be taste-tested as well. Dogs can’t verbally communicate what they think of dog food, however, so many dog food companies have opted to hire human taste testers to assess the flavor and texture of dog food. It’s a pretty ruff job.

9. Odor Tester

Before deodorants, perfumes, and other products are released into the market, the companies need to make sure that the product produces the desired smell when applied. So, companies often run tests where real humans try the products and assess the smell. From this process comes another odd job, the odor tester! Yes, there is someone out there whose job it is to smell people’s breath, feet, and sometimes even armpits to assess the effect of odor-giving products.

10. Keeper of the Cup (The Stanley Cup)

Every year, the Stanley Cup is awarded to the championship team in the National Hockey League. The actual Stanley Cup trophy itself is a large, very expensive cup, of which there are no duplicates if something were to happen to the first one. Given the importance of the Stanley Cup, a “Keeper of the Cup” is hired every year to chaperone the trophy and accompany it in all of its travels. Think of it as babysitting a trophy.

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