Rock and metal musicians are an interesting group of people. They manage to take what is, for most people, a hobby and elevate it to something that they can make a living off of. But the industry can be really fickle; you never really know what the next big thing is going to be. Just ask the hair metal bands of the late ’80s about the release of Nirvana’s album Nevermind, and you will see how fast the tides turned.

Due to this instability, it isn’t hard to see how one might have a backup plan or develop new skills outside of the music scene to survive. Additionally, the money and fame that come with success can open doors for musicians to pursue other passions that they wouldn’t have had the opportunity to pursue before. Here is a list of 10 rock/metal musicians who have had other professions.

Related: 10 Most Dangerous Jobs That’ll Make You Rich

10 Eric Stefani

You might recognize Eric based on his last name. That’s right, he is pop star Gwen Stefani’s brother and one of the founding members of the band No Doubt. Eric helped to form the band in 1986 but suddenly left in 1994 once the group had finished recording their third studio album, Tragic Kingdom. Why would a founding member of a band leave the group just as it was on the up and nearing a breakthrough? To pursue his true passion: animation.

Pursue might not be the best word, as Eric already had an established animation career starting in 1989 with The Simpsons. He actually worked on the very first episode. Eric put his animation on pause as work with No Doubt was ramping up and decided to resume with The Simpsons in 1994. In addition to The Simpsons, he has also worked on Ren and Stimpy and Rugrats and helped animate the opening sequence of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

While it may have seemed like a silly decision to leave a band that would become as big as No Doubt, it looks like Eric’s path was equally as fortunate. I mean, to be able to play a part in one of the biggest animated shows in television history is a huge accomplishment. Eric doesn’t seem to have regretted his decision, as he has been spotted at No Doubt shows and is often supportive of his sister’s career.^[1]

9 Vanilla Ice

Looking back at the rise of Vanilla Ice is like finding photos of your parents as teenagers. It is almost impossible to grasp that certain things were actually cool unless you were around at the time. In the early ’90s, Vanilla Ice was most definitely cool as ice. He was everywhere: in magazines, on the radio, and even on the silver screen. However, trends changed, and Vanilla Ice fell off hard. Accompanying his downfall was hard drug use, which almost killed him in 1994.

Despite his goofy style and somewhat silly rapping, there was more to Vanilla Ice than meets the eye. For instance, his real name is Robert Van Winkle. Ice was actually smart enough to branch out away from music and develop other skills when he noticed his popularity waning. Prior to his music career, he was really into motorsports and, in 1995, became the Number 6 ranked jet-ski racer in the world.

Even more successful was his real estate business, which he started working on the side at the same time. He was so successful with real estate and renovating that he actually scored a TV deal with the DIY Network called the Vanilla Ice Project that lasted for 9 seasons between 2010 and 2019. He has also published books on the process of buying and flipping houses, as well as focusing on how to have a celebrity-style home on a normal salary.^[2]

8 Stevo-32

“I don’t want to waste my time, become another casualty of society.” That was part of the chorus for Sum 41’s breakout hit “Fat Lip.” They are lyrics that only a kid ready to go out and make their mark on the world can sing earnestly. I’m not trying to knock the sentiment, but hearing this come out of a 20-year-old hits differently than someone in their 40s. No example is better than Sum 41’s very own drummer, Stevo-32.

After multiple platinum albums, playing up to 300 shows per year, and surviving through the emo boom of the 2000s, the drummer found himself ready to hang up the sticks. He left unceremoniously, and it was only recently that he discussed why. He states in an interview that he was burnt out and wanted to be with his wife and newborn.

It is totally understandable, but what blew a lot of people’s minds was what he went on to do next: real estate. Some noted that he became one of those suits that Sum 41 was railing against in their youth. Nevertheless, Stevo-32 (now Steve Jocz) is a rather successful real estate agent. There’s even a video showing just how great Steve is at his job!

Recently, Stevo-32 has moved on from “the former drummer of Sum 41” to now being the “current drummer in his basement” with a new YouTube channel focusing on the history of his time in the band while playing some of the old classics. I highly recommend his channel, which is both interesting and hilarious.^[]

7 Dan Spitz

When it comes to the “Big Four” of thrash metal bands, Anthrax is the one that people overlook the most. They shouldn’t, considering the contribution they made by teaming up with Public Enemy to bridge the divide between rap and metal music. On second thought, they may be responsible for the rap metal subgenre, so perhaps we shouldn’t be singing their praises just yet.

“Bring the Noise” was a pivotal moment for both metal and hip-hop, but did we ever consider the impact that this collaboration had on the musicians themselves? For instance, is it possible that the giant clock that Flavor Flav wore around his neck awoke some deep interest in timepieces for the legendary guitarist Dan Spitz? While I can find no actual mention of this inspiration, you cannot deny the link when, in 1995, Spitz quit Anthrax, gave his guitars and equipment away, and went on to pursue watchmaking.

Okay, I may be overselling the Flavor Flav connection: Spitz originally learned all about watches growing up in his grandfather’s antique jewelry store. The interest was always there with Spitz. So, when he grew tired of life on the road, he revisited his old interest, and he was quite good at it. Spitz has multiple degrees in watchmaking from around the world and is considered one of the premier horologists in the world. If you have a spare $128,000, you may be able to get one of his lower-end timepieces but expect to wait at least two years for it to be made.^[4]

6 Tom DeLonge

“Aliens Exist” is the third song on Blink 182’s breakout album Enema of the State. At the time, Blink 182 was seen as highly immature and unserious, despite some of the weightier subject matter that their later songs would explore. Of all the things for co-frontman Tom DeLonge to be serious about on an album with an adult film actress on the cover, songs about prank calling your ex’s parents, and a guy that spreads dysentery, I don’t think anyone expected it to be the existence of aliens.

While the other two members of Blink-182 were aware of Tom’s passion for the extraterrestrial, the public only took notice in 2014 when Tom formed a new band, Angels and Airwaves, that released material under his new company, To The Stars*. What started as an entertainment company releasing all sorts of media exploring space, UFOs, and the unknown quickly developed into recruiting scientists and ex-government employees to begin investigating and communicating with the U.S. government concerning extraterrestrial life.

Tom rebranded the company as To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences (TTSAAS) to reflect the more serious nature of the company’s efforts. The hard work paid off in 2023 when a congressional subcommittee met to confirm and discuss the existence of UFOs based on leaked video evidence that had been released by TTSAAS.

Since then, Tom and his band have been taking a sort of victory tour celebrating the band’s return as well as his success with TTSAAS. Mark frequently reminds the crowd that Tom was right. Amusingly, Tom has remarked that when approached by fans, there is a 50/50 split on whether they are fans of his music or fans of his work in Ufology.^[5]

5 Jeff “Skunk” Baxter

By the 1980s, Jeff Baxter had made quite a name for himself as an original member of Steely Dan before leaving to play in another iconic rock band, the Doobie Brothers. His playing style often traversed the musical spectrum from rock to funk to avant-garde, pulling from each to create a unique sound that would later inform his future career as a missile defense contractor. Baxter had a keen interest in recording equipment and noticed the military advancements in technology regarding data compression and storage.

As luck would have it, Baxter’s neighbor was a retired engineer who contributed to the Sidewinder missile program. The neighbor, noticing Baxter’s interest in the subject, bought him a subscription to Aviation Weekly. Baxter’s interest grew, and he became a self-taught missile defense expert. He authored a paper on the subject of converting the Navy’s anti-aircraft Aegis missile to a missile defense system. The paper was pushed along by Republican Congressman Dana Rohrbacher, and Baxter was launched into the world of defense consulting, eventually reaching the level of chair of the Congressional Advisory Board on missile defense.

Baxter has been very clear that his experience in the music industry has informed the unique way he thinks about military defense: “We thought turntables were for playing records until rappers began to use them as instruments, and we thought airplanes were for carrying passengers until terrorists realized they could be used as missiles.” By utilizing existing technologies, Baxter has been able to envision novel defense systems, much like he was able to craft genre-bending leads and melodies. At one point, the chairman of the Armed Service Committee asked an advisor if Baxter “is the guy from Raytheon or Boeing?” The advisor simply stated, “No, this is the guy from the Doobie Brothers.”^[6]

4 Billy Corgan

During the ’90s, one of the most popular bands was the Smashing Pumpkins. Fronted by the mercurial Billy Corgan, the band reached stardom by blending rock n roll (Cherub Rock), dreamy atmosphere (1979), and anger (Zero). To this day, “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” remains one of their biggest hits with one of their most memorable choruses: “Despite all my rage, I’m still just a rat in a cage.” Initially, we may have all believed this to be a commentary on the futility of trying to escape the modern-day rat race, but maybe Billy was referring to a different type of cage—a wrestling cage match!

Corgan has loved wrestling since he was a kid, and it makes sense when you think about it. Pro wrestling offers violence, drama, passion, and showmanship all in one package. Like the Smashing Pumpkins, they know how to put on a good show. It’s no wonder that Corgan decided to throw his hat into the ring and acquire the National Wrestling Association in 2017. Since then, Corgan has incorporated matches into his music performances, and he even has a reality show, Adventures in Carnyland, that documents his work-life balance between rockstardom and running a professional wrestling company.^[7]

3 Adam Jones

When it comes to artistic integrity, few bands can come close to Tool. Everything they do is with intention and serves their vision. It’s a meme now, but when a band uses the Fibonacci sequence to create a rhythm for their song, you know that they are on another level. Another aspect of Tool that has created an extra layer of interest and mystique is the visuals, especially those found in its music videos. With equal parts H.R. Geiger, Salvador Dalí, and David Lynch, would you be surprised if I told you that one of the members worked in special effects?

Rolling Stone’s 75th best guitarist and Tool’s very own Adam Jones had quite an impressive resume in film before Tool was even signed in 1990. Some of his credits include Jurassic Park, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and Predator 2, where he worked on set design, makeup, special effects, and sculpting. One of his most notable creations was the iconic effects for “Freddy in the Womb” from Nightmare on Elm Street 5.^[8]

2 Bruce Dickinson

Some people might be fine with being the frontman of one of the biggest metal bands in the world, but Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson is not some people. While Bruce was out conquering the world with his operatic performances, he decided to take a flying lesson in Florida in 1990. Bruce has stated that he has always had an interest in aviation, which is quite evident from one of Iron Maiden’s biggest songs about war pilots, “Aces High.”

From there, Bruce got his license and began flying chartered flights for Astraeus. When Astraeus went defunct in 2010, Bruce started his own aircraft maintenance company called Cardiff Aviation Ltd. His piloting career has seen him fly members of the Royal Air Force, civilians out of conflict zones like Lebanon, and even the Rangers and Liverpool Football Clubs. At this point, I don’t even know what is more impressive.

I should also note that Bruce has written novels, created a radio show for the BBC, and created beer in partnership with Robinson’s Brewery. These efforts have earned Bruce the title of a Polymath by Intelligent Life magazine, but—much like the influences on Iron Maiden’s sound—I like to refer to him as a Renaissance Man.^[9]

1 Christian Jacobs

Most of the artists in this list are recognizable by their name or band, but Christian Jacobs is more of a cult figure. Nevertheless, his work as a musician and television producer/director has had quite an influence in their respective fields.

Fans of the ska revival of the ’90s might know Jacobs by his stage name: The MC Bat Commander, frontman of the band The Aquabats. For those unfamiliar with the band, The Aquabats are a group of costumed superheroes that travel the world fighting crime and boredom. Their shows include elaborate stage performances paired with their energetic, upbeat songs. While a mostly silly band, the group managed to achieve mainstream success and even had Travis Barker of Blink 182 join their ranks for a while.

You might gather from the description of the band and their shows that the act is for children. It isn’t, but it definitely serves as inspiration for Jacobs’s other project: creating and directing a kid’s television show. Jacobs is the co-creator of Yo Gabba Gabba! Much like his band, the show is quirky, weird, and very positive. Airing on Nickelodeon, the show featured many memorable segments, including drawing with Mark Mothersbaugh, dancing with Elijah Wood, and practicing beats with Biz Markie.

Reflecting on the success of the show and why he helped create it, Jacobs stated, “We wanted to watch something cooler, and that definitely became the design of the show, something that we would want to watch with our kids.” Honestly, I would say mission accomplished.^[10]

+ Bonus: Tim Lambesis

As I Lay Dying is one of those bands that transcended their genre to break through into the mainstream. Originally considered metalcore, their fourth album, An Ocean Between Us, debuted at number 8 on the Billboard 200. Shortly after their sharp ascent into the mainstream, frontman Tim Lambesis was arrested in California.

This came as a bit of a shock because the band also marketed themselves as a proudly Christian band with many of the themes of their music based on their faith. Even more shocking was the reason for his arrest. Tim had attempted to hire a hitman to kill his estranged wife. The trial revealed that over the years, Tim became obsessed with working out and distanced himself from his wife and children to the point that while he was on tour, he had emailed his wife stating that he didn’t love her, no longer was Christian, and was having an affair. Tim’s defense attempted to blame his erratic behavior on his rampant steroid abuse, but nevertheless, Tim was required to serve six years in prison.

As I Lay Dying was put on hold, but they eventually returned with Tim. However, news has broken that everyone but Tim has left the band for undisclosed reasons. Maybe Tim is trying to plan another hit or become a mob boss?^[11]

We are all concerned about robots and artificial intelligence taking over our jobs. However, nobody seems to be worried about the jobs that were taken over by earlier advancements in technology and even modern robots.

A few centuries or even decades ago, some of these professions were mainstream and profitable. They disappeared when some easier-to-use technologies were invented to take over their roles. In rare instances, advancements in technology proved that the profession should not even exist.

10 Gong Farmer

A few centuries ago, what we consider a bathroom (or toilet in Britain) was called a privy. It was a raised board with a hole in the middle instead of a flush toilet. Users sat there to do their business. Their feces went down the hole into the cesspit below.

The cesspit soon filled up and needed to be emptied. This was the job of the gong farmer.

Gong meant “going,” while farmer was used to refer to the act of “harvesting” the “goings.” The gong farmers entered the tight cesspits where the feces reached their waists. Sometimes, they employed a smaller boy to do the job. The boys scooped the feces into carts for transport to dumps where the waste was converted to fertilizer.

The gong farmers stank a lot, which isn’t surprising considering that bathing was alien to the people of the Middle Ages. They smelled so bad that they were often confined to their homes and only allowed to work at night.

The job was also dangerous. The feces produced poisonous gases that could kill the gong farmers inside the cesspit. However, the handsome pay made up for any humiliation or danger they faced. The job went extinct after sewage pipes and treatment plants crept up in the 19th century. Gong farmers still exist in some parts of the world, though.
^[1]

9 Knocker Upper

Decades before the alarm clock went mainstream, people depended on the knocker upper to wake them from sleep. Interestingly, the profession lasted until the 1970s.

The first knocker uppers knocked or rang at the doors of their paying customers. However, they soon discovered that this was bad for business. Neighbors often complained that the noise woke them up. The knocker uppers also realized that they often woke nonpaying clients during the rounds. So the knocker uppers started tapping on the windows of their clients with long poles.

The tap was loud enough to wake the paying client but quiet enough to wake no one else. The knocker uppers did not hang around to make sure that their clients were awake and left after three or four taps. The profession started to disappear as electricity and alarm clocks became common.

Most knocker uppers went out of business in the 1940s and 1950s, and they were extinct by the 1970s.^[2]

8 Ice Cutter

From 1800 to 1920, people preserved their foods with ice harvested from frozen ponds by ice cutters who used ice axes and, later, handheld ice saws. The industry boomed so well that ice cutters started using large ice saws that required horses to tow.

Most of the ice came from the natural fresh water in the northwest United States between January and February. The work was tedious. Ice cutters worked seven days a week in 10-hour shifts to harvest enough ice before temperatures rose in March. The ice cutters were always at risk of falling into the frozen water.

The horses were not spared from the dangers of the trade, either. They were equally at risk of falling into the frozen ponds. Their dung also contaminated the ice. Most ice cutting businesses even employed a “shine boy” to clean after the horses. The shine boy put the dung into a waterproof wooden sleigh that he always carried along.

The harvested ice was stored in warehouses called icehouses for export to other regions of the US and Europe. The icehouses were built with double walls, raised off the ground, and filled with sand, straw, sawdust, hay, charcoal, bark, and whatever would stop ice from melting. These structures were also located far from trees over concerns that the ice could become damp and melt.

However, the industry was not very predictable because ice could melt or form improperly. It was unusual for ice cutters to record two profitable harvest seasons back-to-back. The winners were the farmers who owned the ponds. They sometimes made more from selling ice from their frozen ponds than they did from peddling their crops. The industry disappeared after the invention of the electric refrigerator.^[3]

7 Match Maker

Centuries ago, match-making companies employed all-female labor forces to make matches. These women were called “matchstick girls.” The job was dangerous and tedious. This was especially true at companies like Bryant and May which paid low wages, overworked workers, had strict regressive rules, and used dangerous white phosphorous in manufacturing its matches.

Matchstick girls at Bryant and May worked 14 hours a day. They were often fined for minor infractions like dropping a match, talking to coworkers, or clocking in late. However, their biggest threat was from the white phosphorous they worked with.^[4]

White phosphorous is toxic. It could cause a disease called “phosphorous necrosis of the jaw,” which the ladies called “phossy jaw.” The disease rotted the jawbone. Sometimes, it spread to the brain, causing the sufferer to die a slow and agonizing death. It could only be treated by removing the damaged jaw. However, this could also lead to death.

6 Rectal Teaching Assistant

While we were immersed in debates over whether robots and artificial intelligence would seize our jobs someday, robots crept behind us and snatched the profession of the rectal teaching assistant.

Medical personnel often diagnose prostate cancer by inserting their fingers into the anus to feel the prostate gland. At one time, they were trained with the rectum of a living human who was called a rectal teaching assistant. Only one man in all of the UK was licensed to become one.

Concerned about the shortage of rectal teaching assistants, scientists at Imperial College London developed a robotic rectum that mimicked a real human rectum. Unfortunately, the creation of the robot meant that the only licensed rectal teaching assistant in the UK lost his job.^[5]

The inventors say the robot is better than a human. Cameras inside the robot allow medical personnel to see the internals of the robot rectum on a computer screen. There was no way they could have done that with a human.

5 Human Computers

The first human computers appeared in 1939 when the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California employed Barbara Canright as a human computer. Canright was responsible for calculating everything from the amount of force required to take an airplane airborne to the amount of rocket propellant required to get a rocket into space.

The complex calculations were done with pencils and paper. Determining the travel time of a rocket took a whole day, and some other calculations could take a week. A single calculation could fill up to eight notebooks. Canright was later joined by Melba Nea, Virginia Prettyman, and Macie Roberts after the US got involved in World War II.

The human computers concentrated their efforts on the space race after the war. They were responsible for the calculations that put the US first satellite in orbit, the Voyager probes into space, the first unmanned rover on Mars, and Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 crew on the Moon.

The human computers still had the upper hand when NASA started experimenting with mechanical computers in the 1950s. Most people believed that humans were more reliable than machines. However, the humans soon lost their jobs to computers.^[6]

4 Pin Boy

A few decades ago, bowling alleys employed young boys called pinsetters, pin spotters, or pin boys to manually reset fallen bowling pins and return the bowling balls to players. The work had low pay and was often part-time. However, it was highly demanding as the boys often worked until midnight.

This started to change when Gottfried Schmidt invented the mechanical pinsetter in 1936. The pinsetter was semiautomatic and still required human intervention. Some bowling alleys did not adopt the mechanical pinsetter and continued using the pin boys. However, the pin boys and the semiautomatic pinsetter soon gave way to fully automatic pinsetters.^[7]

3 Lamplighter

The first public streetlights appeared in the 18th century. They used fish oil for fuel and required a lamplighter to light them at night and put them out in the mornings. The fish oil streetlight was later improved, leading to the invention of the gas lamp. However, that also required a lamplighter.

These professionals used long poles to light the lamps at night and extinguish the flames in the mornings. Lamplighters were also responsible for cleaning, maintaining, and repairing the lamps.

The profession started to die off in the 1870s when the first electric streetlamps appeared. Electric streetlights rendered the gas models obsolete in the US. However, the UK was still stuck with gas lamps for several decades because electric lamps were controversial there at the time. Finally, the UK dumped gas for electric lamps.

Critics complained that their lights were blinding, ugly, and too bright for the night. Others pointed out that electricity was expensive. The British Commercial Gas Association promoted gas lamps as the better alternative and deliberately sabotaged the adoption of the electric lamp.^[8]

Electric lamps only took over in the 1930s. However, around 1,500 gas lamps still exist in London for historical reasons.

2 Log Driver

Long before trains and trucks came along, timber that had been cut down deep in forests was rolled into rivers and left to drift downstream. However, it sometimes got stuck in miles-long logjams that could involve tens of thousands of logs and required dynamite to break up. An entire industry sprang up around escorting the drifting logs downstream and clearing the logjams. The men were called log drivers.^[9]

The job was dangerous and tedious. These men often followed the logs in special boats. Sometimes, they even jumped from log to log as the timber drifted downstream. Unlucky log drivers fell into the water and drowned while escorting the logs or trying to end logjams. Some were crushed to death after falling between the logs.

1 Leech Collector

The leech collector was a brief profession that sprang up and disappeared in the 1800s. At the time, bloodletting was used to drain blood from the body to supposedly cure diseases. Physicians applied leeches to suck blood from their patients.

Leech collectors soon appeared to cater to the high demand for leeches. These jobs were often done by poor women who obtained leeches from ponds and other areas where the creatures were plentiful. The collectors used their legs (the preferred, cheaper method) or those of old horses as bait to attract the leeches.^[10]

The women allowed the leeches to suck their blood for around 20 minutes before pulling them off. This was because a full leech was easier to detach than a hungry one. Nevertheless, this often caused injuries that bled for hours and resulted in significant blood loss. But the bleeding attracted more leeches, which was good for business.

The profession started to die out after leeches became scarce. Around the same time, doctors started to doubt that bloodletting really worked. Medical advancements soon proved that the procedure did not work and was actually dangerous. Bloodletting became history, and the leech collectors followed. The winners were the leeches that were saved from extinction.

A job is something all of us have to do to get by. 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.

10 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.^[1]

9 Parabolic Expert

When you train to be an astronaut, one of the first things you have to learn is how to maneuver yourself in a gravity-free environment. Although it may not sound like a big deal, you’d be surprised how difficult it is.

Inherently, our bodies are trained to only work in gravity. It takes a long time just to get used to a gravity-free environment, let alone be able to engage in day-to-day functions in it.

The people who impart that training are known as parabolic experts, one of the most coveted and highly skilled occupations in the going-into-space industry. In fact, only nine people in the world are qualified to do it.^[2]

First, they must become excellent at free-falling in an aircraft (aka a vomit comet in casual NASA lingo). This is the only way to simulate a microgravity environment on Earth for training potential astronauts to go on missions. It’s not their job to actually go into space, even though they’re a crucial part of nearly every space mission.

8 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.^[3]

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.

7 White Hat Hackers

With almost everything from traffic to government databases to supply line inventories of big corporations now operating through the Internet, hacking is an increasingly serious threat for almost everyone. This is especially true of hackers in countries where the Internet isn’t regulated much.

As a result, there’s an equally high demand for good hackers who know the basics of getting into networks without being detected. They expose vulnerabilities in high-value targets like government databases.

Known as white hat hackers (as opposed to the regular black hat hackers), these individuals are hired by corporations and governments around the world to do their best to get into the employers’ networks. If you’re really good at it, you may earn a fortune for doing a contract job, with a chance to be hired by your client at the end of it.

The best part?

Absolutely no one will ask how you got those skills in the first place as long as you’ve never used them to do actual harm. To qualify, you simply need to get really good at hacking. Just make sure you don’t practice on live targets, as that is illegal.^[4]

6 Iceberg Movers

Potable drinking water is already on the brink of running out for the whole world. We may not hear much about it because the crisis isn’t as dire in the loudest parts of the world yet.

Many countries are now looking to Earth’s natural ice reserves for help. They are devising plans to haul entire icebergs from the South Pole to their shores to harvest water. The job is given to iceberg moving companies, where you can apply to work if you’re up for it.

Iceberg moving may sound impossible—like mountain relocation or beach stealing. However, many Middle Eastern countries are already grappling with serious water scarcity issues, so they’re willing to give it a shot.^[5]

Some iceberg towing companies are already on their way to get the first icebergs to some of those countries. Middle Eastern governments are also hoping that huge floating icebergs off the shores of their countries may serve as tourist attractions, too.

5 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.^[6]

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.

4 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.^[7]

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.

3 LEGO Master Builder

LEGO bricks transcend age, sex, borders, and race. No matter who you are or what you do, a LEGO set is all you need to push aside everything else and spend the next four hours trying to build something that you’ll give up on anyway. And that’s okay. A big part of the company’s success is being able to engage the inherent builder in all of us, even if we’re not that good at the job.

That doesn’t mean that everyone’s bad at it. We all had that one kid in class who could build intricate structures out of LEGO sets and simply mesmerize us. If you were one of those kids and have always wanted to do this for a living, you can get paid tons of money for it.

Known as LEGO master builders, these guys are employed by the LEGO Group to create those huge structures built of LEGO bricks that occasionally go viral on the Internet. If playing with LEGO pieces has been your dream all along, you could definitely give this a shot. However, you’d have to be really good at it to even stand a chance.^[8]

2 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.^[9]

1 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.^[10]

You can check out Himanshu’s stuff at Cracked and Screen Rant, get in touch with him for writing gigs at [email protected], or just say hello to him on Twitter.

Jobs. There are a million of them out there, and most have one thing in common: boredom. Turning human beings into mindless cogs in the machine, the soul-crushing tedium of modern occupations can be scary for sure.

But that’s nothing compared to the horrors endured by the workforces of yesteryear. Thumb though a history book, and suddenly, even the most run-of-the-mill job springs to truly terrifying life. Keep these vicious vocations in mind the next time you find yourself praying for five o’clock.

10 Waiting Tables

Waiting tables has long been the domain of struggling actors and those working on their screenplays; it’s sort of a holding-pattern profession, not something you aspire to. But the ancient world somehow found a way to make this most humble of professions even less profitable and even more degrading.

The wealthy of ancient Rome were fond of a good feast. They would attend lavish banquets and gorge themselves on wine and various delicacies, all served by slaves, until they simply couldn’t eat another bite. But what was a Roman aristocrat to do when a full belly came a little too early in the evening? They made some room.

Excusing themselves from the party, diners would occasionally force themselves to vomit in order to rejoin the feast (in a not-too-dissimilar manner to some of our own size 0 models and actresses). The downtrodden waitstaff—slaves—would then mop up the last course before returning to serve up the next. And they didn’t even get a tip. Incidentally, contrary to popular belief, the Romans did not purge themselves in rooms called vomitoria or vomitoriums—those were simply passages in an amphitheater.

9 Cutting Hair

Between sweeping up other people’s hair and forcing boring small talk, the duties of a modern barber aren’t exactly glamorous. But luckily for those aspiring stylists out there, the last few centuries have done a great job filtering the unbridled horror out of a job that once left our ancestors scarred in more ways than one.

In addition to trimming hair, the barbers of medieval Europe held a host of other job titles. They dabbled in dentistry by extracting the rotten teeth of their clients. They played doctor by selling various primitive medicines, performing bloodletting, and even giving enemas. Though most shocking were the duties of the notorious barber-surgeons.

As the terrifying title suggests, these barbers made a living hacking open their customers. Barely trained and almost never literate, these maniacs’ attempts at medicine were little more than butchery.

It was common for bloodstained rags to be seen hanging from the walls of the barbershop, inspiring the iconic red-and-white poles we still see today. Luckily, barbers were forbidden to do anything but cut hair by King George II in 1745.

8 Bartending

The gravest dangers facing barkeeps today are bad tips and the occasional drunken brawl. Other than that, it’s pretty cut-and-dried. Even if a mistake is made, the worst that can be expected is a demanded refund. But that wasn’t the case in 17th-century Europe.

During the Tudor era, it was common for brewers to sell their products directly to the alcohol-crazed masses. The ale went bad in a matter of days, so alehouses—or taverns—brewed their ale on-site to serve it as quickly as possible. This was a pretty efficient system, but the fact that nonprofessionals were handling the brewing often led to bad batches. People didn’t like bad batches.

Punishments for inferior ale were swift and bizarrely severe. In addition to fines, the offending brewer, which was traditionally a woman, would have her entire stock confiscated and distributed for free to the poor.

But strangest of all was the use of the “ducking-stool.” The “alewife” in question would be tied to a chair on the end of a long pole and submerged in dirty water. This primitive waterboarding was used on countless women whose only crimes were making a few bad drinks.

7 Making Musical Instruments

Modern instrument manufacturing is typically carried out like any other kind of modern manufacturing—on a cold, monotonous assembly line. Workers are essentially soulless living machinery, but the experience still beats the methods used in ages past.

Violin strings were, and occasionally still are, made of only the finest sheep intestines. Violin manufacturers would often set up shop right next door to the local slaughterhouse to get their hands on the grisly guts the moment they were cut from the sheep.

Then the manufacturers would cart their haul back to the factory and set about scraping out the feces, blood, fat, and slime. This would all be done by hand as the intestines were too delicate for machinery to handle.

After cleaning, the guts were wound up and dried to produce the violin strings. Ironically, this gruesome process was said to result in the most beautiful-sounding strings. If they were cleaned properly, that is. If not, they were known to begin rotting on the violin.

6 Hairdressing

Modern hairdressing may be looked down upon by some, but the stylists of the ancient world were the targets of almost universal disgust. Far from their chatty, hairspray-blasted modern counterparts, hairdressers in ancient Rome were slaves who reeked of several less pleasant substances.

Called ornatrixes, these pitiable professionals spent their lives catering to the whims of the ultra-vain elite. The pressure was intense as a mistake meant a brutal whipping, but that still wasn’t the worst part of the job.

There were no hair products back in the day, forcing the dedicated ornatrix to improvise. Bile, cuttlefish ink, and even decomposed leeches were mixed to produce dark hair dye, but bleaching was even worse. Pigeon droppings and ash were slathered onto the scalp and then rinsed out with human urine.

However, the ornatrix’s worst days came from dandruff sufferers as the Romans believed that a flaky scalp could be cured with human feces.

5 Washing Clothes

Aside from dry cleaners, you would be hard-pressed to find a laundry washing professional in modern society. Washing machines and detergents have made the task so easy that there really isn’t a need for a dedicated laundry person. But there used to be, and his job was truly disgusting.

Again, ancient Rome is to blame for the foulness of what should be a squeaky-clean profession. Large vats were a common sight on Roman streets, which acted as primitive public restrooms. Citizens would wander by, urinate into them, and go about their business. When the vats were full, they were hauled off to the local fullonica.

This building was the ancient equivalent of a laundromat. Workers would pour the massive jugs of strangers’ urine into large tubs with the dirty laundry. But that was only step one.

Next, they would stand knee-deep in the urine-filled tubs and stomp around to agitate the clothes. Ironically, the ammonia in urine is great for breaking down dirt and grease, making this a surprisingly effective process.

4 Party Planning

Whether it’s a graduation party, wedding reception, or just a weekend house party, a lot goes into crafting the perfect get-together—so much that many people choose to make their living coordinating such events. But odds are that none of them have ever been asked to plan a night of group sex.

As you may have guessed by now, this extremely dirty job comes to us from ancient Rome. Emperors had their own personal orgy planners committed to throwing the largest and filthiest sex parties imaginable. Often lasting multiple days, Rome’s elite would meet at these carnal carnivals to indulge in acts so legendarily lurid that they would be painted on public walls for all to enjoy.

While this may sound like a dream job to some, it comes with a catch. Humiliated family members of partygoers sometimes “vented their frustrations” on the orgy planner or his employer. That’s a diplomatic way of saying that the family brutally tortured and murdered the orgy planner.

3 Working In A Carnival

Working in a carnival is by no means a pleasant experience. Sitting outside, listening to screaming kids, and huffing fumes from the Tilt-A-Whirl isn’t exactly paradise. Luckily, today’s carnival goer is a bit more squeamish than his early-20th-century counterpart or it would be so much worse.

The word “geek” is usually used to describe the socially awkward, but it began as the title for a carnival performer. This performer did only one thing: He bit the heads off things, including snakes and rats but usually live chickens. Playing the role of a savage “wild man,” the carny shocked crowds with his gruesome and bloody displays.

But it gets worse. Obviously, very few would volunteer for this position, so carnival owners were notorious for finding homeless drug addicts for the part. The owners would simply offer the addicts their fix in exchange for a performance.

The addict was given a razor blade to sneakily cut the neck of the animal, making his job easier—at first. Once the “performer” was completely dependent on the owner, the razor was taken away, leaving the carnival with a brand-new geek.

2 Making Hats

Like so many professions, the job of hatmaking has been simplified to the point of being phased out. Machines have replaced most of the workers, making modern hatters little more than glorified factory equipment. But that may not be such a bad thing.

The 17th century gave us one of the worst manufacturing innovations in history. “Carroting” was a hatmaking shortcut that allowed hatters to work their stiff materials into complex shapes more easily. By simply washing the fabric with mercury nitrate—which temporarily turned it orange, hence the name—the fabric was much more workable, cutting down production time. It seemed like a miracle—until hatters started losing their minds.

As it turns out, holding a mercury-soaked wad of cloth inches from your face for years isn’t the healthiest pastime. Breathing mercury fumes allows the deadly metal to build up in the body and attack the nervous system as well as the teeth and gums.

This led to a rash of “mad hatters.” Their poisoning led them to drool, lose teeth, shake uncontrollably, and eventually suffer permanent brain damage. This is actually where we get the phrase “mad as a hatter.”

1 Making Matchsticks

No one would argue that matches are dangerous. But barring a freak fire, how could making the tiny, innocuous sticks possibly be harmful? Just dip a few pieces of wood into some incendiary sludge, and call it a day. Sure, it would be tedious, but it’s easy money. Right?

Well, no. It turns out that one of the most gruesome workplace epidemics of the 19th and 20th centuries was suffered by workers producing “strike anywhere” matches. Yellow phosphorus—which we now call white phosphorus—was needed to produce these matches, and factory workers spent 10–15 hours a day handling the dangerous substance. However, its danger came not from the potential for burns but from the fumes it produced.

In 1838, the first case of “phossy jaw” was recorded. After breathing poisonous phosphorus fumes in a matchstick factory, workers began to experience intense pain and swelling in their lower faces. They started to lose teeth, and large, open sores appeared along their jawlines.

Both skin and bone rotted and fell away, leaving the hapless employee permanently disfigured. The only course of action was a complete removal of the jaw. Luckily, the early 20th century saw strict regulations, if not outright bans, placed on phosphorus match production.

Ian is a struggling writer who suddenly doesn’t feel so bad about that.

If you’ve ever been fired before you know it’s not always the easiest pill to swallow. Most of us would disagree with an employer when it comes to reasons for being fired, though there are of course situations where it’s warranted. If you steal, do your job poorly, leave early and so on, your dismissal may be wholly justified. And there are a few other reasons that are weird and unpredictable that can lead to losing out on work. It happens to people in Hollywood as well, and some of their firings just boggle the mind.

10. Rick Moranis was Fired From The Breakfast Club For a Russian Accent

The Breakfast Club has become a classic example of ’80s cinema and one of director John Hughes’ most beloved films. The simple tale of a group of five misfits spending a Saturday together in detention seemed to capture not just a zeitgeist, but something that transcended the time and related to audiences even decades later. 

Apart from the central cast there are really only two other characters in the film. The chief antagonist is the brilliantly portrayed Principal Vernon and then there’s also the janitor character played by John Kapelos. His character doesn’t do a lot in the movie but he does have a couple of memorable scenes. And the character nearly went to Rick Moranis.

Moranis, best known for movies like Ghostbusters and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, was cast in the role until John Hughes fired him. According to legend, Hughes was stoked to have Moranis on board but for mysterious reasons, Moranis refused to play the character as written. Instead, he portrayed him with an over the top Russian accent. And that wasn’t all.

When Moranis arrived on set, he had gold caps on his teeth and had cut his hair. The studio saw the dailies and hated it. Hughes didn’t want to tell Moranis, but the studio didn’t want to waste time with him so they fired him. 

9. David Herman Got Fired on Purpose From MADtv

MADtv never quite hit the heights of SNL but it was one of the longest running competitors of the sketch comedy series and featured several performers who are still big in the comedy scene today. 

One performer, David Herman, is maybe best known outside of the show for his work in the movie Office Space, where he plays a character named Michael Bolton who hates the office printer. Herman was locked into a contract with the TV show that prevented him from being in any projects outside of the show and he had a problem with that.

Herman wanted to do other projects, so he needed to void his contract and void it he did. He began to do his table reads for the show by shouting all of his lines. And he kept it up until producers got so sick of him they fired him. Since then he’s gone on to have a fairly successful career as a voice actor. 

8. Dan Aykroyd Fired JT Walsh For Being in a Movie About John Belushi

Back in the 1980s and ’90s, character actor JT Walsh appeared in a number of memorable roles in films like A Few Good Men and Sling Blade. While many people enjoyed his body of work, that wasn’t true of everyone. Including, apparently, actor Dan Aykroyd.

In 1990, Aykroyd was making the movie Loose Cannons, an action comedy that also starred Gene Hackman. Walsh was hired to play a cop named Weskit but Aykroyd went out of his way to make sure it never happened. Walsh had recently starred in the movie Wired, a biography of John Belushi. Aykroyd and Belushi were famously close friends and performed as the Blues Brothers together and Wired didn’t always portray Belushi in the kindest light. As a result, Aykroyd was holding a grudge and had Walsh replaced. 

7. Chris Hansen Got Fired After Being Caught on Camera Cheating

For a few years, Chris Hansen was remarkably famous for his To Catch a Predator stings, where he would work with law enforcement to set up would-be pedophiles and catch them on camera trying to meet up with underage victims. To this day Hansen is still used as a meme when someone online is being creepy, even though To Catch a Predator ended in 2007.

Because Hansen spent so much of his career setting up hidden camera stings, it became bizarrely ironic that he lost his job with NBC entirely in 2013 after being caught on hidden camera cheating on his wife. 

It was the National Enquirer that took Hansen down, but NBC didn’t want to deal with the potential black eye of keeping the man on staff so they canned him once the story came to light. 

6. Daniel Benzali was fired from Murder One For Pooping at Home

The show Murder One was a serious legal drama that came from the infamous Steven Bochco. It starred a man named Daniel Benzali who was very serious and powerful in the role. He was critically lauded for his work but, nonetheless; the man was fired. Why fire such a good actor? Steven Bochco has the answer.

Benzali came to work late every day. An hour late, according to Bochco. And on a TV show set, that’s a huge issue. These shows cost a lot of money and that’s a huge waste if it happens every day.

Bochco confronted Benzali about being late to ask if there was a solution. Benzali admitted the problem was he had a long commute, but he couldn’t leave the house until he pooped. That was literally his reason.  Bochco suggested he come to work and then poop but Benzali resisted, stating he could only go at home. 

Benzali refused to get up earlier to allow for him getting to work on time. Bochco even offered to get him an apartment right across from the lot. But the actor wouldn’t do it. So, they fired him.

5. Jay Thomas was Fired from Cheers for Insulting Rhea Perlman

The sitcom Cheers featured an ensemble cast of classic characters that were beloved by fans. Carla, the waitress portrayed by actress Rhea Perlman, was known for an acerbic wit and a surly but oddly lovable demeanor. Perlman was well-liked in the role and it’s hands down what she is most well known for to this day. That said, not everyone was as stoked by the role as the fans.

Actor Jay Thomas had a recurring role as Carla’s boyfriend and later husband Eddie Lebec. The characters got married and only a short time later the character was killed by a Zamboni. While that’s a goofy ending it made some people wonder why they had Carla get married only to have her husband die so soon after. The plan was never to kill Eddie, but Thomas brought it on himself.

Thomas was doing a radio show discussing his role on the show and started making jokes about how disgusting it was that he had to kiss Rhea Perlman. Series co-creator James Burrows said Thomas was fired immediately for his comments and then the character was killed off.

Thomas maintained that he wasn’t fired for that reason at all, but the show’s creator may have more standing to determine what the truth was. 

4. Richard Gere was Fired From a Movie For Getting Mustard on Sylvester Stallone

Richard Gere was a pretty big name in Hollywood for years, even if we don’t see him much anymore. And, of course, Sylvester Stallone still is. The two of them were signed up to star in the movie Lords of Flatbush together back in 1974. Offscreen, however, things were not going well.

According to Stallone, things were already a little sour because Gere was taking fight scenes too seriously. The cast breaks for lunch and Gere has a half chicken covered in mustard that he proceeds to spill all over Stallone’s pants. Stallone elbows him out of the car they’re sitting in, and the feud resulted in a choice for the director – Stallone or Gere. Gere got fired.

The feud long outlasted their brief stint together and there have even been rumors that persist to this day that Stallone started the infamous Richard Gere gerbil story, which Gere himself apparently believes is how things went down..

3. Damon Wayans was Fired From SNL for Sabotaging a Sketch

SNL has seen dozens upon dozens of comedians perform as cast members over the years and some obviously last longer than others. Some leave the show on their own terms but others are summarily and mercilessly fired for going against the wishes of producer Lorne Michaels. Damon Wayans was one of those people.

Wayans had been in seven episodes of the sketch comedy series. He was already having a problem with how he was being featured, not getting much to work with and being put into situations he felt were racially offensive, such as being asked to simply stand on stage in a thong holding a spear.

In his final sketch, a Miami Vice parody, Wayans was portraying a detective. Wayans said that, after rehearsal, Michaels told him he looked like a pimp in the suit, he needed to put on a cop uniform. And that was it. 

Wayans already hated the sketch, which he didn’t think was funny, so when it came time for the live performance, he played the cop as flamboyantly gay, just bowling over the whole scene.

After it was over, Michaels fired him on the spot, which Wayans admitted was the right move since what he did wasn’t funny, it was just out of anger.

2. Russell Brand was Fired For Dressing like Osama bin Laden the Day After 9/11

Russell Brand is mostly known for his podcast and political takes these days but once upon a time he was a comedian and even worked for MTV. In fact, he worked for MTV right until September 12, 2001. 

The day after 9/11 which, even if you weren’t around at the time you can imagine, was one hell of a serious day for people all around the world. Brand showed up for his gig at MTV dressed like Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader who was ultimately responsible for the 9/11 attacks and the deaths of 2,996 people.

Word is Brand was high as well, and he’s admitted to having drug issues in the past, but the mix was definitely not one that was going to guarantee him work at the end of the week. 

1. Michael Buble Was Fired From the X-Files for Stealing a Hot Dog

Long before Michael Buble was a spokesman for flavored fizzy water or a latter day crooner, he was an actor. Or he tried to be, anyway. The man hit a setback or two the likes of which most actors avoided. 

Buble was cast in an episode of The X-Files as an extra on a submarine. Not a big role by any means, but he was just trying to get his footing in the acting world. He does appear in the episode briefly, but he was fired from the set as well. The reason? Hot dog thievery.

Turns out craft services aren’t for everyone all the time. There was a table of food on location and Buble was hungry, so he got himself a hot dog.But the table was reserved for principal actors, meaning that hot dog belonged to Mulder or Scully. 

Someone from craft services pounced on Buble and even threatened him with a career blacklisting for his actions. 

“Learn to code,” shout simpletons at people whose industries are crumbling. Whether affecting coal miners or trendy Internet journalists, the march of progress can be a brutal one for those whose skills are about to become obsolete.

Still, we often forget about jobs that were once plentiful and provided a living for past generations. Here are the top 10 jobs that have been crushed under the boots of human progress.

10 Iconic Professions That Have Almost Vanished

10 Knocker Uppers

Usually, it takes a while for new, cutting-edge tech to filter into our lives and become ubiquitous. Some forms are created to replace older tech. But in many cases, new tech comes along that replaces a human-held role.

This was true in the case of the alarm clock. So, what came before? In the more industrialized parts of England, they relied on knocker uppers.^[1]

Factories and mines had a real interest in getting their workers on the lines as early as possible, often at 6:00 AM or earlier. The problem is that humans love to sleep, often quite late into the new day.

To remedy tardiness, these companies employed people to walk the narrow, terraced streets where their workers lived and brandish very long sticks (or peashooters) to tap on the bedroom windows of their workers—and wake them on time.

9 Rower Women

Getting from point A to point B is at the very core of how our species evolved from the animal kingdom to something quite apart. However, Mother Nature loves throwing obstacles in our way: mountains, chasms, occasionally magma, impenetrable woodlands or jungles, and, most commonly, water.

Until World War I, the Swedes used an ingenious way to quickly traverse the many waterways that blocked their access to the islands of the Stockholm archipelago—water taxis.

Not so obsolete, you may think. But this was solely a female profession, and they only used long-oar-propelled boats. (They were challenged by a group of unmarried women from Dalarna who used newfangled paddle-wheel boats).

The advent of the Steam Age and further innovations led to the decline and eventual end of the traditional role of rower women. It’s a shame, really, that we cannot see these ladies do their thing anymore. As Venezuelan General Francisco de Miranda said in 1787, “[They were] good women who row like devils!”^[2]

8 Computers

Too many people are enslaved by their tech. Apple, Google, social media, Microsoft—never in the whole history of mankind have we been so reliant on such a small number of companies. So, what if there was a true neo-Luddite revolt? What would take the place of all the ubiquitous devices on which we rely?

A lot of things we do on our devices would simply go away, replaced by older forms of entertainment, communication, and work. But what of the computing needed to manage the vast amounts of data processing and analysis required in all facets of human endeavor?

Well, our digital computers would be replaced by . . . human computers, a throwback to yesteryear when people did their own computing. In fact, NASA relied on human computers at one time.^[3]

7 Priest Hunters

This entry is very era-specific, thank goodness. Queen Mary I has a rightly “bloody” reputation, but that of her younger sister, Elizabeth I, is generally positive in the public consciousness.

Where Queen Mary burned Protestants at the stake, Elizabeth sought to right this injustice during her reign by placing a bounty on the heads of Catholic priests. She sent out men to hunt down the priests. Job done, peace restored!^[4]

This dangerous environment caused many priests to take daring, often desperate measures to evade capture. One such ploy was to build a “priest hole” in a friendly household where the priest could hide from the searching hunters. If a priest was discovered, he was flung into prison before being tortured and put to death.

Society will often create a “folk devil,” an individual or group who can be blamed for a population-level anxiety. In Elizabethan England, Jesuit priests held that dubious title.

6 Whipping Boys

Kids can be rude, cruel, and quite naughty. In the past, parents and guardians remedied their children’s bad behavior with a whipping. However, what if your son had stolen an apple from the pantry but was also the heir to the throne of your country?

You couldn’t beat a future king. Instead, you would use a whipping boy—a young lad to take all the corporal punishment that the devilish little prince deserved.

There is some debate as to whether such a role was a “real” job. However, given that a physician would often drink his lord’s pee to ascertain whether the nobleman was close to developing diabetes, we are willing to believe that such a ridiculous role existed.^[5]

10 Jobs From The Early 1900s That Totally Sucked

5 Sandal-Bearers

Sandal-bearers carried the sandals of their superiors in early cultures, such as ancient Egypt or feudal Japan. The sandal-bearer often washed the feet of his superior as well.

It wasn’t as bad a role as it sounds. In feudal Japan, sandal-bearers often rose to higher status from this seemingly low position. For example, Toyotomi Hideyoshi became Imperial Regent of Japan, having unified the islands through bloody conquest.^[6]

Sandal-bearers also held an important role in ancient Egypt. The exact nature of their status is shrouded in mystery. Was their depiction in reliefs and other art a tribute to their high status in society or merely a reflection of their masters’ power? We may never know.

4 Printer’s Devils

What do Walt Whitman, Thomas Jefferson, Ambrose Bierce, John Kellogg, Warren G. Harding, and Mark Twain have in common? Yes, they’re all dead. True, they’re all American. But they were all printer’s devils as boys, too. It was a common apprenticeship for young boys until the end of the 19th century.^[7]

There is no special or unique set of tasks for a printer’s devil. Like many apprentices, they were just errand boys who completed any menial task while observing their master’s work to learn the craft.

The disappearance of the role has more to do with the death of traditional printing and the decline in the apprentice model of career progression. However, we can all agree that there has never been a cooler job title in history.

3 Herb Strewers

Have you ever worried that the walkways in your palace smell bad? If so, you need an herb strewer!

London stank, and unfortunately for the royal family, their main residences have always been in this stanktropolis. Kings and queens tend not to enjoy the terrible smells emanating from open sewers and mountains of animal dung, so they came up with a specialized role to alleviate this malodorous situation.

A solely female role, the herb strewer would do just as described. She would scatter herbs and sweet-smelling petals throughout the royal household.^[8]

The herb strewer also played a prominent role in coronation ceremonies. She led the procession by spreading herbs and petals before the king- or queen-to-be made their way toward the throne. However, at the coronation of William IV in 1830, the role was cut due to budgetary concerns.

The last lady to strew herbs for the royal family was Anne Fellowes. If the position were ever restored, the first unmarried woman descended from Fellowes could lay claim to the title.^[8]

2 Mursmackas

This is yet another entry from Sweden, a nation that pioneered gender equality long before most other cultures. In this Scandinavian country, both sexes were allowed to be equally miserable!

A bricklayer’s job is hard enough without having to carry heavy pallets (or buckets) of mortar to the wall that they’re building. Why not get an unmarried mother who cannot find work anywhere else to do the job?

That’s exactly what the Swedes thought during the rapid growth of Stockholm, Gothenburg, and other cities from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries. However, as social changes and women’s liberation took place, women in Sweden had more choices as to where they could work.^[9]

1 Link-Boys

The children who held the candles or torches on dark streets in Victorian London were known as “link-boys.”^[10] This is the supposed derivation of the saying “can’t hold a candle to,” which is a way of expressing inferiority to another person or object.

Before London had streetlights every few yards on almost every roadway, a link-boy was paid by passing patrons to pick up a flaming link and lead the way to wherever the customers were going. To make a little extra money, link-boys sometimes worked for thieves and muggers. The boys were tasked with leading unwitting customers down dark alleys where they would be robbed.

10 Jobs We Already Lost To Technology

About The Author: CJ Phillips is a writer, storyteller, and actor living in rural West Wales. He is a little obsessed with lists.

Dogs are humanity’s best friends. From the first moment humans tempted wolves into being friendly with some scraps of food human and dog evolution has gone hand in hand. Today we have bred our best friends into an amazing range of breeds to suit any jobs that we want done for us. From sheepdogs to lapdogs there is a dog for every job – and some of those jobs are stranger than you might think.

Here are ten jobs you never knew a dog could do.

10 Extraordinary Dogs That Saved Lives

10 Helping Children Testify

Is there anything more comforting than a dog trusting you enough to let you pet them? When they rest their head on your knee you know you have made a new friend. It’s not just a warm feeling they can provide – dogs have been employed to help the legal system function with their comforting presence.

Children who have to testify in court can find it trial due to the pressure put on them by the situation. With a judge, lawyers, and a jury all staring at them a young child can be terribly intimidated. That’s where a canine companion can come in handy. Dogs are being used to help children testify.

A trained dog can help a child right from the moment they report a crime to police until they speak in court. When in court the dog is usually concealed with the witness behind the stand. This lets them comfort the child without distracting the jury as humans will often pay more attention to a dog than the person with them.^[1]

9 Friar

Dogs and religion are a divine combination. From St Roche, a saint who was comforted by his dog, to St Christopher, who was often depicted with a dog’s head, to St Guinefort, a dog who was made a saint, humanity’s love for dogs has often come close to worship. On a more mundane level monks and churches would often keep dogs to guard their gates. One monastery in Bolivia has decided that one dog is such a good boy that he deserves his own uniform.

Friar Carmelo is a schnauzer. Carmelo was photographed dressed in a miniature version of the monks’ own habit taken from a puppet used to amuse children. Since then the canine friar has become a social media darling. His internet fans have dubbed him Friar Moustache for his distinctive facial hair.

While the official belief of Catholics is that animals cannot get into heaven because they lack eternal souls (their souls die with their bodies) some popes have left the Pearly Gates a little ajar for our animal friends. Pope Paul VI told one boy whose dog had died that “One day, we will see our animals again in the eternity of Christ. Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures.”^[2]

8 Truffle Hunters

Truffles are one of the most valuable foodstuffs on the planet. Because of their symbiotic relationship with trees and their complex life cycle it is not possible for us to farm truffles. If we want their rich flavour in our food we have to go out hunting for them – but not with our own limited noses.

Some animals have much more sensitive senses of smell than we do. Pigs are well known for their ability to snuffle out truffles under the ground, but they also have a tendency to eat the truffles they locate. Dogs are much less likely to wolf down the precious fungi. Some dogs are trained to associate the distinctive smell of truffles with pleasure mere days after their birth.

In Italy the Lagotto Romagnolo breed of dog is now associated mainly with truffle hunting. It used to be a hunting dog, and it still is – just not hunting for animals.^[3]

7 Ball Dogs

Catching and retrieving balls is one of the most popular pastimes for our canine buddies. So why do we use boys and girls for this task during tennis matches? That was a question one Brazilian tennis tournament decided to answer. Several dogs who were taken from the streets of Sao Paulo and dressed up as ball boys and girls and let loose on the court.

The aim of the game was not to replace their human colleagues however. Because the dogs were strays it was hoped that spectators who saw the dogs would want to adopt them. In the first year all four ball dogs were adopted. Soon more strays were brought in.

The strays were not always the most obedient of court assistants. They quickly mastered getting the balls but sometimes proved unwilling to return them to players. And they were only used during warm ups – who could concentrate on a tennis match when there are dogs to look at?^[4]

6 Art Protector

When we think of dogs as protectors of valuable items we tend to think of snarling guard dogs straining against their chains to ward off robbers. Riley however protects fine art from more subtle dangers. Riley the Museum Dog works at the Museum of Fine Art in Boston to detect the many pests that can threaten the conservation of artworks.

Pests as diverse as moths and rats can all destroy art in even the best run museum. Riley uses his nose to sniff them out before they can create havoc. Riley was introduced to the museum at a young age to get used to his surroundings and to train him not to damage the artworks himself.

Riley has since become a mascot for the museum and even features in his own book – The Adventures of Riley, the Museum Dog.^[5]

10 Unusual Studies And Stories About Dogs

5 Cancer Detector

A dog’s nose is incredibly sensitive. While humans have around 6 million receptors for smell dogs can have up to 300 million. Dogs also give over a much larger proportion of their brain to interpreting the smells they detect. It is not surprising then that dogs can sniff out things that might seem impossible for us to imagine.

Some dogs are so sensitive to changes in smell that they can tell when their owners get sick just from their odour. Other dogs can be trained to detect certain diseases in people they have never met. Daisy the dog has been trained to tell who has cancer. Having checked over 6,000 samples she has correctly identified 550 people with cancer – including her owner.

“Daisy kept nuzzling and pawing at my chest one day, which really alarmed me,” her owner said. “I got it checked out and was told I had early stage breast cancer. Fortunately I was able to have it removed but if it wasn’t for Daisy it would have gone undetected for much longer and could have been more serious.”

For her work in healthcare Daisy was awarded a Blue Cross Medal in 2014.^[6]

4 Cheetah Befriender

The health benefits of owning a dog are well known. As well as the exercise we get from playing with dogs there are dramatic mental health benefits. Loneliness and depression can both be reduced by the comforting company of a dog – and not just in humans.

Cheetahs are built for speed and sprinting on the wide plains of Africa. A small enclosure in a zoo can leave them anxious and depressed. Constantly on the lookout for larger predators they can feel threatened by the hordes of humans staring at them. A dog can make the perfect companion to calm the cheetah down.

Despite the mythical antagonism that is said to exist between cats and dogs both animals seem to enjoy being in each other’s company. The dogs offer a soothing presence and sense of companionship while the cheetahs give the dogs a playmate.^[7]

3 Anti-Tank Dog

Not all the jobs given to dogs are ones that are go down well on social media. In times of war humans often recruit their animals as allies. These animals can be put to work as beasts of burden, guards, or even weapons. The Anti-Tank dogs of the Soviets were designed as weapons – and single use ones at that.

The plan was to use the dogs as a way of delivering bombs to the vulnerable underside of enemy tanks. At first the dogs were trained to release their bombs when they arrived but in the chaos of battle this proved to be too much for the dogs. They often returned to their handlers with a live and dangerous bob still strapped to their back. Next the dogs were fitted with bombs that detonated as soon as they brushed against the tank.

Unfortunately the Russians used their own tanks to train the dogs. The dogs thought they would find a treat under a tank and so sought out the ones they were most familiar with.

When anti-tank dogs were deployed in actual combat most were killed before they reached any tanks. Some turned back towards their trainers and had to be shot by their own side. Fortunately this is a doggy job that no good boys have to train for any more.^[8]

2 Penguin Protectors

Invasive species can completely wipe out a species and human attempts to halt the spread of such species can often backfire tragically. In one case however the results have been cute. Middle Island off the south coast of Australia is home to a colony of the world’s smallest species of penguins, but they have come under threat from foxes.

The Fairy Penguins are as petite and darling as they sound but have no natural defence against foxes. Natural changes to the coast had allowed foxes to access the island when the tide was low. When researchers checked the population of penguins on the island after foxes had got to there they found that hundreds of penguins had been killed. In two nights foxes had slaughtered 360 of the miniature birds.

It was a local chicken farmer called Swampy Marsh who came up with a solution. Used to protecting birds from murder-happy foxes he suggested using dogs to guard the penguins. In the ten years that dogs have been protecting the fairy penguins there has not been a single death from foxes.^[9]

1 Max the Mayor

Even the most beloved of politicians will have their detractors. You would be hard pushed however to find anyone who hates the Mayor of Idyllwild, California – he’s a dog. Born Maximus Mighty-Dog Mueller II he has been mayor since he was just 11 weeks old.

Mayor Max is not the first dog to be named mayor of Idyllwild. His predecessor Max I died while in office and the current mayor was found after a hasty search for a replacement. The first Mayor Max won his position in a charity event against a range of other pets. Since Idyllwild is an unincorporated town it has no government of its own and Max’s position is mostly honorary.

Max II now spends his time spreading happiness to his constituents. Wearing a tie he can often be seen on weekends touring the town in the back of a pickup truck and barking to his fans. Despite an “assassination attempt” when another dog went for Max’s neck it seems his lifetime appointment will last for some time yet.^[10]

10 Heartbreaking Tales Of Faithful Dogs

Underwater diving isn’t just a recreational activity, it’s an important trade with many industrial applications. Commercial divers are fearless professionals who work in dangerous environments. Most divers specialize in one type of underwater work, with the big bucks going to those who aren’t afraid to take on significant health and safety risks. Here’s a list of some of the most fascinating (and often disgusting) jobs that commercial divers perform.

10 Underwater Welding

The idea of welding metals together underwater seems almost impossible, but it’s one of the more useful trades a commercial diver can pick up. The technique for joining metals together underwater dates to the 1930s and is most often used to repair submerged structures like bridges, ships, and pipelines.

There are two basic types of underwater welding: dry and wet. Dry welding, the more common version, requires a hyperbaric chamber which creates a seal around the welding area. Water is pumped out of the chamber by hoses, then replaced with a gaseous mixture including helium and oxygen. Offshore jobs like oil rigs often employ “habitat welding,” where the gas-filled chamber is large enough to fit one or more divers. Helium and oxygen are pumped in while toxic welding gases are pumped out to create a dry, breathable workspace.

Wet welding is considered much riskier because salt water is a very effective conductor of electricity. Wet welders often use a technique called shielded metal arc welding, which protects them from being electrocuted by generating a layer of gaseous bubbles around the welding area. Even with proper safety procedures, both wet and dry welders face hazards like electrocution, explosions, and drowning. Not a job for the faint of lung.

9 Sewer Diving

Sewer systems for major cities have a lot of moving parts. Hundreds of pipes and pumps are required to flush away the daily waste of humanity, and you better believe they get clogged up with all manner of unmentionables. That’s when you call the sewer diver. Julio Cu Camara has been plumbing the depths of Mexico City’s sewers for almost four decades to maintain the elaborate drainage system that keeps the city clean. Working in a hermetically sealed three-centimeter-thick dive suit, Cu takes weekly plunges into the black water to perform routine maintenance of motor parts.

Julio can repair pumps in a day that would take two weeks to fix otherwise. Oh, and did we mention he does it completely blind? “Black water” isn’t just an expression. The sewers of Mexico City are so full of human and chemical waste that no light has been able to illuminate the foul depths. Cu is getting up in years, so he’s been training a replacement to take over his important job when he retires. Along with the unimaginable stench, the next sewer diver of Mexico City will have to get used to finding the occasional dead horse or pig floating in the sewers without wondering “who flushed that?”

8 Aqueduct Repair

New York City’s water supply comes from reservoirs in the Hudson Valley and Catskill Mountains, which connect to the metropolis by massive tunnels like the 85-mile Delaware Aqueduct. The city noticed leaks in the aqueduct in the late 1980s and eventually hired a Seattle diving firm to investigate. In February of 2008, a team of divers was dispatched to the bowels of the aqueduct, where they lived for two weeks in a sealed and pressurized chamber complete with sleeping quarters, toilets, and even a Nerf basketball hoop. The chamber itself was had to be pressurized with 97% helium and 3% oxygen so the divers could easily transition into the high-pressure underwater shaft without risking decompression sickness (a.k.a. “the bends”).

Divers working 24-hour shifts were lowered 700 feet into the shaft to inspect the structure and take measurements for repair equipment. Later that year, the city sent divers into the aqueduct again for nearly a month to fix the valves at the bottom of the shaft. The divers who lived in the saturated chambers had to be gradually weaned off helium over the course of a week to reacclimate them to surface air. Diver Chris Hackworthy said one of the biggest challenges was communicating in the helium environment, which made everyone sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks. Helium also dulls tastebuds, so the crew ate a lot of Tabasco and jalapeños during their underground deployment. Better hope that bathroom had some fans in it, since they probably didn’t pack any Febreze.

7 Nuclear Diving

Nuclear power plants need a lot of water to keep running, both to generate electricity and to manage hazardous waste. When their water infrastructure needs maintenance, plant managers turn to nuclear divers. A lot of what divers do for nuclear plants is “mudwork,” low-risk tasks like cleaning intake pipes in the lakes that supply the plant’s water. These pipes can get clogged with debris from the lake, including schools of fish who mistake the plant’s heat for warm spawning water. Cleaning fish guts out of giant pipes might be gross, but it doesn’t put divers at risk of radiation exposure. However, they do closely monitor their radiation doses when performing riskier tasks like repairing the underwater carts that move spent fuel rods from reactors to the pools where they are stored.

During longer dives in high-radiation environments, divers sometimes find their dosimeter creeping up beyond the acceptable maximum. When this happens, the plant managers must decide whether they’re going to send someone else in or grant an extension allowing the diver to exceed the legal exposure limit. As most nuclear divers will tell you, the big worry isn’t one-time exposures but small doses over long periods, which can have unpredictable effects on human health. As one spouse of a diver said in a Popular Science article: “Who wants a glowing husband?”

6 Discovering Lost Civilizations

No one has yet located the fabled city of Atlantis, but underwater divers have turned up some incredible archaeological finds. Most people would think of shipwrecks as the main target of underwater archaeology, but that’s just one of many types of sites excavated by divers. Coastlines are always changing, and some areas that were once dry thousands of years ago are now underwater. These submerged sites include Neolithic villages like Atlit-Yam in Israel and more recent seaside settlements like the colonial Jamaican town of Port Royal. In 2020, a group of archaeologists surveyed the area off the coast of Murujuga in northwestern Australia and found 269 stone artifacts with the help of scuba divers. Radiocarbon dating showed that these specimens were between 7,000 and 8,500 years old. Most appeared to be tools for scraping and cutting, though one is believed to be a grindstone used to crush seeds into bread flour. This site was the first one over 5,000 years old to be discovered in the tropics, proving that stone tools can survive on warmer seafloors despite the threats of algae and natural disasters. Underwater archaeology projects show us that bits of the past can be found in every nook and cranny of our planet.

5 Finding Drugs

People hide drugs in a lot of crazy places, but most don’t have the gumption to keep their stash in the ocean. In 2020, a group of volunteer divers surveying an artificial reef off Florida’s Treasure Coast came across a square package floating in the water. When they opened it, they found a kilogram of uncut cocaine, which they turned over to the Coast Guard. This isn’t the first time someone has found drugs off the Treasure Coast. In fact, locals have a nickname for the floating packages: “square groupers.” They are believed to be the product of drug dealers tossing their wares into the ocean when they’re in danger of being caught. An even larger underwater cache of coke was found by the Greek coast guard in April of 2021. Following a DEA tip, coast guard divers found 46.7 kilograms (about 103 pounds) of cocaine in a waterproof bag hidden behind a grate in the hull of a cargo ship arriving from Brazil. Twenty-three crew members were arrested for the drug trafficking attempt. No word on whether local fish started swimming faster.

4 Cleaning Oil Spills

The British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was one of the worst ocean contaminations in American history. Along with commercial fishermen and residents of the Gulf Coast, some of the most severely affected victims were the divers called in to clean up the spill. Despite the large amounts of carcinogenic crude oil floating in the ocean, commercial divers dispatched for this job were assured by BP’s health and safety specialists that they didn’t need extra protective gear. Cleanup crews worked up to 20 hours a day in contaminated waters, and some divers started getting sick before the job was even over. The crude oil itself was one source of contamination, but it’s also likely the dispersants used by the divers to clean it up exposed them to hazardous chemicals. This brand of dispersant has been banned for years in the United Kingdom due to its negative health effects. Since the spill, nearly all the divers have experienced health problems and at least two have committed suicide as a result. A group of around 700 commercial divers started a class action suit against BP in 2010 which has yet to be resolved.

3 Exploring Icebergs

You might have heard of cave diving, but how about diving in a floating ice cave? That’s what professional cave diver Jill Heinerth and her team did in 2019, marking the first ever dive into the crack of an iceberg. During the descent, Heinerth and her diving companion were pelted by falling isopods, a type of cold-water crustacean which she described as “horror story material.” Things got even more spooky when they attempted to leave and found their entrance blocked up with massive chunks of ice that had fallen off the iceberg. The two divers eventually made a hole in the barrier big enough to swim back through, but the terrors didn’t end there.

On the next dive, a strong current started pulling the divers into the iceberg, almost like it was trying to suck them into its freezing belly. Rather than fight the current, they let it take them away from the exit hole and towards another light source that looked like an alternate way out. When Heinerth surfaced, she found their boat was nowhere in sight, having been pulled away by the same current that sucked them into the iceberg. Eventually the crew in the boat found the divers and they cheated death once again.

On the third dive, Heinerth took two other divers with her into the iceberg. After descending into the crevasse, she realized almost immediately that the current was too strong and gestured to her companions to leave. Only once again, they couldn’t leave. After dragging themselves against the current towards the exit, they found themselves unable to get back up the crevasse due to water pouring in. Heinerth came up with the plan of scaling the crevasse wall using tiny holes in the glacier as handholds. After climbing 130 vertical feet of ice, the solemn diver had only one thing to say to her crew: “the cave tried to keep us today.”

2 Sewage Diving

If the story about the sewer divers was too much for you, go ahead and skip this one.

Now that everyone with weak stomachs has scrolled past, those of you left are probably wondering why this list item exists if we already covered sewer diving. That’s because there’s an even worse job than diving in sewer water: diving in liquefied, undiluted poop. Rather than sewer systems, professionals like Austrian diver Gregor Ulrich work in wastewater treatment plants, where they are sent into digestion towers filled with sewage sludge.

At facilities like the Winterthur waste treatment plant, towers are designed to process the sludge using aerobic bacteria fed by compressed air blowers and then moved to larger anaerobic towers where it generates methane gas. This creates a highly flammable environment for the divers who routinely maintain these towers and gas levels must be closely monitored to prevent explosion. Not to mention the fact that the sludge is kept around 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 Fahrenheit) for maximum ick factor. Ulrich says it feels a lot like wallowing in warm mud, and he prefers it to diving in cold water. His bosses must be happy he feels that way, since having divers saves the plant a huge amount of money compared to having to shut down operations and empty the tower out every time it needs to be cleaned.

1 Searching for Lost Cheese

In a 2005 story that could be titled À la recherche du fromage perdu (In Search Of Lost Cheese), a French-Canadian cheesemaker called in professional divers to find 800 kg (about 1763 pounds) of cheese that he had dropped in a lake. Luc Boivin of La Fromagerie Boivin in the Saguenay region of Quebec left the dairy stash underwater on purpose because he thought aging it in a lake would impart a unique flavor. Apparently, he didn’t secure it well enough, because a year later there was no cheese to be found. A team of professional divers combed the Saguenay Fjord using high-tech tracking equipment, but eventually the search had to be called off. Boivin feared if he kept paying for search teams, he would lose more money than the 50,000 Canadian dollars the cheese was worth.

The cheesemaker had been inspired to employ this unorthodox aging technique after a fisherman found a block of his cheese in the lake which Boivin said was the best he’d ever tasted. Maybe it was so good the divers took it and didn’t tell anyone. And hey, they deserve a treat. You’ve seen some of the stuff they deal with at work.

Workplace accidents are a common occurrence. There are many dangerous jobs, which tend to have higher salaries to make up for the risk. Policemen, firefighters, bodyguards, and stuntmen are only a few examples of life-threatening professions.

However, purposely avoiding dangerous professions is far from a safety guarantee. Anyone can end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. And even the most risk-free jobs can occasionally lead to fatal workplace accidents.

SEE ALSO: 10 People Who Are Famous For Being Hilariously Terrible At Their Jobs

10 Janitor

In 2018, a man working for Bee-Clean Building Maintenance was found dead in Edmonton, Canada. Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) was notified that the 50-year-old janitor had died at the Workers Compensation Board of Alberta building.

OHS investigated the cause of death. Rob Scott, executive vice president of Bee-Clean Building Maintenance, stated “We are deeply saddened by what happened and our thoughts, prayers, and support are with the deceased worker’s family at this difficult time. We are working closely with the regulatory authorities to determine the cause of what appears at this time, to be a tragic accident.”^[1]

The investigation later revealed that the man died after getting hit by an overhead garage door. Edmonton police noted that the man’s death is considered non-criminal.

9 Tobacco Farmer

Farming is not an easy job, but it is a fairly safe one. As long as farmers are careful around tractors and watch out for snakes, other threats are few. Unfortunately, not every source of danger can be foreseen and accounted for.

In February 2019, Zimbabwe, three tobacco farmers did not expect to be in harm’s way. They were grading tobacco in a grass-thatched shed when lightning struck and killed the trio. Police quickly confirmed the deaths as a tragic accident.

A few minutes after the thunderstorm began, 44-year-old John Gede was working nearby when he saw the shed on fire. He screamed for help, but it was too late to save the farmers. The 22-year-old Jameson, 21-year-old Mungate, and 16-year-old Onward Gede had instantly burnt to death from the lightning.^[2]

8 Hotel Helper

On the third of January 2019, a boy in India had a fatal accident only two days after turning 13-years-old. He died six months after beginning work as a helper at a hotel. The boy was employed to wash utensils and do various housekeeping tasks.

While the government claims to be working on eradicating child labor, it is still common across India. The job seemed to be safe enough for a child, but the boy did not take proper care around a freight elevator used for moving food and other goods between hotel floors.

Staff members rushed to the kitchen area when they heard a loud crash. They found blood and remains sprayed across the walls. The boy’s body was stuck and his head had been crushed between the grill and the elevator. Police believe that the boy might have been looking down into the elevator shaft.

A federal inspection report was lodged against the hotel owner and manager for culpable homicide not amounting to murder, and sections 75 and 79 of the Juvenile Justice Act, for cruelty to a child and exploitation, respectively.^[3]

7 Actor

Good actors can make it seem like their life is on the line at all times. But except for Jackie Chan and a few other actors who do their own stunts, acting is a fairly risk-free job. Especially nowadays, when most of the dangerous scenes are created with special effects.

However, one dangerous tool is still commonly used in film production to this day—the prop gun. Producers who strive for realism prefer to use real firearms with blank ammo over replicas. While the idea seems flawless on paper, human error can quickly turn the prop into a deadly threat.

There have been a surprising number of deaths caused by prop guns throughout history but the most famous example might be the death of Bruce Lee’s son, Brandon Lee.

Brandon signed on to play a role in “The Crow”, where his character is a murdered rock musician who comes back from the dead to take revenge. Near the end of production, Lee was performing his death scene when a bullet fired from the prop gun pierced his abdomen and ended up near his spine.

Reportedly, because it was a routine scene, and the movie was nearly finished, Carolco Studios had preemptively decided that the services of their firearms consultant were no longer required. The regular stage crew handled the prop gun instead.

The firearms consultant later concluded that a portion of a dummy bullet from a previous scene had become dislodged from its casing and remained in the cylinder. The gun fired, and the actor fell to the ground. Nobody realized that Brandon was really injured until blood oozed from his right side.

Lee was taken to a hospital but the surgeons could not repair the damage. He died on March 31, 1993. An investigation determined that his death was an accident. After shooting additional scenes to complete the film, “The Crow” was released one year later.^[4]

6 Roller Coaster Operator

People often think roller coasters are dangerous. And they are absolutely correct. That is why roller coaster operators stay at a safe distance while handing out tickets, providing safety instructions, and starting and stopping the ride.

Additional duties, such as roller coaster maintenance, are typically taken care of before the attraction becomes operational. But Doug McKay, a co-owner of Paradise Amusements, climbed onto the platform of Super Loop 2 to lubricate a portion of the ride’s track while in use in 2003, Idaho.

A double-ended passenger cart—which rides on a single vertical loop like a roller coaster—struck McKay and carried him over nine meters (30 ft) into the air before dropping him. According to a medical examiner, the initial impact likely caused fatal head trauma on its own.

After falling, McKay struck on the ride several times before landing on a metal fence. Carnival workers and a number of children on the ride were traumatized. Many were spattered with blood. About 30 children who witnessed McKay’s death were rounded up and questioned by the police for an hour until the case was ruled as an accident.^[5]

5 Tennis Linesman

Tennis linesmen are paid to carefully watch tennis games and call out whether a ball has fallen inside or outside the lines of the court. Many people already sit in a chair and watch professionals play tennis for free, so this job may sound like a dream come true for fans of the sport. However, even this seemingly safe job has led to a fatal accident.

In 1983 at the United States Open, tennis linesman Dick Wertheim was hit in the groin with a tennis ball served by Stefan Edberg of Sweden. He fell from his folding chair and hit his head on the ground, which rendered him unconscious.

Wertheim was taken to a hospital and put on a respiratory system but never regained consciousness and passed away five days later. He became the first person ever killed by a tennis ball in a tennis match.

Wertheim’s family sued the United States Tennis Association (USTA) for $2.25 million, accusing them of negligence in providing adequate safety precautions. The complete investigation revealed that the tennis ball strike was not the real cause of Wertheim’s death but USTA was still found 25% responsible and asked to give $165,000 jury award.^[6]

4 Chef

While chefs might risk getting a cut or a burn, their lives are rarely at stake. But one chef in southern China was in more danger than he thought. Peng Fan was preparing a rare delicacy—a special dish made from the Indochinese spitting cobra. As he tried to discard the cobra’s head, which had been severed 20 minutes prior, the cobra bit his hand.

Indochinese spitting cobra victims asphyxiate after their respiratory system is paralyzed by the neurotoxic venom. The only thing that could save the chef’s life was the anti-venom available in a hospital. By the time medical assistance arrived, he was already dead.

According to snake expert Yang Hong-Chang, all reptiles can function for up to an hour after losing body parts or even their entire body. “It is perfectly possible that the head remained alive and bit Peng’s hand,” said the expert. “By the time a snake has lost its head, it’s effectively dead as basic body functions have ceased, but there is still some reflexive action.”

The snake was being made into a snake soup, which is highly sought after in high-end restaurants. And the snake’s skin is used to make expensive designer goods. The Chinese, who have been consuming snakes for centuries, believe that the more poisonous the delicacy, the more it benefits the body.^[7]

3 Shepherd

Although watching over sheep is not the only duty of a shepherd, it is the most commonly associated responsibility. Safety is rarely a concern because wild animals and humans are more interested in the sheep instead. And it is one of the few jobs where falling asleep is almost expected. After all, shepherds spend a lot of time counting sheep.

In 2001, shepherd Mokhtar Adam Fadl was taking a nap beside his flock in the desert near Sidi Barrani, northwest Egypt. It was just another ordinary day at work until it took an unexpected turn, landing Mokhtar a spot in the history books for one of the most unusual deaths ever recorded. He was shot by a sheep.

Mokhtar had fallen asleep without properly securing his rifle. One of the sheep kicked his gun, accidentally firing a shot that landed in the 20-year-old Bedouin’s chest. The police confiscated the unlicensed, locally made gun.^[8]

2 Lawyer

Clement Vallandigham was a former congressman, working as a lawyer on what he thought would be the greatest case of his life. He represented Thomas McGehean in what was believed to be a murder case in 1871, Ohio.

A man named Thomas Myers was playing cards in his room above a bar when five thugs burst in and a brawl broke out. As Myers got up, rushing to pull his pistol from his pocket, a muffled shot was heard. He pulled out the gun, fired a few shots and collapsed dead.

It was unclear what really happened in all the confusion but witnesses kept bringing up McGehean’s name—everyone knew there was bad blood between the two. So the judge and juries believed that McGehean was to blame for the murder.

Meanwhile, Vallandigham believed that Myers had actually shot himself by accident. He went out and conducted an experiment to establish the levels of residue left by a point-blank range shot. By the time Vallandigham was done, three live rounds remained in his pistol.

When the lawyer returned to his hotel room, he was handed a package with Myers’s gun for examination. He lay down both pistols side by side. As Vallandigham explained his theory to a visitor, he performed a demonstration.

The lawyer took a pistol which he believed to be empty and enacted the event as it may have happened. The pistol snagged on his clothing and unintentionally fired a bullet into his belly. Surgeons could not locate the projectile and Vallandigham died the next day.

The lawyer’s death served as proof for his theory and McGehean was acquitted. Reportedly, another man killed himself in the exact same way shortly after by trying to demonstrate how Vallandigham had died.^[9]

1 Gardener

In 2014, UK, Nathan Greenaway was rushed to a hospital. Despite frantic analysis of his blood, doctors could not figure out what was wrong with the 33-year-old. Nathan died five days later from multiple organ failure.

Before his death, Nathan worked as a gardener on the £4m estate of Christopher Ogilvie Thompson. The link between his job and his death was only found when Nathan’s father carried out hours of tireless research to find out what happened.

North Hampshire coroner Andrew Bradley concluded that the gardener most likely brushed up against a flower from the Aconitum genus. The genus contains more than 250 flower species, most of which are extremely poisonous.

Commonly known as aconite, Monkshood, Devil’s Hamlet, and Wolfsbane—Aconitum flowers can lead to poisoning through ingestion or handling without gloves. The poisoning causes dizziness, vomiting, and diarrhea. In severe cases, these symptoms are followed by palpitations, paralysis of the heart and airways, and death.

The attractive purple plant has claimed many human lives, including Canadian actor Andre Noble, who died after accidentally ingesting the plant in a camping trip in 2004. And Brit Lakhvir Singh dubbed the “Curry Killer”, poisoned her lover with a curry dish laced with Indian aconite in 2009.^[10]

Child labor still occurs today; in fact we even wrote a list about it. But going back through the history of Christendom (what we would largely consider the West these days) we see an almost constant use of young boys for the worst jobs we have to offer. Jobs that adult men either didn’t want, or were not equipped for in quite the same way (due to being too big for example). This list takes a trip through relatively recent history to explore ten of the worst jobs we have made our boys endure.

10 Gruesome And Shocking Facts About Victorian Surgery

10 Farming

Farming as a job for children remains, to this day, a big part of life on family-owned farms, but in the past children would work wherever they could and for whomever they could. That meant back-breaking laborious hours under the blistering sun being paid a pittance. Without parents in charge, little leniency was offered when a boy fell ill or was overwhelmed by the job. This is an industry that also hired many girls for less arduous jobs such as sorting of fruit and vegetables.

Children provided extremely cheap (and sometimes nearly free) labor for farmers who had profit margins that were minuscule in extremely difficult times. Not only was the depression raging, but the dust bowl was forming and the world was reeling from the aftermath of the Great War  . . .  and readying itself, perhaps subconsciously, for the next one.^[1]

Child labor was largely ended in the US in 1938 as part of the efforts to deal with the Great Depression. It was reasoned that by banning children from work, unemployed men would be able to take up those jobs. Combined with laws to compel the payment of higher wages as well as unionizing efforts in certain industries, it had the desired effect and children were, for the first time in modern history, allowed to be children.

9 Picolo

Ludwig Bemelmans, author of the Madeline series of books for children, described the lives of the Picolos in his fantastic book When You Lunch With The Emperor. The book is about his youth as am immigrant boy from Austria working in the New York Ritz during the great depression. The book recounts vivid and seedy tales from the underbelly of the New York Ritz where he worked as a young man during the Great Depression, after emigrating from Austria-Hungary.^[2]

“The child picolo is an institution in all European restaurants. His head barely reaches above the table; his ears are red and stand out, because everybody pulls them. And when he is a man he will still pull his head quickly to one side if anyone close to him suddenly moves, because he always did that to soften the blows that rained on him from the proprietor down to the last chambermaid; they hit him mostly out of habit.” He goes on to add: “[W]hen one sees [ . . . ] one of those old waiters [ . . . ] leaning on a chair, with ugly lightless eyes and a dead face that is filled with misery and meanness, one is seeing that little boy grown old, with flat crippled feet on which he has dragged almost to the end of his useless life his dead childhood.”

The picolo worked from 6am till 11pm and his job was to do everything undesirable that no one else wanted to do. He cleaned the ashtrays. He scraped the old food from plates. He folded newspapers, washed dishes, carried water, and spent half the day bowing to his superiors. Despite this, the job of the picolo was, for a boy at the time, not the worst option available to him as we shall see.

The 1993 film King of the Hill (unrelated to the animated TV series) is based on the life of a young boy forced by circumstances to become a picolo. It is considered to be Steven Soderbergh’s most underrated picture, so it is worth a look.

8 Apprenticeships

An apprenticeship for a boy typically began between the ages of ten and fourteen. Continuing with the words of Ludwig Bemelmans above: “[T]he picolo was looked upon with envy by the apprentices of plumbers and cobblers; they had the red ears, too, but not enough to eat, and no cigarettes, no drinks, no tips.” Considering that in the middle ages a boy had to pay to become an apprentice, it was something of a novelty that he would even be paid for the job in the 19th and 20th centuries.^[3]

Nevertheless, it was difficult work and punishments were liberally delivered by the tradesmen who took these boys on. But, unlike many of the other jobs on this list, there was at least a reasonably certainty that upon competition of your apprenticeship, a good job with an equally good pay awaited you. Such a prospect in such times of hunger and poverty would have seemed a true blessing to the boys “lucky” enough to end up in training. My how the world has changed!

7 Cannery Worker

Working in the canneries meant standing for hours in the freezing Atlantic winters chopping, packing, and hauling fish and other foods. Canning was still a fairly young enterprise and like so many other jobs on this list, needed a big workforce of unskilled laborers. Children, like the boy above, aged nine, were paid up to five cents per box that they processed.

Notwithstanding the dangers of working in such terrible conditions (terrible enough for grown men!) the boys were also required to handle extremely dangerous cutting tools and canning machines designed to slice and seal metal. One can only imagine the casualties that would have emerged from the sheds and boatyards where these boys worked.

Unfortunately many of these industries hiring young boys were run by do-gooders. Men (and sometimes women) who felt they were providing a better life for the child by offering them labor. This definitely brings to mind the famous quote of C.S. Lewis who said “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”^[4]

6 Bootblack (Shoeshine Boy)

There is an anecdote that tells us that Joe Kennedy (former President Kennedy’s father), upon being given stock tips from a shoeshine boy realized that if a kid who polished dirty old boots for a living could trade stock in the market, it might be time to get out of it! He immediately sold all of his stock and avoided the massive market crash the next day that launched the Great Depression.

Anecdotes aside though, the job of bootblack was a tough one. The boys involved frequently fought others in the same trade for their corner, and you can imagine how vicious that could get when starving children are involved. The job would produce barely enough money to live, and that meant that it was a seven day a week gig, rain or shine. But, for those who were able to acquire the expensive polish and kit needed, it was a far better option than many of the others at the time.

The very first recorded image of a person is that of a man having his shoes polished by a bootblack. The photo was taken in 1838 and you can see it here. The people are in the lower left quadrant. At the time of the photo, Gregory XVI was Pope; he was the last pontiff who was a simple priest when elected (he was ordained a Bishop four days after he became Pope). He was the Pope who condemned and forbade participation in the Atlantic slave trade.

Another bootblack-related fact is that the character of Enoch “Nucky” Thompson in the brilliant television series Boardwalk Empire credited his rapid rise to the reading of the book for boys called Ragged Dick or Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks. Unlike the characters in the TV Series, the book is real and was written by Horatio Alger Jr. in 1867. It tells the tale of young Dick who starts life as a poor boy on the streets of New York blacking boots, and his lifting himself up through perseverance, thrift, and cleverness.^[5]

Ragged Dick’s bildungsroman (coming-of-age story) was immensely popular at the time of publication as it typified the good character that all boys sought to attain. Books such as these epitomized the American dream. I cannot recommend them enough—to modern teenaged boys and grown men alike for the sheer pleasure of their reading. You can buy them here. Ad astra per aspera!

10 Modern-Day Forms of Child Labor

5 Cotton Mill Worker

The invention of the cotton gin, and a variety of other mechanical devices soon after was a Godsend in the post-slavery west. The American civil war and the abolition of the slave trade by Republican president Lincoln led to a shortage of cotton in Europe which verged on a crisis for the nation. But, as life returned somewhat to normal in the states with a new approach to the cultivation and picking of cotton, the industrial inventions brought things back to their peak and beyond.

The new machines were faster than a man, more accurate than a man, but far deadlier. There was a very real risk of loss of life or limb through the use of the cotton gin and spinning machines. Safety mechanisms were not considered important and oversight in the factories was lacking. And, kids being kids, occasional mishaps were bound to happen. Pictured here is twelve year old Giles Newsom in 1912 who had two fingers ripped out of his hand by a spinning machine in the cotton mill. He had slipped and his arm got caught in the gears of the machine. Giles’ eleven year old brother was also working in the factory at the same time.^[6]

The reaction from his family to the accident is rather incongruous with our modern principles: “Now he’s jes got to where he could be of some help to his ma an’ then this happens and he can’t never work no more like he oughter.” This apparently-heartless quote from the boy’s aunt underscores how truly important child labor was to family survival in the days before central banking and easy credit. Or, perhaps the aunt was simply sending a message to the mill owner to cough-up bigly in compensation.

4 Soldier

Child soldiers are known to exist today, but this is true going right back to ancient time when the Romans regularly hired boys as young as fourteen for the general army. In recent times (for example El Salvador in the 1990s) boys fought for the rebel troops and many child soldiers were seen across the Balkan region during their troubles.

The most shocking example of an historic nature is that of Momcilo Gavric, the seven year old boy who was accepted into a Serbian army unit and made a corporal a year later at the age of eight. He joined due to being orphaned when his family were killed in the war. He assisted military in the destruction of the troops who had taken the lives of his parents. After the war he was sent to England to school but he returned in time and remained in Serbia until his death aged 86 in 1993. Many monuments have been erected to his memory.^[7]

Despite the fairy-tale story of Momcilo Gavric’s life, children in the military is a terrible situation that should be prevented and fortunately most nations (at least western ones) have laws against the use of children in battle.

3 Prostitute

One of the lowest jobs on this list is, tragically, one most frequently seen still today and perhaps performed in even greater frequency than in the past due to the secret nature of many online apps and websites abused for the purpose. Child prostitution is most frequently associated with girls but it is equally common and harmful amongst boys. In Victorian England, Jack Saul caused a scandal when he announced himself, shamelessly, as a “sodomite” and “a professional Mary-ann” in court at the age of 18, admitting to an already long and prosperous career as a rent boy (indicating that he had begun in the profession back in Ireland as a child). Rumors circulated that one of his clients was the handsome Prince Albert, a mere seven years older than he and the eldest grandson of Queen Victoria, then reigning.^[8]

Interestingly this is the same Prince Albert who has many times been touted as having been Jack The Ripper. He died at 28 of the Spanish flu pandemic. Prostitution was particularly common amongst Catholic boys in a time when “Papists” were seriously discriminated against in England by law. Additionally, many of the children who took part in this occupation would have been practically enslaved for the purpose by pimps and street gangs. These days many of the boys involved are runaways with very few options for earning money legally due to child labor laws and absent families. Pictured are two boy prostitutes haggling with potential customers in Times Square, New York, in the 1970s.^[9]

2 Mine Worker

While we are busy fretting over our children playing video games or binge-watching disturbing YouTube videos when they should be out playing in the sun, we should spare a thought for the boys of days gone by who spent their entire childhood deep beneath the surface of the earth performing menial tasks for the men who labored to bring coal to the surface to keep the machinery of the world turning.

These children (such as the boy pictured in 1908 with an oil-wick lamp attached to his cap) worked from 7am to 5:30pm daily in the mines driving the animals that pulled the wagons of coal, opening and shutting doors that kept the miners safe from potential hazards should they arise, or basically performing any task assigned to them that their small bodies or hands were more suited to than those of adult men.^[10]

While our children have the promise of a future of opportunities, the boys who worked these mines had no future beyond that of lung disorders and hard labour for a lifetime. And that was the good news; the bad news was that you ran the risk, daily, of being killed by a mine-collapse. The eyes of the child pictured here cannot hide his acute awareness of that fact.

1 Chimney Sweep

The tragic life of the chimney sweep all too often ended in death. Alas the risk of death was deemed a necessary evil as the lack of clean chimneys would have been catastrophic on a far larger scale for city-dwellers through uncontrolled fires and freezing temperatures. In fact, it was the Great Fire of London in 1666 that led to the adoption of boys (some as young as four) for the task. The little boys were purchased from their parents and forced into tiny chimneys with brushes to do a job that was otherwise impossible due to the sharp angles and considerable length of some chimneys.

On a good day a young chimney sweep would clean chimneys through all the daylight hours, and then retire to a miserable meal sleeping on the floor of his master’s own decrepit lodgings. Standing on top of a roof as he prepared to sweep the first chimney of the day, every day, he would know that the sunrise he was seeing may be his last as there was a very real possibility that this chimney could be the one to finally kill him: by fall, by suffocation, or by becoming stuck tight.^[11]

In a horribly sad twist on an already tragic tale, the bodies of many of these innocent children remain entombed throughout London in the chimneys that killed them. There has even been speculation that the British Houses of Parliament are riddled with the corpses of dead boys. Even if the bodies were recovered, a lack of records in a time when the life of a poor boy was worth so little, it would impossible to attribute names to the dead.^[12]

An extremely good book on the topic is British Chimney Sweeps: Five Centuries of Chimney Sweeping and I do recommend it if you have an interest in this sordid side of the life of Victorian England.

Top 10 Creepy Aspects of Victorian Life