I used to own a company, Muscles for Hire: Luxury Handyman Service and Odd Job Professionals. We ran crews of college students managed by retired contractors to work in the homes and businesses of affluent Houstonians. We every sort of odds n ends jobs that were either too small or too unusual for typical services contracting companies.

Consequently, there are all kinda great stories to tell. But the craziest was when we were hired by a realtor to go into the penthouse of one of Houston's poshest high rises in the aftermath of a domestic murder-suicide and empty it of everything wall-to-wall, including blood-soaked bed and carpet and other tell-tale signs of the mayhem.

I wasn’t a spy BUT . . . Is that enough of a tease? I worked as a software developer for a company that did work for intelligence agencies. So I wasn’t a spy, but I worked at some interesting places, CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, and a DIA installation in Norfolk, Virginia.

I remember signing documents when I got my security clearances saying I wouldn’t reveal any details of my work for 75 years, so I wouldn’t expect to hear any juicy info if a real spy happens along here.

I grew up on a family dairy farm in Wisconsin. There were probably several jobs I did on the farm that might be classified as weird or crazy but I'll pick one. In addition to the dairy, we also raised hogs for butcher. The male hogs had to be castrated while they were young so that they would fatten properly and produce good tasting meat. So every spring, Dad turned one of the hog pens into a temporary operating room, with an overturned 55-gallon barrel the operating table and a couple of buckets of disinfectant solution. My brother and I would hold down the impending victim and Dad did his thing with a straight edge razor blade. If everything went well, the squealing quickly died down after we released the castratee and he went on about his business. We saved the testicles and sold them to a local restaurant. They have various names, but we called them "rocky mountain oysters". Why, I haven't a clue. Every once in a while, especially when the subject was larger or stronger than usual, he might jump during the procedure and the blade in Dad's hand went where it wasn't supposed to. But he was prepared for that with some large needles and strong thread that we used to stitch up the damage. We never lost a hog. And I've never eaten hog testicles in a restaurant.

When I was a freshman in college I got a job flying a heavily modified T28 Trojan aircraft in hail storms. The idea was to collect information on severe weather conditions by finding golf ball or larger size hail and flying through it and collecting samples in a special container. After an hour or so I would land and they would take the airplane into a hangar and bang out all the dents and I would be ready to go again. Weird but it paid my way through school and I never needed a loan. Later after graduation I got a job with the NSA, Yes, I actually was a spy, sort of, we analyzed telemetry data from Soviet missiles and space craft. Back then the NSA actually knew who the enemy was. It was the late 1950's, the era of Sputnik and Uri Gagarin

What a great Idea for a post 'K'!!! "Book Burning" we need to get you a copy of Fahrenheit 451. I read this all the way through.
I have had so many different dirty jobs I could put them in a TV show. Mm Mm Mm. The two stinkiest were; When I was between 10 & 11 I had to shovel out 7 stalls (5 sheep, and two newborn calfs) twice a week. I pulled septic tanks for three weeks (I operated the tractor) until we pulled one and it exploded. The two guys that worked with me looked like something out of a movie covered in thick slime. It took me almost an hour to get them hosed off and it was about 40deg. out. That was the day I quit that.
After college I went to work in Semiconductor Engineering. That was something like a cross between Teslas & Frankensteins laboratory and the Myth Busters TV show.

A gut-snatcher is exactly what it sounds like, I gutted hogs for a living. I took everything from bunghole to throat out in just three cuts. I could fit a hog in less than 3 seconds.

I was a gut-snatcher at a pork processing plant.

OK, round 3 of some of my less than usual jobs. I was a spy of sorts. I was a private investigator for many years, most of them doing sub rosa investigations of workman's comp fraud cases. I took videos of people claiming to be injured. I have stories and the videos to go with them. Talk about looters.

I just remembered a weird, or rather creepy incident that happened when I was working in the ER. A guy came in from a home (the kind where they take your SS check and give you a bed) who had been in a cane fight with another resident. He was on the gurney and as I reached across him to adjust the IV I noticed his chest hairs weren't chest hairs. I jumped back with an "Ewwwwwww his chest hairs are moving!" The entire ER, the Xray tech, the ambulance and the paramedics had to get treated for lice. We emptied the town supply of Quell.

jlc, the Wizard and I did much the same thing, only in America. Live steel, stage combat, acting - the Robin Hood Story. I played the mouthy minor Saxon noble who picked on Prince John incessantly. Hard work, much fun.

Yeah, I worked as a janitor for a swim club I'd been a member of so that I could have some spending money, back around high school before my senior year, I think it was... Early 1960s. $200 for the summer. Hourly wage? Better to calculate the Weekly Pay...

One day I was a member, swimming and laughing with the other members. The next day I started work as their janitor and discovered how invisible you can become simply by appearing to belong to a 'lower caste.'

I actually did a good job, thanks to being OCD and a bit of a perfectionist, but after a while, I discovered that the Z-fold toilet paper dispensers actually depended on interlocking the refill stack with the remaining stack.

So if you 'accidentally forgot to interleave those two key sheets,' the next 'customer' would see what looked like a full dispenser, but might just get The Last One if their lucky number came up.

Taught me a lot about respecting people As People and not because of their jobs, wealth or title. From the President of the Country on down to the guys that haul my garbage away.

All humans deserve respect until or unless their actions make it clear they don't.

When I was in the Navy I blew up aircrews in the Low Pressure Chamber. The most fun was the rapid decompression training. I also trained them on the ejection seat trainer, and of course had a few rides on it myself. As a private investigator I saw a lot of weird....a lot. Probably the craziest thing was when I was a drug dog handler with Customs. My dog and I crawled on our bellies to the nose of a 40 foot container of salted goat skins from Jamaica mon. I had to wash my uniform several times to get the smell out. Edited to fix typos.

Why did you do that? I know I had a part-time
job as a janitor at night, and part of my work was
in law offices, and I saw books in the trash (by
mistake, I thought), and "rescued" them; but I
found out they were being thrown away because
they were out of date. So is that why you pre-
pared those other books for burning?

as a dj for private parties and company christmases,
it was friends among friends. . people whom we knew.

then, one day, I got a call from a person whom I had
never known, asking if we would do the knoxville
"dogwood arts festival" dance. . in the old city.
in the middle of the street. . and play disco.

besides a couple of songs, I didn't play disco and
have always been a nonconformist -- no politics.
but they wanted music for one of the four sides of
an intersection, with the other 3 sides filled by others.
a radio station, a dance group and a club
featuring country music were the other 3.

long story short -- we got music and cable and took
the high-power stuff and, by the end of the night,
all of the people were on our side of the intersection.
and we did not have to replace too many windows.
we ran about 3,000 watts. . they paid for the romex.
and we made no enemies. -- j
.

in high school, I graded papers for the spanish teacher.
got so good that she did not check me. . and today,
dammit, I get lost after lunes, martes, miercoles..... -- j
.

book-burner. . not a job I would enjoy. -- j
.