Jobs You Never Knew Existed (Quotes)

Quotes about unusual careers and business plans:

ANIMATEUR “An Animateur helps audiences to appreciate musicians and music in new ways and helps them to enjoy music that they may not be familiar with. They also help the musicians as they develop techniques for reaching out to their communities and encourage as many people as possible to engage with music and music related activities.” (uk.music-jobs.com But what do they actually DO?)

FACE EMPLOYEE In China, according to CNN, “companies hire Caucasians to pose as employees or even business partners, which effectively bolsters the “face” or reputation of the company… one man posed as an Italian jeweler for a Chinese jewelry company producing pieces inspired by Italian design, which in the eyes of the Chinese customers made their products more authentic. However, the man was in actuality an American actor. In another case, a young Caucasian male was hired to sit in an office that faced the street to visibly show passersby the company had people from the West working there.” (weirdasianews.com)

FAKE GIRLFRIEND “Mostly she was hired by businesses who wanted their Facebook pages to look more popular than they really are.” (The Guardian, April 2013)

INVASIVE SPECIES EXTERMINATOR Wildlife Management International are based in the South Island of New Zealand and have wide extermination experience. They also eradicated feral cats on Ascension Island. (Now eliminating rats on St Agnes, Scillies.)

“[Novelist Barbara Comyns] supported herself by working as an artists’ model, by converting old houses into flats, selling vintage cars, and breeding poodles.” (Introduction to Our Spoons Came from Woolworths)

“Ida O’Keeffe, who also painted, used to annoy her illustrious sister by claiming that she, Ida, would have won just as much fame and fortune as Georgia if only she, too, had found herself an Alfred Steiglitz as husband, dealer, arbiter of taste, publicist of genius and, last but not least, photographer, to give protection and promotion.” Angela Carter

ART COPYIST “From Van Gogh’s sunflowers to Lichtenstein’s comic book blow-ups, familiar masterpieces appear quite literally on every street corner, meeting the demands of tourists, interior design suppliers, and hotel mass-market orders from around the world.” (tvglobalist.org describes China's Dafen Art Village)

CROP-CIRCLE MAKER “Nike, Pepsi, BBC1, Greenpeace, Sky, Weetabix, Big Brother, Mitsubishi, Thompson Holidays and O2 have all paid [crop] circle-makers tens of thousands of pounds for a night's work. They have been made for pop videos, corporate parties, TV dramas and ads. The Sun paid for one to publicise its campaign to bring the Olympics to Britain.” (Guardian June 5 2009)

FUNERARY ARCHAEOLOGIST “Jelena Bekvalac has a Master's degree in Osteology, Palaeopathology and Funerary Archaeology from Sheffield and Bradford University.” (museumoflondon.org.uk)

“My position is Facebook Administrator for KitchenAid. Any blog that’s posted with the word KitchenAid in it comes onto our web page. It’s my job and my pleasure to try and assist anyone having an issue with their KitchenAid Portable Appliances.”

GARDEN DETECTIVE “A retired police officer from York has co-founded a company with the sole aim of combating garden crime.” (Guardian May 6, 2008)


JUNKET WHORE “A reviewer or critic who attends lavish all expense-paid press junkets and delivers an unqualified, glowing review in return. Quotes from these universally favorable reviews appear in newspaper movie ads paid for by the same entity that sponsored the junket. Often there is no actual review - just the blurb appearing in the ad.” (Hollywords)

MALE HONEYTRAP “I decided to take up an offer of working as a male honeytrap for a company called Executive Honeytraps run by a private detective.” Daily Mail

FREELANCE POLICEMAN “The truth is, if you can afford it, you can have your own private uniformed force, and your own highly experienced, highly trained and fully resourced private CID. Energy firms, just like many other companies, seek cost-effective solutions to issues that can damage revenue streams, branding and assets. It's a rational business decision for them to use every available legal tool to manage threats to their operations. Deal with it, because we're here to stay.” (The Guardian, Feb 2011)

MYSTERY SHOPPER “We’ve pretended to be betting shops, scientists, installation engineers, bikers, students, foreign doctors, hairdressers, plumbers, dentists, caravanners and every flavour of small business. We even have our own dummy businesses with websites. We’ve set up plumbing blockages and car faults. We’ve cheated in exams (to check the invigilators are alert), parked illegally (to test the council’s parking wardens), shoplifted (to check the security systems) and gone on timeshare holidays. We’ve parked bicycles to see how quickly they get stolen (quickest was 75 minutes – in Croydon). We’ve been pregnant, bankrupt, hard-of-hearing, teenagers looking for contraception, pensioners buying insurance and trainee teachers. We’ve recruited Chinese gamblers, housing tenants, disabled mystery shoppers and males to take the last dance at a lap-dancing club (to ensure nothing is occurring which contravenes the licence).” (mystery-shoppers.co.uk Who ghost-writes their website?)

THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY “J. Edgar Hoover’s Cointelpro (counter-intelligence program) infiltrated agents into radical (and even not radical) groups. These agents brought disinformation and chaos to the groups they stalked. They turned members and allies against each other with astounding effectiveness and instigated much of the criminal activity that the government claimed it was trying to curb.” (A friend writes)

STUNT WRITER Mark Twain employed “a sort of stunt-writer to prospect for diamonds in South Africa and gather material that [he] could use”. (Hilary Mantel, Guardian March 2010)

COMPOSER OF LIBRARY MUSIC “This high-energy collection of royalty free corporate music is a versatile addition to your production music library. Use it as background music, production music, music on hold, documentary music or motivational music and be sure to raise audiences' spirits and interest level.” (royaltyfreemusic.com)

COMPOSER FOR VIDEO GAMES “Jack Wall is an American video game music composer. He has worked on video game music for over thirty games including the Myst franchise, Splinter Cell, Jade Empire, and Mass Effect. He is married to singer Cindy Wall. Currently, Wall is the conductor for Video Games Live, a concert featuring popular video game music performed by live orchestras and choirs.”

EXOTIC VEGETABLE FARMER “FACT:UK farms growing wasabi, NZ yams, cocktail kiwis, cucamelons & now goji berries have all opened in the last 12mnths.” (James Wong/@Botanygeek, 2013-09-29)

More here.
And now read the book Jobs You Never Knew Existed.