I dont know if its really “Lesser Known”, but pest control is a very interesting field to work in and isnt often talked about in many circles.
Its essentially future proof, as we’re always going to have pests. Its one of those jobs where its the same enough every day that you get a little better, but different enough from call to call to keep you challenged and stay interested.
I wished that I had even considered it an open back in High School and gone to college/university to actually study pests in an academic setting, and be able to participate in some of the groundbreaking work taking place currently.
Has it ever happened that you accidentally took some pests (like bed bugs or cockroaches) home in your clothes or bag and infected your own home with it?
Nah. I mean, it can happen, and really only with bedbugs, but only if you’re not careful.
Roaches have no interest in being on your person, so.its not like they’re going to hitch a ride home with you. If I were to, say, take home a cardboard box from a heavily infested unit, then maybe (they loooove corrugated boxes), but that fall under “not careful”.
Bed bugs are pretty much the same. I mean, if you give a bear hug to a mattress that is heavily infested, then there is a chance that one could make it onto you and you bring it home, but theyre actually not that great at holding on (they are not like ticks where they latch on).
My only precaution is an ocular patdown of myself when I leave a unit, and as soon as I get home, my uniform goes into the dryer on High for 40 minutes to kill anything in the off chance I brought a bed bug or an egg home with me.
I stumbled into the field of construction cost estimating, because I wasn’t watching where I was going, and it has been good to me. There’s only an education/certification requirement for the companies that do the largest commercial projects (at least in my region). However, there’s a pretty large job market because there are a ton of smaller commercial & residential builders.
I’ll never be wealthy, but I make a decent living, and my work/life balance is good. I primarily work in the office, but get out in the field enough to keep it from getting boring. There is also a good ability to move up into project management, which can pay better, but also has a higher stress level in general.
This is an absolutely boring one, but did you know part of your seatbelt, right now, could just be colored in?
How about your seat cover? Your steering wheel? Some poor bastard had to go get that out of stock, bring it into repair, go over the entire lot, and take a special pencil to color in those little scratches, or mark it as unrepairable.
I was that bastard for awhile. It sucked. 10 hours going over whatever needed checking that day. An “exciting” day meant a defect hit the line and we needed to hunt it down, hopefully without stopping production.
“Repair” can cover a lot of things, and that was the worst repair work I’ve ever done.
Some poor bastard had to go get that out of stock, bring it into repair, go over the entire lot, and take a special pencil to color in those little scratches, or mark it as unrepairable.
…This is so simple it’s making me ask to be sure…This specific repair gig was…Coloring in scratches?
Not in this field anymore, but used to be a landscaper for a handful of years.
A lot of people think that landscaping is just grass cutting, but it’s called that because you are literally scaping the land, and sometimes beyond that.
Hell, roof work, foundation laying, pressure washing, among other things, have been a part of my duties during my time in that field.
For one glorious summer I was a small boat sailing instructor at a summer camp. My life was sitting on the beach and teaching kids to sail. I had a wonderful tan, and sun bleached hair. My life was stress free and wonderful. I got into it by learning how to sail at that very camp, and applying for the job. It paid minimum wage, but it also came with free room and board, and I was a kid, so I didn’t really need any money anyways.
Dang, I missed out. I applied for that job somewhere up in Maine, just to get away from hick-ville south USA. I think they thought I was crazy to want to drive that far.
System integrator or automation integration. It has a few names. My title is currently controls specialist but that also changes constantly. I install, setup, and program PLCs to run any type of plant automation. I also set up HMIs and stock tracking systems. I haven’t done it in a while but interfacing with SAP used to be a big part my job. Now I mostly just program conveyors and configure HMIs so people can see status without being on the floor.
I started this job by having an MS in ME and taking the first job I could get out of college. It was never my intent to have this career path, but now I kind of like it. It’s crazy stressful at times though. Whole production facility can go down for hours if I make mistakes.
Do you feel like your job is on the whole fair? I have often wondered if claims investigators either come to believe most claimants are lying or, conversely, that insurance companies are exploiting people.
I basically failed out of engineering. It turns out I care more about people and systems, so I have a job at a City doing something called Asset Management. Which means I coordinate all the different ways the different departments take care of their infrastructure, and plan for the City to keep doing what they do for 50, 100 years out.
It’s a bit of people, relationships, organization work, finance, engineering, operations, data analytics, planning, risk mitigation, public consultation, blah blah blah. I’ve moved up in the industry to the point where I’m helping other city’s do similar work.
I work in the surgical pathology department in a hospital.
Anything you get removed from surgery comes to me to be examined. Then I describe what I have and what sort of pathology I can see with the naked eye. I select and cut out pieces of tissue that are important to the case. The tissue undergoes further processing and eventually reaches the desk of a pathologist (a type of physician) who examines the tissue microscopically, forms a diagnosis, and ultimately signs out the case.
My job can assist with several things depending on the case…
To help the clinician confirm or determine what type of lesion or disease process the patient has
To document and confirm that a surgery was necessary
To stage cancer cases
To determine whether or not a cancer or lesion has been completely removed from the patient and there is none left inside their body
To make sure the patient does not have an unsuspected cancer
I see everything from tiny boring specks of tissue they biopsy during a colonoscopy to large cancer resection cases.
The other day, I got an almost entirely necrotic above the knee amputation with maggots. A few days before that I got a 9 lb spleen. It’s fun in the lab.
In the US, my job generally requires a very specialized 2 year master’s degree (on top of a bachelor’s degree in any subject). In other countries, the role of my job can be fulfilled by different types of people depending on the country and education will be different.
I found out about the job on Google lol. I was looking for something hands on in healthcare or anatomy related, but I didn’t like patient contact. I would probably select this career again if I had a second go around. It pays pretty well and is interesting. But grad school in the US is very expensive.
I’m an environmental chamber technician. I fix and test the equipment that does all of the temperature and humidity testing for most electronics from consumer grade stuff to stuff that is literally going into space. Basically an environmental chamber is just a programable box that is refrigerated and/or heated that you put stuff into to see how it performs at different temperatures. The ones I work on also often have programable humidity levels for testing equipment under basically any normal atmospheric conditions. The ones I work with are anywhere between the size of a household microwave and slightly larger than Volkswagen Beetle. The ones that don’t use liquid nitrogen can manage temperatures anywhere between 200C and -75C. The liquid nitrogen ones can of course manage temps as low as liquid nitrogen gets.
As far as education and certifications go, there isn’t much. In the US you do need an EPA 608 certification to work with refrigerants but that only cost like $100 (my employer covered it) and it’s a lifetime certification. Everything else was just on the job training. I just got mentored by some coworkers, did some independant study, and practiced. The biggest thing is just haveing a technical mindset. Troubleshooting is troubleshooting so basically if you’re someone who can usually figure out how to fix things on their own then odds are you could do my job with minimal refrigeration training.
As far as getting into the same niche today, I definitely would if I could find the job (it’s not all that common). I love working with refrigeration and troubleshooting these machines scratches tha puzzle solving itch in my brain. It’s fun to see the unique options that certain customers get like water cooled systems or liquid nitrogen boost units. Also seeing as how these machines need to be benchmarked at a known ambient temp, it is one the very few refrigeration related jobs that you get to do from a strictly climate controlled building. It is always exactly 23C in my work area because that’s exactly what our testing spec calls for. To top it all off the pay isn’t bad. I could be making a bit more in normal HVAC but not much more and, unlike HVAC, my equipment comes to me in my climate controlled shop. I don’t have to climb up on a roof when it’s 40C outside to fix someone’s AC.
It’s seasonal. I do gardening in the summer. I definitely see myself coming back to this and the more experience you have the more “valuable” you are for returning!
Is there a license requires for driving a snowmobile in your country? Is it a government issued licence or an insurance thing? I have driven them, but I think here a normal driver’s license is enough and even that is only needed when driving on streets (which is often not permitted and even more often impractical).
I'm a software sales engineer. I was a systems administrator that learned a really in demand product front to back, and incidentally had good people skills and presentation skills. The company contacted me when I left that job and I joined on.
I scope installs, perform architecture reviews, compete with other products, give presentations/demos/conference talks, do hands on training, happy hours, dinners, triage and escalate support issues...
It's been life changing. No more oncall, West Coast / Silicon Valley benefits, lots of fun with customers, and absolutely stupid money in a good year.
Not everyone is cut out for it. It can be very stressful and high pressure, but those who can do very well for themselves.
I’m a county prosecutor (in the US). Prior to law school, I studied horticulture and worked on an industrial hazelnut farm. Law school only required an undergrad degree and a decent score on the Law School Amission Test (LSAT). Law School took 3 years and then a summer to study for the Bar exam. After passing the bar exam, one is generally qualified for an entry level attorney job with most DA offices, but the pay is generally slightly lower than you could find at a private firm.
However, government jobs are often sought out for because they don’t generally have a “billable hour” requirement. Billable hours are how attorneys generally charge for their services with a set price per hour. Most attorneys charge by 0.1 hours and each charge must have a statement explaining what it is the attorney did. This is sent to the client at the end of a job or month for them to know how much they owe. Most law firms require a out 1,600 hours per year (33 hours per week). An efficient attorney can probably get their ratio of billable hours to work hours to about 60%. This means if an attorney worked for 10 hours, they would generally only have 6 billable hours. This system often forces people to work longer hours to meet their requirements. However, if an attorney bills more than their requirement, they get a bonus based on amount of money brought in.
If I could do it again, I might do it. I generally like the work environment, pay, benefits, and coworkers, but someday I think I would have enjoyed a more physical job doing something interesting.
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