October 20, 2017 • 37 mins
From being Saddam Hussein’s body double to being a whale snot collector there’s a whole world of jobs our guidance counselors thankfully forgot to tell us about. Will and Mango take a deep dive into things you probably don’t want to do for a living. Featuring the New York Review of Comics’ Lucas Adams.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what, mango, what's that? Will? So I was reading
this article on Saddam Hussein and all of his body doubles,
and supposedly he sent them out to do TV appearances
or speeches, and you know, sometimes he'd even send them
out to meet ambassadors from other countries. So how did
people know he was using body doubles? Well, people in
a rat could tell because nobody loved his close ups
(00:21):
more than Saddam Hussein, and he'd insists that the press
with zoom in on his face so that they could
get his full handsomeness in the frame. But when his
body doubles were giving televised speeches, it was always this
super distant, wide angle shot, no close up. So I mean,
it's pretty obvious after a while of that, I'm guessing.
But then you've also got this first person account from
(00:42):
one of the decoys his sons used. So his sons
were using decoys to yeah, and the job sounded awful.
So not only did the doubles have to hang out
with these idiot psychopaths, but one of them said he
was shot not once, but twenty six times on the job,
all during these failed assassination attempt But apparently it was
never bad enough that he couldn't be patched up and
(01:03):
sent right back out again. That's horrible, I know. I mean,
it's got to be the worst job in the world.
And so he's a human rights lawyer somewhere in Europe
and his life is obviously improved since then. But the
whole thing made me wonder, what are some of the
other candidates for the world's worst job, and what are
some other careers you're busy town books never told you
about as a kid. And that's what today's show is
(01:24):
all about. Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson
(01:46):
and as always I'm joined by my good friend Man
Guesh I Ticketer and the man behind the soundproof glass
rest like a paper boy from the nineteen twenties is
our good pal Tristan McNeil. He's always committed. Tristan. We
don't need a paper We've got phones. Okay, alright, so
so go I know you and I feel lucky to
have this weird job that we do where we basically
get to read things and then talk to each other
about them. I mean, how weird is it that this
(02:08):
is our job? Now? I know, it's the best and uh,
and then we got to spend this whole week on
the job just researching other people's terrible jobs is pretty great. Actually,
I forgot to mention this to you. I I googled
worst jobs, and one of the first things that came
up was a list of Steve Jobs being terrible to
other people, like like him yelling at a Whole Foods
cashier for supposedly overcharging him by a quarter, or how
(02:32):
he used to recruit talented people by telling they hadn't
achieved anything in their life, so you know, maybe they
should come work for him. Well, maybe we should do
a worse Steve Jobs episode down the road. But uh,
but let's get back to regular job. So I I
was talking to my friend who's this cultural theorist, and
he was talking about the way Europeans used to think
about work and the way Americans still think about it,
(02:53):
and how different those two are. What do you mean
by that? So, I mean this is all getting blurred
now with technology and whatever. But he was reading this
Italian sociologist's book from the nineteen eighties, and the author
was making this argument that in America, you're supposed to
get enjoyment out of your job, Like there's this tremendous
emphasis placed on doing what you love, right, I mean,
that's that's the ideal, I guess. And and his point is,
(03:15):
like your life revolves around your work. Your work friends
are some of your closest friends, and you might hang
out with them at night. You keep your cell phone
by your bed in case there's a work emergency. You
plan your life and your vacations around your work. And
your work, in many ways, is actually your identity. It's
who you are. Yeah, you know. It's the first thing
people ask whenever you meet somebody. And as much as
I tell myself not to do this, I can't help it.
(03:38):
When I meet somebody, the first thing I asked them
is like, so what do you do? And I guess
in reality it's it's often the least interesting thing about
a person exactly. But his point was that in Germany
and Italy and these other places, the culture was very
much like once you leave work, you leave your work
there and you leave to live your passion. So whether
that's going out to shows or spending your time woodworking
(03:59):
or bling in photography or whatever. And your friends aren't
necessarily your work friends, but your friends from that life.
It's like the separate hidden life, and the people at
work might not even know these more colorful aspects of
who you are. Yeah, And you know it's interesting because
if your job is something you're just doing to make
good money, you know, maybe being I don't know, say,
like a whales snot collector isn't such a bad thing.
(04:22):
I mean, it's it's what you do to live comfortably,
but it's not the reason you wake up every single morning, right,
So I mean, I guess you have to like it
enough to do it every day, but will it's not
collecting that sounds like a job No guidance counselor has
ever tried to sell me on, so I want you
to tell me about it. Well, my mom was a
guidance counselor and she never mentioned this one to me,
So you're right about that. But it's not the sort
(04:44):
of thing most kids grow up dreaming they want to be.
But it's actually a really important job. So I'm curious
what you actually do, because I'm guessing it's more intense
than just holding up this like giant Kleenex in the
ocean and tickling a whale under their nose. No, that's
pretty much it. It is a little more involved in that.
And and here's why it's even a job. So it's
really hard to collect blood from a whale. Their skin
(05:07):
is super thick and they're they're not easy to wrangle
or keep still. I don't know if you've ever tried
to wrangle whale before. It's pretty difficult. Sometimes scientists have
used darts for their biopsies, but they can only get
a few samples a day by doing something like that,
and that's after a ton of effort. So I'm wondering, like,
couldn't you just study the blood samples of whales that
have washed ashore or like those that are in captivity. Yeah,
(05:29):
I mean, I guess so, but it's not a great
way to understand and monitor the wild population. So Karina
Asaveta white House, she's the scientist with the Zoological Society
of London, she came up with a much more effective way.
You know, since she couldn't get ahold of any blood sample,
she realized not was the next best thing. I never
actually thought about whales not before. I don't know if
(05:50):
you had to just I didn't even know they made it.
But anyway, so so this is the crazy part. She
started tying herself to a boat, leaning over whales blowholes
with a Petri dish and then trying to collect the
gunk whenever they sneezed it out, which sounds disgusting, but like,
did that actually work? I mean sort of. So so
when whale surface, they release this mucus and water and
(06:11):
gases about thirty feet into the air from their spout,
and you know, but trying to catch the stuff with
bare hands and a Petri dish while being tied to
a ship it was a little bit dangerous, I guess.
So she came up with a different idea and and
so now she flies remote controlled toy helicopters, you know,
through these disgusting sneeze clouds, and then just takes the
whale snot to a laugh, for bacterial and virus analysis,
(06:35):
which actually sounds way cooler once you explain it. I mean,
it's still gross, but also kind of awesome, and especially
they're using toy helicopters for good part. Exactly, it does
sound pretty cool when you really start to think about it.
And the toy helicopters quickly morphed into using drones, and
now there are a lot of whale scientists who have
these snot bots to help them collect fluids, and instead
of just being able to collect three or four samples,
(06:56):
they get close to fifty on a good day, and
it's really helped to paint a better understanding of whale
health than the wild. Amazing. So I I really like
that job, but I think we should try to make
up some ground rules here. I know we told that
Saddam Hussein decoy story at the top, but we've kind
of agreed not to cover anything that feels too exploitative
or depressing because there are obviously some truly heartbreaking jobs
(07:20):
out there, and and this is really more about learning
about curious jobs that people actually want to do. Yeah,
and you know, I know the whales not thing was
pretty gross, but I think we should probably agree not
to cover anything too disgusting. Likes not collecting from giant
mammal splits more funny than gross to me, exactly. But
I I don't want to do anything on like portable
toilet cleaners or sewer divers or or even you know
(07:42):
about the the guy who has to empty out the
walk in freezer every week where Boston stashes all of
their cities roadkill. All their road kill gets stored in
a giant freezer. Yeah, it's a walk in freezer. I mean,
the most interesting thing about the job is that someone
has a business card that reads, quote, uh Final Journeys,
Animal Aftercare. So they actually have this contract where they
(08:04):
escort roadkill on their final final journey. But I think
we should focus our efforts on some things that are
more surprising and cork here. So but what else do
you have for me in this funny gross category? I
like how we agreed we weren't going to talk about
the guy that stashes all the cities roadkill and then
you totally talked about it breaking the rules already here.
But um, let me see, I want look at my
list here. I was reading about a pet food taste
(08:26):
and I don't know, I kind of feel like my
twelve year old self would be impressed with his job.
So some people actually taste the pet food before it
goes out, all right. So there's this great profile from
the Daily Mail back in two thousand and eight about
this guy named Simon Allison and he's the senior food
technologist for Marx and Spencer and this is in England,
and you know, no one has asked him to try
the gourmet pet food. He just tries every variety they
(08:48):
produced to make sure it's up to snuff. He was
quoted as saying, no one asked me to taste it,
but it is what I do. It's just the same
as if I was working in the ready meals department.
I love my job, and eating the product is a
fundamental part. So that's a real commitment. But what kind
of thing is he? Eating? All the cat and dog
food that they produce, and so that they make things
(09:09):
like camp fire jerky bars and Thanksgiving cat food with
cranberries and turkey, And he claims that cat food has
to have more of an odor because cats are more particular,
and that a lot of the stuff he does is
mostly for humans, so adding chunky vegetables and making the
food look moist, and the more humans think it looks
like human food, the more they'll actually pay for it.
(09:30):
But you know, his primary concern is making sure the
animals will actually like the stuff, So I can't imagine
eating pet food voluntarily, which just sounds terrible to me.
But does he have any tricks to his trade? Well,
he says that he looks for texture, like he likes
a little bit of grit, but that he always wants
something that you can spread on a crusty bread. I
don't understand that part, but that's you know, that's what
(09:54):
my how my dog eats so But but he always
keeps a tall glass of water handy. He says. He
never swallow is the food. And it's not that he
seems against it. It's more that he doesn't want to
put on weight from all this taste testing, which would
really be a shame if you like, put on a
ton of weight for eating dog and cat food. But
he always keeps gum around because there's nothing worse, in
his opinion than, as he says, dog breath. Well, I mean,
(10:16):
you've got to applaud that sort of dedication. And I'm
curious whether he holds the same standards for his employees,
Like if they don't want to snack on puppy chow,
does he think they're phoning it in? But I think
that's a good amount of gross um. But how about
you hit us up with one more gross one and
then we'll shift gears a little. I like, how you
knew I was gonna come with the gross ones that
I can do that, all right, let me choose one
(10:37):
more here. So, um, I mean this might border on
two grows, but there was a pop size story on this.
They did a list of the worst jobs in science
and one of their top choices was flattest judge, or
a job where two brave souls, as they put it,
were paid by a gas ranentrologist to analyze the odor
as people broke wind, which sounds straight out of like
(10:58):
a mel Brooks movie or something. I mean, but the
funny thing is the way that Minneapolis gas entrologist his
name is Michael Levitt. So he collected samples and he
did this by getting volunteers to eat copious quantities of
pento beams. Again, I know, we said we were going
to talk about gross things, but the twelve year old
he just couldn't resist this. But then he used plastic
tube contraptions to collect the quote, episodes of flatulence before
(11:22):
analyzing the chemicals and subjecting the people to smells. But
you know, as he defended that, there's a real purpose
for this grossness. So think about mouth washed companies, so
unlike those where sensitive sniffers and odor judges are really
getting a sense of whether a mouthwash is effectively going
to cover up bad breath here. Instead, the flattest sniffers
(11:42):
are analyzing this scent for health reasons. And and Levitt
believes you might actually be able to detect things like
all sort of coldis, you know, all from these aroma notes.
And as the article puts it, quote, he's dedicated his
career to the study of the myriad fragrances produced by
the human gut and imprudently ignore by the medical establishment.
I like that phrase, myrriad fragrances, But flattest judge is
(12:04):
definitely not a job I want. And I do think
that's enough grossness. So why don't we break for a
little quiz, And then I want to talk about a
post that's been called the hardest job in the world,
the Somalian Minister of Tourism. So back in a minute, Tomanka.
(12:28):
Who do we have on the line today? So we've
got my pal Lucas Adams. I watched Lucas intern all
over the place in New York City, and today he
has one of the best jobs. He's an amazing cartoonist
and he's also the founding editor of the New York
Review of Comics, which is the super prestigious in front
of the New York Review of Books. It's awesome. But
before that he was juggling tons of terrible jobs in
(12:49):
New York City and that's what I brought him on
to talk about. So Lucas, welcome to the show. So
one of the funniest things I remember from when you
worked on an ice cream truck was how sticky the
experience was. And being sticky is the worst. Can can
you talk to me about the different kinds of sticky
you get on various jobs? Oh? Oh yeah, definitely. Uh,
(13:12):
this is something I still think about. Um. And I
would be scooping my arm, hair would get caked in
ice cream. Uh, and like different flavors or worst chocolate
was the absolute worst. Um. But yeah, you would just
sort of have to like hide different customers like through
the day. Uh, get kind of everything we get stuck on.
It was it was really ideal. Uh. And then I
(13:33):
a couple of other trucks that worked, and I worked
on the lobster truck that was run by a TV
show host daughter. Uh, and that was always like you
just came out selling like a seafood restaurant like every time. Um.
And then uh, and my first truck job that was
on a dumpling truck, and that was like sort of
the worst smell you have this like Doughey, sort of
like dumpling smell. You've burned your hands when you worked
(13:56):
the dumpling steamer. You kind of lose the feelings and
the finger tips of your fingers. But because you're basically
getting a steam bath all day from the dumpling steamer,
it was a clear skin I've ever had in my life.
Compliment like how glowing I look through the day. It
was really ideal. And you've lost all your arm hair
and the ice cream, so you're just really shiny arms exactly,
(14:17):
and a real beauty routine buried in there. Yeah. Yeah,
And I hear sometimes you you didn't have a work
permit to be working these trucks. Is this is this true? Oh? Yeah,
that was. That was my first job because I moved
to New York in and you you're supposed to get
a permit, and it was good faith with trucks. You're
gonna like do two steps and go through it. But
I put it off for a really long time, and
(14:39):
there was always the threat that the Health inspector might
come and like scare you or whatever. And then it
actually happened to me where I was like, Hi, can
I take your order? And a guy just like flashes
a badge and I have to go. I gotta like
go immediately to see my mom and just like put
on my jacket and just run off the truck and
had to hide out like five or six blocks away
for the rest of my shop. So that was very professional.
(15:01):
So I know, I watched you work your tail off,
and I heard these horrible stories that people talking down
to you and treating you miserably, But there were some
positive experiences you had, right, Can you talk about some
of those? Yeah, definitely. You need uh a lot of
good customers to everything. But I met a ton of
really great people. When Hurricane Sandy hit and when I
(15:23):
was in the ice cream truck. New York City, UH
commission a bunch of food trucks, like gave money, UH
two different food trucks, and we were one of them
to go out to the Rockaways at the Breezy Point,
all these places that had been really hard hit because
the city didn't really have any mobile food kitchens. UM,
so we would be parts like next to like uh
(15:44):
some neighborhoods that were with that power, and we'd be
serving coffee and cookies, no ice cream, just cossies and cookies.
But it was this really wild environment where everybody was
just so excited to be there. Um I had like
doctors offering to give us like free flu shots our
battery day. At one point in this powered trucks from
Wisconsin returned shirt battery and we like tried to give
(16:04):
them cookies and they were like, no, save that for
everybody who needs them. And everybody was just so grateful,
and it was like it's still probably the best work
I've ever done, just because it felt so immediate and
it felt so good to be there to help, and
it's really like direct the media way. Yeah, that's that's
really really cool. All right, Well, we wanted to throw
a little quiz at you, Lucas, So, so Mango, what
(16:24):
quiz are we playing today? It's called odd Jobs and
it's actually a multiple choice. All right, that's right, So
we're gonna describe an odd job from your and then
ask Lucas what's the job title? So you're ready to play, Lucas, absolutely, alright?
Question number one in British towns where there was a
mill or a mine. These people were responsible for going
house the house to wake workers up in the mornings.
(16:46):
What were they called? Were they a COCKA doodlers or
be knocker ups? I'm gonna go with B. Yeah, that's right.
So the title came from the sound they made on windows.
Usually they carried a long pole so that they could
tap from the street level. I kind of wish I
had a knock at I guess they're called kids, So
(17:09):
all right, question number two. This street profession consisted of
shuffling a p among three thimbles and taking bets on
which thimble the p was under. What were these early
hustlers called a thimble riggers or B P podsters. I'm
gonna go with A, but I wish it was be.
You're right, So thimble riggers were popular in the late
(17:31):
seventeen hundreds, and shell games date back to ancient Greece.
All right, Lucas two, So far he's halfway there. Number three.
This used to be the common name for a wandering
egg merchant. Is that an a eggler or B an
eggmund ohn B sounds more formal. Let's try that. Oh,
(17:53):
we finally stumped him didn't we mango. So it's an
eggler and you can guess how these folks got their names.
Sometimes an egg it could also be a higgler or
a door to door salesman, although to be clear, not
all hitlers were egglers. If there's one thing we want
people to take away from this episode, it's that not
all higglers were egglers. Right, Okay, last question, still a
(18:15):
chance for the big prize. Here we go, question number four.
These oddly named textile mill workers had the job of
wandering through the mill and changing any bobbins where they
yarn or thread was spinning imperfectly. What were they called?
Were they a mc fluffins or be slubbard offers? Um,
(18:39):
let's try be Yeah, that's right, so any imperfections in
the yarn were called slubs, so the doffer was responsible
for fixing them. Gosh, we got higglers and nigglers and
dufflers and thimble riggers. This is this is pretty great?
All right? Well, I think Lucas did pretty well. How
do you do, Mango? Yeah, Lucas went an amazing three
for four, So we're gonna send him a copy of
(19:00):
this important book called Poets. Ranked by Beardwight. Uh. Congrats, Lucas.
For those of you listening at home, be sure to
check out the New York Review of Comics. It's truly wonderful.
Thanks so much for joining us, Lucas, thanks for having me.
(19:27):
Welcome back to part time genius Domego. We're talking about
terrible jobs today, but before we dive back into those,
why do we cover some of the best job titles
we've seen. When we were at Mental Flaws, I remember
your job title was something like it wasn't like VP
of Important Things. Yeah, so my initial title was actually
product development, just because that was the job that Tom
Hanks had in the movie Big, But then I changed
(19:50):
it to sound even less like a job. All right, Well,
I've jotted down a list here of some other enviable
job titles. One of my favorites was bacon critic, and
that's actually a real job at Time Magazines Extra Crispy site.
So it's a site dedicated just to breakfast, and apparently
they have the critic working pretty hard. I mean that
the person who filled the job has eaten thirty one
(20:12):
animals in the span of a month, and I'm guessing
those aren't full animals. But just the bacon visin. So
what are some of the other great titles. Let's see,
Yahoo has a head of cybersecurity that's called the Paranoid
in Chief, and it makes the job sound a little
bit more fun, and of course it makes sense because
the entire cybersecurity division they're they're called the paranoids. So
(20:33):
I actually have a few of these giant down as well. Um,
Pizza Hut employs a Dean of pizza and I would
love to have that title. And there's this company called
Matrix Group, which is a digital agency, and they've got
a Chief Troublemaker on staff, and that's another job title.
I like a little mischief and troublemaking is always something
I'm fond of, and a little bit of nonsense and
there too, that also makes sense art, speaking of which,
(20:55):
Microsoft used to have a job for the Galactic Viceroy
of Research Excel. What's that mean exactly? I mean, I
think it's some sort of cloud computing gig. I don't
really know. And then I saw another from a pal Tune,
which is a software company to help animated explainers and presentations,
has a chief executive Unicorn. Well, those are definitely very
(21:15):
dreamy job titles. But here's one that isn't a dream job.
In fact, in two thousand four, the Economist magazine called
it the hardest job in the world. It is the
director of tourism in Somalia. Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely
interested to hear what you're gonna say about the gig,
but I do think it gets into tricky territory. You know,
obviously Somalia has been ravaged by civil war for decades now,
(21:36):
so you know, it's not as that we're making light
of any situation there. That's true, and it is sad
because the country is truly beautiful. Like Mogadishu was once
referred to as the white Pearl of the Indian Ocean.
The coastline is completely stunning. There's really interesting cuisine from
the Italian influence that was there, like people eat pastas
for lunch with all these various spices, and and from
(21:58):
its previous life as a trading poor through all these
other spices that are imported as well. They're these cave paintings,
and and there's this medieval walled city that supposedly contains
like ninety moss. Yeah, there's a lot of rich history,
but I think there are two main types of terrible jobs.
They're like the gross ones, and then they're the ones
where you're just bored out of your mind because you
(22:18):
can't accomplish anything and you have nothing to show for
your work. They're kind of this like sysiphus like job. Yeah,
I was telling you about that that piece I read
and Esquire a while back, and I think these two
dudes in Hollywood, you know, from the outside, they looked
pretty successful, and they have these fancy houses, drove sporty cars.
They made a few hundred thousand bucks a year, definitely
(22:39):
enough to eat and vacation well. And they were really
unhappy though, because their job was to do rewrites on
the fifth and sixth version of Terrible Scripts. And so
they worked on the Fletch reboot or Angela's Ashes Too,
or whatever horrible movie idea studio has, and they get
paid good money to try to save these movies. So
they work really hard. But the article said, in something
(23:01):
like fifteen years in Hollywood, neither of them had ever
had a real film credit to their names exactly. So
there's like a futility in those jobs that's remarkable. And
it's the same thing with this Somali tourism director. So here,
I'm gonna read you a little bit from this Economist article,
which is actually from two thousand four. So Abdi Jamali
Osman is Somalia's Minister of Tourism. His inbox is always empty,
(23:24):
given that his homeland has not had a single officially
acknowledged tourists in fourteen years. Somalia is not without its attractions,
and so it goes on to say, like while the
lobster and views from hotels are exquisite, one of the hotels,
the charmo, advises guests to hire at least ten armed
guards to escort them from the airport. Since civil war
broke out in Somalia has been divided into some two
(23:46):
dozen warring fiefs, but Mr Jamale is undaunted. Later in
the article, it says, I'm sure tourists would leave Somalia alive,
and I'm hopeful they wouldn't be kidnapped. He says, at
least we would try to make sure they were not kidnapped,
although it can happen. I mean, I mean, he sounds
so sweet and like kind of optimistic that people will
actually come. Yeah, but I don't know, it's not very
(24:08):
reassuring though. Kaef Andy shows after work every single day,
and just for the record, Somali Land, which is this
politically stable and a breakaway territory on the northern coast
that actually does have more to see. You can go
snorkeling there and see some of the art we talked
about earlier, and it's pretty safe. But Somalia itself is
still pretty rough. There's no US embassy, and Osmana said
(24:30):
that while you can come for the animals, most of
them have been eaten. But what's interesting is that occasionally
people do come. So In fact, Time had this amazing
story from two thousand and ten about this forty one
year old Canadian guy. His name was Mike Spencer Brown,
and he's somehow caught a plane to Mogadishu. He's one
of these guys who's been to like a hundred fifty
plus countries and just wanted to put Somalia on his list.
(24:53):
But when he showed up, officials were in such disbelief
that they tried four different times to put him back
on them and send him home, and Brown admitted he
had to shout and play tricks until the plane left
without him. But his trip wasn't actually that fun, Like
he couldn't actually leave his hotel room. I mean, I
guess as hard as a job like tourism director there
sounds like, I mean, the positive is you can only
(25:14):
go up. I mean this this this guy had his
job for fourteen years, got zero tourists every single one
of those years, and then he gets one Canadian. So
like I would imagine he's got to get a bonus
for that, right, Yeah, I guess that's a better way
to look at it. But what if I'm fascinating about
Osman and some of the other people I've researched in
these really futile jobs, is what pride they take in
(25:35):
their work. Like have you ever heard of Bruce the
mouse Trouse? You're talking about the boxer, right, yeah, I have,
but you you should definitely talk a little bit about him. Yeah.
So one of the things that's crazy to me is
that there's this whole world of like professional losers out there,
and sometimes they're called peluccas or tomato cans, but they're
the undercard opponents who keep fighting because they still love
(25:56):
the fight. I mean that does sound pretty terrible to
maybe I mean too, but Bruce's story is particularly odd
because he might be the best loser in history, both
as a good sport but also as a talent. So apparently,
at age sixteen, he got knocked out by a stray
shot put and when he woke up he only had
this slight headache, but to him it was this like
(26:17):
total revelation that he could get in a ring and
not really be worried about getting knocked out. And according
to the Sports Illustrated article on him, his goal has
been to become the best opponent of all time. He's
lost over eighty times under his own name, fifty or
sixty times under aliases. He's been knocked out three times
in a week, twice in a night. And he even
has these like special weighted shorts or trick trunks as
(26:39):
he calls them, and they're made so he can box
at a hundred eighty pounds even though he's a hundred
fifty five pounds. And the weirdest thing is that he
loves what he does. Like that's the crazy part to me.
I don't understand why he wants to box in a
higher way, so like he likes losing and then really
just wants to get hit by an even bigger person.
But if he's known for losing, why do people still
(27:00):
put him in fights? Because he doesn't just lose, Like
he goes nine or ten rounds with people and then
actually gives them a really good fight. I mean, as
much as I don't understand wanting to put yourself in
that situation, you know, losing night after night, there is
something fascinating about it, and I guess you kind of
have to tip your hat to the person. Yeah. I
was actually reading this article on Red Clots, who owned
(27:22):
and coached and actually also played for the Washington Generals.
So we're talking about that team that lost to the
Harlem Globetrotters night after night. Yeah exactly. Did you ever
go see them as a kid? I watched him on TV?
Yeah it was. It was always such an entertaining show.
But there's this really wonderful profile on him by Joe Poznanski,
and it's fascinating. I mean, just reading the rules that
the General's had for playing the Harlem Globe Trotters is
(27:43):
pretty crazy. And you think about the makeup of the Generals,
they're they're actually really good players. These are guys that
all play Division one basketball and Clots himself hates losing.
But here's some of the rules. So the Generals are
supposed to play hard on offense and actually try to
score every time down on the court. That was something
I didn't know. And when the Globetrotters aren't doing a skit,
(28:04):
which is I don't know, maybe like fort of the
time or so, the Generals are supposed to play defense
and really make them work for every point. But then
when it's skit time, they're just supposed to stand there
and act embarrassed, and and they have to let the Globetrotters,
you know, like pull their pants down, stuff the ball
in the back of their shirts, all the kind of
nonsense that they're up to, and just stand there and
act humiliated. But I mean, I guess they've signed up
(28:26):
for the gig and and it's kind of like performing
a play. Yeah, And what's interesting about the pieces that
it goes into the one time Clots and his team
beat the globe Trotters actually didn't know that they had
ever beaten them, and this is like decades ago. But
the Globetrotters were playing lazy and they didn't go into
skit mode, and they kind of weren't paying attention. But
Clots and his team just kept hitting these shots. And
(28:46):
this is actually the only game the Washington Generals have
ever won. And when they did, the crowd went totally silent.
As he put it, was like killing Santa Claus. And
the truth is, the Generals are not actually paid to
lose to the Globetrotters. They're paid to be really good opponents.
So when this strange victory happened in a completely dry
town in the South, the team took Clots into the
(29:08):
shower and sprayed him in orange soda instead of champagne. Yeah,
but I'm sure they didn't see it coming. Like who
could have expected that win? I don't know. But but
what I love most about the pieces that Clots really
doesn't see himself as a loser. He sees, you know,
quote giving your fight, you're all as winning and and
for a good part of his life he was a winner.
(29:28):
So it was just five ft seven and he led
his high school team to the city championships in Philadelphia.
He then went on to play at Villanova, so obviously
a good basketball school, and then for the Baltimore Bullets,
where he actually won a championship. This was before he
started playing for the Generals, so he won an NBA championship.
Well that this was proto NBA, but it was essentially that.
I mean, he he was in the Guinness Book as
(29:50):
the shortest player on record to have been on a
championship basketball team. But his desk at home was apparently
cluttered with notions on reframing the idea of losing. He
has himself in a frame with a picture of Al Gore,
Charlie Brown, and Thomas Dewey. He kept this confucious quote
around him that says, uh, our greatest glory isn't falling,
but in rising every time we fall. I mean, the
(30:12):
man lost over twenty hundred games in a row, so
he had to come to terms with it somehow. But
the way Poznanski ends the pieces is actually kind of
beautiful though. It's about the game after the epic win.
So the Globe Trotters were ticked off, they'd been yelled at,
and they came out to play. I mean, they just
destroyed the General's in the next game, but clots His
(30:34):
memory of the night isn't that they lost, or how
many times he was pants or anything like that, but
how they gave it their all how they made the
Globetrotters look really great that night, and how at the
end of the game, when he looked at the fans
smiling and feeling like they had the best night out,
his contribution to that made him feel like he'd won. Oh,
I love that. So can we talk just for a
second about one other aspect that can make a job terrible?
(30:57):
What's that? Uh? Your boss? So it's no surprise that
a good boss can make you want to stay in
a job for longer, and a terrible boss can give
you anxiety and make your life miserable. But there was
this interesting study from the Harvard Business Review that found
people are happier at work when their boss can do
their job. So what does that mean exactly? So, if
your boss is trained in your position and has this
(31:18):
deep expertise and understanding of what you do, you're more
likely to enjoy working with them and and supposedly perform better.
It's a departure from this idea that you just need
a great manager and delegator in the position. And apparently
the results bear out not just in happiness but in results.
According to the report, formula one teams do better if
led by successful former racing drivers, and universities do better
(31:41):
when led by top researchers rather than talented administrators, which
is kind of fascinating. That is interesting. Yeah, I've not
heard that before, all right, But so so let's talk
about the actual worst job we each read about. So
what would you say as yours? Well, this is only
because I now get claustrophobia, which is a fun new
skill of a chuired to my thirties, but being in
(32:02):
a crowded or small space for too long kind of
creased me out, which is why I've chosen isolation chamber
testing at NASA for my nominee for worst job. That
does sound awful. Yeah, so, according to POPSI quote, engineers
responsible for life support systems signed up to spend a
few months in cramped captivity to test their equipment for
no additional pay. In one day test at NASA, the
(32:25):
crew recycled their urine into drinking water thirteen times. But
the true hell is other people. So apparently, like fistfights
and uncomfortable encounters happen all the time, and the worst
part is that whild people volunteer for this duty to
beef up their resumes. According to the article, quote. None
of NASA's recent chamber testers has actually made the Astronaut Corps.
(32:45):
It does sound brutal. I I probably would put that
in my top two or three worst jobs to all right,
So mine comes after reading a profile on this guy,
Bill hast He's a ninety seven year old guy and
he is a snake milker. He's been bitten over a
hundred and seventy two times by various venomous snakes and
he used to put on shows at his serpentarium in Miami,
(33:06):
and it was one of the most diverse collections of
venomous snakes in the world. But the whole reason he
do this is to save lives. So he was routinely
flown around the world to provide anti venom for various
snake bites, and he saved so many different lives. In fact,
when his anti venom bank briefly closed, the number of
deaths from exotic snake bites went up, and since it
(33:27):
reopened in it's actually saved over a thousand people. You know.
And while that's all very heroic, the idea of actually
holding a snake and milking it for venom is something
that I don't know. Strangely, I just can't get into
some reason. Yeah, I mean either, but you know what
does it feel to me? I do the PTG fact off?
All right, And because of today's theme, we both agreed
(33:50):
going into this one that we're going to concentrate on
some terrible jobs that no longer exist. Let's do it.
So here's a job I definitely don't want. Leech collector. Obviously,
leeches were commonly used in medicine at one point, but
(34:11):
the way leeches were collected was horrible. Basically, you just
waded through water and let as many leeches latch onto
your legs as you could. And also the job wasn't
paid well, which makes the job even worse. Oh man,
all right, Well, here's a dumb one whipping boy. So
as a companion to a Renaissance prince, you got to
play with the young royal and perhaps taste some of
(34:32):
his food. But the real job was whenever the prince
got in trouble, you'd have to supply your backside for
whatever spankings or physical punishment the prince was supposed to
get for all of his naughty That sounds terrible. So
have you heard of a resurrectionists? Apparently in the early
nineteenth century med schools had a hard time getting ahold
of cadavers, so they used to pay these grave robbers
(34:54):
to find them fresh bodies, and according to mental flaws,
the quote problem became so severe that family members took
to guarding the graves of the recently diseased to prevent
resurrectionists from sneaking in and unearthing their dearly departed. Wow,
I mean, grave robbing does seem horrible, but you know,
just stealing the jewelry seems a little more innocent, right there.
At least not taking the bodies. That does sound like
(35:15):
a terrible job to getting wrong. All right, So here's
another gross one. The groom of the stools. You know. So,
while the name sounds repulsive, the position didn't actually involve
any wiping. According to Historic UK, the groom of the
stool watched the king's diet and organized the king's day
around his predicted movements. But because the position was somewhat
intimate and needed to be someone the king trusted, it
(35:38):
was actually a path to power. In fact, it was
a position held exclusively by nobleman and John Stewart, who
was one of King George the Third's grooms went on
to be Prime Minister of England. That's so crazy. So
I was going to talk about a different job that
no longer exists, being a Gallagher copycat act. Gallagher of
the community. I'm sure we really need one more watermelon
(35:59):
smash and comedian. Why why would we need two of these?
So I was thinking the same thing, but a friendly
Gallagher's younger brother, Ron Gallagher, decided to copy is act
and appear on the same night in different towns, much
to Gallagher's dismay. In two thousands, this court stopped him
from doing comedy with fruit and a sledgehammer, ruling in
(36:19):
favor of his older, wiser Gallagher. But I think I
like your groom of the stool fact a little better.
So why don't we hand you the trophy this week?
All right, Well, I'll keep it safe. Thanks so much,
And for all of you listeners out there. If there
are any weird jobs, terrible jobs, whatever it may be
that you feel like we missed today, don't forget. You
can email us part time genius at how stuff works
(36:40):
dot com. You can also hit us up on Facebook
or Twitter, or you can call our seven Fact hotline checking.
The fact hot Line is not a terrible job. It's
one of our most fun job. You can call us there.
It's one eight four four pt Genius. We look forward
to hearing from you. Thanks so much for listening, Yea,
(37:09):
thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is a production
of how stuff works, and wouldn't be possible without several
brilliant people who do the important things we couldn't even
begin to understand. Christa McNeil does the editing thing. Noel
Brown made the theme song and does the MIXI mixy
sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the exact producer thing. Gabeluesier
is our lead researcher, with support from the Research Army
including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve
(37:32):
Jeff Cook gets the show to your ears. Good job, Eves.
If you like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe,
And if you really really like what you've heard, maybe
you could leave a good review for us. We do.
We forget Jason Jason, who
Guess what, mango, what's that? Will? So I was reading
this article on Saddam Hussein and all of his body doubles,
and supposedly he sent them out to do TV appearances
or speeches, and you know, sometimes he'd even send them
out to meet ambassadors from other countries. So how did
people know he was using body doubles? Well, people in
a rat could tell because nobody loved his close ups
(00:21):
more than Saddam Hussein, and he'd insists that the press
with zoom in on his face so that they could
get his full handsomeness in the frame. But when his
body doubles were giving televised speeches, it was always this
super distant, wide angle shot, no close up. So I mean,
it's pretty obvious after a while of that, I'm guessing.
But then you've also got this first person account from
(00:42):
one of the decoys his sons used. So his sons
were using decoys to yeah, and the job sounded awful.
So not only did the doubles have to hang out
with these idiot psychopaths, but one of them said he
was shot not once, but twenty six times on the job,
all during these failed assassination attempt But apparently it was
never bad enough that he couldn't be patched up and
(01:03):
sent right back out again. That's horrible, I know. I mean,
it's got to be the worst job in the world.
And so he's a human rights lawyer somewhere in Europe
and his life is obviously improved since then. But the
whole thing made me wonder, what are some of the
other candidates for the world's worst job, and what are
some other careers you're busy town books never told you
about as a kid. And that's what today's show is
(01:24):
all about. Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson
(01:46):
and as always I'm joined by my good friend Man
Guesh I Ticketer and the man behind the soundproof glass
rest like a paper boy from the nineteen twenties is
our good pal Tristan McNeil. He's always committed. Tristan. We
don't need a paper We've got phones. Okay, alright, so
so go I know you and I feel lucky to
have this weird job that we do where we basically
get to read things and then talk to each other
about them. I mean, how weird is it that this
(02:08):
is our job? Now? I know, it's the best and uh,
and then we got to spend this whole week on
the job just researching other people's terrible jobs is pretty great. Actually,
I forgot to mention this to you. I I googled
worst jobs, and one of the first things that came
up was a list of Steve Jobs being terrible to
other people, like like him yelling at a Whole Foods
cashier for supposedly overcharging him by a quarter, or how
(02:32):
he used to recruit talented people by telling they hadn't
achieved anything in their life, so you know, maybe they
should come work for him. Well, maybe we should do
a worse Steve Jobs episode down the road. But uh,
but let's get back to regular job. So I I
was talking to my friend who's this cultural theorist, and
he was talking about the way Europeans used to think
about work and the way Americans still think about it,
(02:53):
and how different those two are. What do you mean
by that? So, I mean this is all getting blurred
now with technology and whatever. But he was reading this
Italian sociologist's book from the nineteen eighties, and the author
was making this argument that in America, you're supposed to
get enjoyment out of your job, Like there's this tremendous
emphasis placed on doing what you love, right, I mean,
that's that's the ideal, I guess. And and his point is,
(03:15):
like your life revolves around your work. Your work friends
are some of your closest friends, and you might hang
out with them at night. You keep your cell phone
by your bed in case there's a work emergency. You
plan your life and your vacations around your work. And
your work, in many ways, is actually your identity. It's
who you are. Yeah, you know. It's the first thing
people ask whenever you meet somebody. And as much as
I tell myself not to do this, I can't help it.
(03:38):
When I meet somebody, the first thing I asked them
is like, so what do you do? And I guess
in reality it's it's often the least interesting thing about
a person exactly. But his point was that in Germany
and Italy and these other places, the culture was very
much like once you leave work, you leave your work
there and you leave to live your passion. So whether
that's going out to shows or spending your time woodworking
(03:59):
or bling in photography or whatever. And your friends aren't
necessarily your work friends, but your friends from that life.
It's like the separate hidden life, and the people at
work might not even know these more colorful aspects of
who you are. Yeah, And you know it's interesting because
if your job is something you're just doing to make
good money, you know, maybe being I don't know, say,
like a whales snot collector isn't such a bad thing.
(04:22):
I mean, it's it's what you do to live comfortably,
but it's not the reason you wake up every single morning, right,
So I mean, I guess you have to like it
enough to do it every day, but will it's not
collecting that sounds like a job No guidance counselor has
ever tried to sell me on, so I want you
to tell me about it. Well, my mom was a
guidance counselor and she never mentioned this one to me,
So you're right about that. But it's not the sort
(04:44):
of thing most kids grow up dreaming they want to be.
But it's actually a really important job. So I'm curious
what you actually do, because I'm guessing it's more intense
than just holding up this like giant Kleenex in the
ocean and tickling a whale under their nose. No, that's
pretty much it. It is a little more involved in that.
And and here's why it's even a job. So it's
really hard to collect blood from a whale. Their skin
(05:07):
is super thick and they're they're not easy to wrangle
or keep still. I don't know if you've ever tried
to wrangle whale before. It's pretty difficult. Sometimes scientists have
used darts for their biopsies, but they can only get
a few samples a day by doing something like that,
and that's after a ton of effort. So I'm wondering, like,
couldn't you just study the blood samples of whales that
have washed ashore or like those that are in captivity. Yeah,
(05:29):
I mean, I guess so, but it's not a great
way to understand and monitor the wild population. So Karina
Asaveta white House, she's the scientist with the Zoological Society
of London, she came up with a much more effective way.
You know, since she couldn't get ahold of any blood sample,
she realized not was the next best thing. I never
actually thought about whales not before. I don't know if
(05:50):
you had to just I didn't even know they made it.
But anyway, so so this is the crazy part. She
started tying herself to a boat, leaning over whales blowholes
with a Petri dish and then trying to collect the
gunk whenever they sneezed it out, which sounds disgusting, but like,
did that actually work? I mean sort of. So so
when whale surface, they release this mucus and water and
(06:11):
gases about thirty feet into the air from their spout,
and you know, but trying to catch the stuff with
bare hands and a Petri dish while being tied to
a ship it was a little bit dangerous, I guess.
So she came up with a different idea and and
so now she flies remote controlled toy helicopters, you know,
through these disgusting sneeze clouds, and then just takes the
whale snot to a laugh, for bacterial and virus analysis,
(06:35):
which actually sounds way cooler once you explain it. I mean,
it's still gross, but also kind of awesome, and especially
they're using toy helicopters for good part. Exactly, it does
sound pretty cool when you really start to think about it.
And the toy helicopters quickly morphed into using drones, and
now there are a lot of whale scientists who have
these snot bots to help them collect fluids, and instead
of just being able to collect three or four samples,
(06:56):
they get close to fifty on a good day, and
it's really helped to paint a better understanding of whale
health than the wild. Amazing. So I I really like
that job, but I think we should try to make
up some ground rules here. I know we told that
Saddam Hussein decoy story at the top, but we've kind
of agreed not to cover anything that feels too exploitative
or depressing because there are obviously some truly heartbreaking jobs
(07:20):
out there, and and this is really more about learning
about curious jobs that people actually want to do. Yeah,
and you know, I know the whales not thing was
pretty gross, but I think we should probably agree not
to cover anything too disgusting. Likes not collecting from giant
mammal splits more funny than gross to me, exactly. But
I I don't want to do anything on like portable
toilet cleaners or sewer divers or or even you know
(07:42):
about the the guy who has to empty out the
walk in freezer every week where Boston stashes all of
their cities roadkill. All their road kill gets stored in
a giant freezer. Yeah, it's a walk in freezer. I mean,
the most interesting thing about the job is that someone
has a business card that reads, quote, uh Final Journeys,
Animal Aftercare. So they actually have this contract where they
(08:04):
escort roadkill on their final final journey. But I think
we should focus our efforts on some things that are
more surprising and cork here. So but what else do
you have for me in this funny gross category? I
like how we agreed we weren't going to talk about
the guy that stashes all the cities roadkill and then
you totally talked about it breaking the rules already here.
But um, let me see, I want look at my
list here. I was reading about a pet food taste
(08:26):
and I don't know, I kind of feel like my
twelve year old self would be impressed with his job.
So some people actually taste the pet food before it
goes out, all right. So there's this great profile from
the Daily Mail back in two thousand and eight about
this guy named Simon Allison and he's the senior food
technologist for Marx and Spencer and this is in England,
and you know, no one has asked him to try
the gourmet pet food. He just tries every variety they
(08:48):
produced to make sure it's up to snuff. He was
quoted as saying, no one asked me to taste it,
but it is what I do. It's just the same
as if I was working in the ready meals department.
I love my job, and eating the product is a
fundamental part. So that's a real commitment. But what kind
of thing is he? Eating? All the cat and dog
food that they produce, and so that they make things
(09:09):
like camp fire jerky bars and Thanksgiving cat food with
cranberries and turkey, And he claims that cat food has
to have more of an odor because cats are more particular,
and that a lot of the stuff he does is
mostly for humans, so adding chunky vegetables and making the
food look moist, and the more humans think it looks
like human food, the more they'll actually pay for it.
(09:30):
But you know, his primary concern is making sure the
animals will actually like the stuff, So I can't imagine
eating pet food voluntarily, which just sounds terrible to me.
But does he have any tricks to his trade? Well,
he says that he looks for texture, like he likes
a little bit of grit, but that he always wants
something that you can spread on a crusty bread. I
don't understand that part, but that's you know, that's what
(09:54):
my how my dog eats so But but he always
keeps a tall glass of water handy. He says. He
never swallow is the food. And it's not that he
seems against it. It's more that he doesn't want to
put on weight from all this taste testing, which would
really be a shame if you like, put on a
ton of weight for eating dog and cat food. But
he always keeps gum around because there's nothing worse, in
his opinion than, as he says, dog breath. Well, I mean,
(10:16):
you've got to applaud that sort of dedication. And I'm
curious whether he holds the same standards for his employees,
Like if they don't want to snack on puppy chow,
does he think they're phoning it in? But I think
that's a good amount of gross um. But how about
you hit us up with one more gross one and
then we'll shift gears a little. I like, how you
knew I was gonna come with the gross ones that
I can do that, all right, let me choose one
(10:37):
more here. So, um, I mean this might border on
two grows, but there was a pop size story on this.
They did a list of the worst jobs in science
and one of their top choices was flattest judge, or
a job where two brave souls, as they put it,
were paid by a gas ranentrologist to analyze the odor
as people broke wind, which sounds straight out of like
(10:58):
a mel Brooks movie or something. I mean, but the
funny thing is the way that Minneapolis gas entrologist his
name is Michael Levitt. So he collected samples and he
did this by getting volunteers to eat copious quantities of
pento beams. Again, I know, we said we were going
to talk about gross things, but the twelve year old
he just couldn't resist this. But then he used plastic
tube contraptions to collect the quote, episodes of flatulence before
(11:22):
analyzing the chemicals and subjecting the people to smells. But
you know, as he defended that, there's a real purpose
for this grossness. So think about mouth washed companies, so
unlike those where sensitive sniffers and odor judges are really
getting a sense of whether a mouthwash is effectively going
to cover up bad breath here. Instead, the flattest sniffers
(11:42):
are analyzing this scent for health reasons. And and Levitt
believes you might actually be able to detect things like
all sort of coldis, you know, all from these aroma notes.
And as the article puts it, quote, he's dedicated his
career to the study of the myriad fragrances produced by
the human gut and imprudently ignore by the medical establishment.
I like that phrase, myrriad fragrances, But flattest judge is
(12:04):
definitely not a job I want. And I do think
that's enough grossness. So why don't we break for a
little quiz, And then I want to talk about a
post that's been called the hardest job in the world,
the Somalian Minister of Tourism. So back in a minute, Tomanka.
(12:28):
Who do we have on the line today? So we've
got my pal Lucas Adams. I watched Lucas intern all
over the place in New York City, and today he
has one of the best jobs. He's an amazing cartoonist
and he's also the founding editor of the New York
Review of Comics, which is the super prestigious in front
of the New York Review of Books. It's awesome. But
before that he was juggling tons of terrible jobs in
(12:49):
New York City and that's what I brought him on
to talk about. So Lucas, welcome to the show. So
one of the funniest things I remember from when you
worked on an ice cream truck was how sticky the
experience was. And being sticky is the worst. Can can
you talk to me about the different kinds of sticky
you get on various jobs? Oh? Oh yeah, definitely. Uh,
(13:12):
this is something I still think about. Um. And I
would be scooping my arm, hair would get caked in
ice cream. Uh, and like different flavors or worst chocolate
was the absolute worst. Um. But yeah, you would just
sort of have to like hide different customers like through
the day. Uh, get kind of everything we get stuck on.
It was it was really ideal. Uh. And then I
(13:33):
a couple of other trucks that worked, and I worked
on the lobster truck that was run by a TV
show host daughter. Uh, and that was always like you
just came out selling like a seafood restaurant like every time. Um.
And then uh, and my first truck job that was
on a dumpling truck, and that was like sort of
the worst smell you have this like Doughey, sort of
like dumpling smell. You've burned your hands when you worked
(13:56):
the dumpling steamer. You kind of lose the feelings and
the finger tips of your fingers. But because you're basically
getting a steam bath all day from the dumpling steamer,
it was a clear skin I've ever had in my life.
Compliment like how glowing I look through the day. It
was really ideal. And you've lost all your arm hair
and the ice cream, so you're just really shiny arms exactly,
(14:17):
and a real beauty routine buried in there. Yeah. Yeah,
And I hear sometimes you you didn't have a work
permit to be working these trucks. Is this is this true? Oh? Yeah,
that was. That was my first job because I moved
to New York in and you you're supposed to get
a permit, and it was good faith with trucks. You're
gonna like do two steps and go through it. But
I put it off for a really long time, and
(14:39):
there was always the threat that the Health inspector might
come and like scare you or whatever. And then it
actually happened to me where I was like, Hi, can
I take your order? And a guy just like flashes
a badge and I have to go. I gotta like
go immediately to see my mom and just like put
on my jacket and just run off the truck and
had to hide out like five or six blocks away
for the rest of my shop. So that was very professional.
(15:01):
So I know, I watched you work your tail off,
and I heard these horrible stories that people talking down
to you and treating you miserably, But there were some
positive experiences you had, right, Can you talk about some
of those? Yeah, definitely. You need uh a lot of
good customers to everything. But I met a ton of
really great people. When Hurricane Sandy hit and when I
(15:23):
was in the ice cream truck. New York City, UH
commission a bunch of food trucks, like gave money, UH
two different food trucks, and we were one of them
to go out to the Rockaways at the Breezy Point,
all these places that had been really hard hit because
the city didn't really have any mobile food kitchens. UM,
so we would be parts like next to like uh
(15:44):
some neighborhoods that were with that power, and we'd be
serving coffee and cookies, no ice cream, just cossies and cookies.
But it was this really wild environment where everybody was
just so excited to be there. Um I had like
doctors offering to give us like free flu shots our
battery day. At one point in this powered trucks from
Wisconsin returned shirt battery and we like tried to give
(16:04):
them cookies and they were like, no, save that for
everybody who needs them. And everybody was just so grateful,
and it was like it's still probably the best work
I've ever done, just because it felt so immediate and
it felt so good to be there to help, and
it's really like direct the media way. Yeah, that's that's
really really cool. All right, Well, we wanted to throw
a little quiz at you, Lucas, So, so Mango, what
(16:24):
quiz are we playing today? It's called odd Jobs and
it's actually a multiple choice. All right, that's right, So
we're gonna describe an odd job from your and then
ask Lucas what's the job title? So you're ready to play, Lucas, absolutely, alright?
Question number one in British towns where there was a
mill or a mine. These people were responsible for going
house the house to wake workers up in the mornings.
(16:46):
What were they called? Were they a COCKA doodlers or
be knocker ups? I'm gonna go with B. Yeah, that's right.
So the title came from the sound they made on windows.
Usually they carried a long pole so that they could
tap from the street level. I kind of wish I
had a knock at I guess they're called kids, So
(17:09):
all right, question number two. This street profession consisted of
shuffling a p among three thimbles and taking bets on
which thimble the p was under. What were these early
hustlers called a thimble riggers or B P podsters. I'm
gonna go with A, but I wish it was be.
You're right, So thimble riggers were popular in the late
(17:31):
seventeen hundreds, and shell games date back to ancient Greece.
All right, Lucas two, So far he's halfway there. Number three.
This used to be the common name for a wandering
egg merchant. Is that an a eggler or B an
eggmund ohn B sounds more formal. Let's try that. Oh,
(17:53):
we finally stumped him didn't we mango. So it's an
eggler and you can guess how these folks got their names.
Sometimes an egg it could also be a higgler or
a door to door salesman, although to be clear, not
all hitlers were egglers. If there's one thing we want
people to take away from this episode, it's that not
all higglers were egglers. Right, Okay, last question, still a
(18:15):
chance for the big prize. Here we go, question number four.
These oddly named textile mill workers had the job of
wandering through the mill and changing any bobbins where they
yarn or thread was spinning imperfectly. What were they called?
Were they a mc fluffins or be slubbard offers? Um,
(18:39):
let's try be Yeah, that's right, so any imperfections in
the yarn were called slubs, so the doffer was responsible
for fixing them. Gosh, we got higglers and nigglers and
dufflers and thimble riggers. This is this is pretty great?
All right? Well, I think Lucas did pretty well. How
do you do, Mango? Yeah, Lucas went an amazing three
for four, So we're gonna send him a copy of
(19:00):
this important book called Poets. Ranked by Beardwight. Uh. Congrats, Lucas.
For those of you listening at home, be sure to
check out the New York Review of Comics. It's truly wonderful.
Thanks so much for joining us, Lucas, thanks for having me.
(19:27):
Welcome back to part time genius Domego. We're talking about
terrible jobs today, but before we dive back into those,
why do we cover some of the best job titles
we've seen. When we were at Mental Flaws, I remember
your job title was something like it wasn't like VP
of Important Things. Yeah, so my initial title was actually
product development, just because that was the job that Tom
Hanks had in the movie Big, But then I changed
(19:50):
it to sound even less like a job. All right, Well,
I've jotted down a list here of some other enviable
job titles. One of my favorites was bacon critic, and
that's actually a real job at Time Magazines Extra Crispy site.
So it's a site dedicated just to breakfast, and apparently
they have the critic working pretty hard. I mean that
the person who filled the job has eaten thirty one
(20:12):
animals in the span of a month, and I'm guessing
those aren't full animals. But just the bacon visin. So
what are some of the other great titles. Let's see,
Yahoo has a head of cybersecurity that's called the Paranoid
in Chief, and it makes the job sound a little
bit more fun, and of course it makes sense because
the entire cybersecurity division they're they're called the paranoids. So
(20:33):
I actually have a few of these giant down as well. Um,
Pizza Hut employs a Dean of pizza and I would
love to have that title. And there's this company called
Matrix Group, which is a digital agency, and they've got
a Chief Troublemaker on staff, and that's another job title.
I like a little mischief and troublemaking is always something
I'm fond of, and a little bit of nonsense and
there too, that also makes sense art, speaking of which,
(20:55):
Microsoft used to have a job for the Galactic Viceroy
of Research Excel. What's that mean exactly? I mean, I
think it's some sort of cloud computing gig. I don't
really know. And then I saw another from a pal Tune,
which is a software company to help animated explainers and presentations,
has a chief executive Unicorn. Well, those are definitely very
(21:15):
dreamy job titles. But here's one that isn't a dream job.
In fact, in two thousand four, the Economist magazine called
it the hardest job in the world. It is the
director of tourism in Somalia. Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely
interested to hear what you're gonna say about the gig,
but I do think it gets into tricky territory. You know,
obviously Somalia has been ravaged by civil war for decades now,
(21:36):
so you know, it's not as that we're making light
of any situation there. That's true, and it is sad
because the country is truly beautiful. Like Mogadishu was once
referred to as the white Pearl of the Indian Ocean.
The coastline is completely stunning. There's really interesting cuisine from
the Italian influence that was there, like people eat pastas
for lunch with all these various spices, and and from
(21:58):
its previous life as a trading poor through all these
other spices that are imported as well. They're these cave paintings,
and and there's this medieval walled city that supposedly contains
like ninety moss. Yeah, there's a lot of rich history,
but I think there are two main types of terrible jobs.
They're like the gross ones, and then they're the ones
where you're just bored out of your mind because you
(22:18):
can't accomplish anything and you have nothing to show for
your work. They're kind of this like sysiphus like job. Yeah,
I was telling you about that that piece I read
and Esquire a while back, and I think these two
dudes in Hollywood, you know, from the outside, they looked
pretty successful, and they have these fancy houses, drove sporty cars.
They made a few hundred thousand bucks a year, definitely
(22:39):
enough to eat and vacation well. And they were really
unhappy though, because their job was to do rewrites on
the fifth and sixth version of Terrible Scripts. And so
they worked on the Fletch reboot or Angela's Ashes Too,
or whatever horrible movie idea studio has, and they get
paid good money to try to save these movies. So
they work really hard. But the article said, in something
(23:01):
like fifteen years in Hollywood, neither of them had ever
had a real film credit to their names exactly. So
there's like a futility in those jobs that's remarkable. And
it's the same thing with this Somali tourism director. So here,
I'm gonna read you a little bit from this Economist article,
which is actually from two thousand four. So Abdi Jamali
Osman is Somalia's Minister of Tourism. His inbox is always empty,
(23:24):
given that his homeland has not had a single officially
acknowledged tourists in fourteen years. Somalia is not without its attractions,
and so it goes on to say, like while the
lobster and views from hotels are exquisite, one of the hotels,
the charmo, advises guests to hire at least ten armed
guards to escort them from the airport. Since civil war
broke out in Somalia has been divided into some two
(23:46):
dozen warring fiefs, but Mr Jamale is undaunted. Later in
the article, it says, I'm sure tourists would leave Somalia alive,
and I'm hopeful they wouldn't be kidnapped. He says, at
least we would try to make sure they were not kidnapped,
although it can happen. I mean, I mean, he sounds
so sweet and like kind of optimistic that people will
actually come. Yeah, but I don't know, it's not very
(24:08):
reassuring though. Kaef Andy shows after work every single day,
and just for the record, Somali Land, which is this
politically stable and a breakaway territory on the northern coast
that actually does have more to see. You can go
snorkeling there and see some of the art we talked
about earlier, and it's pretty safe. But Somalia itself is
still pretty rough. There's no US embassy, and Osmana said
(24:30):
that while you can come for the animals, most of
them have been eaten. But what's interesting is that occasionally
people do come. So In fact, Time had this amazing
story from two thousand and ten about this forty one
year old Canadian guy. His name was Mike Spencer Brown,
and he's somehow caught a plane to Mogadishu. He's one
of these guys who's been to like a hundred fifty
plus countries and just wanted to put Somalia on his list.
(24:53):
But when he showed up, officials were in such disbelief
that they tried four different times to put him back
on them and send him home, and Brown admitted he
had to shout and play tricks until the plane left
without him. But his trip wasn't actually that fun, Like
he couldn't actually leave his hotel room. I mean, I
guess as hard as a job like tourism director there
sounds like, I mean, the positive is you can only
(25:14):
go up. I mean this this this guy had his
job for fourteen years, got zero tourists every single one
of those years, and then he gets one Canadian. So
like I would imagine he's got to get a bonus
for that, right, Yeah, I guess that's a better way
to look at it. But what if I'm fascinating about
Osman and some of the other people I've researched in
these really futile jobs, is what pride they take in
(25:35):
their work. Like have you ever heard of Bruce the
mouse Trouse? You're talking about the boxer, right, yeah, I have,
but you you should definitely talk a little bit about him. Yeah.
So one of the things that's crazy to me is
that there's this whole world of like professional losers out there,
and sometimes they're called peluccas or tomato cans, but they're
the undercard opponents who keep fighting because they still love
(25:56):
the fight. I mean that does sound pretty terrible to
maybe I mean too, but Bruce's story is particularly odd
because he might be the best loser in history, both
as a good sport but also as a talent. So apparently,
at age sixteen, he got knocked out by a stray
shot put and when he woke up he only had
this slight headache, but to him it was this like
(26:17):
total revelation that he could get in a ring and
not really be worried about getting knocked out. And according
to the Sports Illustrated article on him, his goal has
been to become the best opponent of all time. He's
lost over eighty times under his own name, fifty or
sixty times under aliases. He's been knocked out three times
in a week, twice in a night. And he even
has these like special weighted shorts or trick trunks as
(26:39):
he calls them, and they're made so he can box
at a hundred eighty pounds even though he's a hundred
fifty five pounds. And the weirdest thing is that he
loves what he does. Like that's the crazy part to me.
I don't understand why he wants to box in a
higher way, so like he likes losing and then really
just wants to get hit by an even bigger person.
But if he's known for losing, why do people still
(27:00):
put him in fights? Because he doesn't just lose, Like
he goes nine or ten rounds with people and then
actually gives them a really good fight. I mean, as
much as I don't understand wanting to put yourself in
that situation, you know, losing night after night, there is
something fascinating about it, and I guess you kind of
have to tip your hat to the person. Yeah. I
was actually reading this article on Red Clots, who owned
(27:22):
and coached and actually also played for the Washington Generals.
So we're talking about that team that lost to the
Harlem Globetrotters night after night. Yeah exactly. Did you ever
go see them as a kid? I watched him on TV?
Yeah it was. It was always such an entertaining show.
But there's this really wonderful profile on him by Joe Poznanski,
and it's fascinating. I mean, just reading the rules that
the General's had for playing the Harlem Globe Trotters is
(27:43):
pretty crazy. And you think about the makeup of the Generals,
they're they're actually really good players. These are guys that
all play Division one basketball and Clots himself hates losing.
But here's some of the rules. So the Generals are
supposed to play hard on offense and actually try to
score every time down on the court. That was something
I didn't know. And when the Globetrotters aren't doing a skit,
(28:04):
which is I don't know, maybe like fort of the
time or so, the Generals are supposed to play defense
and really make them work for every point. But then
when it's skit time, they're just supposed to stand there
and act embarrassed, and and they have to let the Globetrotters,
you know, like pull their pants down, stuff the ball
in the back of their shirts, all the kind of
nonsense that they're up to, and just stand there and
act humiliated. But I mean, I guess they've signed up
(28:26):
for the gig and and it's kind of like performing
a play. Yeah, And what's interesting about the pieces that
it goes into the one time Clots and his team
beat the globe Trotters actually didn't know that they had
ever beaten them, and this is like decades ago. But
the Globetrotters were playing lazy and they didn't go into
skit mode, and they kind of weren't paying attention. But
Clots and his team just kept hitting these shots. And
(28:46):
this is actually the only game the Washington Generals have
ever won. And when they did, the crowd went totally silent.
As he put it, was like killing Santa Claus. And
the truth is, the Generals are not actually paid to
lose to the Globetrotters. They're paid to be really good opponents.
So when this strange victory happened in a completely dry
town in the South, the team took Clots into the
(29:08):
shower and sprayed him in orange soda instead of champagne. Yeah,
but I'm sure they didn't see it coming. Like who
could have expected that win? I don't know. But but
what I love most about the pieces that Clots really
doesn't see himself as a loser. He sees, you know,
quote giving your fight, you're all as winning and and
for a good part of his life he was a winner.
(29:28):
So it was just five ft seven and he led
his high school team to the city championships in Philadelphia.
He then went on to play at Villanova, so obviously
a good basketball school, and then for the Baltimore Bullets,
where he actually won a championship. This was before he
started playing for the Generals, so he won an NBA championship.
Well that this was proto NBA, but it was essentially that.
I mean, he he was in the Guinness Book as
(29:50):
the shortest player on record to have been on a
championship basketball team. But his desk at home was apparently
cluttered with notions on reframing the idea of losing. He
has himself in a frame with a picture of Al Gore,
Charlie Brown, and Thomas Dewey. He kept this confucious quote
around him that says, uh, our greatest glory isn't falling,
but in rising every time we fall. I mean, the
(30:12):
man lost over twenty hundred games in a row, so
he had to come to terms with it somehow. But
the way Poznanski ends the pieces is actually kind of
beautiful though. It's about the game after the epic win.
So the Globe Trotters were ticked off, they'd been yelled at,
and they came out to play. I mean, they just
destroyed the General's in the next game, but clots His
(30:34):
memory of the night isn't that they lost, or how
many times he was pants or anything like that, but
how they gave it their all how they made the
Globetrotters look really great that night, and how at the
end of the game, when he looked at the fans
smiling and feeling like they had the best night out,
his contribution to that made him feel like he'd won. Oh,
I love that. So can we talk just for a
second about one other aspect that can make a job terrible?
(30:57):
What's that? Uh? Your boss? So it's no surprise that
a good boss can make you want to stay in
a job for longer, and a terrible boss can give
you anxiety and make your life miserable. But there was
this interesting study from the Harvard Business Review that found
people are happier at work when their boss can do
their job. So what does that mean exactly? So, if
your boss is trained in your position and has this
(31:18):
deep expertise and understanding of what you do, you're more
likely to enjoy working with them and and supposedly perform better.
It's a departure from this idea that you just need
a great manager and delegator in the position. And apparently
the results bear out not just in happiness but in results.
According to the report, formula one teams do better if
led by successful former racing drivers, and universities do better
(31:41):
when led by top researchers rather than talented administrators, which
is kind of fascinating. That is interesting. Yeah, I've not
heard that before, all right, But so so let's talk
about the actual worst job we each read about. So
what would you say as yours? Well, this is only
because I now get claustrophobia, which is a fun new
skill of a chuired to my thirties, but being in
(32:02):
a crowded or small space for too long kind of
creased me out, which is why I've chosen isolation chamber
testing at NASA for my nominee for worst job. That
does sound awful. Yeah, so, according to POPSI quote, engineers
responsible for life support systems signed up to spend a
few months in cramped captivity to test their equipment for
no additional pay. In one day test at NASA, the
(32:25):
crew recycled their urine into drinking water thirteen times. But
the true hell is other people. So apparently, like fistfights
and uncomfortable encounters happen all the time, and the worst
part is that whild people volunteer for this duty to
beef up their resumes. According to the article, quote. None
of NASA's recent chamber testers has actually made the Astronaut Corps.
(32:45):
It does sound brutal. I I probably would put that
in my top two or three worst jobs to all right,
So mine comes after reading a profile on this guy,
Bill hast He's a ninety seven year old guy and
he is a snake milker. He's been bitten over a
hundred and seventy two times by various venomous snakes and
he used to put on shows at his serpentarium in Miami,
(33:06):
and it was one of the most diverse collections of
venomous snakes in the world. But the whole reason he
do this is to save lives. So he was routinely
flown around the world to provide anti venom for various
snake bites, and he saved so many different lives. In fact,
when his anti venom bank briefly closed, the number of
deaths from exotic snake bites went up, and since it
(33:27):
reopened in it's actually saved over a thousand people. You know.
And while that's all very heroic, the idea of actually
holding a snake and milking it for venom is something
that I don't know. Strangely, I just can't get into
some reason. Yeah, I mean either, but you know what
does it feel to me? I do the PTG fact off?
All right, And because of today's theme, we both agreed
(33:50):
going into this one that we're going to concentrate on
some terrible jobs that no longer exist. Let's do it.
So here's a job I definitely don't want. Leech collector. Obviously,
leeches were commonly used in medicine at one point, but
(34:11):
the way leeches were collected was horrible. Basically, you just
waded through water and let as many leeches latch onto
your legs as you could. And also the job wasn't
paid well, which makes the job even worse. Oh man,
all right, Well, here's a dumb one whipping boy. So
as a companion to a Renaissance prince, you got to
play with the young royal and perhaps taste some of
(34:32):
his food. But the real job was whenever the prince
got in trouble, you'd have to supply your backside for
whatever spankings or physical punishment the prince was supposed to
get for all of his naughty That sounds terrible. So
have you heard of a resurrectionists? Apparently in the early
nineteenth century med schools had a hard time getting ahold
of cadavers, so they used to pay these grave robbers
(34:54):
to find them fresh bodies, and according to mental flaws,
the quote problem became so severe that family members took
to guarding the graves of the recently diseased to prevent
resurrectionists from sneaking in and unearthing their dearly departed. Wow,
I mean, grave robbing does seem horrible, but you know,
just stealing the jewelry seems a little more innocent, right there.
At least not taking the bodies. That does sound like
(35:15):
a terrible job to getting wrong. All right, So here's
another gross one. The groom of the stools. You know. So,
while the name sounds repulsive, the position didn't actually involve
any wiping. According to Historic UK, the groom of the
stool watched the king's diet and organized the king's day
around his predicted movements. But because the position was somewhat
intimate and needed to be someone the king trusted, it
(35:38):
was actually a path to power. In fact, it was
a position held exclusively by nobleman and John Stewart, who
was one of King George the Third's grooms went on
to be Prime Minister of England. That's so crazy. So
I was going to talk about a different job that
no longer exists, being a Gallagher copycat act. Gallagher of
the community. I'm sure we really need one more watermelon
(35:59):
smash and comedian. Why why would we need two of these?
So I was thinking the same thing, but a friendly
Gallagher's younger brother, Ron Gallagher, decided to copy is act
and appear on the same night in different towns, much
to Gallagher's dismay. In two thousands, this court stopped him
from doing comedy with fruit and a sledgehammer, ruling in
(36:19):
favor of his older, wiser Gallagher. But I think I
like your groom of the stool fact a little better.
So why don't we hand you the trophy this week?
All right, Well, I'll keep it safe. Thanks so much,
And for all of you listeners out there. If there
are any weird jobs, terrible jobs, whatever it may be
that you feel like we missed today, don't forget. You
can email us part time genius at how stuff works
(36:40):
dot com. You can also hit us up on Facebook
or Twitter, or you can call our seven Fact hotline checking.
The fact hot Line is not a terrible job. It's
one of our most fun job. You can call us there.
It's one eight four four pt Genius. We look forward
to hearing from you. Thanks so much for listening, Yea,
(37:09):
thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is a production
of how stuff works, and wouldn't be possible without several
brilliant people who do the important things we couldn't even
begin to understand. Christa McNeil does the editing thing. Noel
Brown made the theme song and does the MIXI mixy
sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the exact producer thing. Gabeluesier
is our lead researcher, with support from the Research Army
including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve
(37:32):
Jeff Cook gets the show to your ears. Good job, Eves.
If you like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe,
And if you really really like what you've heard, maybe
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