Comments on Feminist Finance: Is This A Good Time To Talk About The Unusual Thin...

I got a job through a temp agency one summer answe...

2009-02-03T13:33:00.000-06:00

I got a job through a temp agency one summer answering phones for a company that took reservations for campsites in the state parks of Maryland. Except that we were answering phones in Wisconsin. We were not to admit that we were not in Maryland unless directly asked, so we did a lot of fudging and outright lying about our knowledge of the campsites in question, based on sketchy little hand-drawn maps from the park offices. "Um...yes, it looks like there...ah..IS a water view from that site!" The worst, though, was that Assateague Island State Park was part of the system, and people were obsessed with camping on Assateague and seeing the wild ponies. Assateague, of course, was fully booked up for the entire season by early June, and well into the next summer as well, and many people were unhappy to learn that they would not be taking their darling offspring to camp near the ponies that summer. Except for one woman, who wanted to rent a picnic pavilion for a family gathering. She, too, asked about the ponies, and I had just started my, "They are wild ponies; sometimes you see them, sometimes you don't" spiel when she interrupted me and said that she didn't WANT to see the ponies, because last time she was there, a male pony's penis was hanging down all the way to the ground, and it was VERY inappropriate for a family gathering. I put her on hold, fell off my chair, gasped out "Pony penis!" to my coworkers, and finally managed to pull myself back together to finish the call. When I put her back on the line, she told me there was something wrong with our hold mechanism and she'd heard everything I'd said.

Discussing pony penises with strangers is the oddest thing I've done for money.

OMG that is awesome - i had a huge crush on one of...

2009-01-28T19:02:00.000-06:00

OMG that is awesome - i had a huge crush on one of our nude models in college but when i saw her @ a bar (fully clothed) it was weird...which is weird in itself!

we ended up never dating, but she became a cool friend until we graduated 3 months later...and i came 99% close to having her model for an ad. i was designing too! haha..it was awesome.

and mad props to ALL of you who model like that - crazy confidence like woah!!! good for you ;)

I modeled nude in college too. It was the best-pay...

2009-01-28T18:38:00.000-06:00

I modeled nude in college too. It was the best-paying job on campus.

Nothing else could really be described as weird, I don't think.

I had to delurk to comment - I was a telemarketer ...

2009-01-28T10:34:00.000-06:00

I had to delurk to comment - I was a telemarketer who sold accidental death and dismemberment insurance, too! It was as smarmy as you describe, although I did get a kick out of listing the scheduled pay outs for various body parts.

That wasn't my craziest telemarketing gig, however. That honor goes to the summer I spent telemarketing for a funeral home/memorial park. We called numbers right out of the phone book (which is illegal) and offered a free hole if the person agreed to suffer through a high pressure sales demonstration for funeral pre-planning and bought a vault. I made those calls from a room in a little trailer with walls lined with shelves on which sat pre-purchased urns, each of which were tagged with an index card baring the name of the eventual occupant.

hee! love the stories. umm, given my jobs over t...

2009-01-28T10:29:00.000-06:00

hee! love the stories. umm, given my jobs over the years haven't been that odd, i'd say the weirdest task i ever had was searching rap lyrics for quotes that sounded good out of context. the job itself wasn't odd, but that was a once-yearly task that i always enjoyed and thought was crazy.