Cuddle therapy is a real thing, we are assured by an Instagrammer. There are many other truly strange ways to make a living in the world. For instance, there is Paul Flart who calls himself the Fart Authority and has 105K Instagram followers for posting videos of himself – hold your breath – farting. Here are some truly strange jobs – that pay, it seems:
She shows her certificates and says she is a qualified cuddle therapist. This not-so-common job involves comforting those who have suffered abuse and trauma. Her job also involves doing what a client requests such as having a tickle fight, playing with a client like a puppy and so on.
Do people get paid to sleep? The real job description is ‘bed tester’ or ‘mattress tester’. In one actual instance, a hotel in Finland appointed a member of their staff to test each of the beds in their hotel turn by turn.
Dog food comes in pellet form, biscuit form, tinned meat, gravies in packets and so on. Then there are other types of food for exotic pets, fish and so on. there has to be someone doing the tasting for this, right? Presumably, a pet food taster would have to check the taste, smell, texture, mouthfeel – perhaps because it isn't good enough for the pet to indicate their approval?
There is an entire industry based on eliminating natural odours and smells that emanate from the body: the mouth, armpit, etc. There has to be someone who gauges the efficacy of deodorants, antiperspirants and so on.
Fun job, but potentially dangerous I would think. This person would spend a lot of time in amusement parks and frolicking in the water I would imagine. But this person would have to gauge the fun factor of the slide and also check whether they are safe enough for kids to use, presumably.
Not only do social media platforms reward ethical hackers, but it is also actually a job with a fairly high cool quotient. Here a person is paid to check an organisation's platform vulnerabilities by trying to hack into them and then suggesting fixes for them. This helps protect the organisation, its employees and data against malicious hackers, malware and so on.
This is a traditional occupation that still exists in some parts of India – a woman known as a ‘rudaali’ who will come and weep at funerals and generally up the doom and gloom there. Turns out this is a profession in other parts of the world too – such as South East Asia.
Anti-venom medications to treat snakebite are made by extracting the venom of snakes. Not a pleasant or a safe job, but someone's got to do it! I wonder how people get into these very strange jobs – I don’t think there are kids running around saying I want to be a snake milker when I grow up, surely.
Do you have something interesting you would like to share? Write to us at [email protected]
