You remember the drill. You were a young ’un, telling anyone and everyone you were going to grow up to be an astronaut. You turned a bucket into a makeshift astronaut helmet and invented your own alien language. Your dreams were encouraged, and mom played along driving you “into space” in the family Dodge. After all, you can be whatever you want when you grow up.
But where are the kids who want to clean chimneys, artificially inseminate cows or scoop up road kill? Somewhere. Those kids are somewhere. Maybe the astronaut had a change of heart after hearing about the whole diaper thing. Or perhaps these kids have already learned there’s a faint stigma in admitting their offbeat dreams.
Regardless, there are jobs most of us never dream of doing for one reason or another [think careers involving sewage, blood, death, etc]. It’s not that these jobs are necessarily dirty or gross. There’s dirty work in every job, be it red tape or red blood. But these jobs, well, they probably don’t score too favorably on Kuder preference tests. They’re entrenched in animal skin, road kill, soot, smelly feet, crawfish and cow privates. Surely most people would rather be a musician than cut other peoples’ toenails. But for a portion of our community, it’s all in a day’s work.
Business Report offers you six glimpses into these lesser-experienced jobs: a boudin maker, road kill cleaner, chimney sweep, pedicurist, crawfish farmer and cow artificial inseminator. We’re not trying to make you sick; rather, we’re trying to spotlight a handful of jobs rarely glamorized and glorified but are essential to our lives and quality of life. At the very least, maybe you’ll appreciate your job a teensy bit more. —Marissa Frayer
Click below to read more about each dirty job.
Comments
Posted by Karlaswacker on March 31, 2008 at 3:18 p.m. (Suggest removal)
From Allied Waste......Thanks for recognizing the "unappreciated" work of our women and men in the collection trucks. Like the old saying goes, our business is "always picking up".
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