And You Thought *Your* Job Was Tough...

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How many times have you wanted to do this? :)

Waiting tables. Janitor. 'Sanitation engineering'. Door-to-door vacuum sales. Telemarketing. Shoveling bovine scatology. Herding cats.

Okay, maybe the last one isn't a real job, but that's beside the point.   I'm sure we can all think of a job we had that had us pulling our hair out at the end of the day. While I usually like waiting tables, I know people who would sooner drink an entire bottle of laundry detergent than take someone's order. However, there are worse jobs out there. If you don't believe me, watch a few episodes of Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel. If you don't get the network or need immediate encouragement, just keep reading. Here are some of the worst and strangest jobs that someone in the world actually has to do. Some are 'separate' jobs while others are included in a job description.

• Sniffing underarms. Hey, someone has to test deodorants to see if they work. Since people can't always smell their own body odor, someone else has to do it for them. Ew.
• Testing dog food. Since dogs can't tell you how their food tastes, someone has to do it for them. After all, the manufacturers can't advertise that a food has 'meaty morsels' if it isn't true. How else will they know? Double ew.
• Milking snakes. Like most vaccines, anti-venom contains a very small 'deadened' amount of venom. Someone has to actually hold a poisonous snake against the edge of a container to 'milk' the venom. Seeing as I'm scared of snakes, this would not be a good job for me!
• Retrieving lost golf balls. Before you think that diving into a water hazard to get stray golf balls would feel good on a hot day, remember that some of the streams that feed them contain a lot of bugs, bacteria and plant matter. In certain areas of the country, they are also home to snakes and alligators.
• Cleaning up vomit. This is in the job description of pretty much any amusement park or carnival ride attendant. A British park has even gone so far as to hire a specific person to do this all day!
• Disposing of medical waste. There are actually companies that specialize in safely getting rid of used needles, catheters, urine and other medical by-products. While I am glad that I no longer have to worry about finding a dirty syringe washed up on the beach when I visit my parents, tossing out removed gall stones is a bit much.
• Phlebotomist. On the 'medical waste' tip, phlebotomists are the people who collect and test urine samples for drug tests. They get paid a good bit of money because, as you can imagine, it's hard to find and keep people who are willing to do this for a living. The same goes for emergency plumbers-they have to work with and around substances that would make a lot of people sick just looking at. I couldn't do it, so more power to them.

You can watch Dirty Jobs at http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/dirty-jobs/.

Next time you think you've got the worst job in the world, remember this post. If nothing else, I've given you a good laugh.