Wild Work Hazards: Dirty Jobs That Will Make You Love Your Desk

Think you have it rough? Is the office driving you up the wall? Consider yourself lucky—or, if you find that difficult, check out the following dirty, dangerous jobs that should put things into perspective:

High-Rise Window Washer

Some relish the idea of working outdoors, but what if your work takes you hundreds of feet off the ground, on a platform suspended by ropes? This is the everyday reality of high-rise window washers. If you have nerves of steel, little regard for the laws of gravity, and a passion for streak-free glass, this might be the job for you. For the other 99.9% of the population, we’ll continue to opt for working inside the building.

Paramedic for Industrial Safety Service

This job essentially entails being a first-responder to any number of workplace mishaps. One day, you’re on a floating oil rig miles from the nearest shore assessing a worker’s injuries, the next you’re on a helicopter, about to land at a remote drilling site where an explosion occurred. While the heat rises, think about that cushy, climate-controlled office you left.

Animal Control Officer

Picture yourself in the life of an animal control officer. A call comes in, just as you take the first sip of your morning coffee--there's an animal causing a disturbance in a residential area. As an animal control officer, that’s your cue to grab your catch stick and head out. You arrive in a nice suburban neighborhood and there's a bear in one of the trees. Now you can't help but think of the old days, as you watch a tranquilized bear hit a trampoline and bounce off, when the most stress you had was when the water-cooler ran dry.

Roadkill Collector

This is a real job, and if it was your job, you might enjoy certain aspects of it. The quiet ride as you survey roads for carcasses of unlucky critters, the lack of deadlines and performance reviews, no loud breathers like Jane from accounting or chatterboxes like Jeff from HR. This job is just right for you, you think as you scrape the asphalt...roadkill doesn't try to one-up all your water cooler tales. Roadkill won't steal your leftovers from the fridge or “borrow” your favorite stapler and pretend it was broken when they got it. Roadkill is great.

When you think about these jobs (which are, of course, real jobs which are necessary to the continuation of our society as we know it) the mandatory morale meetings and office memos don't seem so bad, do they? Take a minute to be glad your work keeps you planted inside a nice, safe workplace, sans wild animals, explosions, and dangling in midair.

Informational Credit to 911 Industrial Response Inc