5 Most unusual jobs in the world

When the pool where he worked as a lifeguard in Melun southeast of Paris was closed during the Covid-19 pandemic, Guillaume Pop took jobs at various other pools that were virtually deserted. At one of them there was a small waterslide, which gave the 22-year-old former competitive swimmer an idea: He would make a TikTok video in which he pretended to be a “professional waterslide tester.”

Shooting down a slide in hard hat and hi-viz jacket or smiling broadly in cool shades and a tiny Speedo to a groovy soundtrack, Pop soon became a social-media sensation. He was hired to “test” slides and other facilities at water parks, swimming pools and campsites all over France. Today, he has more than half a million followers on TikTok and his own real-life waterslide-testing business. No longer working as a lifeguard, he travels the country checking the condition of waterslides, trying them out to determine how fun they are and creating amusing videos to attract customers.

“First of all, I check it without water, to make sure it’s in an acceptable state,” explains Pop, who must keep up to date on water-park regulations. If he finds a waterslide needs work—for example, if there are bumpy joints, which can hurt sliders—management will bring in a specialist repairer. “After that, I test it with water,” Pop says.

Then he moves on to the fun, promotional aspect. Sometimes he takes over a leisure park and invites social-media influencers to enjoy it too. In 2022, he took 25 influencers to O’Gliss Park, an enormous water park in the Vendée region on the Atlantic coast.

Pop estimates he’s tested around 700 French waterslides and is now eyeing water parks abroad, in countries such as Switzerland, Portugal and Spain, where he has been testing slides during the winter. “It’s the best job in the world,” declares Pop, whose videos have received 80 million views. “I’m not behind a desk. I’m active and outside in the sun. And I have a great rapport with customers. In fact, all the children tell me they want to be a waterslide tester!”

Finnish Lapland, in the far north of Europe, is home to some 180,000 people—and around 200,000 reindeer. The animals live wild but each one has an owner, identified by a tag on its ear. Anne Ollila, one of 4,000 such owners, works in the Finnish part of this harsh but beautiful region with her husband and two adult sons and their families. She has Sami roots, as do many of Finland’s reindeer herders. They farm the animals principally for meat, which is considered both healthy and ethical, but reindeer tourism has also become an important source of revenue.

“My family have been reindeer herders for at least nine generations,” says Ollila, 50. She started helping out when she was a very young child, and her father-in-law only stopped herding at the age of 82, shortly before his death.

Ollila lives 80 kilometres inside the Arctic Circle, an hour from Lapland’s capital city, Rovaniemi, and seven kilometres from her nearest neighbour. Summer days—when the reindeer herders earmark newborn calves—are long and in June the sun never sets. At that time Ollila sleeps during the day and walks up to 20 kilometres a night through marsh and forest, making the most of the cooler temperatures to do her work but having to endure swarms of insects along the way.

In deepest winter there is little daylight, though Ollila insists it’s not dark. “The snow reflects the starlight,” she says. Many pastures are frozen and the reindeer move into the forest for protection against predators, including wolves, lynx, wolverines and golden eagles—the birds can kill an adult reindeer. “Life is not easy here, but it’s how nature works,” says Ollila. In winter she trains reindeer to pull sleighs.

Her busiest times are early summer, when earmarking takes place, and autumn, when she rounds up the animals to vaccinate them and select some for slaughter. “Reindeer are part of the ecosystem,” explains Ollila, who is also director of the Reindeer Herders’ Association. “They keep nature in balance, but if there are too many, there isn’t enough food for them. We have to control herds. Earlier generations have taught us this.”

Ollila and her family, like many herders, offer tourists reindeer experiences via their company Reindeer Journey. Visitors can get close to the animals in the wild or at their farm, watch them being trained to pull sledges or take a sleigh ride.

“Reindeer are very smart animals,” Ollila says. “They have different personalities, and some are very funny.” One of her favourites is Rocky, named after the movie boxing legend. “He’s very curious and always in trouble,” she says. He once got himself wedged in a pile of hay bales and had to be lifted out, and he has been known to walk off with the laundry rack on his antlers—complete with his owners’ drying underwear.

Ollila gave up her job as a sociology researcher at the University of Lapland in 2010 to devote herself to reindeer herding full time and has no regrets. “I love the environment, the animals and the freedom,” she says. “Also, I have a sense of belonging to something bigger than me, to the chain of life through the generations.”

Around 160 times a year, come rain, shine or frost, Nicolas Edelman, 43, climbs a ladder to dress a bronze statue of a little boy peeing into a fountain in Brussels. Located on the corner of Rue de l’Etuve and Rue du Chêne, the 58-centimetre-tall Manneken-Pis, which literally means “the peeing boy” in the local Dutch dialect, is a major tourist attraction in the Belgian capital. Edelman is thought to be the statue’s 13th official dresser since records began in the 18th century.

Manneken-Pis, which “peed” fresh drinking water until 2019, was recorded as a public drinking fountain as long ago as the 14th century and is meant to represent the spirit of resistance of the people of Brussels. (One story has it that it’s modelled on a boy who urinated on a burning fuse, preventing gunpowder planted by the city’s enemies from going off.)

The statue is dressed to mark special occasions such as national days, international events, anniversaries and even important matches of Belgium’s national football team, when Manneken-Pis wears the Red Devils’ team colours. The statue’s outfits are housed in the Manneken-Pis Wardrobe, a museum open to the public. The oldest costume is a brocaded blue gentlemen’s suit complete with embroidered leggings and white gloves—a gift from France’s King Louis XV in 1747. It was presented to the city by the king himself to make amends after his soldiers had stolen the statue.

“The official collection currently holds 1,129 costumes,” says Edelman, a former cook who has been the statue’s dresser since 2014. And the collection is growing: Foreign organisations and governments continue to donate specially made infant-sized costumes. “Around half of the clothes in the collection are from overseas,” says Edelman. “Many are gifts offered as part of diplomatic friendships.”

When a country or an organisation wishes to offer a costume, it must get approval from an official Brussels committee. After the finished costume is delivered, it is tried on a replica of the statue and any necessary alterations are made. Once the formal ceremony is underway at City Hall, Edelman hurries to dress the actual statue behind a curtain—with the “pee” turned off, of course. By the time the official delegation arrives and a crowd of passersby has gathered, Edelman draws the curtain to reveal the Manneken-Pis—back in full stream—in all his sartorial glory.

Edelman’s favourite costumes include St Nicholas, which adorns the statue on December 6, St Nicholas’ Day. “Picture a great saint doing a wee!” he says with a laugh.

“My job is to make people happy,” Edelman says. “Manneken-Pis is part of the folk tradition of Brussels. Dressing and looking after this symbol of the city I’m from is a great honour.”

Elisa Meyer, 37, was studying philosophy and German literature in Austria in 2016 when she read an article about an emerging therapy in the United States—cuddling. Cuddle therapy uses platonic touch, which “can reduce anxiety and stress levels and improve confidence and self-esteem,” according to Cuddle Professionals International, the training, certification and membership body for practitioners. Meyer, who is originally from Luxembourg, was intrigued, having always envisaged a career involving some kind of therapy. “My first thought was, ‘Wow, this is the perfect job because I can relax at the same time!’” she says with a laugh.

But after doing two online courses, Meyer realised cuddle therapy was a serious profession. She came away with two pages of strict rules that establish boundaries, including the fact that cuddle therapy has no sexual element. And, while she was aware cuddle therapy can’t replace medication or psychotherapy for people who have a serious mental illness, she saw how it could bring benefits when used alongside those treatments.

Meyer started practising in Vienna as a sideline to her PhD studies and university teaching and is now a full-time cuddle therapist based in Leipzig, Germany. She welcomes clients to her studio where she talks to them for about ten minutes about what they want from the session. Many are lonely, such as men with social anxiety who are ill at ease with women; some are busy women who simply want to relax.

The rest of the session is spent in close contact on a bed or sofa. Meyer might start by hugging a client from behind and stroking their hair, sometimes massaging their neck if they are tense. The pair usually change position once or twice during the 50- or 80-minute cuddling session.

Cuddling releases oxytocin in the body, she explains. “Your body feels very relaxed and a bit like you are floating. People have the feeling that everything is and will be okay. They smile a lot afterwards. Oxytocin is known as the ‘love’ hormone.”

Meyer recalls one client who couldn’t speak because of a problem with his vocal cords. His voice came back softly during a cuddle session. “He was so happy, he was glowing,” she says. Just knowing he could still use his voice to communicate and break out of his isolation was very special for him.

She also takes cuddle therapy into a home for adults with learning and physical challenges. People with physical disabilities are often keen to talk about the pain they experience. “They talk, I listen,” she says.

Besides being a good listener, what makes a successful cuddle therapist? “You have to like humans and be a trusting and positive person,” says Meyer. “You have to read body language and be able to recognise what people want and adjust the way you touch accordingly.”

Meyer has written two books about cuddle therapy and now trains other aspiring practitioners. “Sometimes people have lost all joy in life and may be suicidal,” she says. “When I see they have hope again, that is the biggest reward.”

Stevie Douglas estimates he’s trained at least 1,000 zombies over the past ten years. The 52-year-old Scot from Carstairs, a village southeast of Glasgow, has taught people how to behave like all varieties of the undead. That includes the slow, shambling zombies typical of films such as Night of the Living Dead (1968) and the truly terrifying, screaming ones who chase you as you run for your life.

Fortunately, Douglas, a co-director of the Glasgow-based ScareScotland Talent Agency, is very much alive, as are all his pupils. He started out as a “scare actor,” using his 1.9-metre frame to frighten people in interactive scare mazes across the UK. “Before I knew it I was being hired to play various characters, from serial killers to chainsaw-wielding maniacs,” says Douglas. “Zombies came up a lot too.”

A big fan of horror movies, Douglas noticed that the zombies he saw in films were often unconvincing. “Their movement was poor,” he says. “I thought I could do better.” So, in 2012, he and a friend formed ScareScotland to provide zombies for films, television and events such as horror conventions.

A year later they started a training program for aspiring zombies. It took off when they received a request for 300 zombies for The Generation of Z, a huge interactive production that ran for three weeks in an underground car park at the world-famous Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The show was a hit.

Undead Academy classes are held in the upstairs room of a Glasgow theatre, where Douglas instructs students in different aspects of zombie behaviour. He asks each one to stand up, bend one leg inwards and drag their heel, then lift their head up as if it were attached to a piece of string and—voilà—you have a zombie who can lurch forward. “The noise part is easier,” says Douglas.

Typical zombie sounds include screams, wails, puffing and panting. He impresses on students the importance of safety when frightening people; imagine there’s a 1.2-metre box around you, he tells them, and always stay at arm’s length from a member of the public.

Among the Academy’s alumni are a couple of wrestlers and a heavily built, 2.1-metre-tall zombie. “When Big Ross scuttles from the corner, you can see the fear in people’s eyes,” jokes Douglas, who has worked on film sets teaching professional actors how to play zombies.

He insists Academy “graduates” are not extras. “They’re skilled actors,” he says. “What they do is very specific.” They certainly have an effect. Douglas recalls an event in a park when a woman was so terror-stricken on encountering a group of “zombies” that she ran into a pond.

But many people enjoy being petrified, says Douglas—and he’s happy to oblige them.