The Bizarre Jobs of Celebrities Before They Were Famous

[SharonBell]

 
Geena Davis was a live mannequin in a New York department store.   

Huey Lewis slaughtered rabbits: he had to hit them over the head with a pipe, then skin them and gut them.    (Particularly appropriate with this week's flash challenge word!)

Ellen DeGeneres was a vacuum-cleaner saleswoman.   

Rod Stewart was a gravedigger.   

Whoopi Goldberg worked as a makeup artist for a funeral parlor.   

Russell Crowe was a bingo caller.   

Kevin Richardson played a Ninja Turtle at the Disney-MGM Studios theme park.   

Liam Neeson was a forklift driver at the Guinness brewery in Belfast.   

Nathan Lane was a police bail interviewer.   

Ben Kingsley worked as a penicillin tester.   

Willem Dafoe was a magazine binder at Penthouse.   

[JoyceCarter]

Guess they'll always have something to fall back on...

[SharonBell]

Yeah, I figure I can always go back to chopping lettuce for airline caterers...if they fed anyone anymore, that is!

[JoyceCarter]

My first job was working in the toy department of a local department store during the Christmas rush.  Choice memories from there - they didn't have paper bags, and you had to wrap everything in brown paper and string.  Oh, and there wasn't any sticky tape to use to keep the paper in place, either.  (Really time-and-motion efficient, I don't think, that place!)  Also it was before the days of cash registers which added anything up for you.  My nightmare used to be a customer who was buying a handful of toy soldiers, farm animals or cowboys-and-Indians, because the prices varied slightly, but were all of the kind fourpence-ha'penny, fivepence three-farthings, sixpence farthing.  This is in English old money, where an old penny was made up of either four farthings or two ha'pennies (half pennies), twelve old pennies made a shilling, and twenty shillings made a pound.  So you can see the task it was to add up the varying costs of a dozen little figures, with all those fractions, in your head, and then make them all lie on a piece of brown paper and not slide off while you got the ends round them and none slipped out of the edges before you managed to knot the string, all done on a counter where six other people were trying to do similar things, and the floor-walker might say, 'Are you quite sure of your calculation?' just to put you off!

[SharonBell]

Now there's a short story inspiration! "Killing the Floor Walker" --It was the day before Christmas and a customer came in demanding an entire army of toy soldiers and the complete Nativity scene in miniature....

[Ed]

My first job was working in the toy department of a local department store during the Christmas rush.  Choice memories from there - they didn't have paper bags, and you had to wrap everything in brown paper and string.  Oh, and there wasn't any sticky tape to use to keep the paper in place, either.  (Really time-and-motion efficient, I don't think, that place!)  Also it was before the days of cash registers which added anything up for you.  My nightmare used to be a customer who was buying a handful of toy soldiers, farm animals or cowboys-and-Indians, because the prices varied slightly, but were all of the kind fourpence-ha'penny, fivepence three-farthings, sixpence farthing.  This is in English old money, where an old penny was made up of either four farthings or two ha'pennies (half pennies), twelve old pennies made a shilling, and twenty shillings made a pound.  So you can see the task it was to add up the varying costs of a dozen little figures, with all those fractions, in your head, and then make them all lie on a piece of brown paper and not slide off while you got the ends round them and none slipped out of the edges before you managed to knot the string, all done on a counter where six other people were trying to do similar things, and the floor-walker might say, 'Are you quite sure of your calculation?' just to put you off!

Whoah!  That sounds like a nightmare

My first job was a paper round.  Got to the shop by 6AM, took until 8AM to deliver them all, then I'd have my breakfast and get to school for 8:30AM.  Did it from the age of thirteen until I was sixteen, all weathers, seven days a week, never had a day off, except Christmas Day and Boxing Day.  Mind you, you paid for that by humping all the Xmas suppliments around, for the week or so before.  Plus loads of people would have either the Radio or the TV Times (large mag with the week's TV progs listed) when they wouldn't normally get it.

I also had a Saturday job, working in a pet shop all day.

When I left school and got a full time job, I remember thinking it was a lot easier than doing the round and the Saturday job, for the simple reason of having the weekends to myself, and not having to get to work until 7:30AM on weekdays felt like a lie-in.  Oh the decadence....

[JoyceCarter]

I can believe that!

[Ed]

Thinking of Christmas - one year, the shop owner gave me a different round to do on a Saturday, just before Christmas - the Saturday when most customers would give you a tip.  He put his son on my round for the day, because mine was the biggest, and I was the most reliable paperboy - always got the papers delivered before 8AM.  The fat little shit got all my tips for the year, bar a couple who noticed it wasn't the regular kid delivering that day and gave it to me on the Sunday

The things you remember, eh?

[SharonBell]

That really sucks. 

[JoyceCarter]

Argh!  And you didn't lie in wait for him on his way home?