Forum: Author Hangout

Unusual Past Employment Opportunities

Ernest Bywater 🚫

Back in the mid to late 1990s I was offered a special job that looked very good and interesting until I saw the fine detail and refused it. Some comments in another thread made me think to start this thread to see whatever other weird jobs were out there.

The Job was as a Logistic Supervisor at a Remote Site with a pay of US $100,000 per year for a four year contract after the 3 month training period at US $15,000 all paid into a Swiss bank account and tax free because it was on a UN sponsored project overseas. Here in Australia the US $15,000 was a damn good annual salary for most of that type of work.

Special conditions were to work 6 weeks on-site for 7 12 hour days in a desert environment then spend 2 weeks off-site relaxing in Southern France with rotations for the full period of the contract working out in the middle of nowhere.

Even then the job looked good until I saw the list of employer issued equipment you had to be trained with and tested included first aid, body armor, helmet, 9 mm handgun, and 7.62 mm carbine for self protection and protection of site if needed to help support the on-site security team should the site come under attack by local bandits. That put a very different meaning on working in a hot location.

The job was to manage the local logistics side of a UN sponsored road construction project in a desert area where the locals did not want the road built.

Another oddity was I could never get from them the names of any past employees to talk to about what it was like working out there.

Remus2 🚫

Even then the job looked good until I saw the list of employer issued equipment you had to be trained with and tested included first aid, body armor, helmet, 9 mm handgun, and 7.62 mm carbine for self protection and protection of site if needed to help support the on-site security team should the site come under attack by local bandits. That put a very different meaning on working in a hot location.

Code for hiring a mercenary combat engineer is what that reads to me.

I spent most of my career traveling. All but two states in America and a few over fifty countries. In that time, I've been offered some strange to very contracts.

A for instance was training military personnel in a very early version of ground penetrating radar.
Wave mechanics is a prerequisite to perform that, and while my primary disciplines are in engineering, I did have the background.
The ad was for training and implementation coordinator. Pay was 50k for 4 weeks in the states training then another 8 weeks over seas, location to be determined. 50k for three months? Sure, sign me up.

For those eight weeks I found myself wearing combat/EOD armor, being shot at randomly, using the GPR to search for voids associated with IEDs under a runway whilst listening to the adhan five times a day.

The lemmings/wackamoles...um civilians were not allowed to be armed, much less shoot back. Keep in mind this was a very short time after the wall had fallen which meant all the former Soviet States were still very unstable.

Then there was the lead Artic Mechanical/Welding engineer. 200k a year, 6 weeks on 2 weeks off (fine print "weather permitting"). After being stuck for five months straight in the Artic I never went back.

Heinlein put it best. "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch."
Pie in the sky job adverts always come with a catch.

Replies: REP

REP 🚫
Updated:

@Remus2

My company had an opening for a field engineer to support the fielding and provide the first year of field support for a new system. I wasn't familiar with the equipment, so I was not qualified for the position. I don't recall, but the field site was either Nicaragua or Honduras. The details of the political situation indicated whoever took the position would be a civilian in the middle of a hostile environment, and if I recall they weren't authorized to carry weapons.

Replies: Remus2

Remus2 🚫
Updated:

@REP

I don't recall, but the field site was either Nicaragua or Honduras.

For those two, it was most likely agricultural, O&G, or mining equipment. Neither place has been stable in my lifetime, but Nicaragua was particularly bad for the health of most western xpats. It's probably a good thing you were not qualified for that one.

Replies: REP

REP 🚫

@Remus2

No, my company was heavily involved in designing electronic surveillance equipment for the military and the 3-letter agencies.

At the time there was anti-government guerilla activity in the country.

Replies: Remus2

Remus2 🚫
Updated:

@REP

That would have been Nicaragua and the Sandinistas then, or at a minimum, on the border. Be glad you were not qualified.

Replies: REP

REP 🚫

@Remus2

I was divorced at the time, and looking for something interesting to do and the money was tempting. I decided that even if I were qualified, the situation and deployment parameters didn't make the situation a good idea.

I've always been of the opinion that a person should examine a situation and weigh the risks, before putting oneself into the situation. As far as I'm concerned the Middle East is not a good place for a vacation, but people go there all the time and some regret their choice. They usually say that there was no way they could have known what happened to them would occur. They just didn't look for and consider the risks.

Replies: Remus2

Remus2 🚫

@REP

I've always been of the opinion that a person should examine a situation and weigh the risks, before putting oneself into the situation.

It's been my experience that the risk are not always known ahead of time, much less the situation on the ground. Then there is the law of large numbers. Seemingly low risk activities performed a sufficient number of times, creates a high risk. Gamble enough you lose, drive enough you wreck, travel enough you have an incident.

That last bit caused me few problems.

Replies: REP

REP 🚫

@Remus2

I mostly agree with what you say.

Your average tourist who visits the Middle East doesn't check the State Departments list of places American should not go to due to high risk. They also read the headlines in the newspapers about terrorist activities and say that won't happen to them.

Replies: Remus2

Remus2 🚫
Updated:

@REP

Your average tourist who visits the Middle East doesn't check the State Departments list of places American should not go to due to high risk.

The State Department isn't always forthcoming with threat levels or intelligence thereof. According to them in 2003, the shining path in Peru was all but wiped out with only a handful of sympathizers left scattered around the country. In June 2003 I found this out the hard way while contracted to Techint on the Camisea pipeline.

After spending a few days as an unwilling guest of the shining path, all were released. Officially no one was killed, and there were no Americans in the mix. I must have come down with a bad case of CRS. I distinctly recall three Americans in the mix and the Peruvian forces killing the rebels. Must have been my imagination or someone slipped me some Cimora when I wasn't looking.

State by its nature is political. Never forget that when traveling.

Radagast 🚫

I knew a couple of former SAS who were offered jobs in the 90s by Lloyds as security on ships off the Horn of Africa. They passed when they realised their job was to shoot pirates and make sure there were no witnesses.
25 years and 18 years of war later, I doubt their modern counterparts would turn the job down.

oldegrump 🚫

This goes back to the '70s. I was offered two different jobs. I was a certified biomedical equipment technician, one of less than 400 in the country.

Job 1 was on the up and up. A new hospital was being built in Riyadh Saudi Arabia. My job would have been to certify the equipment and teach the Saudi's to do their own repairs. $25,000 per year. Job for wife $12,000 per year. Tax-free if we stayed 18 months. Two-year contract. Two weeks vacation every 4 months, one month every year. No alcohol, no woman outside the compound without a male escort. No woman driving.

Job 2 Iran - same duties no job for wife. Unaccompanied tour. Two weeks earlier three American military people were killed driving a jeep escorting some secret police (SAVAK)

I didn't take either.

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Unusual Past Employment Opportunities

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