Regards,

Carl Palmer
and the Carl Palmer Web Site Team
 

“I’ve always wanted to do your job, it’s so interesting,” these are words I have heard time and time again while performing my job as a Forensic Science Specialist.

In my job I get to look for clues left behind by criminals.  Clues that can take them off the street forever!  In my career, I have seen a serial killer nabbed by a piece of cigarette paper with DNA, red carpet fibers & dog hairs left on a nude victim’s body.  Even though the killer tried to strip the evidence, he still left plenty for us to find!  This job is also interesting because within the course of one day I see things that can make you mad, or laugh your head off; like the crook who taped a hand written “out-of-order sign” over a local bank’s night deposit slot and placed an old US Postal mail drop box next to it with “deposit here” taped on it to get customers to drop their overnight deposits into his convenient “cash and carry” box.  And as you might suspect, they did!!  We can laugh about it now because it didn’t take long to catch this “genius”, as his fingerprints were all over the box. 

In Forensic Science, there is law at work called Locard’s Exchange Principal.  It states, that every time an individual comes in contact with a place or another individual, something of that individual is left behind at the place and something taken with them.  Because Locard never said the evidence would be easily seen, many times hi-tech equipment is used in the search for “trace” evidence.  This trace evidence may be the tinyest fiber from a piece of clothing or a smear of saliva containing valuable DNA.  In my job there is never a dull moment in a county with nearly one million people!

John D. Grubb 
Pinellas County, Florida

My weirdest job ever. Being a rock drummer, (hi Carl), I was in rehearsals for a new band. While we were working hard into the night perfecting our renditions of 1st Impression and Hoedown, I still had to pay the rent. So I signed up at a temp agency to pick up jobs when available. They usually called at about 5 AM to offer me a job for that day. One fine morning I was awakened from a deep sleep and told to report to a “rendering plant”, (whatever that was), by 6. Sleepily, I wrote down the directions and fell into the shower. 

As it turned out, the shower was totally unnecessary. It seems a rendering plant is a place that takes all the parts of slaughtered cows, pigs, and sheep that nobody wants, and “renders” them down into something usable. (What that might be, I shudder to think.) 

I was handed a shovel and shown a never-ending pile of entrails, bones, brains, guts, and other unspeakable items, and told to shovel them into the rendering machine, basically a huge oven. The stench was indescribable. Needless to say, when it came to lunch break, my ham sandwich didn’t seem too appetizing. The 8 hours seemed to take 8 weeks. 

Upon my arrival home, I showered 3 times to get rid of the smell. I ended up throwing out the clothes I had worn that day, as they were unsalvageable. Luckily, my band hit the road soon after, so I could dump the temp jobs. No bar or club, no matter who the clientele was, could EVER smell THAT bad!

I now work my dream job, producing and engineering at my own recording studio. Anyone want to revive Prog Rock for the new millennium? Give me a call.

Derry D Hirsch
Roseville MN

In 1985, I was a single mother and took a job that allowed me to take my son to work with me.  I was a publicity assistant for a woman quadriplegic. 

She was the spokesperson for an organization that placed trained capuchin monkeys with handicapped people in order to help them live a more productive life.  Our monkey, Henrietta, was trained to open doors, put prepared food out, turn lights off and on, put water out, etc; things that would allow this woman to be in the house alone for at least 2-3 hours a day.

We would get many journalists and news crews in all the time. The monkey was very attached to me. When strangers were in the house, the monkey would attach itself to my leg and I’d have to walk around dragging the monkey. If any of them tried to touch me, the monkey would go berserk.  She didn’t have teeth, but she could suck the blood right to the skin.

One German crew wanted us to take the monkey outside to see the monkey’s reaction. It didn’t sound like a smart thing to do, but then who am I to say.  We get down on the street and the monkey gets frightened and climbs to the top of  my head.  Well I have long hair and I wasn’t parting with any of it, so I didn’t attempt to pry the monkey off.  At the end of the street a group of kids noticed the monkey and started running towards me.  The monkey got so scared it crapped big time down the back of my head, my hair and my jacket.  These monkeys are vegetarians so at least it wasn’t really smelly, just sort of like 
having a hot henna treatment, just lovely for German TV

Linda Heath
NYC

I had moved to Reno in the late 70’s with my girlfriend.  She had a job singing in the then brand new Reno MGM.  At that time it was very hard for a new drummer in town to get a gig.  I ended up with (and to this day I don’t know why) a young girl who “played” the piano.  Her mother had great plans for her; unfortunately she was an awful piano player.  We were playing in the bar of a Lake Tahoe tennis club one night (that was the last time I “worked” with her) when right in the middle of one of her songs, someone put a coin in the jukebox and started playing records!  I never did thank that person, just packed up my kit and went home, later to give notice to this young girl and her mother; which is another story all in its self!  This wasn’t the worst job I had, but have to admit it had one of the funniest endings!

Frank Long
Silverado, CA

In the disgusting category I briefly worked as security guard for an airline at an airport in Denver Colorado and guarded the cargo area which amongst other items would have remains of the deseased stored prior to a flight...One day watching a stored cadaver going up a ramp,the container with the recently departed fell over with a variety of fluids dispersed on the ground....Any more details would be nauseating...I left that job shortly after that....

Yours,

Neil  Kirby
Astoria,NY 

Worked for a company that imported exotic foreign cars..like Porsche, Ferrari, Maserati, Lamboghini,etc. Our job was to bring them to the free trade zone warehouse and convert them to street legal in the US. It was strange feeling drilling holes in the rear of Lamborghini Countach to install side marker lights. Shame actually. I did however get to drive some exquisite automobiles!

Jeff Hunnicutt
Wilmington, NC

I had the best job known to man—an ice cream taste tester.   Over the course of two years I served as a “taste bud” for the Blue Bunny Ice Cream company.   Believe me folks, this was a window into heaven.

Imagine a room of 25 people who take their job as seriously as tasting the finest wine.   Some 30 ice cream samples are laid in front of you in little cups.   Under the watchful eye of a veteran taste-room supervisor, you are instructed to gently place the sample on your tongue, move it around your mouth to absorb the flavor, then, methodically “cleanse your pallet”  (I am not kidding).   You then describe the flavor as would a wine critic.   “Yes, a very nice German chocolate flavor, a little woody, but offset nicely by a bocquet of coconut.”   I became so adept at this that I found myself fanning the aroma of container lids as if sniffing a fine cabernet—“say, this is a tad too fruity—lets try another please.”

As if this were not enough of paradise, my in-kind pay included two years worth of free Blue Bunny ice cream.   I gained about 50 pounds in the process but hey, what a job.
 

Robert K. Poch
Woodury, Minnesota

MY FIRST JOB, AFTER LEAVING SCHOOL, WAS A BIT DIFFERENT.  I TRAINED TO BE A MONUMENTAL MASON.  TO PUT IT SIMPLY, I MADE MEMORIALS FOR GRAVES. OCCASIONALLY I HAD TO GO OUT IN THE LEICESTERSHIRE COUNTRY SIDE TO DIG THE ODD GRAVE.

IT WAS ON SUCH AN OCCAISION THAT MY TALE TOOK PLACE.  ONE OCTOBER MORNING (WAY BACK WHEN) MY BOSS AND I HAD TO GO INTO THE COUNTRY TO DIG A GRAVE FOR AN AFTERNOON FUNERAL.   AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT, IT STARTED TO RAIN, VERY HEAVILY.  GREAT, WE HAD NO CHOICE BUT TO CARRY ON DIGGING AS THE STORM WORSENED.  WHEN WE WERE ABOUT FOUR FEET DOWN WE WERE ANKLE DEEP IN WATER.  MY BOSS, EXPECTING THIS, GOT OUT AN ANCIENT STIRRUP-PUMP AND WHILE I CARRIED ON DIGGING HE PUMPED OUT THE WATER.

WHEN I WAS ABOUT SIX FEET DOWN I CAME ACROSS THE COFFIN FROM THE PREVIOUS BURIAL.  NOT A PROBLEM, I’D SEEN A FEW BEFORE.  SUDDENLY, MY FOOT WENT THROUGH THE LID OF THE COFFIN AND I WAS STUCK.  THE WOOD WAS SPRINGY AND HAD TRAPPED MY ANKLE LIKE A VICE.  “MY, MY!!!” OR WORDS TO THIS EFFECT CAME OUT OF MY MOUTH AS I HACKED AWAY THE WOOD WITH MY SPADE UNTIL I WAS FREE.  I DIDN’T USE THE LADDER TO GET OUT OF THE GRAVE AND I’M TOLD I WAS ABOUT TEN FEET IN THE AIR BEFORE I STOPPED CLIMBING!!  NEEDLESS TO SAY, IT WASN’T MY BEST DAY.  ONE I’LL NEVER FORGET!  IN CASE YOU ARE WONDERING THE FUNERAL DID GO AS PLANNED.

ANDY KENT
LEICESTERSHIRE, ENGLAND

The lowest form of life in the employment hierarchy of a gambling casino is a shill. Traditionally, a shill is defined as either a person paid by the house to attract gamblers to the game (many people don’t like to start a “cold” game) or, worse, a person in a confidence game who pretends to be a participant, but who helps fleece the mark. My employment as a shill in the WWII era had a third purpose: to shield one side of the crap dealer as he switched dice from a pocket in his apron.

Back then, casino gambling was illegal in all states but Nevada. A casino consisting of craps, roulette, blackjack, and a “birdcage” could be set up or torn down in a couple of hours.  The necessity was to beat the customer at probably the only visit he would make to the casino; only a continuous wave of customers in a legal establishment can produce profits by the inexorable grinding of favorable house odds.  Therefore, illegal gambling joints cheated, and in the case of craps, the dealer of the dice cheated by changing the dice in mid-game.
Say you had to make a 6 to win. In his black apron, the dealer had several pairs of dice that would throw only even or odd numbers, or numbers higher or lower than 7, or only a 7.  The dice were mis-spotted.  Correctly spotted die total 7 on opposite sides, but these die might have a 6 on each side, totalling 12.  The amazing thing is, the dice were a transluscent red color; one could peer down through them to see the number on the bottom side.  But somehow, no one ever did.

So my job was merely to stand on one side of the dealer (another shill stood on the other side), pretend like I was a player, and shield his legerdermain as he deftly raked in one set of dice, but threw out another. The height of people’s gullibility came one night when the dealer raked in a pair of dice, but then threw back three to the player.

With his consummate nerve and smooth patter of talk, he merely recouped the errant die and the play proceeded without anyone saying a word.  That wouldn’t happen in modern Las Vegas.

Bob Lane
Palmyra, VA

Hello,
My name is Tom Maffucci from Revere MA.  Here is a job that I think is quite unique and is most enjoyable yet bizarre at the same time. I am a full time K-7 music teacher who also directs a percussion ensemble made up of 10-13 year olds. There has been a time when during the school day, I would have a percussion rehearsal teaching the kids how to play Knife Edge while at the same time baby sitting a 30- 3rd graders!  First of all its not that bizarre to have a practice while baby sitting, its just funny to do it while performing Knife Edge! on percussion instruments!

Tom Maffucci

My most memorable job totally forgot about this until a friend of mine, whilst reminiscing, brought it to my attention. It was my crazy idea to check out an ad in the newspaperfor this “Super Super Job Opportunity”, “Earn money, money money”...”Set your own hours”.... “No Cold Calling”.

In any case, me and my friend wanted to earn some extra money so we could put our band together and didn’t want the “9to5”, so, that ad seemed like a god-send to me. My friend, less convinced, went along to check things out.  So, we arrive at this weird little office, with one fake plant in a corner and one hot girl behind the desk (of course), and the rest of the office looking quite fake and contrived. We both looked at each other and wondered about the rest and thought about leaving. Before we could whisk out of there, this high-strung dude comes out from nowhere, and says “John, Gregg...how are you doing???!!!!” Kind of shocked, because of his quick arrival and his loud mannerisms, he had us pinned and we both knew we were stuck. Next thing we know he has us sitting in another contrived little room, telling us we made the “greatest decision of our lives”. Wondering how that was possible, since I never really make great decisions, and I already regretted showing up at all this day, we both laughed to ourselves and went along with it.

And yes, I haven't yet disclosed what it was we were applying for or what the opportunity was because we still had no clue yet ourselves. Then, "bam",here it came. He says, "you don't yet know what you will be doing, but I will tell you now. We sell meat out of the back of little refrigerated trucks." A little "shocked and awed", I couldn't believe what he was saying.  My friend was also a little aghast. He went on to tell us how and the approach of selling. And it went something like this, (starting with knocking on neighborhood doors with our truck parked outside) , "Ma'am/Sir, I just got done making my deliveries for the day, and I just happen to have some of the freshest frozen cuts of meat out in truck, and I think you should check some of it out...can you hold on while I go get you some samples???"

Needless to say, we did try it out that day because he had us in a truck already and handed the keys over in less than a half and hour after stepping foot in the office. There was no backing out, other than just doing it for the day and just never coming back the next. My friend was able to sell some cuts, but I didn't sell a thing. And that goes down in history as one of the weirdest jobs I ever had. And I only felt bad about quitting, because the guy seem convinced we had just made the greatest decision of our lives. Though i do beg to differ, it was certainly one of the more memorable decisions I made, and i can't help thinking about what i was willing to do, try even, to just avoid the "norm"when it came to employment.

Thanks for the chance!!!

Cray Morrison

On September 11, 2001 the world as we knew it was changed forever.  In New York City, this drummer and was called upon, and put into action, all of the knowledge and experience gained in the pursuit of a career in environmental and occupational health. For the next several months, it would me helping to protect hundreds of workers and to help people everywhere understand the environmental health risks following the collapse of the World Trade Center.

Working for the federal government, as a public and occupational health official in New York City I witnessed, first hand, the carnage left in the wake of the disaster.  I was responsible for overseeing the safety and welfare of many law enforcement workers on the joint terrorism taskforce.  I handed out enormous amounts of safety equipment and collected and examined hundreds of environmental and worker exposure samples of air, water, dust, and soil in an effort to better understand where, if any, the immediate or long term risks to health were.

Then, equipped with what I have learned about the behavior of these contaminants, I went before hundreds of frightened, shocked, sad, angry, and confused federal and private workers in an attempt to help them to understand the science of it all.  All this in the face of my own desperate uncertainty about what the true health outcomes may eventually be for those directly involved and most substantially exposed during the unfolding of the disaster. 

While this memory represents one of the darkest, saddest and most startling periods of my life, I am now able to feel great pride for the contributions I was able to make, and for the contributions of people everywhere who came together and gave of themselves so unselfishly.  9-11-01, Never Forget. 

David J. Eisenhardt

Hi,

I am now a Members Club steward and have a tendency to juggle with things behind the bar to the amusement of customers occasionally some will say you should be in a circus most are surprised when I say I was but it was a the Lion tamers assistant a very interesting job from day one the interview was in a farm yard in Widnes about three foot away from the trailer containing several Lions roaring in my left ear as this never phased me I got the job part of my duties was to feed the Lions and Tigers and make sure they have their medication which involved pushing the tablets into the meat they were about to eat which more often than not was pigs heads as they came free in exchange for show tickets from local slaughter houses, another duty was the cleaning out which involved getting the lions over to one side of the trailer placing a divider in to keep them over that side clean out the vacant side the swap them over one day while sweeping out I was backing up brushing away when the boss yelled out STOP I stopped looked round and I was slowly backing up towards a hungry lion probably thinking here comes dinner very intresting.

Steve Cook

Talk about working live!  When I was 16 I had a job doing promotional work for the Fruit of the Loom underwear company through a temp agency.  I had to dress up like a thing of grapes and walk around the Meadowlands parking lot (New Jersey) and have people fill out surveys all day in 100 degree weather.  When the day was over I was usually five pounds lighter and demoralized—my friends still tease me about this.  Eat your heart out Peter Gabriel!  Anyway, see ya in the states.  Back to working live....

Josh Leibowitz

Hello,

The most interesting/disgusting job I ever had was working as an animal care technician at a children’s science museum. The job required that part of the morning (usually done before lunch) was to clean out the cages and feed about 26 different specie of exotic cockroach from around the world, as well as the holding units of a few extremely venomous spiders and scorpions.  None-the-less sticking your hand in a smelly cage of 500 roaches was not the best part of my work history. 

Frank Palmieri

OK,

So here I was fresh out of college - a journalism major, looking for a real job in the “real” world. I was offered a position in the small Northern Ontario Canada town of Mattawa with the local newspaper. The newspaper was housed in the back of a building which also housed the local funeral home and a flower shop - you see the owner/publisher of the newspaper owned the only flower shop in town and her husband, the Mayor, ran the only local funeral home - oh, and he was also the Coroner.....Let’s just say our paper has the best obituary section you’ve ever seen.......

So, back to my job - well, my job description had me doing reporting, photography, typesetting, layout, printing, darkroom work and “other related duties” (always beware of that last statement....). It turns out that “other related duties” included everything from unloading truck-loads of flowers, walking the owner’s dogs (did I mention that she also had about 8 dogs) and to my surprise - moving caskets and the occasional dead body.

Of course, while working at my “interesting” job, I needed to live “somewhere” and as the vacancy rate in Mattawa is negligible, I ended up living in the Trans-Canada Motel, across the street from work. I had a room with Purple and Black wallpaper and a red, white and blue bed -and the room was situated directly above the Hotel bar’s stage - where really struggling rock bands performed Friday and Saturday nights and Monday through Thursday featured the “best strippers in Northern Ontario”............

It is 3 months out of my life that I will never forget...........

David Carswell
Hamilton, Ontario Canada

Many individuals may only dream of ocean crossings and white sand beaches, but in 1985 I was fortunate enough to leave my home in San Francisco and set sail on a 3-year circumnavigation.  I had spent the past 2 years constructing the boat which in itself was an unbelievable experience learning and using skills from hull layout, welding, carpentry, joinery, painting and rigging.

The voyage itself was the reward for the construction effort but the responsibilities aboard the yacht were many.  Working on the boat encompassed many skills including planning, navigation, cooking, electrical, refrigeration, engine mechanical as well as paint and general maintenance skills.

The voyage took me from San Francisco to the South Pacific, visiting French Polynesia, the Cook Islands, New Zealand, Tonga, Fuji, Solomon Islands and many more unique countries.  Australia and parts of Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand were also discovered before setting sail across the Indian Ocean, first visiting the Seychelles and then on to Kenya and then South Africa were I spent the summer hurricane season. After 5 months in South Africa working on various boats to supply my needs for the next leg of the trip, I headed to the Caribbean.  After 3 months in the British and American Virgin Islands I ventured through the Panama Canal and proceeded back up the west coast of Mexico eventually arriving back in San Francisco.

Now many years latter I’m trying to provide my young family with similar sailing experiences albeit on a smaller scale while sailing on the Long Island Sound.

My choice to sail was a significant departure from normal life and many people considered it a waste of time that would eventually hurt my future working career. But given the opportunity I was able to Live and Work live in a very unique way.

My sailing part of my life has played and continues to play an instrumental role in my current work, which allows me to visit many of the places I once visited many years ago while on my voyage.

My recent business travels have allowed me to see Carl and his band play at the Powderham Castle in Exeter England several weeks ago.  This was a thrill for me, which brought back fond memories of many ocean crossings while listening to the world’s most extraordinary drummer while navigating across the world’s oceans.

Michael Gehb