Welcome to the world's wackiest jobs.
But don't tell these hard workers they're in the wrong occupation: they wouldn't have it any other way.
Mark Gooley,
from Geelong, taste-tests doggy dental sticks, chewy bones and liver
mixture as the owner of dog and horse food company Huds and Toke.
"If you wouldn't put it in your mouth don't you dare expect your dog to eat it,'' the canine food critic said.
"I'm looking for palatability. I want it to be soft in the mouth and I want it to be an enjoyable experience for the dog.
"The
dog might not be able to tell me 'that tastes terrible' so I have to
taste it and if it doesn't pass the taste test then it's not going off
the factory floor to the animals.''
Asked what his wife thinks when he kisses her after work, the
50-year-old said "there is always a bottle of Listerine somewhere.''
"People don't understand me because I talk about my love for dogs and
my love for horses and I'm making a horse treat,'' he said.
"I
don't know how to explain it. It's like being a mad scientist: people
look at me blankly and say `I just don't get it, I understand but I
don't get it'.
"I'm stuck in that box of no man's land. But I wouldn't do anything else.''
Consumer goods company Unilever _ who own brands of deodorant _ employ the likes of
Peta Jones who loves her job just as much as Mr Gooley, even though she has to sniff strangers' armpits for a living.
As
the company's "underarm odour assessor'' she works on research and
development for brands like Rexona, Dove, Lynx and Impulse.
"The
first time I took part in sniffing it did seem a bit strange however,
within the first week of the job it was fine,'' she said.
"It (soon) felt normal as there are a team of us doing the job and I could see the results we were producing
were useful.
"When I sniff an underarm I am testing for the level of odour, the type of odour and measuring how good our products are.''
Watching paint dry may sound mind-numbingly boring to some but Taubmans technical manager
Paul McCorkell has made it an art form.
Mr
McCorkell, 39, of Sydney, cumulatively spends at least a few days a
year staring at walls and painted panels at the company's Villawood
factory.
"I'm not going to sit there for two hours obviously but we would evaluate the paint at regular intervals,'' he said.
"If
you're out on site you talk to the painters about how the brushing and
rolling is and you are also talking to them about how it is drying.
"I
would look at the paint every few minutes and evaluate it for different
appearance. We need to make sure the customer is happy that it dries
down to a uniform appearance.''
Mr McCorkell said he finds paint a lot more fascinating than the average person.
"I
find when I walk into a building while people might be admiring the
architecture, I'm looking at the paint work and how well it has been
applied or not _ whether it is a good job or not,'' he said.
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