A friend of mine once struck it rich overnight by selling "designer" pet rocks online, complete with little outfits and backstories. It was a wild idea that somehow took off!

My cousin recorded the audio of a fan for 8 hours about a decade ago and now has north of a billion “white noise” YouTube views and is one of the top podcasts on Spotify.

My uncle invented micro machines. Little toy cars in the early 90’s.
EDIT: when I see my uncle next I will show him this and all the people he brought joy to.

When I had to get a couple mandatory vaccines the summer before college because I had never had a single vaccine. (Anti-vax parents). I spent that entire summer getting 1 shot in each arm every week because I wanted to get all of them.

My mom brought me to an evangelical church multi-media show/“play” that simulated a school shooting (you then watch all the “heathen” children go to hell after they die) to ensure that I understood the gravity of hell and what not choosing Jesus as my savior meant for me.

I was nine. Still have nightmares about it at age 31.

Apparently other parents don’t do that. Huh! /s.

This is probably the opposite of what you expect

My family actually loves each other. A lot. I tell my mom and brother all the time (rip dad, miss the hell out of him), even my sister in law. Always end phone convos with I love yous and stuff.

This is in contrast to many of my friends. Their families are not affectionate at all. It’s off to me but mine is off to them.

I chalk it up to my dad having to take care of his brother and sister a lot and vowing to be around for his kids and my mom just being the baby of the family.

When I travelled across the country and spent a few weeks with my partner’s family during Christmas. Honestly, it was the fact that when his brother forgot to bring the stuffing to Christmas dinner everyone reacted appropriately and in proportion to the situation. Nobody died…we just ate more of the potatoes. Sure there was some gentle teasing towards his brother for forgetting the ONE item he was in charge of but everything turned out just fine. It was such an appropriate response to such a small problem. In comparison, the preceding year at my family’s Christmas my uncle KICKED my mother because they had a disagreement (and I don’t even remember what it was about).

There was obviously more to it than just this incident, but that’s the moment where it really hit me. Aaaaaand then I spiralled big time. I tried to break up with him because I fully planned to kill myself once I arrived back home. I thought there’s no coming back from this, my family and myself are so completely irredeemably WRONG that I don’t have any hope of being a functioning person, let alone part of a real FAMILY! What am I doing here, why am I wasting everyone’s time?

It was a very dark moment, and nobody could figure out what was going on. But even though I seemed absolutely insane, everybody just…carried on and continued trying to include me. 5 years later…we’re still together (and I’m slightly less crazy!).

Nurse: oftentimes we can't control death, only how we greet it, so for the love of God, do not refuse the comfort medication for your loved one. It's not going to [end] them, their disease is!! The comfort medication just help to ensure they have no pain or anxiety when they die. Let us help them so they don't die crying or trashing in bed, confused and scared out of their minds.

The hospice nurses loaded my dad the f**k up when he was dying and I'll forever be grateful for that.

Ejection seat mechanic. Goose would not have died in Top Gun. The canopy explosives can malfunction but moving at the speed that a Tomcat moves at would’ve ripped that canopy off and Goose would’ve escaped without perishing. Obviously done for dramatic effect.

Nail tech here. We are not uneducated or lacking intelligence. In order to do the job safely, we need a deep understanding of product chemistry, anatomy, and must able to recognize a ton of diseases and disorders that impact the hands and feet. In the US, we are also required to have continued education on these topics.

We also aren’t being greedy by charging higher prices. We not only have to purchase way more products for our services than other professions in the industry, but we also have some of the highest product costs. So no, we can’t afford to provide a LUXURY service with quality products, keep up with our educational requirements and also charge $20 for a full set or a pedicure. If you find a salon charging that low, run. They are absolutely cutting corners somewhere, and it’s anyone’s guess as to whether that cut comes from low quality products, safety, sanitation and disinfection, or labor law violations. For transparency sake, I am on the low end of pricing in my area and a full set starts at $60 and a pedicure starts at $45. At those prices, I’m barely making more than minimum wage after overhead.

Nursing is a profession, not a devotion, calling, whatever other b******t they tell you.

Yes, it’s an honor to care for people at their most vulnerable, but stop telling people they’ll be a terrible nurse if they say they became a nurse because of the job security or semi-decent wage.

Forester.
I am not the one who actually cuts and hauls the trees, that's a LOGGER. If you have a problem tree you need removed from your yard or trimmed, you need an ARBORIST.
My job is to create and implement management plans, cruise timber for volume and defect, and mark trees for the logger, among other preparatory and managerial tasks.
Furthermore, my presence does not mean that a forest is being clear-cut (hardly ever). "Clear-cut" does not necessarily mean the complete removal of every tree in an area. Most importantly, the cutting and removal of trees is not automatically a bad thing; more often than not a forested area needs to be thinned to encourage growth/production, increase carbon sequestration efficiency, and reduce fire risk.

Massage is not sexy, professionally. If you want a sexy massage...idk, do it with a partner or a sex worker, not your physio.

Teachers are NOT indoctrinating your children to be gay.

Logistics is a vital component of our society.

Everything we touch, everything from the doorknob of your home to the oil in your car to the coffee shop to your desk to your commute to your bed has employed around 10 people.

More if it’s food related.

Logistics wins wars and ends them.

Take a banana -

From the planting, fertilizer, cultivation and harvesting involves about 8 different types of transportation, warehousing, storage, distribution and delivery.

On average 17 people will physically touch a banana before it’s eaten (and very few people wash the outside of a banana)

I’ve been in logistics for years, previously a break bulk specialist with my area of expertise being Russia.

It’s a very interesting career

I'm an accountant. Whenever people jokingly talk about the good looking people in the office, it's always "Lisa from accounts".

As an accountant, I wish to point out that most of us look like a bulldog chewing a wasp.

I am a stay at home dad and former NICU nurse.

No, I do not sleep all day as a stay at home dad. No, I did not get to play with cute babies all day as a NICU nurse.

There is sooooo much more to the speech-language pathologist scope of practice than working with kids who stutter or can't say their "r"s. An entire half of the field is in the adult medical setting working with people who have dementia, swallowing disorders, oral cancer, strokes, Parkinson's disease, and voice disorders, plus some other niche areas like transgender voice or accent modification. The pediatric half of the field also works with AAC devices, social skills, literacy development, syntax, executive functioning, writing, feeding, and more.

I am a public librarian. While curating books is still a portion of the job, much of it these days is taken up by database assistance and training, program development and teaching, and public education. It’s much closer to school teaching, but for adults and without grading homework, than it was in the past.