Not My Job: The Strangest Work Stories Out of New York’s Southern Tier

My question of the week may have been a strange one. Well, I came up with it after watching an old television sitcom where an employee of a business was asked to perform a strange task that was really not a part of their job.

Get our free mobile app

The question I posed on social media was this: "What's the strangest thing you've had to do at work that was outside of your job description?" I wasn't sure what kind of response I'd get, if any, but wow, did I get some really interesting and somewhat very strange answers.

One of my relatives stated that she had to pour water down the bathroom floor drain from time to time to alleviate sewer orders from filling the air. At my workplace, I remember once when a couple of my co-workers had to chase a chipmunk through the offices and out of the building. How it got in, well never know.

So, how about the responses I received on social media? Well, settle in and take a look below at some of the more strange answers I received. And yes, these are real answers from local people who answered my question. Do you believe them? For more answers, visit our Facebook page.

What's the strangest thing you've had to do at work that was outside of your job description?

• Mickey - Clean grills that were left outside and finding dead mice in some.
• Kayla - Put a fire out in a cigarette disposal...I worked at a bank.
• Johnny - A lifetime ago (late 60's) I was transferred to a different location. I was to learn from the guy running the place which I did then the district manager called me on the phone and gave me the guys position, and told me to let him go and to be sure I escorted him out the door. All of which I did, but felt out of place doing it!
• Jill - Clean up after a flood because they were too cheap to hire a company to do it.
• Penny - Early morning phone call to come to work and climb through a service window to open a door as the crew had somehow locked all their keys inside the room. I was the only one who could fit.
• Stacie - Clean outside windows, my first time on a ladder! I was a waitress!
• Carla - Washing an elder gentleman's poodle in the bath tub. He was in the process of doing it when I got there. I was afraid he would fall.
• Amber - Change a kids diaper while I was a receptionist at a chiropractors office. The child wasn't mine, it was my boss' and I was told to watch her while she had a client.
• Sean - One time my boss had an "accident" at work and I had to drive over to his house and get him a fresh pair of drawers.

• Carolyn - Catch a snake that came in the building. Also a cat.

• Jessica - Hold cricoid pressure during intubation (press on someone’s neck  while  tube is put down their throat.) I’m just the X-ray girl.
• Kadi - Scrub the hard stuff stuck to the floor with a hairbrush, because housekeeping only had a wipe mop and refused to do their job.
• Gould - During the 2006 flood I had to squeegee water down the sewer drains in the floor, while to my left is a electrical outlet smoking in the water, and as the head mechanic picks up the four plug outlet and sets it on a cardboard box it falls back in the water, and finally they shut the power out.
• Elizabeth - Take the "Made in China" stickers off hundreds of pens to be given out to Union workers at a company meeting.
• Jim - Bury my boss’s dog.
• Debby - Catch a squirrel, a snake and a few birds.
• Donnina - Predict the exact date and time a lake was going to thaw out.
• Louise - Mopping the floor after a pregnant lady's water broke as she was eating her lunch at the old Burger King with the gazebo at the mall!
• Tiffany - Stand in an room with a dead body in the ER because the nursing assistant didn’t want to be alone with the body.
• Stacy - Take the side by side and go feed the deer. Hold the boss's dog for a veterinarian visit. Find an hmmm... How to word this...An exotic dancer for the Christmas party. Oh the list goes on and on.
• Mark - I was helping to set up my company's sales booth at a new shopping mall when somebody I didn't know and never saw before came up to me and told me to lay out all the food at the buffet table. I just shrugged and said, "Well, okay."
• Denise  - My manager had cataract surgery, and I had to put drops in her eyes every day.