Category:
Jobs and Occupations
Jobs and Occupations
Miss Future Secretary
From what I can gather, the 'Miss Future Secretary' contest was launched in 1954 by the National Secretaries Association. Though I don't believe it was a national contest. Local chapters of the NSA selected winners from high schools.Miss Future Secretaries continued to be chosen for three decades, until the early 1980s, when being labeled a "future secretary" had come to sound more like an insult than a positive career aspiration.
Wikipedia notes that the National Secretaries Association changed its name in 1982 to Professional Secretaries International, and in 1998 changed it again to the International Association of Administrative Professionals.
Fresno Bee - Apr 21, 1957
Fresno Bee - Apr 24, 1959
Fort Lauderdale News Sun - Apr 25, 1965
Posted By: Alex - Fri Jun 30, 2023 -
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Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Jobs and Occupations
The Littlechaps
Read an extensive history at the link, with many scary pictures.
Posted By: Paul - Wed Mar 22, 2023 -
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Category: Enlargements, Miniatures, and Other Matters of Scale, Family, Horror, Jobs and Occupations, Toys, Dolls and Stuffed Animals, 1960s
The Making of An American
The immigrant's story: twas ever thus.
Posted By: Paul - Sun Mar 19, 2023 -
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Category: Emigrants, Immigrants and Borders, Ethnic Groupings, Jobs and Occupations, Languages, PSA’s, 1920s
Rent-a-Drunk
For only $3 a night, Colin White would rent out one of the drunks from his pub to liven up a party.White explains that when people are worried about their parties getting off to a slow start, they call up and say: "Oh, Mr. White, I wonder whether you could send us around a drunk about 8:30 p.m.?"
So his employees could legitimately claim to be professional drunks.
Asbury Park Press - Nov 26, 1971
Posted By: Alex - Wed Jan 11, 2023 -
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Category: Business, Inebriation and Intoxicants, Jobs and Occupations, 1970s
Miss Wisconsin Cheese
Marvene Fischer won the title of Miss Wisconsin in 1948. The Armour food company then decided to name a brand of cheese 'Miss Wisconsin' in her honor. It simultaneously hired her to serve as the traveling ambassador for the brand. In this position, she became known as Miss Wisconsin Cheese.She ended up working for nine years as Miss Wisconsin Cheese. During this time she reportedly traveled more than two million miles in 48 states, visited more than a thousand towns, and distributed over 15 tons of cheese samples in more than 8000 food stores.
Binghamton Press and Sun-Bulleting - June 6, 1951
Here are some more details about her job from the Portage Daily Register (Dec 21, 1953):
Miss Fischer's carefully planned visit to a town usually sets off a varied series of events, most of which are reported in the press and over radio and TV broadcasts.
She is greeted by mayors, governors, senators, congressmen, movie stars, chiefs of police, food editors, currently reigning local beauty queens, and other assorted celebrities.
Most of these meetings are highlighted by a formal presentation of a basket of cheese by Miss Fischer in exchange for a gift symbolic of the city being visited. She has received roses, posies, rhododendrons, wine, fruit, foam rubber pillows, cake, and Indian headdress, and any number of giant keys of the city. In St. Joseph, Mo., she was made a deputy sheriff. At the Rockingham Park race track, Miss Wisconsin Day was proclaimed in her honor. In San Francisco, she toured a submarine, and the event was officially publicized by the U.S. Navy.
Miss Fischer takes all this gracefully, in fact gives a continuous impression that it's all a lot of fun. Actually, a lot of good hard salesmanship is involved.
Miss Fischer does most of her traveling by air and prefers to travel alone. She says she has no need for a chaperone. "Why I have about 65,000 chaperones — all Armour employees," she says.
Glamour may be fleeting, figures Miss Fischer, but cheese is here to stay.
She is greeted by mayors, governors, senators, congressmen, movie stars, chiefs of police, food editors, currently reigning local beauty queens, and other assorted celebrities.
Most of these meetings are highlighted by a formal presentation of a basket of cheese by Miss Fischer in exchange for a gift symbolic of the city being visited. She has received roses, posies, rhododendrons, wine, fruit, foam rubber pillows, cake, and Indian headdress, and any number of giant keys of the city. In St. Joseph, Mo., she was made a deputy sheriff. At the Rockingham Park race track, Miss Wisconsin Day was proclaimed in her honor. In San Francisco, she toured a submarine, and the event was officially publicized by the U.S. Navy.
Miss Fischer takes all this gracefully, in fact gives a continuous impression that it's all a lot of fun. Actually, a lot of good hard salesmanship is involved.
Miss Fischer does most of her traveling by air and prefers to travel alone. She says she has no need for a chaperone. "Why I have about 65,000 chaperones — all Armour employees," she says.
Glamour may be fleeting, figures Miss Fischer, but cheese is here to stay.
Unfortunately I haven't been able to find many details about what became of Marvene Fischer after her time as Miss Wisconsin Cheese. The only info I came across was a listing for a Marvene Fischer, age 94, living in Wisconsin. About the right age, and living in the right state — so I'm guessing it's her.
Miss Wisconsin Cheese in Denver, 1949
Posted By: Alex - Sun Aug 21, 2022 -
Comments (3)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Food, Jobs and Occupations, 1940s
Steel Mill Archery
My mother's family lived in the Pittsburgh area, and a lot of them (including my great-grandfather) worked in the steel mills. But I hadn't known that the mills employed archers to ignite the gas coming out of the tall bleeder stacks.
Shenandoah Evening Herald - Dec 29, 1975
Posted By: Alex - Fri May 27, 2022 -
Comments (1)
Category: Jobs and Occupations, Industry, Factories and Manufacturing, 1970s
45 Jobs in 45 States
In January 1939, Lyra Ferguson of Missouri left her job as a church secretary and took off on a tour of the United States. Her goal was to spend a week working in all 48 states. Alaska and Hawaii weren't yet states, so she didn't have to worry about those. She was equipped with only "a new automobile, a small wardrobe, a little pistol and $200." I'm not sure of her exact age, but news reports said she was "over 40."She made advance plans to secure a job in a handful of states, but mostly she just arrived and tried to find employment. She also tried to find jobs in industries that seemed representative of each state.
Ultimately she managed to find one-week jobs in 45 states but failed to get work in New York, Nevada, or Arizona.
Her plan had been to write a book about her adventures, but in a later interview she said her attempt at a book was "terrible." So that plan fell through.
However, she did take film footage of her entire journey and later edited this together into a movie which she showed to various groups. Unfortunately I can't find any evidence that this movie still exists.
Below is a list of her jobs in 42 states. I couldn't find any info about her jobs in Arkansas, Colorado, or West Virginia.
- Alabama: performed at the assembly exercises of the Tuskegee Institute
- California: worked for an overall company at the San Francisco fair
- Connecticut: typewriter factory
- Delaware: tanned kid skins in a tannery
- Florida: packed oranges
- Georgia: cafeteria
- Idaho: dug potatoes
- Illinois: made wax fruits and flowers
- Indiana: manufactured refrigerators
- Iowa: pen factory
- Kansas: packed dog food
- Kentucky: ironed shirts in a laundromat
- Louisiana: packed shrimp
- Maine: helped out in a lighthouse
- Maryland: tea packing factory
- Massachusetts: served as attendant in an insane asylum
- Michigan: maid on a Great Lakes steamer during tulip festival
- Minnesota: sewed buttons on suits
- Mississippi: shucked oysters
- Missouri: social hostess at a hotel
- Montana: cooked on a dude ranch
- Nebraska: booked well-known artists for an agency
- New Hampshire: paper factory
- New Jersey: cosmetics factory
- New Mexico: sewed labels on ties made by Native Americans
- North Carolina: weaved homespun suiting
- North Dakota: picked chickens
- Ohio: worked in the printing room of a newspaper
- Oklahoma: wiped windshields at a gas station
- Oregon: packed salmon
- Pennsylvania: made chocolate candy at Hersheys
- Rhode Island: baking powder factory
- South Carolina: textile industry
- South Dakota: took pictures of the Black Hills for the association of commerce
- Tennessee: washed turnip greens
- Texas: delivered packages during the Christmas holidays
- Utah: wove blankets in a woolen mill
- Vermont: helped make maple syrup
- Virginia: weighed peanuts
- Washington: worked at a general store in a logging camp
- Wisconsin: milked cows for a dairy
- Wyoming: worked at Yellowstone
Pittsburgh Press - Dec 24, 1939
Weekly Kansas City Star - May 8, 1940
Sedalia Democrat - Sep 23, 1941
The only follow-up info I can find about her was that in 1956 she had just returned home from a world tour during which she collected souvenirs from the countries she visited. She obviously really liked to travel!
Posted By: Alex - Sun Jan 23, 2022 -
Comments (9)
Category: Jobs and Occupations, Travel, Tourists and Tourism, 1930s
Wrinkle Chaser
Unusual job: A wrinkle chaser uses a hot-air jet to 'chase' wrinkles out of leather boots and shoes. This is done using a wrinkle chaser machine.
Tacoma News Tribune - Jan 6, 1957
Posted By: Alex - Sun Aug 15, 2021 -
Comments (1)
Category: Jobs and Occupations, Shoes
Paul Kim v. IRS
2013: Paul Chulhie Kim filed suit against the IRS for $20 million in damages, alleging that he had been waiting 24 years for them to get back to him about his job application. On account of this long wait, he said, he had suffered various health problems including "starvation, heart attacks, heart failure, kidney failure, liver failure, pneumonia, seizures, cancer [and] mental illness." It seems that he never bothered to try to get a different job. He wanted the $20 million to "restore [his] trust in the American people and restore confidence in [his] natural United States citizenship."The judge noted that Kim appeared to be hinting that some kind of employment discrimination had occurred, without stating this explicitly. But even so, because Kim had waited so long to file his case, the statute of limitations had long since expired. So the judge dismissed the case.
Kim appealed the decision, but the appeals court affirmed the District Court's decision.
More info: Penn Record, law.villanova.edu
Posted By: Alex - Fri Dec 04, 2020 -
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Category: Jobs and Occupations, Lawsuits
Organoleptic analysis
Odd job: the FDA employs people to smell fish in order to determine if it's decomposed. They refer to this as "organoleptic analysis".There are four categories with fish. "The first is fresh. That's the way fish are right after they are caught. Then there is number one. That's the commercial grade. Most seafood should be number one. It may not smell fresh, but it's not decomposed.
"The next is number two. That means slight decomposition. Whether the fish is all right depends on the product. The criteria are based on percentages. And last is number three, the really bad ones. Definitely decomposed. Number three is so putrid and stinky you wouldn't want to eat it."
"The next is number two. That means slight decomposition. Whether the fish is all right depends on the product. The criteria are based on percentages. And last is number three, the really bad ones. Definitely decomposed. Number three is so putrid and stinky you wouldn't want to eat it."
The article I'm getting the info from was published in 1978, but I'm assuming the FDA must still employ people to smell fish. Unless they've got a fancy gadget to do it now.
Detroit Free Press - Jul 18, 1978
Posted By: Alex - Tue Nov 24, 2020 -
Comments (1)
Category: Jobs and Occupations, Fish, Smells and Odors
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