Questionable Jobs: Watching Paint Dry

I like watching paint dry as much as the next guy. Except, apparently, not as much as this guy:

This guy is Keith Jackson–a man who literally watches paint dry for a living.

With stopwatch and clipboard, he’s an anomaly. A juxtaposition. Part-scientist, part-layman. A joke.

But he’s not poor.

Rather, in the last 30 years, without any formal education, Jackson has somehow landed in the upper-middle income bracket by watching fresh paint harden on concrete–granted, he does it with a white lab coat and a professional title. 

His title: “Technical Manager” for AquaTec Coatings, a London-based company who paints, among other things, the walls and floors of the London Underground.

Questionable Jobs in Entertainment: Best Boy Grip

What’s a “best boy grip”? 

Ever ask yourself that question at the end of the movie when the credits play and that dubious title rolls up and off screen?

I wanna run wires when I grow up!

There’s too little time to think. The guy has some Eastern European last name. A fat guy stands up and blocks the screen, you’re girlfriend wants to leave, and you forget to look it up later.

Well, it happened the other night and I actually remembered to look it up.

The word has two root words combined to make a title: “best boy” and grip”. 

“Best boy” is an old title a master would bestow upon their most skilled apprentice. “Grips” are technicians.

So, aside from an errand boy who flies across set with an arm thrown out dressed up in a Super Hero’s outfit like a twelve year on a caffeine binge, “best boy grips” are nothing more than the assistant to the head lighting and rigging technicians, either a “gaffer” or a “key grip”.

So in other words, they’re not as cool as we had hoped.