While surfing through outdoors and wildlife articles, particularly those focused on the fate of wolf pacts, I stumbled across this quote:

“Stephanie Simek, wolf conflict-resolution manager, said the department investigated 20 reported attacks on pets and livestock last year, but found that wolves were actually involved in only four of them. Confirmed wolf attacks left one calf dead and three dogs injured, she said in the release.”

via State’s wolf population grew last year | Outdoors | The Olympian.

It left me with a single burning question: What exactly IS a wolf conflict-resolution manager and how did Ms. Simek land the job?

One of my side fascinations over the years has been the identification of jobs I never would have thought about. These are things that no one talked about back in school (when the world was screaming ‘what will your career be?’) because a) it never occurred to us that such a thing existed, b) obviously someone had to be doing that job but it didn’t become obvious until someone pointed it out, or c) we had no way of knowing the field, much less the need, even existed.

A few more examples:

• Naming paint colors
• Painting false eyes (custom painting geared toward perfectly imitating the remaining real eye)
• Tattooing breasts after reconstructive surgery (medical profession geared toward realism, not decor)

If I run across additional ‘who knew?” job titles, I’ll be sure to post them here.

(C) Adora Myers 2014