It wasn't really to make a living, but I did work (and got paid) as a crew chief on a 7-story tennis shoe for a week:
I've worked several jobs where I washed dirt and made little worms and patties out of mud. (Materials testing labs...soil gradation and plasticity index tests.) I also blew up cylinders of concrete and washed all the oil out of asphalt with nasty chemicals.
I had a three buddies in high school who spent one or two summers working for Sears in Albuquerque wearing Disney-sanctioned Eyore, Tigger, and Winnie the Pooh costumes at store and school events.
I used to be casual beer-drinking buddies with a carpenter here in LA who built all sorts of TV and movie sets. Remember the car commercial with the champaign glasses on the hood of the car? He built that one. He was also involved in some of the Academy Awards sets.
I also was friends with a guy who worked as a "property master" for films and TV. He was in charge of making sure all the props were correct for the scene. He was very proud of his cigarette smoking machine. When shooting a scene where an actor is smoking a cigarette, they needed a way to be able to re-shoot the scene numerous times, but have the actor's cigarette remain at the same length. He had a box that he could plug a cigarette into, and within a few seconds it'd smoke it down however far he needed for the scene. They would use one cig for each take.
The husband of my pool team's captain is a color timer for Technicolor. Still not sure what the job really involves, but he's in high demand (travels all over the world to fix things gone bad on films). He also won a Oscar for technical achievement as the result of some new device he pioneered that allows directors to see the day's shooting much more rapidly.