Worst Jobs Celebrities had before they got famous

Kelly Clarkson  

Original ‘American Idol’ winner Kelly Clarkson held down a surprising number of jobs before becoming a superstar. You decide which of her pre-fame jobs was the worst. She was a vacuum cleaner saleswoman and a telemarketer in Ft. Worth, Texas. She also moonlighted as a cocktail waitress and one of those women who go from bar to bar hawking energy drinks.So it was reality television or bust for the recently-turned country music singer!

CORY MONTEITH

Monteith worked at a Wal-Mart, greeting customers as they entered the store, as a school bus driver, and then as a cab driver. Fitting, since he seems to drive the ladies crazy.

Monteith seems grateful for the experience, though, as he says in an interview  , “If you’re an aspiring actor and you want a good character study, you should be a taxi driver for a while — you see a lot of characters.”

Blake Shelton

Blake Shelton probably had the most boring pre-fame job. He dubbed tapes — as in cassette tapes. There’s a small portion of Taste of Country readers who’ve never held a cassette tape (or tried to reel it back in with a pencil), but even those who remember the days of Side A and Side B didn’t know that people got paid to dub cassette tapes. That would be like if people got paid to look at Facebook all day. Oh, wait…

Another job Shelton held before releasing ‘Austin’ in 2001 was painting houses. He says he liked that job much better.

Diddy

Even the mega glamorous Diddy — aka. P. Diddy, aka rapper and millionaire mogul Sean Combs — came from not-so-glam beginnings.

Before becoming a star, Diddy was working at El Torito, a Mexican restaurant where he had — legitimately — the worst job ever: cleaning the bathrooms. And in true Diddy form, he’s not so humble about it.

In an interview with EW, Diddy makes sure to defend his old job while still coming out on top, saying, “It was a job! But I was the best bathroom cleaner that ever was.” We bet you were, Diddy. We bet you were.