I get the feeling you've never worked in either a call center, distribution center, or custom metal shop. I've either worked in them, or had them as customers and, trust me, this is where many of these folks work - that and other hourly jobs with minimal, if any, customer interaction. Now, don't get me wrong, many of these folks are incredibly skilled at what they do (which causes mgmt to look past appearance and hire based on "skillz to pay the billz"), show up to work on time, are great people to know, etc. They just have some odd desire to modify themselves outside of the normal.

Of course, there are definitely some damn wierdos out there, too.