Poll: Fun or Enjoyable Jobs you've had

[luxagraf]

line cook (not chef, which I did later, but had more responsibility and a corresponding drop in fun)
painter (like houses and apartments, not the artistic kind)
cigarette promo person -- Still my strangest job. I got paid to hand out packs of cigarette in bars. At that particular point in my life the line between that job and the rest of life was very thin.

[SavingWithBabies]

Summarizing: Interesting to observe that mostly low paid jobs are the most fulfilling

I realized my favorite might have been being a chaperone on a high school class trip. It paid $0 but I did get to work on clearing ditches on the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico (off in parts you don't get to go to if you are a tourist) along with a very long train ride. There were some downsides like having to discipline kids (or avoiding disciplining them due to being too angry). But toss in a little overnight river rafting, some day hikes to hot springs and mountain lakes, etc. It was a lot of fun.

To be clear, by $0 I mean I wasn't paid but I didn't have to pay for food, travel expenses, activities or lodging.

@EdithKeeler Did you work any weddings while catering? I always wondered if that was a good gig or not.

[theanimal]

My favorite job was one of my firsts. For two summers during high school I worked as a driving range attendant at one of the top public courses in the nation. This was back when all I thought/did was golf 24/7 during the warmer months of the year. My boss was my golf coach and I worked with a bunch of guys around the same age range. The work wasn't bad and involved very little time inside. The first year I worked the second shift and drove around in the golf cart picking up balls on the range. I'd throw on my ipod and drive around until the cart was full. Otherwise we'd clean the balls and fill baskets. When the boss took off, we'd have closest to the pin contests. During thunderstorms, there'd usually be nobody around (except under the covered hitting stations) and we'd just hang out inside, shooting the shit and watching golf on TV. At closing, we'd have to clean the range (picking up every ball). This often led to more shenanigans with the golf carts as we rode around. The best was after a rain and the grass was wet, we'd do donuts and slide all over the place. The area had lots of hills so the carts had gas engines, much faster than the electric carts found most everywhere else.

The second summer I was promoted to the morning shift. This involved less work with balls and more grounds crew work. Filling in divots, clearing brush and other maintenance. Less guys to work with but still very enjoyable. The entire golf club was huge, it had multiple courses plus a driving range and we spent a lot more time just roaming around. One of the guys I worked with was an older immigrant from Mexico. We'd banter back and forth in the limited spanish I could muster. During this time, I also often got called to work as a caddy on the top course at the club. I worked as a forecaddie, so I didn't have to carry anyone's bag, just run ahead, find their balls and do the usual caddy stuff. That was great too. I got paid an avg of $140 cash for about 4 hrs of work, just running around on one of the top ranked golf courses in the country. Man, I loved that job...

[unemployable]

I processed estimated tax payments people made to the IRS. (I wasn't working for the IRS, or in an IRS office, but at major bank that had the infrastructure to handle millions of checks being sent in at once.) Basically typing numbers into a computer; I recall each payment had to be entered by three different people to reduce errors. I suspect most of this is automated now, even if you mail your payments in rather than e-file.

Anyway, the interesting part of this was seeing the different amounts of checks, the different kinds of checks, and the people who sent them in. Lots of $5 and $10 payments because people didn't want to run afoul of the IRS. This was in Pennsylvania but the addresses of the taxpayers were New England and upstate New York (not NYC). Lots of six-figure checks from Connecticut and a fair number of athletes and celebrities including an SI swimsuit cover model, back when that was a big deal. Closest I ever came...

Biggest check was for exactly $1 million (wasn't from the supermodel). The woman who ran the floor (also not a supermodel) told me it was coming and wanted me to verify after I entered it. I guess I had made it into the "trustworthy" category. Apparently they sneak blank (no payee) checks in to see who's honest; you're supposed to immediately report when you get one and I had gotten a couple.

This is why, when you mail a check to the IRS, it's usually to a different state, even if there's a processing facility in your state. They don't want people knowing their neighbor's social security numbers and tax info.

[Farm_or]

Coaching youth soccer. ($00.00)

I was assistant coach. The head coach immigrated from South America so soccer for him was ubiquitous. I knew very little to start.

The very first practice, he split the team into two groups. He sent me with the second group to go practice juggling (hands free, of course). It was something that I had never attempted and watched what the head coach was doing from a distance.

I thought I got the starting technique; spin the ball towards yourself in the toss up. I was so nervous and wanted badly to make a positive first impression for my audience of a dozen ten years old boys. When I couldn't delay any longer, I gave it my best first shot. To everyone's amazement, especially mine, I pulled it off looking like a pro. Kept the ball up and front for almost twenty taps!

We were undefeated that first year. We had one ringer. The second year, we went completely winless, zero ringers... Great times! Learned a lot about soccer and life.

[EdithKeeler]

@EdithKeeler Did you work any weddings while catering? I always wondered if that was a good gig or not.

Nope, no weddings. Mostly just parties. I worked catering for two employers—one was a bakery that did catering for small parties usually at people’s homes, or maybe a small open house at an office. The other was my college campus’s catering department which was great—wine and cheese receptions for visiting artists and authors and musicians and scientists, usually. I got to meet some really neat people—Nadine Gordimer, Grace Murray Hopper, etc.

[EdithKeeler]

Summarizing: Interesting to observe that mostly low paid jobs are the most fulfilling

I wonder if they were just fun because we were young, we were working with people we liked, and we were not yet ground down by the whole “responsibilities of life” thing.

I loved the 2 summers I worked at an amusement park. I ran the bumper cars. Fun, outside, active, shared a quart beer with my BF every day on the way home, and only had my car insurance payment and avoiding pregnancy to worry about. Good times!