THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Fun Stuff => CHATTER => Topic started by: SirJuggles on 25 Feb 2009, 20:15
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So it has come to my attention that some people out there have had some really cool jobs in the past. And I thought that is something that I would like to hear more about. I'll go first:
I got super lucky with my first job. It started as an internship, and then my best buddy and I were hired on part-time for the summer since we were already trained. The company I worked for was called Premier Jet, and we played with airplanes. Expensive airplanes. Basically the business was a very high-class compound of hangars and pretty lobbies, and when people wanted to fly on their private/corporate/chartered plane we would take care of the rest for them. My job was officially a "line porter", which basically amounted to "valet". People pulled up in shiny cars and gave me the keys. I would then take their luggage and go load it on their plane, and depending on how busy we were I would also pull the chocks (brake-thingies around the wheels) and marshall the plane out to the runway. That's right, I got to be the dude with the giant earmuffs and the glowy lightsaber things. Then I would go back out to the front and park their nice expensive cars for them. At this point my work was done for a few hours. Since I was the new guy I also made lunch runs, but we made great tips and the guys usually paid for my lunch anyway. So yeah, I'm kinda sad I don't have that job anymore (moved for university), and am also a little afraid that any other job I get won't be as fun.
What about you guys? I apologize if this seems self-indulgent, but I really am curious. What cool/crazy/fun jobs have you had? Tell us about them!
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this was a job a coworker of mine worked, not me, and i guess it's not a "really cool job" but it is the best thing i have ever heard in my life pretty much? so i'm going to put it in here anyway.
my friend had a summer job working in a biscuit factory and got paid minimum wage to sit in a room and watch packages of biscuits roll down a conveyor belt. all she had to do was watch them roll down the belt for 8 hours a day and make sure none of them were defective. however, if she did see a defective package of biscuits... she had to poke them off the belt with a stick.
let that sink in - my friend got paid full-time to poke boxes with a stick. it's like something out of a cartoon.
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That does not seem like a good job at all
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Blacksmith shop internship.
you are jealous.
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My mom recently retired from the Air Force, where she had a very nice long career beginning with metallurgical engineering (lots of analysis things. She got to work with Cady Coleman!) and finishing up with revamping the entire evaluation system for the ENTIRE Air Force. :) She now teaches eighth graders. And probably prefers the military :P
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my family used to own a Gaming store, so basically I got paid to run, play in, and win Magic: The Gathering tournaments.
shit yeah.
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I worked for NAMCO BANDAI Games America as a video game tester. So basically I would play video games for 8 hours and get paid to do so.
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I once was employed at NAMbLA as an assistant rapist.
Those were some good times.
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I used to work at my Junior College's computer lab. It was sickeningly cushy and I was paid $8.25 an hour.
My duties were limited to refilling paper in the printers and resetting student passwords. Any and all technical issues, be they hardware or software related, were delegated upwards toward full-time IT staff.
We were allowed up to 30 hours a week. I clocked in 26, on average.
We had no oversight from management. All issues relating to lab employees were basically handled by the employees as a collective. Unless you were opening you could come in late if you wanted (2 people on desk at all times) and you could leave early.
There were no real restrictions on what you could do in the lab. You could listen to music, watch video or play computer games (provided you had a laptop) I watched the entire series of the Wire on the clock, as well as Twin Peaks, Arrested Development and Mr. Show. All in all I was probably paid $1,500 just for watching video. I also beat Baldur's Gate 2 twice, which yielded me about $660, as well as a modded game of Fallout 2 which netted me about $330. Same for dicking around in Reason 4.
God, it was the greatest fucking job on the planet. I miss it terribly.
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this was a job a coworker of mine worked, not me, and i guess it's not a "really cool job" but it is the best thing i have ever heard in my life pretty much? so i'm going to put it in here anyway.
my friend had a summer job working in a biscuit factory and got paid minimum wage to sit in a room and watch packages of biscuits roll down a conveyor belt. all she had to do was watch them roll down the belt for 8 hours a day and make sure none of them were defective. however, if she did see a defective package of biscuits... she had to poke them off the belt with a stick.
let that sink in - my friend got paid full-time to poke boxes with a stick. it's like something out of a cartoon.
That actually seems like a really, really, really boring job.
My friend's job is quite relaxed, I think he enjoys it, he's been doing it for a while now: He tests games for EA, he tested games for a couple of other companies beforehand, too. All he does all day is play games, take a second look at everything, make sure things are working [which sounds like there should be some work involved, but it takes a quick note and you're done], and..well..that's it.. Sometimes he just comes in and... Plays games.. He comes in high sometimes.. No one seems to notice. It looks like a giant LAN party at his office. The only bad thing I suppose is the nerd-stench and some other drawbacks of having a lot of 'computer guys' around with you, but there should also be computer girls... Hopefully..Do they still exist?
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Some of these do in fact sound like Really Cool Jobs. That JC computer lab spot? Sweeeeeet.
I have heard mixed things about being game testers though. Some stories paint it as a magical wonderland of being paid to play games whenever you want. However, I've also heard horror stories about exhaustive, tedious debugging carried out under nigh-unlivable conditions for poverty wages. This does not sound like fun.
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I like having a hobby, like painting miniatures. Lots of people have told me "YOU NEED TO DO THAT FOR A JOB" and I do not want to make that my primary source of income (its true, I do paint miniatures in exchange for money, but I do it for people who are my friends, and it is only as a source of money to buy my own miniatures) because then it will no longer be my hobby and I won't enjoy it, because it'll just be work. Sure I'll like it for a while, but I'll probably have very little time to paint my own stuff because I'll constantly be painting something for someone else.
I think this same argument applies to video game testers, sure, it can be fun for a while, but what if you have to spend 8 hours testing a really shitty game? Do you want to go home and play any games after that? I know I wouldn't.
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I understand what you mean. I used to work for a Collectibles and Hobbies gameshop, and after working there, I got more turned off from MTG And such than I already was. My friend seems content, and the de-bugging doesn't take him very long, he mostly just mucks around on his gaming and never seems to complain about his job. If I had to rank him by how many video games he plays in relation to how many people I know, he'd be number 2 or 3.
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pretty sure i have the best job
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My favorite job so far was working in a luthier's workshop. I built an acoustic guitar there.
My boss, master, owner and sole employee of the workshop, was old school.
He was almost 70 when I worked there which was 7 years ago. He still works there.
And he was so good at all of it.
My next hopefully cool job involves strategery and companies. Don't know yet what it is precisely but the pay makes it seem really cool.
pretty sure i have the best job
Pretty sure you have the best avatar also.
lucky bastard
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I sit around playing video games and messing on the interent, occasionalyl writing a bit. Occasionally I have to perform in front of people. I'd say that's a pretty cool job.
At the moment I work part time in a bar beside an old theatre which is empty most of the time except during shows when it fills up with actors and artists who are all lovely to me. It is possibly the easiest job I have ever had.
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I used to work for a branch of the Massachusetts Water Resource Association called Save the Harbor/Save the Bay. Some days, I had to go to the YMCA and teach kids the value of water conservation, but most of the time, we just went canoeing or whale watching or something awesome on the water. I have a pretty awful fear of water, so it was kind of exhilerating for me.
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I worked at a marine lab for a while when I left school. Got to work on building a couple of weather stations that got sent up to the Arctic. They named one after me, this alone made the job pretty cool.
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3050/2762326621_3ac57be11b.jpg?v=0)
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That actually seems like a really, really, really boring job.
yeah it was a really boring job and i feel sort of bad for finding it funny, but when we were talking about past jobs and she brought that up i just could not stop laughing for ages at the fact that her only responsibility was to poke boxes with a stick. like, they gave her a poking stick and everything. if you really think about it, it is basically fordism at its most dehumanizing and scary but if you don't think about it and just focus on the mental image it is a pretty funny one.
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What cool/crazy/fun jobs have you had? Tell us about them!
1990-1991: Repo man in Los Angeles, specializing in Inglewood and Compton. The learning curve is climbed more quickly while being shot at.
1993: Armored Car Guard, moving around palletized stacks of currency in large, square, clear plastic bags. Personally responsible for more money than most people (including myself) had ever seen (or will again) in our entire lives.
1998: Bondsman/Bail Enforcement Agent, kicking in people's doors in the middle of the night or otherwise using underhanded kidnapping techniques in order to return them to jail.
2001-2004: Locksmith, breaking into people's cars, homes, and safes at the direction and request of the people who own them for money. Occasionally opening a door or safe for law enforcement or the Medical Examiner's office.
2004-Present: Emergency Medicine: Giving free estimates to people who are bleeding, thwarting natural selection with every call.
Been there, done that. Bought the T-shirt. Used it for rags.
S
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Robbie why do you have the Best Life? I am constantly jealous of the things you do. Please teach me your ways.
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pretty sure i have the best job
pretty sure you're a fag
(oh snap)
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Before the job I have now, I was a cleaner in a primary school. That was the worlds cushiest job.
It was paid for by the council, so whenever it was a hoilday, I wouldn't have to go in. Just paid a set amount every month. I was paid to do two hours of cleaning too, and I could get it done in an hour, so I ended playing with the kids things, or drawing on the chalkboard in the cleaners cupboard.
Now I work in a nightclub. On the face of it, it's pretty shitty. Having to deal with drunk people when you're on the bar or the floor is a pain in the ass, as well as picking up broken bottles, cleaning up vomit and occasionally unblocking a shitty toilet. I generally don't get home until 4 in the morning.
On the flip side, I work with the nicest people on the face of the earth. It's very much an 'all for one' atmosphere and we have a stupid amount of fun during and after work. Many a time when it's not busy, i've been involved in a dance off, or a hearty game of "balls" (a game in which you pretty much molest a co-worker, while shouting the name of what we've groped, i.e "balls!" "Boob!" "minge!"). I've also made friends with of lot of customers, which is a bonus, though i've not played 'balls' with any of them.
And there's an Alternative night on a monday, so it's not horrific music all week through.
I would definitely reccomend working in an pub/club. If anything, it makes you a whole lot more confident, and a hell of a lot more resilient to gross things.
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I work as a paintball marshall, which I guess sounds cool. What it means is that I occasionally get shot while I herd around small kids who forget the rules every round. It's usually a really relaxed job though (except around the extremely high pressure air tanks), so the atomsphere makes it bareable. Plus I already knew half the staff when I started working there.
Story: myself and some friends went paintballing there recently and my friend said he was tempted to jump over the campfire we have. The manager said "go for it" so he ran full pelt and leaped over it. Unfortunately so did another of our friends, from a different direction. They collided mid-air and landed in the fire.
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I work at a pub, which is cool because it is the pub I've been going to once a week (at the very least) since a few years. Basically it means that I get paid to get drunk (and all I drink while I'm working is free).
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I used to work in a pub once or twice a week to it was pretty cool although we didn't get free drinks the boss usually drank so much vodka she wouldn't notice if we took a few dozen shots. We use to shoot the drink guns at each other and throw ice and beer coasters about. Usually we'd fave family parties and they'd give us buffet sometimes loads to take home.
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My dad has had lots of fairly cool/boring jobs. He once spent a half day watching bottles go past in cartons because there were not enough people to form a full team (apparently they couldn't check the bottles for breakages without five people?) but they couldn't fire them before the end of the day because of their contract or something. He also spent time as an egg packer. I think it's the kind of thing everyone goes through - I spent four months being paid to play on Denise Lewis Heptaphlon (ok I wasn't being paid to do it but they were paying me and I was doing it) which was actually incredibly boring.
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at one point, i worked at a huge electronics warehouse in Arizona packing boxes and shipping things. it was pretty lame but the warehouse was so massive that the opportunities for slacking off were incredible. for example, you could lie down in between two massive televisions and take a nap, or build a little fort out of cardboard boxes and rest a bit.
the most interesting thing about that job though was definitely this guy who everyone called Crack Shaq, because he literally looked exactly like Shaq, but on crack. he was about ten feet tall and had no teeth, and apparently was pretty laid back because he didn't mind being called Crack Shaq. i miss that guy.
my current job consists of sitting on the internet all day, listening to music, and occasionally talking to people and answering the phone. it is pretty great.
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I work at Wal*Mart. This has been my first and only job so far. You have made me depressed.
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I worked for NAMCO BANDAI Games America as a video game tester. So basically I would play video games for 8 hours and get paid to do so.
Yeah I got to test Rockband 2 before it came out for a company in Montreal.
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That actually seems like a really, really, really boring job.
yeah it was a really boring job and i feel sort of bad for finding it funny, but when we were talking about past jobs and she brought that up i just could not stop laughing for ages at the fact that her only responsibility was to poke boxes with a stick. like, they gave her a poking stick and everything. if you really think about it, it is basically fordism at its most dehumanizing and scary but if you don't think about it and just focus on the mental image it is a pretty funny one.
The ups and downs of division of labour. But the poking stick is pretty funny.
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pretty sure i have the best job
Hmm...really? 'cause awhile back Neil Swaab told me that webcomic artists are just a bunch of merchandise salesmen and don't think that too many people would be happy with a job hustling t-shirts. When I imagine Jeph's daily life I envision the dude standing on a busy street corner with a foldout table piled high with T-shirts, a mournful look on his mug. Sometimes a tear rolls down his check because he really wants to draw a cute blond chick with OCD but he can't find the time to pull out his Wacom because he is too busy selling those T-shirts. And I believe that senario because Neil Swaab is a syndicated cartoonist and shit. And NOTHING could go wrong with a syndicated profession...you know unless we have an economic downturn or something...
End sarcasm. (with the whole topatoco deal I don't think my street corner senario makes much sense anymore)
Librarianship has it's it's small ups and downs but I enjoy my job and I figure that overall it's a pretty sweet deal.
I get to order books.
My office is hid behind huge shelves of books. Nobody bugs me.
I get to organize cool events like the video game day this weekend.
And answering people's reference questions is neat because I learn more random things as I help the patrons.
Plus the drunks at this library are really nice. The last guy asked me to call the police on him. Then as he was being led away in the squad car he told the cop that I "wuz a real good guy".
It's the best job I ever had. (I am working right now)
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During the summers I have an acting job on a train line. I am an actor on the Wild West shows, and the improv shows. The train is about 200 years old, and really awesome. I get paid, on average, $35 dollars an hour.
For the improv show, all I do is play improv games on a moving train for two hours. For the wild west show, I get paid to dress up as a cowboy, flirt with all of the girls on the train, stage a break out/train robbery, and then die in a shoot out at the end.
I think I might have the best job ever. Though, this upcoming summer, I'm getting paid a lot more to do a children's dinner theater on the same train, but I have to play the part of Harry Potter.
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The job I held from 2005 (when I moved to the city) to early last year was full of awesome. It was data entry, which I didn't mind, because I got a LOT of music listenin' done. And after the first few months there wasn't much to even data enter, so it morphed into a play on the Internet and read and draw comics all day job, which paid $25k and had health insurance. For two years I got paid to sit in a comfy chair and read and take two-hour lunches. Good lord I loved that job. Unfortunately we lost the grant funding, GEE WONDER WHY??
The job I have now is pretty similar, except there is not as much opportunity to slack off, and I don't have health insurance, but we have our own copy machine so when I finish a new comic you know what that means!!
I think the poking stick is funny.
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I would be so bad at any kind of factory inspection job. I'd do okay for about fifteen minutes before I'd space out thinking about what to cook for dinner or something like that. I admire the focus of anyone who can do it.
I have mainly had the kind of job where people yell at you, but one summer I did get to work as the prep person for a produce department. I got loads of free food. If an apple had a bruise on one side, for example, I could take it back and eat the good half. I cut up melons and veggies all day, and was actually encouraged to sample everything to make sure it was ripe and tasty enough. I got paid to snack. It was great.
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I think I might have the best job ever.
You are correct. And I am jealous.
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I have never had a job and live on my parents' income.
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Yeah I got to test Rockband 2 before it came out for a company in Montreal.
You win. I only got to test a couple JRPGs.
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When I worked QA on ATI's mac team I got to play with all the macs before they were released. Who wants to play with the latest mac tower that isn't yet released with souped up graphics cards that we are testing with running two 30" cinema displays at the same time? Those were the days, those were the days. Besides the fact that I lived in an place that totally sapped my life force. Incidentally that is why I am here now.
Also I got to disassemble iMacs sometimes and discovered they were putting cameras in them before that was announced. Apple actually shipped us iMacs with the cameras disabled in old iMac casings so we couldn't actually see the camera! Most prototypes actually just came in nondescript metal cases anyways.
Also I got to play with Mac's photoboth software before any of you did, so everytime you see a silly thing being done with the effects that I have actually done it first. In the interests of thorough testing.
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pretty sure i have the best job
As in: you get to do what you love ... yeah. Definately. And I am jealous.
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I am in a place with usually over 1000 people, and I get to be on the internet for my entire shift. I draw at work, I never really have any major responsibilities, and I get to stay up all night. Also, in my second job, I paint miniatures, which is something I love to do, and that is why it is my second job. My third job is working one 4 hour shift at the game store where I get the miniatures, this consists of sitting near the front with my miniatures, painting them, and ringing up customers when need be.
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I pretty much am on the internet or reading ebooks all day, but I am a manager at a very large liqueur distributor, so I also get nigh unlimited free booze.
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but I am a manager at a very large liqueur distributor, so I also get nigh unlimited free booze.
We SO need to talk.
S
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Inter in the Wisconsin state capitol.
Doesn't sound that amazing, but for one obsessed, as I am, with politics and civics, it was. Sweetening the deal was the fact that the staff person I reported to was a lady of only 23 years, and she was incredibly cute and we had lunch together every day. Also, 10 dollars an hour is a pretty darn good wage for a first job and an internship. And I had a reason to wear a suit every day! And shit do I love wearing a suit.
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I pretty much am on the internet or reading ebooks all day, but I am a manager at a very large liqueur distributor, so I also get nigh unlimited free booze.
This explains your great taste in whisky.
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/\ you are correct sir. Laphroaig 21yr Cask Strength (106.8) FTW!
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/\ you are correct sir. Laphroaig 21yr Cask Strength (106.8) FTW!
I say again...we SO need to TALK...
I like booze...hurr hurr...
S
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I too interned at a local guitar shop (http://www.ludlowguitars.com/), but the guys I worked with were burn-out Lower East Side hipsters who did nothing but mock inexperienced customers and start pissing contests with the ones who knew what they were talking about.
In fact everything there changes at a glacial pace so I'm quite certain that at this moment, as I'm typing this, those same four guys are sitting there, faking boredom a little more than necessary, drinking Guinness and trying to hawk vintage Les Pauls to people.
I did get to shoot the shit with Anton Newcombe (who was at the time and remains still my personal idol), and apparently I'd have met J Mascis and Nick Zinner if I'd stuck around for longer.
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Wait they get to hang out and drink on the job?
And mess about with guitars? That is a fuck of a job.
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.. what did you think guitar salesmen did?
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All of the above except "drink guinness on the job".
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On a somewhat related note, last week's episode of This American Life (it's called "Plan B" (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/) and originally aired back in 2002) had a segment about this guy who was the Jose Cuervo man, living on Cuervo island, paid to drink all day and get people to party.
Unsurprisingly, it wasn't as great a job as it sounds--he actually quit drinking altogether after having worked there a while. I'd imagine it gets less fun to be drunk all the time when it's your job (and if you do anything stupid or rude while drunk, you can still be fired).
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for the last 4 years of high school, i worked evenings and weekends at kwiksave, a shitty low-rent discount supermarket chain in the UK that closed most of its stores recently.
however, what made it awesome was that i got my job there at the same time as a friend of mine got a job on the deli counter there (run by another company), and between us, we ensured that every part-time position that ever came up in that building was filled by our friends from school. even better was that the floor manager used to, on occasion, when the manager and deputy weren't there, wonder onto the shop floor and shout "LASH!" which was our cue to head to the liquor lock-up in the back warehouse-y area, where he'd have lined up all manner of booze for us to get twatted on.
one time that sticks out in my memory was drinking immense amounts of vodka and lemonade, followed by the floor manager and myself drinking a large bottle of cherry brandy between the two of us. he then proceeded (after saying "that's enough, now let's go and get some work done") to disappear back into the warehouse, where we found him slumped on a crate with an empty bottle of vodka next to him. by the end of the shift, he'd banged on the front doors screaming for his mother (and scaring off customers in the process), and been escorted home by his brother (who he didn't recognise and tried to fight...). we had to get the security guard (who was also in on the drinking thing) to "lose" that day's security tapes. the next day, the deputy manager (who's actually really cool, and incidentally is now a good friend and work colleague of my mother's) basically hinted that she knew "SOMETHING UNTOWARD" had gone on, and that she'd let it go for now, "BUT IF ANYTHING LIKE THIS HAPPENS AGAIN...!" etc.
despite the job itself being proper shit, and the head manager being a ageing-butch-lesbian-looking miserable bitch, the amount of insane shit we all got away with will always make me look back on that job fondly.
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I used to spend my summers working as staff on the waterfront of a Boy Scout camp. Spending my summer teaching people how to canoe, putting on silly shows to entertain kids, and just generally lazing about the lake - ah good times. That job was a lot of fun, although it didn't pay for shit and the fact that all summer we would only see like 3 women turned us into sad and desperate men.
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I guarantee you all-boys Hebrew Camp is worse.
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I umpire baseball on the side, and I love it.
I've been a baseball junkie since I was a little kid, but have this blinding inability to throw or hit said ball. Umping is the place I get to be involved.
Plus, on the field, I'm in charge. If you don't like it, I can throw you out. That's POWER.
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I've been thinking about becoming a certified umpire so I can ump little league games. I'd love to still be involved with baseball, even though I don't play anymore, and I'm not the kind of strategist that would make for a good coach.
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a good coach.
Here's what I want you to do: hit the ball.
I could be an excelent coach.
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Here's what I'll do if you don't hit the ball.
Kill. Your. Children.
I'd be the best coach.
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I used to spend my summers working as staff on the waterfront of a Boy Scout camp. Spending my summer teaching people how to canoe, putting on silly shows to entertain kids, and just generally lazing about the lake - ah good times. That job was a lot of fun, although it didn't pay for shit and the fact that all summer we would only see like 3 women turned us into sad and desperate men.
Joe pretty much summed up here why being a girl working at a boy scout camp is simultaneously the best and worst job ever. You get to live in the woods and do very little (best job), but you have to deal with essentially all of your co-workers being the most ridiculous horndogs on the face of the earth.
<3 boy scout camp
(http://photos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-sf2p/v111/7/99/1231170175/n1231170175_30070931_4154.jpg)