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What was the most fun job you had? And what made it fun?


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I live and work from home with my girlfriend, lately things have just been a boring daily grind (i`m the boring one). I feel I`m stuck in a rut, and looking for some personal experiences, or ideas as to what I can do to change things up.

 

 

So, what made your job fun?

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Heh, getting to test the 200' bucket trucks the utilities use to work hot on 120KV power lines, back when I did all the hydraulic work on the local (PG&E) mobile fleet.

 

Then there was working on the feedwater pumps that went into the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. Imagine working on something that goes hot and humans outside the plant never work on again.

 

Probably the longest lived 'fun' job was constructing race car chassis and parts. There was a certain satisfaction seeing one's work operate safely at the track and provide performance for the person using it.

 

Next week I start on a soil sampling machine I'm designing right now. Agriculture is very precise and scientific these days and the soil is analyzed in detail to grow crops in the most efficient manner. We need to test for that.

 

Always something to do. A lot of it is fun, mostly because of the variety. Good luck in your pursuits!

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I was going to say the time when I was the head TV tech for a fairly large TV shop here in San Diego back when I was fresh out of high school. It was fun because I was so young yet had such responsibility and great pay for someone of my age, but Carhill made me feel kinda lame lol. Somehow designing special equipment and race cars seems more exciting! Well, none of it seems exiciting really...it's all work! :p

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still_an_Angel

Assistant to a theatre production manager. I was stressed out to my eyeballs running around trying to fit everything in and keeping everybody happy but by golly, I had so much fun interacting with so many people working on the production. I learned so much technical stuff as well as honing my skills working with people of various interests, jobs, personalities, everything!

I really had a blast working those years.

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I live and work from home with my girlfriend, lately things have just been a boring daily grind (i`m the boring one). I feel I`m stuck in a rut, and looking for some personal experiences, or ideas as to what I can do to change things up.

 

 

So, what made your job fun?

 

BTW, change things up for you not her, knowing your prior posts. Making your own life yours takes time, and you should get a head start. Just sayin' and if someone told me this last year I'd have said shut up. Now, I'd wonder why I didn't listen.

 

Ken

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Running safari camps. Long hours and physically very hard but the environment made up for it. Made good friends too.

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Eternal Sunshine

People make it fun. I enjoy interacting with co-workers and it makes me looks forward to Monday every week. Working from home sounds like death to me.

 

It wasn't much about jobs, it was always the culture. The most boring places were those where people were polite and formal and nobody socialized.

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loveweary11

NASA, hands down.

 

The people were amazing. So relaxed, so interesting to have all sorts of conversations with.

 

Seeing something you have helped create on the news, helping humanity further its knowledge of our place in the universe is an absolutely indescribable feeling of job satisfaction.

 

The spacecraft I helped create are still in the news occasionally, beaming back job satisfaction all these years later.

 

If I were to go back into more traditional areas of work someday, that is what I'd return to.

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serial muse

My current job is pretty cool; I don't want to give personal info but it's very intellectually satisfying and sometimes creatively so, plus I get to meet a lot of very interesting people in the course of my work.

 

The most interesting non-career job I ever had I guess would be when I worked in a wine store post-college and before grad school. I did it for about a year. Learned all about wine, we had weekly in-house staff tastings in order to understand what we were selling and to talk about it more fluently, and we got to go to exhibitions and distributor tastings as well from time to time. I got to sample some amazing stuff that I could never afford on my own - a Sauternes that probably ran $400-$500, assorted high-end champagnes, etc. It was pretty damn cool. It was in NYC at a pretty well-known wine store so there were also celebrity sightings from time to time. I chatted about champagne with Wallace Shawn (incontheivable!). Too bad it paid shxt.

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I've had so many jobs, being a freelancer, it's very hard to pick one. But working on cruise ships was high on the list. What made it fun was not the job itself, but the people. We were all stuck on the ship. We all met up at the crew bar at night, after work. Or go explore the ports during the day. Spending 3 months in the Caribbean is also not something to sneer at!

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runredlights

I had a seasonal summer gig at a large concert venue. My job was to make change for food stands when they'd run out of 1's and 5's and I'd transport their cash from the food and alcohol sales to the cash room for counting. My title was a "concert walker" and i'd walk around in plain street clothes carrying a walkie talkie and a duffle bag full of literally tens of thousands of dollars on me at any given time.

 

The thing is that I was one of only three people in the entire venue with a bag on me doing this job. It was kind of scary because I was afraid someone would know I had so much money and try to jump me, but everyone was too plastered to notice I suppose.

 

I got to go backstage to VIP areas. Saw Bob Dylan, Kenny Chesney, Blink-182, and tons of other artists for free and my job was actually a really big responsibility. Security treated me like a king and I could use the walkie talkie and have the police come to me in seconds if needed. I had a great time doing the job. The money got really heavy sometimes though.

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LuckyLady13

I noticed a trend with how most people are saying it's the interactions they had with other people that created their fondest memories.

 

I've had GREAT jobs as far as people being so happy to be where we were. It was just a given at those jobs. And a lot of my own best memories stem from games I played with managers and coworkers to make the day fun. It was the things going on "behind the scenes".

 

However, I envy a friend of mine who misses a job he had a few years ago. They had Wii bowling tournaments. So, fake bowling. But real trophies!! And whenever he talks about how much he misses that job, it isn't the job itself he misses but the lunch breaks out back playing hockey with one of the guys he worked with.

 

When I think back on it though, there was something else too. A job I took on for quite a while where I was able to concentrate 100% and stay focused all day (thank you Redbull and coffee) and listen to any music I wanted to listen to. I was the most creative at that point in my life because it was like I was set free to work at my own pace (fast) for a change. When Friday rolled around, I had accomplished so much during the week I felt good about myself and after working so hard, played even harder!

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Funnest job was undoubtedly working in record stores, where one place I made good money and the next I made minimum wage, which was pathetic. But it was still the most fun, so just goes to show money isn't everything. Then I moved up to music buyer for a chain and it certainly had the best perks and was a blast, but what I missed was making friends in the retail record stores. Once I moved to the corporate office, my friend circle dwindled considerably. Before long all I was meeting was national artists who came and went, so there were no deep relationships possible. I even lobbied to be able to work in one of the stores one day a week, my logic being it's the only way to keep up with what the customers are wanting, and though the owner thought it was a great idea, my immediate supervisor was so sour on the subject (still have no reason why -- maybe because he was an ex) that I didn't do it. I kind of wish I had though.

 

Working at a record store was so fun that there were times you'd go home and come back just to hang out because it was the best place in town in many ways. At least to a rock n roll lover.

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Before i grew up i worked PT in a sex shop. As well as a few bars... (To supplement my beer income as an aspiring graduate)

 

It was actually fun looking back. My manager was obviously a gangster but the clients were all characters.

 

Asking me questions about toys and machines i had no hope to have any knowledge about.

 

I always said...

 

`It`s the latest thing`.....

 

My weekly money was in a manila envelope.

 

Sometimes i had to help with a stock check.......

 

`Ok we`re out of the 12 inch dildos, best place and order eh son`

 

Despite the fact i`d never seen one sold!

 

Our order man was a rather repulsive bloke named `Clive`

 

Funny days.....

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I was a porn star for a little while.

 

Nah I'm kidding lol

 

I used to life guard every summer during my late teens. We would smoke weed and throw on shades. Invite friends and order pizza, pretty girls in bikinis.

 

Only downside was if I didn't wear sunscreen, I'd bet dark as hell.

 

Man if I could do all that again. :)

Edited by jay1983
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I was porn star for a little while.

 

Nah I'm kidding lol

 

I used to life guard every summer during my late teens. We would smoke weed and throw on shades. Invite friends and order pizza, pretty girls in bikinis.

 

Only downside was if I didn't wear sunscreen, I'd bet dark as hell.

 

Man if I could do all that again. :)

 

I can see you as the life guard type mate. I mean that.

 

Sounds like a load of fun.

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One fun job which really wasn't a job was being a docent for about ten years at the local zoo. The most fun was interpreting the exhibits and sharing stories from my trips to Africa and watching the kids be both fascinated by the work and the animals. Good memories.

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I had a holiday job years back that involved caring for a severely autistic boy. There was a team of us involved (he was violent, so we had to work in pairs) and we were all around the same age. The child would sometimes attack us for no reason, which wasn't pleasant...but on account of his condition, it never felt personal or traumatising.

 

Most of the time was spent taking him out for picnics and long, long walks. It was a glorious summer (rare in these parts) and the entire team of people clicked incredibly well. So it was a combination of weather, getting to spend most of the time outdoors being active - and everybody I was working with being really fun and easy to get along with.

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I got the chance to do a variety of very interesting things, especially summer jobs during my college days, research assistantships, and then a few assignments during my career. They were fun mostly because they were creative, unusual, or had some cool perks.

 

- Groundskeeper at a golf course - I got to play golf after work every day.

- Geodynamics researcher - building and running fluid dynamics experiments in rotating tanks (my office had the best view in the city)

- Cooling tower research - designing, building and collecting data on small scale innovative cooling systems for power plants

- Searching vehicles and people at the border for contraband, weapons and drugs as a customs officer (and dating another very hot officer)

- Gathering and processing deep seawater samples on an oceanographic cruise to the Sargasso Sea (and spending time in Bermuda)

- Researching hazards of commercial space flight for the government

- Running a marksmanship range to test marines' performance under adverse conditions, and collecting data

- Travelling to the UK to install software I'd written for the MoD (I had to be given a special permit that effectively made me an international arms dealer!)

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GorillaTheater

Career-wise, definitely the job I have now. I don't have to bill hours (the bane of an attorney in private practice), I get all the work I can possibly handle, and I have a nice mix of the routine and the unbelievably complicated. As others have noted, part of the appeal is the vast number of people I get to interact with.

 

But as far as flat-out fun, I'd say the delivery job I had when I was 18 or so. Me and another guy delivered medical supplies all over Houston and the surrounding area, and most of our time was spent cracking each other up while on the road, not least of all because we both drove like teenagers with an audience.

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Definitely my current job working for a travel company! May-September is our busy time and it can get quite stressful, but my cool coworkers make it all worth it. Plus, every month there is at least one fun event (either during or after work) that our R&R committee puts on. Anywhere from free lunch from a lunch truck to after work free drinks and apps at a local bar to a paid-for major league baseball game after work with coworkers and spouses.

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But as far as flat-out fun, I'd say the delivery job I had when I was 18 or so. Me and another guy delivered medical supplies all over Houston and the surrounding area, and most of our time was spent cracking each other up while on the road, not least of all because we both drove like teenagers with an audience.

 

I can just imagine

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Besides the record stores and buying (and I didn't mention working for a label group, but honestly, not that much fun), I also had a couple other fun jobs. One was caretaking a ranch for the summer. It was glorious. The place had bunkhouses plus a kind of shoddy main house, but it was filled with museum quality antiques and original artwork. I'd read a lot and watch old movies and go out in the day and sit on the steps that bridged the fence to the horses and sing at the top of my lungs with the stereo blasting in the house. So nice to be out away from everyone on that many acres.

 

To supplement my income at the minimum-wage record store, I took a job driving motorcyles on my days off, riding escort, mostly funerals, but also wide-loads and motorcades. I could have held onto the bike, but had no garage, so I'd took around on it before taking it back for the day. I remember my "test drive" before I was hired, the owner had me follow him over to a location in central Dallas where the original TV show "Dallas" was filming. They'd run a motorcade over there so that's how he knew where it was. Fun in nice weather -- hell in freezing weather.

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Thank you everyone for the input so far.

 

 

 

I do Love my job. My girlfriend does all the designing of our products, and has created some cool and amazing stuff. So I get to be a part of a small company that puts out products that are more of an accessory, not something dull that is just needed or necessary. We get great feedback from our customers too, so it is a feel good job. Plus, so far it feels good to know that the competition hasn`t caught up with her or tried to copy any designs, so in that aspect, we feel ahead of the pack.

 

 

It is cool to hear what people from all different part of the world and walks of life have done for a living, I do find it interesting. Keep `em coming.

 

 

I wasn`t necessarily looking to find out what jobs you have had that were fun or interesting, but more of what made them fun day in day out. What made it not a grind every day?

 

 

So far, what has stood out to me and along the lines of the type of answers I am really looking for, is that is was the people that you worked with that made it fun... Point taken.

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I took care of infant monkey's in a nursery. The infants were abandoned/rejected by their mother's. It was just me there on the swing shift, so I was their momma. Fed them (enfamil), changed their diapers and spent most of the time playing with them. It was so fulfilling and awesome.

Edited by Popsicle
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