Bra fitter
Vanilla frosting taste tester
Video game beta tester
In my youth my dream job involved living in Hawaii, driving a red Ferrari, and dramatically solving crimes. But it turned out none my black friends had a helicopter, so I had to give up* on that one.
My new dream was to have FU money and no job at all. And I’m there. I passed all the investment/financial milestones last month and am on the bell-lap of my career. I’m still working in order to finish some home and toy upgrades before leaving. It’s more efficient for me to go into the office and pay carpenters, painters, tile-setters etc., than to retire and attempt it myself.
*I couldn’t grow the porn-star mustache either.
Being a professor of mathematics was close to my dream job. My real dream job would have been permanent of the Institute for Advanced Study. Good pay, no duties except to research in mathematics. And no papers to mark! Otherwise I enjoyed teaching.
My dream job is like most people - no job. I’d love 6 million in a bank account so I could do what I want when I want. Of course i normally like to stay busy so that would quickly turn into running a large farm/distillery operation.
That being said I’ve got pretty close to my dream job. I work from home supplying my expertise to people who are really interested in me telling them what to do. Sure I’d like to make it back to my old oil field money but the stress isn’t worth the difference. I design and build distilleries which means that I get to design for function and beauty as well as focusing on consulting on the business plan and financial evaluations. The real upside is that i get paid in booze and most of it is pretty spectacular.
[voice from above]
"Hey cornflakes, we have a job for you. Do you remember that book “A Walk Across America” from the post-Vietnam era? I need you top do an arty version of that, walking trails and roadwalking, taking pictures to document the current state of The Great Outdoors and the North American Continent in general. Take the National Geographic human interest pics. Work on your painting and do landscapes–channel Remington and O’Keeffe; tip your hat to VanGogh and crank the saturation up to 11. You won’t get paid a lot, but we can guarantee that you won’t totally use up your 401(k).
You will also have plenty of time to go to the river (so to speak), where you can work on your freestyle and river running and also study and teach single blade. You can even spend some time as a rafting guide. We won’t pay you for that though, because pfffftt …NOBODY EVER makes any money as a rafting guide!!! 
[/voice from above]
My dream job that’s actually a thing would be a Nat Geo photographer, making a living traveling and taking pictures of cool animals.
On the other hand I would love to have a large plot of land and make a living winning giant vegetable competitions across the country. I’m not sure there’s even any money in that
Well, it would be called “Computer Programmer” or “Software Developer” or something like that, but it would really be “person who solves problems involving software”, and that’s how my boss would understand it: The company has a problem, I have expertise and experience, and I’m allowed reasonable time and resources to solve it, with a certain amount of “management” but the understanding that trying to make me whistle while I’m pissing is only going to delay the solution (and ten pounds of flax to whoever gets the reference).
Why that instead of no job? Because I’m going to be doing it anyway, so I might as well get paid for it, and get fed problems instead of allowing myself to just stagnate and putter with half-finished nonsense.
I broadly have that job now, modulo a few infelicities I intend to remedy.
To each his/her own.
The payoff does sound fantastic. But from the outtake snips they put in some of those shows it appears the usual routine is to spend 2 continuous months freezing in a hut with 2 other unwashed guys to get 30 seconds of good vid of the snow leopard or whatever. Plus lots of gigabytes of trees swaying in the breeze with no snow leopards anywhere to be seen.
The first couple days sound like a nice adventure. The other 58 sound like a certified bitch. At least to me.
Good luck and happy hunting to you.
My ultimate dream job would be writing cryptic crosswords for national newspapers. Preferably in a parallel world where you can actually make good money doing that.
I work really hard at being retired, living alone, reading most of each day and not doing anything I don’t want to do. I wish it paid a little better but the benefits are great. It’s the job I yearned for most of my working life.
I have about a thousand questions I would like to ask you. Would you consider starting a thread on this? I think this would be my dream job.
Have you considered training a replacement? Sounds like my kind of job if the hours aren’t to restrictive.
I used to work with a guy who spent a couple of years as a cameraman doing shoots for Wild Kingdom. He said it is incredibly hard work. Hoisting heavy camera gear with makeshift rigging up into the forest canopy in a steamy hot jungle, very quickly becomes boring and exhausting drudgery instead of scintillating adventure.
Principal flutist for a prestigious symphony orchestra. During off-seasons, I would pick up where James Michener left off, researching and writing blockbuster, yet serious, historical fiction.
I’d love to make enough as a studio musician/voiceover artist to support my jazz habit. I’ll sing uncredited backup parts for any genre as long as I can afford to pay a jazz trio whenever I get a gig.
I was a bridge tender off and on for a few years in high school and after. It was a small swing bridge and you had to walk to the middle, disconnect the water pipe to the island, close the road barriers and then activate the bridge. One summer a piece fell off the electric motor and we had to open the bridge with a capstan. I loved that job. Read lots, wrote college essays, played the banjo, stopped traffic to effect “repairs” consisting of hammering in the big spikes that popped up from the decking timbers.
One of my fellow workers “lost” his virginity there on the night shift. He was the envy of all of us. I have no such story to relate, but hope sprang eternal in those days.
Later, on resumes, we called ourselves “marine traffic facilitators.”
I still play the banjo, but now I mark college essays. Apart from the wages (low) and pension (none) bridge tending was better.
Yup, figure out how to make stuff “just work” only i’d like an assistant for timetables and other irritants.
Cattle Rancher.