Im a full time law student but I work part time as a car rental operator to pay my fees! If it wasn’t for the horrid people and disgusting customer I would love my job. When I get nice appreciating customers in it makes it worth while. All the duties my job entails are great and the the bonus of getting to drive different cars (and vans) is even better! The pay is rubbish (and thats putting it nicely!)… wait a minute - did I say I love my job? Strike that!
I love my job!
As a kid who grew up tinking with computer hardware all the time I live in a little piece of heaven. I am the owner of a small computer shop/onsite service. Being your own boss is nice, never knowing what my day is going to be like is nice too.
In many ways my work is my play. Granted, it is occasionally frustrating and can be very hard work but we always have a good time in general at the shop.
Can I have it? I’m bored.
I hate my job.
But I start a new one on Monday, so I’ll let you know once I’m there.
I am three months in to a new “job”, I am doing a PhD in organic solar cells and am having a great time, in marked contrast to my previous efforts to enter academia.
I am learning new skills operating equipment such as the evaporator, sputterer and spin coaters. I have just learned how to operate an AFM and will hopefully pick up more useful skills as I go along.
After nearly 20 years in civil engineering it is a blessed relief to be doing something I enjoy at last. I get to put my scientific knowledge to use in a practical way.
It doesn’t pay a lot, but it’s relatively low stress and will hopefully produce something useful in the end and maybe lead into an academic career.
I’m the receptionist for an architectural firm and I love my job! Great company, great pay and amazing coworkers.
I’m an engineer working in the development of microgravity payloads for the European Space Agency. I love my job, and consider myself extremely fortunate to work here.
I work in preparing fluid science experiments for the International Space Station. I do technical research, project management, solve technical problems, and sometimes I help schedule activities aboard the station. I develop test procedures to verify hardware and experiments, and write the requirements for new hardware to support the experiment development.
The ISS, and space exploration in general, is really exciting, and I love being a part of it. The projects my colleagues work on are pretty neat as well, be it JWST, Envisat, GMES, or ATV, and it’s great to be exposed to all of it.
ESTEC, the European Space Research and Technology Centre, where I work, is a fantastic environment, and ESA is a good employer; HR is constantly reminding people that they shouldn’t work too hard, make time for their families, and make an effort to use all the vacation time they’re allotted (many people don’t). The current active phrase is ‘Work/Life Balance’. We have flexible working hours, on-site bike shelters and showers, access to a sports facility and social clubs, good connection to public transit, a child-care facility, and help for expatriate staff to integrate into life in the Netherlands.
Much more than this, though, I mostly work with smart, interesting, and motivated people. I haven’t had many social conflicts, like difficult coworkers, overbearing managers, or harassment in the workplace. And most people here enjoy what they do, and put in more time than they’re supposed to. Plus, I really enjoy the international environment – working with people from twenty or more countries who speak a dozen languages. I’ve made some good friends here, and we get along well even if most of us are speaking a second (or third, or fourth) language.
Plus I just like biking to work.
I used to work as a flying instructor in the reserve force of my home country’s military. That was cool, too; I really liked what I did, and worked with good people.
I make special effects for video games. When asked to describe my job, I say, “I blow shit up.”
I love, love, love my job. I’ve got the best job in the world. Granted, there are things about the companies I’ve worked for that I didn’t like, and some things I’ve hated about it…
But at the end of the day, I still got to blow shit up.
I’m in IT support. I handle anything from advanced hardware/software problems to “I’ve reached the edge of the mouse pad. What do I do?” (true story).
Things I love about this type of job…
I love supporting and interacting with users-- calming them down and dealing kindly and gently with their problem(s). I could not imagine doing anything else.
I love (metaphorically) patting the computer on the head and telling it that it’ll play the violin again as I button up the case or log off.
I enjoy working with computers. Been doing it for 32 years and counting.
This particular job?
I get a wide variety of problems
I’m the only tech for this office. It’s all up to me.
I know my people and their specific needs: I’m not (f’rinstance) an AOL guy who’ll get who knows whom.
I love the opportunity to get a bit of teaching in (“Did you know you could do things this way?”)
The company pays quite well.
There is some fascinating stuff here - wolfstu, you should start a thread for “ask the space station engineer” or something like that - a few others should do something similar for their positions.
As for me - I love my job; it’s the best job I have had and I still pinch myself for stumbling into it a few years ago from management consulting. As I described in that thread about “what do you do and how much vacation time you get”:
It’s very fun and cool - and we are a Good company; straight up, honest and doing stuff that helps people (it’s in healthcare services). And everything I do is big-deal stuff within the context of my company. It’s like I am the architect for us, laying out the future blueprint that we will then build the company into - and I am on point for managing/executing the deals we need to close to achieve that vision.
If it sounds kinda Mr. Executive, I suppose it is - again, at least within the context of the company. But when I am coordinating the team of folks I have working a multi-million-dollar deal and we are preparing our deal proposal, or I am with our CEO presenting that deal - part of me is just a little kid, having a ton of fun. I just really appreciate it.
I’m a consultant, have been one for the last 6 years.
I get paid to go to Places Abroad (well, not always abroad, but mostly), learn how my client does his job, then teach them how to do it better using this software they’ve bought. I’m a combo Process Engineer - Installation Booklet.
I’ve had projects that sucked, but the problems were the same kinds you can find in any other job: micromanagers, bosses without the manners Og gave to a rabid cow, coworkers or clients with less brains than Ogette gave to a pebble. The reward of seeing the look in someone’s face when he’s just asked whether the new system can do “something the old system couldn’t” and I answer “yep, out of the box” is priceless.
I love my job, although sometimes I take it for granted. When I attended community college to become qualified to do what I do, I used to tell people “I just want a job I can stand.” It has turned out much better than that.
I’m a mainframe software developer for a Fortune 500 company. I have twenty years experience doing this and I’m pretty good at it, so I’m fairly well-paid, I get 6 weeks vacation annually, I have pretty good benefits, and I am very lightly supervised. I work flexible hours and work from home two days a week. When my job is difficult, it’s like getting paid to solve crossword puzzles, and when it’s easy, it’s still at least mildly interesting.
I’d probably have to say I love my career more than my job, the reason being it’s been such a great ride to get to where I am. I love being outdoors and interpreting rocks and that’s exactly what we did in undergrad and grad, go on field trips to beautiful places and work to understand the reasons why they came to be made and situated the way they are. I’ve roughnecked rigs throughout the south, run geochem crews from Florida to the wildest recesses of Oregon and hung out the side of a helicopter to scare Grizzlies from crews in the Alaska wilderness. I’ve been so many places that were so far off the beaten path and were breathtaking in their pristine nature and all the while I was fully appreciative of just how blessed I was to observe what I did.
So now I’m in an oil megalopolis, in a comfortable home and driving what I please, commuting to a big office and on high powered workstations all day. Yes, I love working with a lot of truly brilliant and dedicated people. I love being exposed to and then conveying to others cutting edge technology. I love the incredible diversity of ethnicities, cultures and life histories we have here through employing people from all around the world. And I love the product we deliver as efficiently as possible, despite extreme environments, hardships and uncertainty.
But I am stuck in this office and I do miss that helicopter, the vast expanses of wilderness, the grizzer bears and the pale blue of a North Slope glacial melt stream. I guess a fair part of what’s good about it now is that it’ll allow me to get back to right where I want to be again when I retire. So, yeah, in that sense I suppose I’m pretty content.
I wouldn’t say love, but I truly appreciate my job - seemingly more and more as every year passes. Not because of what I do. I can honestly say I do not derive the slightest satisfaction from any single job duty. But:
It pays well enough to support a very comfortable lifestyle with my wife staying home and putting the kids through college.
It involves no overtime, no take-home work, and extremely little travel.
It is extremely easy for me, and causes me little to no stress.
I have very flexible hours, am able to work at home one day a week, I workout during lunchtime, and receive generous leave that I can take on short notice in 15 minute increments.
It is extremely secure, and has comfortable retirement/savings benefits.
So I really love what my job provides, as well as the extent to which it does not detract from my lifestyle.
+1
I am a photographer, I own my own company in Moab, Utah. I paddle my boat down the Colorado with my adorable doggie to get to work. Doesn’t pay much, but still…
Interested in a swap? 
Heh, awesome commute you’ve got there, chacoguy. I could ponder for two hours and not come up with a way to improve that. When we lived in Grand Junction, we’d cross that rickety bridge downstream from you and drive up your river on the way to catch sunsets at Dead Horse Point, then we’d stop along 70 near the travertine well, Crystal Geyser, to marvel at the Milky Way. 'Mazin country.
I help run a political campaign.
I’m not even paid, although there’s a chance that might change.
I love my job.
I love my job. I provide peer support - essentially a kind of practical mentoring - to who those who are experiencing mental illness and are working on their recoveries. Peer support is what it says: all the support team, myself included, have had their own experiences with mental illness, and we work in putting it to practical use to aid people to find their own paths to recovery. It can be frustrating, but when it goes right - when you can draw on shit that you went through yourself to help someone out of their own morass - it’s the most rewarding feeling there is. Plus I get to work with the kindest, smartest, funniest, most talented and most caring group of people I’ve ever met, and I’m constantly humbled by their calibre. Considering everyone in the company - including the director, the management, the office staff and even the cleaner - is mad, it’s probably the sanest place I’ve ever worked at. I love my job.