Easiest and hardest jobs in Starfleet

Cafe Society
1

Seems like it would be stressful to be a Chief Engineer like Scotty. Lots of hard work, studying and innate talent only to be yelled at by your captain and constantly pressured to perform miracles. Make any mistakes or perform slightly short of perfection and you and your friends die horribly.

On the other hand, a Transporter Chief looks like an easy job. Just stand there and move the levers up or down.

Uhura’s job also seems rather easy.

Being the ship’s doctor also seems simple. You have a ton of advanced technology, so healing injury is as simple as passing the right gizmo over the wound a few times. If the injury is too serious, just say three words: “He’s dead, Jim!”

And what about all the people who staff Ten Forward? Why bother busting your hump competing with the likes of Picard, Riker, Data, Worf and Geordi, when you can get a posting on the flagship and see the galaxy by simply being a waiter?

2

Waiter on Ten forward must be the easiest:

  1. Nobody will talk to you, only to each other or Guinan.
  2. With the replicators, you don’t serve anything. Everybody gets their own stuff.
  3. Since the replicators also duplicate silverware/plates, you don’t need to wash anything. The customers throw everything away, plates and all.
  4. Since there’s no money in the star trek universe, you don’t have to collect money, run credit cards, or worry about getting stiffed on the tip.
  5. Since you aren’t a soldier, when there’s an emergency, you won’t get called to fight.
  6. Since you aren’t maintenance, you don’t have to fix the replicators when they break.

Hardest: Red Shirted Security guard.

3

I’d have to go with, “Person who has to squeegee out the holodeck.”

4

Presuming that the character in Galaxy Quest is based on a character from the original series, the job of repeating everything for the computer.

5

Easiest - Starfleet uniform designer (“I’m feeling that this Spring spandex is again going to be HUGE dahlings”)

6

I always kind of identified with Uhura. Wanted to go to Middlebury and be a UN Translator. Only after i turned down a guaranteed placing in Monterrey and Germany if I went with the Marines. ASVAB meant everything.

7

German, is kinda like Klingon, nowadyas. Part of the Federation.

8

… or is it Russian? I argue that Klingon is more akin to Danish or Dutch or even Finnish than the Assumed threat, I always thought of Klingons as East Germans.

9

You mean Nazi-Planet-Episode Land?

10

Easiest: Spocks counselor-‘I’m not really sensing much of anything, as usual, think I’ll get a nap’

Hardest: Kirks PR flack-‘you violated an alien princess and the prime directive, again? Oy gevalt!’

11

No, I mean aiding postwar Germany with guidance and acceptance out of the the mess that We and the USSR created and left them to tumult within. A totally unnatural segregation and ideological indoctrination of a Nation for nearly a half of a century…

12

Starfleet JAG would probably be rewarding, exciting work - but good grief, it can’t be easy. To use modern scifi parlance, the Star Trek universe seems to be hovering perpetually on the brink of the singularity. Between that and regular contact with genuinely alien cultures, and genuinely alien legal systems, the job must be insane.

Plus, if Starfleet JAG is like US NAVY JAG, there’d be officers posted combat vessels. I don’t know why there wasn’t one on Enterprise NCC-1701(D), though.

13

On the other hand, you’re in a heap of trouble when something goes wrong. You don’t want to be the one responsible for the away team evaporating into the ether.

I also assumed the staff at 10 Forward had other responsibilities, or were, at least, not Starfleet. Remember that people’s families were on board. They had to have something to do.

14

Easiest: Starfleet OSHA inspector. “This control panel arcs at 10M volts when lightly jostled? No problem! Pass!”

Hardest: Starfleet Temporal Continuity Officer. “Wait…you sent who when? Tribbles? Whales? You got trapped trying to rescue yourself from an hour earlier? WHAT?!”

15

Maintenance is the toughest job. Think of all the automatic doors and miles upon miles of ductwork that has to be maintained. There’s probably at least a million air filters alone on the Enterprise.

16

Ship’s Counselor. It’s an Officer grade position that demands no special ability whatsoever. If you fail at the most crucial times (for example, if your ship is about to get blasted into atoms and the Captain desperately needs something, anything to help get the ship out of the jam and your only response is “I can’t sense it… it’s too confusing” or some worthless bullshit like that) there are absolutely no reprecussions to your job or your career.

17

Most of the JAG officer’s duties would be the same as today: prosecuting drunks and gays, paying off homeowners who bring shuttlecraft sonic boom claims, and escorting investigators who think the dilithium contractor cheated the government. Problems with alien cultures would all go to arbitration. Sometimes by the Grizzelas.

That all gets turned into holomatter and reused.

Remember, they don’t even require seatbelts on the bridge.

18

For an easy job, I’d like to work in the aeroponics bay. Ships have food replicators so it’s not like anyone will starve and pretty much whatever fruits, vegetables or herbs you produce are considered extra valuable because they’re “real.” People all over the ship would owe you favors for slipping them a fresh tomato or strawberry or something, and if your captain is addicted to fresh roasted real coffee, you’re gold.

19

So when I’m done boning a holographic Kathryn Janeway my jizz is turned into holomatter? The computer knows to turn my jizz into holomatter but not turn me into holomatter?

20

I’d imagine it’s kind of like a self-cleaning oven…once you get out of the chamber and give the “clean” order, it flash-converts all organic matter currently in the chamber. You really, really don’t want to accidentally give that order before you’re out of the arch, though…