What was the best job you’ve ever had and why?
So far, I’ve had about 20 jobs in my life (I find it hard to commit). Out of these twenty, only two of them were so all-around awful that I can’t categorize them as good, much less “best” in any way. It’s difficult to pick a winner from the rest because they each were best in some form or another. Highest pay, most desirable hours, nicest people, most interesting work, etc.
If forced to choose, though, I would award the job I had at a local BBQ joint. The pay was average, there was no insurance, my work schedule was never uniform, and the work itself was heavy, smoky and messy. But I stayed there for eight years because the people were so great and I had a blast.
What was the best job you’ve ever had and by what criteria did it qualify?
The African Queen Boat Ride - Busch Gardens, Tampa FL, one blissful summer in college. I took a boatload of passengers (15-20) around a little track, through a fake African village, lots of wild animal exhibits (lemurs, rhinos, crocodiles, spider monkeys) while telling a ridiculous story about a search for a lost scepter, peppered with groaner jokes like “the villagers call these huts waterfront CONGOminiums!” I realized I loved to perform, be on stage, be the center of attention and I’m now a corporate trainer, doing similar things, but with fewer corny jokes.
I’m there:
I work for a huge, successful company – so I get all the financial benefits.
I’m part of a small, influential team – so I get personal recognition.
My job is challenging, but not overly demanding – so I enjoy what I do without burning out.
I telecommute – so I can host conference calls with high-level executives at Fortune 500 companies while naked.
My job’s pretty good. Nice people. Reasonable money. Almost no commute. It’s not as intellectually taxing as I’d like and I’d like the work to be slightly different, but I’m working on achieving that.
Even though I am but a lowly secretary, I think my present job is terrific. We have great retirement benefits, good health insurance, six weeks paid vacation per year which revolve around school holidays, my coworkers actually care about one another, and as an organization we’re making a measurable, positive influence on the lives of disabled children. My commute is less than 10 minutes rain or shine. The job itself is rather boring at times but my boss gives me a lot of leeway in determining what is done when and has encouraged me to streamline quite a bit of it which exercises the old noodle occasionally. I also dress fairly casually, which I prefer.
Unless something major happens personnel wise, they will pry my cold, dead body out of my desk before I’ll leave voluntarily.
I didn’t appreciate it at the time but it would probably be when I was an assembler in a construction equipment company, building bucket trucks. I had my own little workspace about the size of a one car garage, all my own tools (I’m a tool freak) my own radio and a good bunch of co-workers. I loved building things that were meant to last. The stuff I built is still out there in the field and will be for a long time. I’d go back to it in a second if it was possible.
Driving trains.
Fun people to work with. Nice, chilled out job. TOTAL control of my working environment. Easy hours with lots of downtime. Several envious friends begging for rides in the cab. Fabulous salary and best of all, commute anxiety is a thing of the past. 
My current job - Officer in Charge of a Great Lakes CG SAR Station. I really can’t imagine anything better than this. It’s a great unit with a fantastic crew and a prime location. Challenging and fun. My next assignment will most likely suck by comparison.
My tour aboard a small ice breaking tug in Maine is a close second. I almost felt guilty getting paid to cruise up and down Penobscot Bay and River; breaking ice in the winter, working on aids to navigation (including lighthouses) in the summer.
My current job involves teaching chess, roleplaying and computer games at a private school. 
It takes me 3 minutes to walk to work, I get all my meals free in term-time and the pupils like my lessons. 
My current job. I work at the law library on campus, and it’s the perfect college job. Were open from 8am through midnight most days, so you can have morning hours or night hours depending on which you prefer. I love the people I work with, I love the amount of work vs. customer service, and I especially love how I can work on my homework while on shift!
Coming in a close second is my job as a cake decorator at Coldstone. Easy, fun job doing something I love. Great hours, and next to no customer service. Free cakes for me too! It would be my favorite job, but the pay was absolutely horrendous… I was the lowest paid employee, making minimum wage and not allowed to take a share of the tips.
My current job, of course- when it comes to money, benefits, power, independence, ect., it is the best job I have ever had. However, if money and other stuff was no object, I had a job as a print-shop delivery guy in high school. I would pick up the packages at the shop and drive around for a few hours listening to the radio, drinking slushes, and honking my horn and saying “hey” to the ladies. Sometimes I would pick up my friends/girlfriends. Oh yeah, I would occassionally deliver a couple of packages.
I work from home, too. I haven’t tried the naked conference call, but I’ll have that opportunity tomorrow. Thanks so much.
It is not so pleasant when you are standing stark naked at your desk, soaking wet as you’ve just darted out of the shower, and shivering.
I recommend a flannel dressing gown.
I’ll keep that in mind.
Do you ever bring your conference call with you to the bathroom? I did that last week and I felt positively wicked.
In 1986 I was bored of freelance programming which I had slipped into after marketing.
I got a job in a young City financial software house specifically to handle some financial packages that were peripheral to the main products, but were sufficiently lucrative to support - and junking them would have been a smear.
Interview on a Thursday, at my desk on the next Monday, with an immediate boss who a fairly nice guy - but somewhat lacking in the financial programming department.
The first few weeks were a nightmare as I reviewed code, then I hit on this marvellous idea - just re-write anything that is cr/p (eg 90% of code) based on functionality.
Most of the guys were dead smart, and a lot younger than me, so I landed up being an avuncular resource which mutated into having a neat team of guys (actually half the company - the other half were run by a smart lad providing an internal suite). As I was pretty versatile, the difficult stuff came to me - on top of my lucrative group of annual fee paying banks.
It was great, I had the record for the longest client entertainment, the biggest overseas bar bill and arrogated things like dress code: ‘We dress smarter than our clients, and our clients are bankers’ - in those days it freaked out bankers (who then dressed smartly) to see floors of articulate programmers looking like them.
I was also good at industrial espionage - nothing like a bit of C&D.
One of my more memorable experiences was when my pal from the parallel division was worried about a recruit - long hair and an earring - not our image. Five minutes with the auld c/nt got that one sorted out.
Another was when the ops manager of a German bank had a ruck with me, he sent a letter demanding my removal from the account - it was Bluetacked above my desk - and he was told - fine we’ll resign the account. Mostly the clients were docile as I was just at home with the bosses as crawling around checking cable connections.
By accident we had XML and HTML in 1990, not to mention data storage mechanisms that are still working today.
Sadly I went and screwed it all up by getting into airline duty free systems (we thought airlines might be like banks) and I landed up being bought out by a very large company.
The overseas travel was diverse and interesting, but software does not work as a sales lure.
My own operation died the death of developing hardware.
Nothing like being a big frog in a small pond, when that pond produces elixir for the really big fish.
If you had mentioned a cat then I could have demanded a picture
I tried radio telephones, but they did not work, bad reception.
Pontificating on the loo sounds interesting, normally I like to take notes, I must think about that one.
My first one implementing SAP.
Helluva team. There were a few rotten apples, some of which showed that cream ain’t the only thing that floats, but in general very good people, both on the “implementors” and “clients” sides.
Lots of hard work, solving problems that most people wouldn’t even be able to explain correctly. Enormously challenging but also doable, as we proved once and again. We did things that our managers had been told could not be done. In general we were the kind of people to whom “no way you can” is a much bigger incentive than “c’mon, you can do it”, but also if we were told to do anything we assumed it was doable, and then we went and did it.
Not enough vacation (what’s with you americans and vacation, having time off does not kill productivity) but I was able to parlay things like “delivering things before they’re due” into extra time off. There were times when we were all supposed to be in the office but we knew that one was enough and the bosses were fine with that; we’d set our own shifts to make sure there was someone manning the phone/sametime constantly, but the rest of us might be doing laundry/at the doctor/shopping/at a movie. The bosses saw it as “compensation for all those times when they eat at their desks”.
Bosses, coworkers and customers who said “thank you” and “great job” and “you guys made me win yet another bet with our Finance VP, he’s starting to hate you” (to which a coworker replied “not our fault if he can’t figure out he shouldn’t bet against this horse!”).
Being able to work from home or at home (in the first case, connected to our net; in the second, unavailable for contact) when needed. “When needed” could be because I’d just come from three weeks in Brazil and was out of clean underwear or it could be because I was going to do the kind of work I do much better with loud music and being able to cuss out loud. For some reason, most people don’t like having a Spaniard listening to heavy metal at a loudish volume and cussing at an even louder volume against the morons who designed whatever pieces of data she’s hammering into place. I suspect they wouldn’t like it from people of other nationalities, mind you.
The traveling was mostly quite nice. A couple of the hotels blew goats; we made sure to spread the word so other teammates would be able to avoid them. After a few complaints, the bosses got a policy that “if your hotel blows goats, you can find a new one, just please tell us why.”
Peace Corps, my current job. Teaching computer literacy a hundred and fifty surly teenagers in 120 degree heat in classrooms made of grass and sticks. I’m having the time of my life.
In college, I had the sweetest job ever!
I worked for a company that did explosives testing, and munitions verification for the Navy. I started out in the carpenter shop, and we built 1-3 houses a week. We then built them in the field, and watched them all blow up with 500 lb ANFO car bombs.
Then, I moved to the field crew, where we built test setups out of concrete, wood, and steel. Testing structural retrofits to withstand terrorist attacks and sled track testing of Airforce dumb bombs were the two types of projects I was on most.
Finally, I moved to the engineering department, where I was basically in charge of projects on a limited basis. It was awesome, to say the least.
I only had to work 20 hrs/week, they worked around my school schedule, and I rarely had responsibility that extended longer than a week. That, and $10/hr + for a college kid!
I had an internship at AOL in 2000, which was still pretty much the late 90s. Not a bad time to be at an internet firm.