I remember when I was younger, I had a job with various car rental agencies. What I would do is ride in a van with a bunch of other people to various cities. The group I rode with would pick up cars and then drive them back to our home city. (Dallas)
A very fun job for a 21yo.
Delivering pizzas as a teenager wasn’t so bad either.
Oddly enough, I actually enjoyed the time I spent working the register at the local Chevron. The hours were rough, but I got a perspective on life unlike any other experiences I had.
My favorite job, though, was the near-minimum wage student job I had working the box office at my university’s fine arts theater. Sometimes it was a pain in the ass, usually when we had people with entitlement complexes, but most of the time it was a real joy. 90% of the people I met or spoke to on the phone were folks who were looking forward to seeing a show, so they were usually in a good mood and happy to talk to me. On show nights, it was a lot of fun to dress up and meet-and-greet everyone. Not to mention that those of us who worked the show were allowed to slip into the theater and watch the performance for free once the box office closed for the night. I saw a lot of great musicals for free that way.
Easily Pizza delivery. Did it in highschool then again in college. What’s not to love? You spend most of your work day driving around in your car, listening to your own music, no boss breathing down your neck, and the harder you work is directly proportional to the amount of money you make.
If it’s slow, you get to sit around and be lazy and get paid for it.
If it’s super busy - yeah it’ll kick your ass - but you rake in the tips, so it’s great.
I worked at Hills/Aames (basically like K Mart) in the electronics department. The company was circling the drain and they couldn’t keep any of their employees, so we got away with everything. The best part was that because of the lousy pay, and because most of the customers were the rudest, most ignorant unwashed bargain hunters you could ever hope to find, there was absolutely no incentive for expending more than the smallest of efforts in customer service. I’m talking the kinds of people who take dumps in the changing room, set racks of clothes on fire, and berate pregnant teenage cashiers over a $0.50 discrepancy. I hung out in electronics listening to death metal on the display stereo, watching Twister 100 million times on the home theater system, flirting with the chick in jewelry, and virtually embezzeling video games. On breaks we’d hang out in the merchandise storage area and joust with the electric pallet jacks or play the Tony Hawk demo on the display Playstation. The store manager was a drug addict who had mangled his hand when he was younger after he jumped out of a moving car while on acid; he never left the back office. The assistant manager didn’t give a crap and used to make up silly rap songs with us.
I quit a union grocery store job to work at that dump for less wage and I never regretted it. So much fun.
All my jobs have paid crap or less, but a few have been truly awesome.
Starbucks was a LOT of fun. Fast-paced, people-centric, great atmosphere, awesome co-workers and bosses. Loved the customers too, even the upside-down soy sugarfree extra caramel light ice decaf macchiato types – there was never a boring day Free coffee and food never hurt, either.
Working for a dot-com startup was great too. It was super-casual and we didn’t have an office yet; we just rented a house. A typical day went like this: Go to work, write some scripts, cook some lunch in the kitchen, eat in the yard with coworkers, go out shopping for groceries, come back and network-enable the attic, grab a drink from Starbucks, water the front lawn, debug the latest installer, get off the clock, have a LAN party till 2am, fall asleep on the couch. Wake up the next day, have boss grin and laugh when he walks through the front door, go back to work.
But by far my favorite was working as a trailworker in a national forest. It was essentially a paid three-month camping trip with some dirt-digging thrown in. Beautiful places, zero crowds, fresh air and sunshine every day. Well, aside from the occasional rainstorm we had to work through. We had professional cooks making all-you-can-eat meals every night too. Just totally… awesome
Movie theater in high school. All the free popcorn and soda I could take in, free movies whenever I wanted, plus I got to see the movies for free the night before they opened and brag about it Friday at school. A couple of my co-workers are still my friends 25-years later. I don’t remember ever having so much fun since.
I worked as a colorist on Acclaim comics such as Magnus Robot Fighter and Shadowman and such. I started as an intern and never got fast enough to really make any money at it before Acclaim went under. I worked for a subcontractor not for Acclaim/Valiant directly.
I was the arts & entertainment editor for an alternative newsweekly. I made diddly-squat, but I spent my time seeing and interviewing utterly fascinating people. And I rarely had to get out of bed before noon. And I never had to wait in line. And I got to hang out backstage, and travel a bit, and get a little taste of the rock-star lifestyle. It was fun, for several years.
During college, I worked at Busch Gardens in Florida on the African Queen Boat Ride. I got to wear a blue shirt, white shorts, a blue bandana tied jauntily at my neck. I was a tour guide for an 8 minute ride, through jungle-type foliage with many life animal exhibits (we had lemurs, rhinos, spider monkeys, malibou storks, alligators).
Sure, the storyline was cheesy (we were looking for some sort of lost scepter and at one point a male coworker dressed as a warrior would jump out of a hut to menace the boat passengers) and the jokes were TERRIBLE (the villagers call these huts their waterfront CONGOminiums, don’t come on board, come on excited!) but it was the best job I have ever had.
And I was really really really good at it. I had been a fairly shy high schooler, the Boat Ride let me unleash my inner ham, I adored playing to a crowd. I went on to become a successful corporate trainer - who still loves to be in front of a crowd.
Busch Gardens tore down the family-friendly African Queen boat ride for the more “exciting” Tanganika Tidalwave. It’s probably a good thing the ride closed, I’d probably be the only 40 year old boat ride captain!
Painting Schools for my home town. I did this summers in high school and when I was in college. It didn’t pay as well as factory work, but was a heck of a lot quieter and less hectic. Didn’t pay anywhere near as well, but I didn’t care.
I taught ESOL to students from around the world who came to the U.S. specifically to learn English–in other words, they weren’t living here–they just came here to learn English, then went home. I loved that job. Most of the students were college age and fantastic people. The best thing about it was that I learned as much from them as they did from me. It was so rewarding, but alas, it was part-time and paid very little, so I had to find something else.
Now that you’re bringing school into it, the best time of my life was working for “The Shamrock,” one of only two weekly high school newspapers in Michigan. We won awards, and I personally won awards. Good times. Too bad that they turned into a monthly. Bad direction. Mrs. Haas, you rocked!
I liked my retail jobs. I worked in handbags for awhile, in juniors, and in fine jewelry. Juniors was a bit of a drag because customers left the dressing rooms a mess, but handbags and jewelry rocked.
Archery instructor at a Boy Scout camp. Basically I got to do one of my favorite things all day long, and I enjoyed teaching and talking about too. Part time duties were leading nature walks, singing silly songs and performing goofy skits at campfires, and lounging around the pool as an assistant lifeguard. I bunked with my best friends and at night and on weekends we would set up the huge projector screen and watch movies.
The pay was really beyond crap. Room (four to a cabin) and board (meager camp food) plus $400 for a month of work. Also, we had to work seven days a week, sun up to way past sun down on some days. But the work itself was great.
I was the receptionist/office assistant/concierge/all-purpose flunky at one of those schools, and I agree, it kicked ass. Met tons of cool people, learned bits of a bunch of different languages, had great conversations about different cultures, and even had a couple of flings. It was generally awesome. And in fact, it didn’t pay that badly. I had to quit because I was in school and they couldn’t accommodate my schedule. Otherwise, I might have stayed there a while.
But if volunteer jobs count, the hands-down winner was being a docent at the zoo. I worked in two houses: Invertebrates, and Reptiles and Amphibians. On an average day, I got to play tag with giant tortoises, hug snakes, hand feed a chameleon and an octopus, and regale a steady stream of visitors with fun facts about the animals. I always got a kick out of the fridge stocked with fresh veggies, dead rats, and a crisper drawer full of worms. I loved the people, I loved the animals, and loved the commute - a five minute walk from my house. If I could have gotten paid to do that - not even well, just enough to live on - I would have taken that job in a heartbeat.