Real job: Research assistant at a medical library
Dream job: Well-paid research assistant at a medical library. With a slightly shorter walk to the parking lot when weather is bad. 
Real Job - Technical Writer
Fantasy Job - Personal pilot for a world-traveling rich guy/gal, or a well-paid bush pilot.
Real job: Emergency operations center dispatcher (911 and whatnot).
Fantasy job: Director of training for same. Unless I decide to go live in the woods in a little cabin and grow my own goats and flax and spin and weave my own cloth and make my own cheese and tend beehives and hail the gods with mead and Jack Daniels every night, naked under the trees. That may have to wait until retirement, though.
Real job - Insurance Sales
Fantasy job - trophy boyfriend
Real Job: Technical writer & editor.
Fantasy Job: Successful studio musician and voice talent.
Real Job: Civil Servant answering people’s silly questions
Fantasy Job: Artist and/or hermit
Real job: Customer service
Fantasy job: Customer assassin
Real job: adjunct faculty
Fantasy job: full-time faculty
Like several up-thread, I love almost every aspect of my job. But I’d like some stability and predictability for a change–having to reapply for my job every ten weeks sucks.
Real job: Call center travel agent
Fantasy jobs: Designing and testing video games or toys; freelance artist or musician; movie producer.
Real Job: Photo Lab Tech.
Fantasy Job–
[ul]
[li]Xenocontact: Human/Non-Human Relations[/li][li]Librarian[/li][li]Sidekick to Doc Savage, Man of Bronze[/li][/ul]
Testing video games can be a fulfilling career, but it certainly isn’t like what most people seem to think. You don’t just sit around playing the game all day every day thinking of ways to make it better.
You know how games have menus? Well, every item on that menu needs testing, sometimes for every build, and builds usually happen every day. Think about what it would mean to test the “Reply to Thread” page here on the Straight Dope. Or just one button…the “Bold” button. How many tests can you think of for that one button? You mouse hover, how many things should happen? You right-click, how many things should happen? You left-click, how many things should happen? How many operating systems should the page work with? How many web browsers? Now picture testing every single button on every single menu of that video game every single build. Then picture yourself putting a bullet in your brain.
Of course usually you don’t have to do full testing of every build, just acceptance testing. And there are lots of actually fun things to do, like building test tools and automating tests. And, yes, you sometimes even get to play the game you’re testing. But that’s usually about 5% of the job.
Sorry to be such a party pooper.
Real job: Software Tester (not games any more)
Fantasy job: Paleontologist
Real job: Broadcaster (announcer, producer, editor)
Fantasy job: this is pretty much it, although I would be curator of the audio archive at the Smithsonian or the Library of Congress in a heartbeat. Especially if they would let me restore cylinders and early recordings.
Real job: cashier and salesperson, full-time student
Fantasy job: World-famous author and traveller
Current job: IT guy.
Fantasy job: too many to list, but Father is at the top of that list.
Could you combine the second and third and be Conan the Librarian?
Tired, cliched jokes do not merit a Slap With The Wet Trout™.
<Dumps Popcorn Shrimp down Sonia Montdore’s Pants>
Real job: Geospatial Systems Engineer, Simulation and Training
Fantasy Job: MotoGP rider. I’d also ride in the Dakar Rally in the off-season.
Real job: manager of a small, struggling science museum
Fantasy job: something (anything!) exciting in a large, well-off science museum
Real Job: engineer
Fantasy Job: international architect
Real Job: Cheese shop owner
Fantasy Job: Singing Lumberjack!
…no, wait…that was someone else entirely.
Real Job: System implementer
Fantasy Job: Actor/Artist/Economist (…what?)