Best /Worst Job List

Subject: Best /Worst Job List
From: Paul G.
Date: 18 Mar 99 - 12:57 PM

I was just reviewing the recently released list job rankings (250 job titles ranked best to worst) and noticed musician at #155. The really interesting thing is that "Musician" is placed directy between "Janitor" (154)and "Undertaker" (156). The first cleans up after us, and the second cleans us up after...this ought to get something going (perhaps a best/worst gig thread?)Personally, I think being a musician is the best possible job to have, if you discount the money part.

Paul G.

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Mar 99 - 05:53 PM

well, I have been lots of things...including "Bean Counter" (inventory in a Pork & Bean cannery!)

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: McMusic
Date: 18 Mar 99 - 10:24 PM

I've had a couple--loaded mattresses in an Arlington, VA bedding store in '74; was an infantryman in Viet Nam--now that really sucked!!

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Mark Roffe
Date: 19 Mar 99 - 02:04 AM

My best jobs were: San Francisco cabbie; bar owner in the West Indies; deckhand on an oceanographic boat; glass artist; musician; dump truck driver; window washer. My worst job was: computer network analyst, which is my current job!

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 19 Mar 99 - 03:23 AM

I had a weekend job in a pet shop as a kid; I had all the really tedious jobs, like sanding greyhounds down to whippets. My little brother got a job in a dolls' hospital, but he had to leave after a week - he couldn't stand the sight of sawdust.

Steve

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: AlistairUK
Date: 19 Mar 99 - 09:21 AM

Umm I worked in the sewers department of my local council..and in the sewers as well. And I spent a summer working as a grave digger in a local cemetary

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 19 Mar 99 - 09:36 AM

I was a Lifeguard when I was sixteen. I lived away from home, worked at tiny beach where the only time I was forced to go in the water was to retrieve a few beachballs that had gone outside of the ropes.

Sunshine, bikini clad young women would actually approach me, although at the time I was too shy and naive to no what to say to them. Virtually no work, a place to stay that was share with the other lifeguard, no one telling us to clean it up, go to bed etc. And I got paid for it too.

There tend to be balancing forces in the universe. As an adult I worked for a leasing company that was beyond description.

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 19 Mar 99 - 10:01 AM

So, Alistair - either your clients were interred or you were! **Fnarr, fnarr**

Steve

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: AlistairUK
Date: 19 Mar 99 - 10:19 AM

*Groan* Steve

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: reggie miles
Date: 19 Mar 99 - 10:21 AM

Jobs! (yech!!) How dare you use four letter words like that at Mudcat.

Reggie

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Big Mick
Date: 19 Mar 99 - 02:08 PM

Best Job: Union Organizer/Singer

Worst Job: Union Organizer/Singer

All the best,

Mick

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Allan C.
Date: 19 Mar 99 - 03:28 PM

Best job: What I am doing now, I run a copy center at a small college.
A pretty good job: Store detective
Worst job: Tied in last place are when I was a dishwasher at a Shoney's and when I worked as a 7-Eleven clerk.

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: John OSh
Date: 19 Mar 99 - 05:28 PM

Worst Job: Being a therapist on a locked psychiatric unit

2nd Worst Job: Pumping gas at a full service station - rain or shine

Best Job: Tie between being a Bar tender (good money, good hours, good folks) and a lifeguard on the sunny beaches of the Windy City (mainly able to booze and party the summer away!)

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 19 Mar 99 - 05:45 PM

I was a chambermaid in Leadville, Colo. one summer. Bummer!

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: LEJ
Date: 19 Mar 99 - 06:21 PM

Best job- worked one winter as assistant manager of an outdoor ice rink in Louisville in the mid-70's. Every Friday and Saturday night it was a complete party with friendly girls, mind altering substances, and Led Zeppelin blasting from the PA. I was 23 and the boss. Lookout.

Worst- either selling women's shoes (my first job), or being a printer, which I did for 7 YEARS. Ouch.

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Susan A-R
Date: 19 Mar 99 - 10:41 PM

I LIKE being a chef. I DIDN'T LIKE being a lobbyist.

I have friends who are caught in management positions, or other work they hate who point to me as the one who got out. After fifteen years in human services/disability rights activism (hence the lobbyist position) I made the leap and now am happily working 60 hour weeks, making enough to pay my part of the mortgage, electric and heat (the food is awesome and well taken care of).

Don't stay in work you hate. Start planning your getaway NOW. Its worth it!!

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: katlaughing
Date: 19 Mar 99 - 11:47 PM

Honestly I enjoyed most of my jobs from wiping people's bottoms and taking temperatures, to being an EMT, to selling radio adverts, tending bar, and running my own ad agency.

Besides being my brother's manager (classical composer/pianist prima dona/o),I have to say the one that gives me the most consternation is what I do now, which is write; it's lonely, frustrating, and requires way too much self-discipline! Plus, people think they can call all hours of the day, when you're supposed to be working and family members don't understand why you can't just drop everything and run an errand for them! But it is a Divine Compulsion which I cannot deny, so....I slog on.

katlaughing

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Bob Jovi
Date: 20 Mar 99 - 12:45 AM

Let's see...

I've worked with the circus, on a cattle farm, as a winemaker, a truck driver, a public opinion pollster, and a few other things. The best job is easy, two years in the kitchen at Pinewoods Dance camp. I highly reccomend the experience.

The worst job is a dead heat, either managing an arts colony in western Mass. or fund raising for public radio in NYC. Arts administration is like working in a chocolate shop, and not being allowed to the goods.

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Don Meixner
Date: 20 Mar 99 - 12:50 AM

Worst Job: Working for Carrier Corp. Attaching things to things on an assembly line. The company made you feel like you were entering a prison everyday when you arrived or left work.

Best Job: Its a tie between building boats and being a silversmith.

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: katlaughing
Date: 20 Mar 99 - 01:25 AM

Bob: where in WMASS? We lived in Granville and Northampton. I also worked at the now-defunct Center for the Arts in westerly, RI. I like your description! The only time I "got the chocolate" was when I sang some fo my brother's songs in concert! otherwise it was pretty thankless.

Don, I'm jealous...I took one semester of metalsmithing...don't have the patience...want to see it done very quickly...so I design and make jewelry using gemstone beads and I love it...balances out the writing.

kat

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From:
Date: 20 Mar 99 - 11:38 AM

katlaughing: It was in Cummington, MA, thats about all that I care to remember, real bad situation.

Bob Jovi

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: katlaughing
Date: 20 Mar 99 - 03:57 PM

Bob: sorry...Katlaughing

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: MAG (inactive)
Date: 20 Mar 99 - 06:19 PM

Earning college money at HoJo's on the NJ Turnpike still ranks right up there with sucksville after 30 years. I had one god-awful printing job, but hanging out in a movement printshop (on S. Dearborn, before it became "Printer's Row," when there were still actual printshops there) was pretty cool, as was having my own small press and puttering. I gave it away to a lesbian collective who later claimed they "found" it in a basement, which left a permenent sour taste in my mouth about 60's idealism.

Kelly Girl sucked, too, but it was interesting doing one job in a manicure parlor, which unbeknownst to our manager was a TOPLESS manicure parlor, and yes, they offered me a job there. (It was a LONG time ago.)

chicago cabbying. I could write a book. The black hooker in the white peekaboos. Crazy Irwin and his basketball. Jerks telling me to take my hat off so they could see what I looked like.

And while I'm on the subject, let me mention a volunteer job working for the democratic candidate in 1972, not because I loked him, but because I hated Nixon so much. When I told a fellow canvasser I was feminist, he immediately wanted to know all about how being a feminist affected what you did in bed. I was so grossed out I left the campaign and didn't go back. Sigh.

And yes, I am a semi-professional storyteller, which rates the highest, so please don't steal my original material!

Mary Ann

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: balladsinginSue
Date: 20 Mar 99 - 08:16 PM

There are good JOBS ?

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Paul G.
Date: 20 Mar 99 - 10:18 PM

Well, since I started this thing, let me tell you about my day job...and yes, there are good jobs, I have 2 of them. One is the music, the other is managing the department of pediatric medicine at a not-for-profit children's clinic. No, I'm not a doctor, but I recruit them and figure out how to get them paid for all of the charity care we do. As a sub-speciatly clinic we care for the sickest of the sick. Heartbreaking frequently, rewarding always...and I sure need the music to carry me through the heartbreaks.

Paul

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: katlaughing
Date: 20 Mar 99 - 11:40 PM

Mary Ann: your posting just reminded me of what the "Rev." Pat Robertson said about feminism at the 1992 GOP convention, you've probably heard it:

"Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practise witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians."

What the man doesn't know or understand could displace all the water in all of the oceans! AARrrrrggghhhh!

Speaking of feminism, one of my favourite bumper stickers is "Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in highheels!"

There's a great catalogue company, Northern Sun, which peddles "products for progressives"....great tees and bumper stickers, etc. AND they are always looking for good ideas (they could use some for folkies), which they pay for! www.northernsun.com

Sorry for the digression....

katlaughing

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: alison
Date: 21 Mar 99 - 12:02 AM

copied from another thread... I thought it looked like it belonged here.... sorry if it wasn't what you inteneded Susan.

slainte

alison -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: RE: Mudcat Marrage Guidance From: Susan A-R Date: 19-Mar-99 - 10:52 PM

I worked at the Council of the Southern Mountains in Clintwood VA in the winter of '81/'82. It was a remarkable introduction to "the real world" it being my first job after college. The work was intense and terrifying in many ways. There were several mining disasters while I was there, and we covered them, tried to provide support to widows, etc. It was as the bottom was going out of mine safety regulation. I was the only person on staff who didn't carry a gun (even if I weren't legally blind, I wouldn't do that.) I got introduced to a lot of causes that are still near and dear to me, I learned a lot about writing under deadline, and even learned how to do layout the old fashioned way, and loved it when we'd go to the press up in Pikefille to pull "Mountain Life&Work off the conveyer belt. I heard Ralf Stanley and the Clinch Mountain boys. I spent an afternoon in a senior center playing music with Guy Carawan, I left the council and spent a month in Hinton West Virginia in the home of Jim Costa (along with about five guitars, " fiddles, several lap dulcimers, a few odd instruments for which I don't know the names, an autoharp and, yes, two ripped apart player pianoos. We went to kitchen sessions and music parties all over southern West Virginia. I had left CSM after too much death (56 miners in two months) and too much learning in too little time, and Jim's was a good place to decompress. I had not been playing the fiddle when I moved down to VA, but I am still playing it now, and still love some of the songs and tunes I learned down there. Wow! guess you uncorked something.

Susan

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Susan A-R
Date: 21 Mar 99 - 12:26 AM

We ell, it actually should have gone to the appalachian thread in response to Catspaw, I already got a much shorter say in earlier. Say, what I REALLY want to know is whether there are any shorter term cooking/kitchen gigs to be had at Pinewoods Music camp.

Susan

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: McMusic
Date: 21 Mar 99 - 01:13 AM

Balladsinging sue-- BRAVO!!!!!

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: o'hanrahan
Date: 21 Mar 99 - 07:01 AM

Best: 1984-present Teaching field studies/natural & cultural history to a variety of people(schools, colleges,environmental agencies, bird clubs, elders) in numerous settings (canoe trips, ocean study cruises, backcountry expeditions, day hikes) at beautiful places(Vermont, Connecticut River Watershed,Berkshires, Cape Cod, Everglades, Okefenokee, Maine)...not making tremendous dough re mi but is greatly rewarding with little stress compared to city commuter lifestyles...plus i get to share music as part of my work.

Worst:Textile mill worker for, need i say, a very short duration.

Most Difficult(stress):Teacher & Advocate for adjudicated teens

Other jobs i've enjoyed to varying degrees:Warehouse Manager(good bucks),Installing floors(sore knees & back),US Coast Guard( had to cut my hair but they paid fot college)

Katlaughing & Bob: have lived in Northampton & Cummington(plenty of good canoeing on the Westfield River) and have bantered around Granville, now & then, out at the reservoir.

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Ferrara
Date: 21 Mar 99 - 10:25 AM

Well, I don't think I've ever had a good job, I've temped as typist and word processor for short stints, but was a computer programmer/analyst for 28 years. *Not* what I should have been doing. I'm convinced that computers, not the bomb, are going to destroy the fabric of society. All the best and brightest are sucked into the vacuum maw of the computer industry, leaving other areas to accept less and less qualified people for lower and lower salaries. This deep thought occurred to me yesterday after a frustrating encounter with a very pleasant but not-too-sharp hospital tech who caused me much discomfort.

If I ever have to go back to work, I'd like to sell my original crafts. "Wouldn't everybody?" I hear you say. Well, I can dream, can't I?

Hey, balladsinginSue! Glad to see you here! -- But your screen name is a little long, would you mind if I shortened it to ball'inSue? (DONT get the wrong idea anybody, Sue's been a friend for more than 20 years. Among other noble traits, she's a fine unaccompanied singer.)

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Bill D
Date: 21 Mar 99 - 12:44 PM

balladsinginSue....*grin*..the name is longer than she is..(if I understand correctly, she has the distinction of being the shortest known adult Civil War re-enactor)..but she stores an ENORMOUS amount of information and songs in there somehow...

Glad to see you, Sue

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Susan A-R, Re: Pinewoods
Date: 22 Mar 99 - 09:45 AM

You never know what Nilos Never-the-less is up to. There have been times that a short term situation has worked. There is also schoarship available for kitechen duty through CDSS.

I guess that I'm saying that I really don't know, but I would encourage you to contact Pinewoods and CDSS, and check it out. Crew at Pinewoods is a highly reccomendable experience.

Bob Jovi

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Roger the zimmer
Date: 22 Mar 99 - 10:27 AM

Coronatiion programme seller- One day's work and 40 years off!

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Mudjack
Date: 22 Mar 99 - 11:34 AM

Monica writes, The best job I ever had was being an intern at the White House, the wost job was the one I did in the White House.

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: The Shambles
Date: 22 Mar 99 - 04:28 PM

Hop picking in East Sussex in September was the best.

Picking potatoes in East Sussex in October the worst.

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: AlistairUK
Date: 22 Mar 99 - 04:40 PM

Jack: Did it involve a cigar and a blue cocktail dress?

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Ross
Date: 22 Mar 99 - 05:09 PM

BalladsinginSue Good jobs are a myth... thats why they call it WORK..

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: DennisM
Date: 23 Mar 99 - 01:03 PM

worst job: working towards retirement best job: enjoying retirement

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Sheye
Date: 23 Mar 99 - 09:10 PM

Wow, talk about tripping through your memories.

The best and the worst career job are both in the same line of work: accountant.

What made it the worst was the ###hole I worked for. I reported him to his peer committee for sexual misconduct and I was fired two weeks later for incompetence. Coincidence? Gee, musta been.

(I worked as a dishwasher for the summer when I was twelve. That was hot, dirty, work that never seems to have a accomplishing end to it. Yuck.)

What makes this current one so great are the colleagues, coworkers, and my own staff who are like family.

I spent one summer building playgrounds; that was a blast.

...and then there was the summer that I didn't work at all. I spent that summer learning how to walk and talk all over again after surviving a horrible car accident. I think I would have taken just about any crappy job as a trade that year.

Still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Mark Roffe
Date: 24 Mar 99 - 01:49 AM

U Utah sez: "Boss is a backwards double S-O-B"

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Bill
Date: 24 Mar 99 - 04:36 PM

The worst job I ever had was working in a factory, assembling mufflers. What made it so bad, besides tedious work, was dealing with the union thugs.

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Bob Schwarer
Date: 24 Mar 99 - 05:18 PM

Best "job" was when I was in the army. Got to go all over northern Japan(north of Sendai) doing a military engineering evaluation of the bridges. Across every little creek or river. At that time GI Joe was still somewhat of a novelty out in the boonies. Worst job? I don't know. I got paid & I did a fair days work for it so we all were happy. Probably worst was during the corn canning season following the trucks through the fields and throwing the ears into the trucks. Not a whole lot of mechanization then. Lot of bending. Along the same line worked on a pea viner(I guess thats the right name). You forked vines with the pods on into one end & got vines & hulls out the other end with the peas deposited in boxes. Stacked the vines like hay with a pichfork or hayfork. Canning season wasn't that long. It just seemed like it. If there were a lot of thistles in the field, they usually ended up with the peas. Things are better now, but I still remember eating "thistle 5's"

Bob S.

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: VAT (inactive)
Date: 24 Mar 99 - 09:54 PM

Best Job: What I do currently, private practice social work. I work mostly with criminal justice substance abusers in a low risk facility. Teaching Vocational Adjustment Training, Job Quest Training and Job Placement. The second best was Embalmer and the third best was a Mudlogger in the East Texas Oil Patch during the late 70's early 80's boom.

Worst job: Mid level management in a state facility for the mentally retarded and next to the worst was a behavior modification specialist in a state facility for the mentally retarded. I lived the clients but the staff was terrible.

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Big Mick
Date: 24 Mar 99 - 10:01 PM

Sheye,

That sucks!!!!! Same thing happened to my daughter. I went very male and was about to rearrange the office into a carwash, but she asked me not to. Really hate these types.

All the best,

Mick

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Mudjack
Date: 25 Mar 99 - 05:56 PM

Mark Rolfe, I heard yet another BOSS backwards, Stupid S O B. I remembering telling my son when he went into business for himself and was complaining about having to do all the little jobs like cleaning the restrooms. Yeah, being the boss really is the pits. Being boss for some might be the worst job, the best job is watching your son mature in the manure as a entrepeneur. Jack

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Jerry Friedman
Date: 25 Mar 99 - 11:43 PM

Best job: Graduate Research Assistant at Los Alamos National Lab in summer. Lots of friendly young people with interests similar to mine in a beautiful setting, and it was the last time I actually enjoyed physics. (Academic, civilian research--thanks for asking).

Worst job: teaching a solar-car project, right now. Would be great for someone with a little experience or talent in management, upper or middle. The project will be done in a few months.

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: DonMeixner
Date: 15 Dec 99 - 08:03 PM

Silversmithing and Singing for me aren't jobs, but I do manage them that way. They are the joy of living and the music in my day. A job is different.

Best job I ever had was building fishing boats and yachts. I meet some of the best and a few of the worst people it has been my task to know. But the character of the crews I built for was never in question. Not always the case with some of the owners. I think i may have a few big boats left in me now, if Pete Culler could build them after 50, so can I.

Worst job was working as a factory deck ape for Carrier Corp. in Syracuse NY. The place I ever found that was like two warring camps held in check by a tenuous contract that both parties would scuttle at the least provocation. One of my five best friends still works there and says its all changed. Luckily I don't have to go back and see.

Don

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: Willie-O
Date: 15 Dec 99 - 09:30 PM

Well this could get lengthy since I have a short attention span and have had more shitty jobs than Geroge Orwell. (That's a lot, look it up.)

But the worst, that's easy. That would be the first two treeplanting jobs I ever went on. This was in BC in '76. The first one, we were clambering around on an extremely steep clearcut mountainside on which the slash had not been moved or burned...the contractor had bid it too low, and after eight days of making about $20/day less camp fees ($100 was a good days pay for planting then, $50 about the minimum standard) we were shut down by the Forest Service for inadequate production. (Silver lining though: the cook on that job was Neal Hellman, a well-known lap dulcimer player and dulcimer-book-writer. There was a specific evening when I tried to jam with them, that Neal and someone else showed me how to play guitar with fiddle tunes---the jiggety jig thing. This was a breakthrough of sorts. Great cook too.)

After that contract folded I went on to another planting job farther north--got sick from planting in the rain too much, ended up wandering the streets of Prince George with a fever of 103, very little money, and a 60-lb pack. Yuck. I did quite a bit more tree-planting, amazingly enough, never got really fast but I ended up going to forestry college and later on was usually the foreman or subforeman, which was a not much better job.

My best job was perhaps doing lake trout fishery field work--mostly creel census on Eels Lake north of Peterborough. They give you a boat and you go out and talk to fishermen, find out what they're catching and offer to clean their fish so you can see what it had for lunch (you get used to this.) They started me out with an 18 hp rental boat, but after I demonstrated some nautical incompetence they busted me down to a 6 hp boat. This was o.k, since I still went out but my boat wasn't fast enough to catch up to anyone else's boat. (Lake trout fishers would much rather troll than talk to anyone) Occasionally I'd find someone bass fishing, but mostly my day's work entailed a leisurely cruise about six miles up this chain of lakes...counting how many people were out there fishing. When I got up to the far end of the lake there was a little island of cedar trees with a nice private clearing in the middle, and I had a chunk of hash about the size of yer thumb...I'd take a little interlude, cruise back, and go home. Now that was a job.

For satisfaction of doing something useful without sacrificing my independent nature though, I like what I do now which is being a small-time carpenter/handyman. Mostly building woodsheds, lofts, decks and stuff like that. It's got rather severe downsides like not enough work and money comes my way, and a minor injury can sideline me, as happened this fall, and I swear I'm out of it for good and going to get a nice dry high-tech job, but then another woodshed to be built shows up--happened today--and I like what I do again. Considering the season, I may include a manger.

Bill C

Subject: RE: Best /Worst Job List
From: _gargoyle
Date: 15 Dec 99 - 10:41 PM

My best job ever was

Burro Wrangler

aka..."keeper of the ass"

The backbiting, kicking, braying, stubbornness, lazyness and just downright shit ..... prepared me for all the "administrative types" I would ever have to meet.