Best job: The one I have now, managing a company that builds musical instruments and operates a large acoustic music store. I work with and for people who genuinely like and trust each other. I've not had to deal with office politics for the last 12 years. I'm a musician on the side, with as many gigs as I want. It's a pretty good life.

Worse jobs: My very first job was working in a plastic factory putting chrome plating on car parts. I dealt with extremely noxious chemicals. The plant's philosophy was that safety gear was too expensive to waste on factory workers. I quit when I started puking every night after work. The place was shut down some years later when it came out that they were pouring the chemical residue in an open pit out back and had poisoned the water supply for the local high school. Next worse job was working for a video tape distributor. It was one of those places where people cared so much about the place that the normal way to quit was to simply stop showing up. It happened a lot. The worse management I have ever seen. No one was ever in any doubt that we were being used to exract as much money from us as possible before we found a job working for people who at least pretended to care. Shortly after I left it was bought in a hostile takeover and the entire management team (all of whom were members of the same family) was fired the same day. No one cried.

John Peekstok