What's the best job you ever had, and why?

Came up through the ranks in the oil patch. There were times I hated my job and other times not so much. Until I made toolpusher (now titled rig manager). Had a really good superintendent who gave me considerable leeway on making the rig safer, faster, easier or more dependable. And made good wages. From there I moved into the consulting side of drilling for oil and gas. When there were good crews on the rig it was the second best job of my life. RETIREMENT is the job to have. It was really cold today (for this area) and I told myself how nice it was to look out the window and see the cold and wind without having to be in it!
I know, OP didn’t ask for history but got it anyway.
 
my best job was the worst paid. In the early 70's 4 of us had a business in Spain for British holiday makers.
We ran sailing, water skiing, scuba diving and horse riding parties for 2 years.
I was a cook "A" along with another friend "B". The other two organised the punters, bookings and driving.
The day started with "A" cruising the market getting the days food, "B" taking a group water skiing, "A" then cooked breakfast, and after would take a party scuba diving whilst "B" prepped lunch.
In the afternoon "A" and "B" each took a party out diving and water skiing and sailing, then both of us prepped and cooked dinner.
After dinner we would both take them club cruising. Twice a week we would let them cruise on their own and around 9pm would round them up then off to the stables and ride up into the mountains for a midnight BBQ. (it was riding back down from one of these where I fell off and broke my back but that was at the end of two years)
A few hours sleep then rinse and repeat.
In the winter months we cruised round spain before getting back to London.
Then from November to March we wandered round London dressed in scuba gear handing out leaflets for our holidays and running scuba lessons for those who wanted them.
It was a great time but I finished up with $400 after 2 years fun work.
My next best job was when I retired, I love retirement
 
cross thread said:
Well on the machine end of it , I had my own shop (started 84'-2010) I scored a customer that was selling high end hunting rifles . I made a lot of stuff for them (tooling and parts) , the part that was fun was what they called a recoil arrester . It was a tube that screwed onto the business end of the barrel it had holes in the side of of the tube drilled radially all around . I made thousands of them and paid off the CNC mill .
Right the most fun job I ever had . That would be racing my Speedway bike 6 nights a week (76') in Socal . I didn't make much money but it was fun .
005 by mark westi, on Flickr
Click to expand...

Used to go to Indian Dunes and Ascot to watch flat track in the 70’s with my dad. Great times.


Cutting oil is my blood.
 
All in all, a "Pipe Shop" electrician was probably the most enjoyable. The mill was old (~1889) and had been updated as needed, but only as needed. We night shift tended the DeLavaud spin casting machines. When I went to day shift, I had gotten the attention of a systems engineer after developing an electronic gizmo for him. That led to the Instrument Shop and many more "designed to fit" gizmos. It was dirty (foundry) and hot in the summer and almost as hot in the winter. But the chief electrician was an old man that knew how to change line fuses (2300 volt) in the rain and old school DC motors. And looked the other way when someone bypassed a tagout and paid the consequences.

The pay wasn't all that good. It was better than the job before, but only half or so of the bigger steel mills. I stayed there for 5 or so years. The union ran me off. 26 men in the shop, 25 signitures on the grievance over a 25 cent increase over my "Instrument Shop" job. The company was going to back me but I didn't like the bad feelings, so left.

.
 
Oh wait, I almost forgot one.

When I was 16 years old I started playing bass guitar in rock bands. By 18 I figured out there wasn't much future in it but I really loved live music. I went up to a long haired sound engineer and offered to work for him, first gig free. That started my night job that found me in live sound on stage as monitor engineer in the SF bay area. We did sound for many, many touring bands as well as local favorites like Tower of Power and Santana. When the live music scene died in 1991 I started doing psycedelic light shows for rave parties. What a way to mis-spend my youth, working corporate A/V during the day and working shows for cash under the table at night.

That ultimately turned into my last freelance gig before going legit, doing networking for conferences all around the world, staying in 5 star hotels and eating really well. Maybe I'll go back to that one after i retire, I love to travel and getting paid to do it is even better.

John

I really haven't worked any bad jobs except that one Valentines day I sold flowers right after my girlfriend broke up with me....
 
Building communications networks.

Builtand maintained many dispatch centers as well as SMR systems, later cellular where we built a couple.

Very high stress for many, we thrived in it.

Cellular is no longer a good industry for the service folks, just boxes and wires, no skill needed.

Engineers do the hard work.

Back to land mobile radio, very rewarding to keep the systems running well.

Sent from my SM-G781V using Tapatalk
 
Lifelong plumber here, my own business for the last 25, I'm mostly just the owner now at 55 years old but a lot of hard work/ long hours and stress getting here. My favorite days were big complex commercials jobs, hospitals, factories, etc. Miles of pipe plumbing heaven, cast iron, copper, everything. Even as a helper my plumber would tell me to slow down. I miss those days.
 
It's a tough question. For 22 years, I had my own small company but in 1997, I decided that I was too isolated and needed to get back into the mainstream. I was hired by a medical device manufacturer as a manufacturing engineer. After a month and a half, I was promoted to manufacturing engineering manager which also included design engineering. I used to come in early and was very often the last person to leave. I would think about a coffee break at lunch time and have a bagel for lunch around three or four in the afternoon. Time flew by each day.

It was there that I first started using AutoCAD. It was easier than trying to explain to my draftsman what I wanted with a crude sketch. We were using a CAD product called Vellum at the time and it was really outdated. I really wanted to purchase SolidWorks but the COO overuled me saying, "the rest of the world uses AutoCAD, we will use AutoCAD". A few years later, we bought two seats of SolidWorks, one for our draftsman and one for general use.

The highlight of my six years there was the accreditation phantom which is used by every CT facility in the US to accredit their operation prior to use. We were asked by the American College of Radiology (ACR) to build a prototype and subsequently manufacture a phantom to be used for the above stated purpose.
accreditationsupport.acr.org

Phantom Overview: CT (Revised 11-9-2022)

Revision History The intent of the CT Accreditation Program (CTAP) is to use the information obtained from the review of both clinical and phantom images to assess overall image quality. Your facility will need to submit up to four specified ...
accreditationsupport.acr.org accreditationsupport.acr.org

Being a very small department, I headed up the development of the phantom and the manufacturing processes to be used. We made an initial batch of three prototypes which were exhibited at a trade show and then sent to the ACR for their approval. Were were significant challenges in manufacturing. Here are some picture of the product. The last photo is of my draftsman (l.), myself, and our head machinist (r.). It was three in the morning and we were just putting the finishing touches to the first three prototypes heading off to the trade show the next day. The next morning, I came in late at 9 o'clock and was geetting the third degree from the owner until someone mentioned our late night activities.
P9120385.JPGP2020004.JPGP2010003.JPG
Oh yes; I met my future wife working there.
 
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