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

Back in the early eighties I answered an ad for a position working with the dancers down on the " Block " in Baltimore City at the Hustler Club . The position required applying make up and making sure the girls were clothed accordingly . The guy said the position paid 125K a year with tons of benefits . Hm .................I told him I was definately interested . :encourage: He told me to get out to Chicago ASAP . I had to ask him why Chicago ? He told me that's where the application line started . :cussing:

Actually , I've enjoyed all my past jobs or I wouldn't have worked them .
 
Never took a job I didn't enjoy....including the military (Navy, aviation machinist mate jet, helicopter engines and power trains, ashore and at sea). Spent 31 years in a job shop machine shop. I've repaired or constructed a lot of equipment for items from, oil field, mining, restaurant equipment, aircraft parts, artificial limbs (while the owner of the prothesis waited in the office), construction equipment, food manufacturing machinery, farming/ranching, etc. Most every day was a hoot. Had good guys to work with and a great owner/boss. I've been retired from that job for 10 years and I still miss it.
 
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You know you have a good job when you wake up each morning looking forward to going in to work, the time flies by so quickly that before you realize it, it is quitting time, and you have a good feeling about your accomplishments. Having good colleagues is a bonus and have miserable colleagues can be a real downer. I was fortunate enough that in my last sixteen years of employment, I was virtually unsupervised. I had superiors and broad goals were set but the actual execution of those those objectives was left to me.

I continued working for years after reaching retirement age because I enjoyed the work and felt that I was personally making a contribution to something that would benefit the greater society. I decided to retire mostly because with all the work hours and hours spent on home projects, I was beginning to resent anyone or anything putting additional demands on my time. I was needing more personal time and to only way to get it was to quit work. I had requests from former employers to do consulting work but I purposely set extraordinarily high rates for my services. At least if you were going t impact my free time, there would be a lucrative reward for it.
 
The first twenty five years of my automotive career had a simple design. If the test drive wasn't going to be fun, I wasn't working on it. I ended up in shops near the local college and medical complex. One job, doing mostly BMW and Jaguar, I relented and worked on a Chrysler minivan "for a good customer". Then they took in a second one, so I quit. Moved from there to a racing shop; mostly VHRA, but some SCCA. Eventually I moved to a more lucrative specialty. Gone was the fun test drives. In it's place was a steep learning curve and mucho more money. I hated it. Not the learning or the subject, but the actual shop environment and the F'n politics. Two years ago I up and quit. Didn't know what I was going to do; didn't care. Just gave my notice. Didn't tell anyone at all.

Two days later I got a phone call from a strange area code I almost didn't answer. It was the prez of an automotive specialty company. They were looking for someone and my name came up through a friend of a friend deal. I took it. I now work from home doing tech support with a side of engineering, a bit of R&D and even a touch of web design. And I"m lovin' it! I work directly with a dozen people. Some of them I've known from years of online forums, but I've never met a single one of them in real life. Never been to the home office. Never even been to that state. And I like it that way.
 
My first job after getting out of school was sweeping floors in a job shop that mostly repaired logging and sawmill equipment, but took in any job that walked in the door. They put me on machines and I progressed up to machinist, running every machine in the shop. I stayed there while I learned to fly, and they always wanted me to help out there even after I got paying flying jobs. My lifetime interest in machining comes from that job.

In 1979 a friend and I bought a Cessna 180 and I got a job for it flying Sockeye Salmon off a beach in Bristol Bay, Alaska that summer. This lead to the fisherman buying a C-47 (Douglas DC-3) cargo plane to haul the fish to Anchorage for the frozen market. This was a seasonal job, lasting a couple of months a year, and since I was a licensed A&P aircraft mechanic, a few extra months a year keeping the airplane in shape.

After several years of this, a fellow I knew contacted me looking for a way to move crews, equipment, and supplies to native villages all over Alaska. Alascom was expanding service, and each village had only one telephone. They were going to offer service to each house! We were able to schedule the job so the airplane could finish the Salmon season first. We flew all over Alaska, moving rubber-tired cable plows and supplies with the DC-3, and used Cessnas for moving people and small items. The DC-3 was the lowboy and the Cessnas were like pickups. The company laid out what and who had to go where and what the construction schedule was. We used our judgement on how to meet those needs, but were never second-guessed about safety or practicality.

The construction job continued the next summer, but over the winter the fisherman had to sell the DC-3 because of other financial issues. My partner and I found another DC-3 that we could lease, and we took over the telephone project. We completed 21 projects from North of the Arctic Circle to Glacier Bay (near Juneau) that year, which completed the planned expansion.

Those two years, when I wasn't flying, I was expected to work on the projects. We got paid Davis-Bacon wages, and had full room and board. One of my jobs was to fly to the villages ahead of the crew and negotiate a place to stay and sometimes even catered food. I got to spend enough time in each village to get to know the locals, and that was wonderful. They are cautious with strangers, but opened up after you had been there a while, and they got to know you. I enjoyed seeing Alaska from the viewpoint of the locals, who were overwhelmingly Native.

Between the wages and the aircraft contracts, I was able to get on sound financial ground. I stuffed both regular and SEP IRA's, paid off all debt, and invested in land. It gave me the resources to start my own business later in life that allowed me an early, secure retirement. Best of all, it was fun! There was a real sense of purpose, bringing a service to remote areas, meeting the challenge of bad weather and small runways (we even landed the Cessnas on roads and beaches), and I was even given the unofficial status of site "boss" to the construction crews. I also enjoyed learning all about telephone technology, since part of the process was building a prefab "central office" for the switchgear and connection to the satellite repeaters.

I got to provide a useful service to remote people, see a lot of beautiful country, meet a lot of great people, fly great airplanes, and make some money. Good times!
 
Working at a Shell station in the early 70's pumping gas and fixing flats. $2.00 an hour and free rack time to work on my car. The next 39 years at the same job that really started getting hard to go to during the last few years. Self-employed now, which I have been mostly happy.
 
An interesting question... Now retired, I had four significant jobs. Each had its pros and cons, so I can't pick a "best job."

From a young age, I'd been heavily into 1) electronics and 2) geography/maps. Throughout my life, these were factors in many of my pastimes and my career. (Maps are obviously not a really big career field.)

Job 1. In my junior year of college, I dropped out and "ran away to sea," to serve on nuclear attack submarines. I was a Fire Control Technician, working on the electromechanical analog/digital computer systems for targeting and weapons control.) So there was plenty of electronics involved, as well as the geospatial aspects of navigation, tracking, and tactics. I suppose an epitome of being immersed in one's job is deploying to spent 60 days at a time submerged on "special operations." Challenging and engrossing, these were the most interesting times of my career.
On the other hand, there were many months with our boat torn apart for overhaul, or routine training operations. All essential, but not like being on patrol.

Job 2. After 6 years, I returned to civilian life, where I installed and repaired mainframe computers for one of the big computer companies. Most of this was East Texas. I serviced a few customers. For the most part, I worked on my own, rarely seeing coworkers. My job title was "Field Engineer" but this was really a technician-level job. Challenging computer problems were very rare, most tasks were mechanical rather than electronic. My main tool was a vacuum cleaner! (Servicing the machines that read and sort checks was a mainstay of daily tasks.) When I had began in the industry, hardware costs were 90% of a system, software was 10%. By mid-80s, the ratio had reversed. I followed the money, getting my Computer Science degree in 1990. I'd prepared to work in business data processing, if I had to. But hoped for, and prepared to work in scientific computing of some sort. In this, I succeeded...

Job 3. Hired as a System Engineer for computerized mapping and geospatial information systems (GIS,) I became the implementation expert for one of our software products, working with a variety of customers (corporate, municipal, national, and international entities) in a variety of industries, as I assisted them in converting their data for use with our software. Given this mix of computers and mapping, I considered this my ideal job. I particularly liked the variety of customers, industries, locations and the custom processes needed for each project. Interesting trips to interesting places, doing interesting work. This was my "best job" until the company lost momentum, customers, and money. Time to move on...

Job 4. My final engineering position was again as a geospatial systems engineer, this time at an aerospace contractor, supporting projects for the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). The government's contracting process is onerous, but classified work does have its perks. I retired from there in 2013.

So where did actual metalworking and machining ever interact with my life?
  • I did take a metal shop class around 9th grade.
  • My father managed an electronic components factory where I had a high school summer job. They had a small machine shop and some complex custom pieces of production machinery. I might have inventoried them.
  • Another summer job was at a tool and die shop that also made cosmetic brushes! I operated a semi-automatic lathe that turned dowels into brush handles and a swaging machine that turned tubing in ferrules. This was in very uncomfortable conditions. After one week, I found a better job a block further down the road...
  • .... where there was an electronics instrument plant. Given that I'd just come from the tool and die shop, they put me into their machine shop. My main job was trying to sharpen small drill bits faster than the women on the assembly lines could dull them drill circuit board holes. But I did used a mill for various custom tasks.
  • So the next summer, got a job at an HP plant that made power supplies and other gear. They looked at my experience and sent me to the sheet metal shop. Mainly, I'd be shearing sheet sheet and stamping out panels. But let me tell a story...
    • First morning on the job: sheet metal shop boss says, "We'll start you over here with Al, spot welding these chassis together. Here's how you do it..." He demonstrated the procedure then said, "Time for coffee break. When you return, start cranking them out."
    • Back from break, I put on apron and safety glasses, turned on the cooling water and turned on the spot welder. Then grabbed two parts and the alignment fixture, stuck the work into the welder and stepped on the pedal. Immediately, every light in the factory went out. And stayed out. (Maybe I had the current set too high?) We found out the lights were out all over town, all over northern NJ. And still the lights stayed off. After an hour or two, we all were sent home, but told to come back if the power returned before mid afternoon.
  • While our submarine was in the shipyard for 15 months, watched tons of steel being cut out, then later replaced, welded, and ground. They gave us dark glasses for eye protection. But nothing for hearing protection. I asked, but our corpsman told me, "You're not a sonarman, you don't need that." Well, he was wrong. My ears ring 24x7, and I get a check from the VA.
  • On the sub, we all learn about all the systems on board. That's a lot of motors, pumps, valves, pipes, hydraulics, electrics, electronics, etc.
  • The sub had a drill press and a lathe in the engine room. I never used them. I was impressed when my buddy, a Machinist's Mate, fabricated a replacement part for the Fairbanks-Morse diesel using hacksaw and file.
  • I recall taking some parts from a check sorting machine to a local machine shop for repair, likewise two different parts from my sailboat.
Then what provoked me to set up my home machine shop? It was around 2009, a local newspaper here in San Diego North County did a story about the Miniature Engineering Museum of Craftsmanship sponsored by local firm Sherline Products. I visited the museum in San Marcos, CA (now in Carlsbad, CA.) Seeing their displays reminded of my history of machinery stuff and I began building my shop and my skills.
 
gjmontll said:
In my junior year of college, I dropped out and "ran away to sea," to serve on nuclear attack submarines. I was a Fire Control Technician, working on the electromechanical analog/digital computer systems for targeting and weapons control.) So there was plenty of electronics involved, as well as the geospatial aspects of navigation, tracking, and tactics. I suppose an epitome of being immersed in one's job is deploying to spent 60 days at a time submerged on "special operations." Challenging and engrossing, these were the most interesting times of my career.
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What?! No way! Me too. Minus the dropping out of college part (I did that later, after the Navy). I was a FT too, served on the USS Oklahoma City (SSN723). Was it FTG back in your day? I can't really place when "your day" was, but based on the amount of stuff that came after the Navy I'm assuming you were out long before I joined.

I was in from '04-'08; only did a 4 year enlistment because I was Nuke Waste and they took my big bonus and 2 yr extension away and sent me to Groton where the instructors wanted me to sign a 1 yr extension with no bonus while everyone else in my class was getting between $5k and $15k. I said I would sign that when they put some dollars in the bonus box. They told me to take it up with legal so I went to legal where I watched 3 pregnant girls eat doritos all day. Told me to come back tomorrow. 3 days in a row. So on the 4th day I just went back to class and the subject never came up again. I got no bonus, and no extension paper was in my file.

My experience in the Submarine Force was not so great. That's where I learned one of my most deeply ingrained lessons that I am still struggling to unlearn: if you want something done right, do it yourself. My first class was only interested one thing: getting letters of recommendation and getting his CWO paperwork pushed through; he didn't lead, instruct, stand watch, anything. He was too busy rubbing elbows with department heads and qualifying officer watches. My chief was a short timer and didn't care about anything. We had (3) "2nd chance" 2nd classes that were all kicked off other boats and only one was qualified FTOW. As a 3rd class I was doing half the work of the entire division. Another 3rd class who was qualified LAN admin did the other half. I had to babysit a NUB as well as a 2nd class who wasn't qualified FTOW. I was the Work Center Supervisor and assigning PMs to sh**bag 2nd classes that just took them to the rack and returned them completed. When I would go check their work and find it undone, I didn't have the power to do anything about it except actually do the PM myself. A lot of the other divisions were in similar situations. The rank:responsibility ratio was all over place across the whole boat.

We had a weak XO and a bitter little-man captain who seemed to do whatever he could to undermine crew morale. Everyone was miserable, all the time. So much negativity everywhere. It was a toxic environment. We had 4 suicide attempts from 3 people during one 9-month deployment and one guy went AWOL during a port call in France, tried to fly home because his daughter was in the hospital with a life threatening illness and the captain wouldn't approve leave. He was a cook, and our worst one. The screw wouldn't have stopped turning without him. I probably would have reenlisted if I had a different first command.

One cool thing about that job though, after I qualified everything a FT is supposed to qualify, I qualified Periscope Operator. That meant I got racked out every time a JO was simply too tired to be roused when coming to PD (which was always), but it also meant I got to be the only person on the boat apart from the captain to make a periscope observation of an "enemy" submarine. The captain barged in the second I called out the Submarine observation and shoved me off the scope, took one look, and ordered 300ft. They hung the picture I took in the ML passageway and it had everyone amped for a few days, temporarily convinced that we were actually doing something cool. There was a round of stern talkings-to though; cool as it was, we were never supposed to get close enough to actually see the thing. I would have had a bigger share in the spankings had it not been for my higher-ranked understudy who's fire control solution had it several miles away. I mean, I can't be on the periscope and generating accurate solutions simultaneously.

The math I Iearned in the Navy, and the practical way I was made to apply it (Target Motion Analysis) on a daily basis made the learning of higher math much more intuitive. I think that close relationship with math served me most personally. Professionally though, the electronics experience that the position allowed me to list on my resume was my biggest takeaway. Truthfully I didn't learn the first thing about electronics in the Navy. I learned how to follow step-by-step procedures and swap out circuit boards. Big whoop. But future employers didn't know that, and those resume bullets got me in the door where "fake it til you make it" took over and I did eventually gather the electronics knowledge that someone in my position was expected to have, by studying on my own time.

gjmontll said:
  • The sub had a drill press and a lathe in the engine room. I never used them. I was impressed when my buddy, a Machinist's Mate, fabricated a replacement part for the Fairbanks-Morse diesel using hacksaw and file.
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Yeah that lathe in the engine room was pretty cool, especially the way it folded up into the wall. I've thought about doing something similar in my shop to free up room. I didn't know what I was looking at back then, never got to touch it. I wish I could go back now and see what kind of lathe it was. One of our Nuke MMs used it to make some points for poseidon's trident for certain ceremony we're not supposed to talk about. But I never saw or heard of it being used other than that.
 
The most fun job I ever had was working for the US Forest Service through americorps. It was an internship for almost no pay. But myself and one other person were in charge of a 13,000 acre island. Drove the boat over in the morning, greeted sightseers as they arrived and then had many hours a day to hike, fish, explore, swim (in Lake Superior, brrrr) view wildlife, etc. came back on the boat at night. Did a little maintenance here and there, cleaned campsites, etc. Then went to the bar many nights or just enjoyed the Upper Peninsula outdoors.
 
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