re: Coolest Job(s) You Ever Had....?

American Airlines ticket agent. Fly everywhere for free, $25 hotel rooms divided by 3 or 4 ppl, endless supply of travelers, flight attendants, bilingual women, liquid lunches, weekend trips... Also loved strip club gig as security, DJ, gopher, bar back.... didn't know how good I had it, never thought it would come to an end.

Oil boy for Swedish bikini team.

Collecting water samples in a sewerage treatment plant. Great job. Amazing the amount of tampons and condoms floating on the top.

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I am in the banking industry for 30 yrs and would give up 1/2 my salary to go back to the first baking job I have. That was a cool job

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Chocolate Chip Cookies???

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She smiled at me once, but I think it was an accident.

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it was

One of my favorite Jobs ever was working at the Brookstown Texaco on Evangeline in Baton Rouge around 1985.

I worked there part time after school and on Saturdays. I loved visiting with the large population of old folks that would come in with their really clean old cars for a full service fill up. I’d check the oil and tires and chat with them a bit. It was just always a nice experience and the folks were always happy to chat.

They ended up needing someone full time and had to let me go. It was a different time…

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I got to run water pipes in the USS Oak Grove Coal Mine one summer when I was in college. I was certified to 'weld' that heavy gauge black plastic pipe and was the only one that could pass the drug test to go down there. Got paid $25/hr which was big money back in 1995.


I had to go through mine safety training. Part of which was survival gear in case the mine collapsed: headlight, rebreather, etc, etc. It came with a utility belt with a metal coin and a number stamped on it. After a couple of weeks of signing out for the belt, I asked the guy where he thought I was going with his belt. There was only one way in and one way out of the mine (1000' straight down an elevator). I'll never forget his response....

"Son, you don't sign out for the gear because we think you are going to steal it. You sign out for the gear so we can ID your body when the mine collapses."


It was about 3 months after I left there that the mine had an explosion and killed some people.

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Never work in a mine again. Worked in a literal salt mine once...there were poles every 100 feet or so down the drifts and you were supposed to take the pole and pole the back (ceiling, roof) so any lose material would fall in front of you instead of behind you. It is like working under a load on a crane every minute. Except the load is far heavier. You will never hear a professional. experience miner cussing MSHA like you will general industry workers cussing OSHA because there are very few miners who do not have some bone chilling experience...they fully understand that MSHA regulations were written with the blood of their friends and family who were miners before them. The regulations are identical and the inspection process is identical...almost no differences...that was why I was working there, to crosswalk the differences. The difference is they know how dangerous their occupation is while general industry workers suffer from recency bias where their jobs have been relatively safe for a long time because of OSHA.

I loved the coal mines, but couldn't deal with the shite, like when Jim Walter bankrupted, and the "investors" took over. Was there 10 years, then went to the Oak Grove mine, was there 6 months, and they did the same thing. Left and went back to machining