I have one very simple question, and I hope each one of you decides to answer it in the comments. The question:
What is the best job you’ve ever had?
I want to clarify the question. I’m not asking about the best position you’ve ever had. I think most positions have many aspects, including things people hate, things people tolerate, and things people love.
I want to know, out of all the individual things you’ve ever been paid to do, which is the best? Think long and hard on this one, and I’m pretty sure you can come up with something awesome. There are only two rules: it has to be freaking sweet, and you have to have been paid for it.
If you aren’t quite sure what I’m asking, read the best job I’ve ever had and I think you’ll get a pretty good idea.
Working a Fantasy Football Draft
When I was in college, I made money as a professional fantasy football journalist. The company I worked for runs different fantasy football games, including one where they have a live draft event. Hundreds of people show up to participate in this event, with a grand prize of $10,000. The event itself is a lot of fun because the people I work with are great, football is awesome, and the girls are beautiful.
Yes, the girls are gorgeous. Allow me to explain.
This event is a collection of about 250-300 football fans (mostly men) who sit in a big conference room for 2-3 hours yelling out men’s names. I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty un-masculine to me. It was pretty clear that we needed to do something to make it more manly.
Enter the Draft Girls.
When a participant in our event calls out the name of an NFL player they want on their team, someone has to put a sticker of that player’s name on a big draft board. Who better to do that than highly paid, beautiful, professional models?
The company I worked for paid a bunch models to be our Draft Girls every year, and the guys loved it.
Well, I’ll say they loved most of the draft girls. As it turns out, even some professional “models” aren’t really that beautiful. That’s where I come in.
The Best Job I’ve Ever Had was Rating the “Talent”
Most of our Draft Girls were gorgeous. Heck, they better be with how much we were paying them (I don’t know how much exactly but it was something like $100 an hour per girl). However, let’s just say there were a few Draft Girls whose “talent” didn’t live up to their price tag.
I’ve done a lot of different things working this event over the years, but no job has been more fun than rating the Draft Girls.
My assignment was to rate each of the Draft Girls on the standard 1-10 scale. Appearance was the main factor, but personality was also important considering the girls would be spending 2-3 hours interacting with the customers. I had to spend a minute or two with each Draft Girl to do a proper evaluation. Then I recorded my rating and moved onto the next one until all were complete.
The company used these ratings to request certain models be used in future years.
While some of you may think this is ridiculous or stupid or chauvinistic, it really was a necessary job. Here are a few reasons this was important:
- Appearance matters to the customers. They understand that part of their entry fees go towards paying for the models, and they want to get their money’s worth.
- Models are freaking expensive. Why pay someone $100 an hour to do a job that plenty of people are willing to do for $15 an hour if they don’t bring a unique skill-set to the table?
- The guys who pay the largest entry fees want (and deserve) the “best” models at their table. We needed a way to figure out which ones were the “best”.
It was a tough job, but someone had to do it. I charge $20 an hour for the work I do at this event and probably only did this for 1/2 hour. I really only made $10 to rate the talent.
But it was the most fun $10 I’ve ever earned!
What’s the Best Job You’ve Ever Been Paid For?
Now I ask again, because I’m sure most of you have been paid to do some awesome stuff. What is the Best Job You’ve Ever Had?
I know a lot of us can hate our jobs sometimes, so take a minute to think about the best thing that’s ever made you money, and share it with everyone in the comments.
Or if you’d like, you can just rate the Draft Girls like I did. But I’m not paying you.
Kevin McKee is an entrepreneur, IT guru, and personal finance leader. In addition to his writing, Kevin is the head of IT atย Buildingstars, Co-Founder of Padmission, and organizer ofย Laravel STL. He is also the creator of www.contributetoopensource.com. When heโs not working, Kevin enjoys podcasting about movies and spending time with his wife and four children.
Wow, I’m not sure I can top rating hot chicks. Best Job I was ever paid for was probably being a tutor. I have nothing near as exciting as yours, but I get a lot of fullfilment from it.
Thanks for the interesting post Kevin!
Nate Hans
The best job I ever had was strolling through a mall in my Dickens-era costume playing Christmas carols on my violin. I spent 4 hours on that gig, and got paid $600.
The “job” I have now that comes in fairly close to that is teaching children (and a few adults) how to play the violin.
When I retire from writing software for a living, I think that I will pursue teaching violin lessons full-time.
Nice! I don’t think I’ve had a best job. ๐
Why would you ever leave that company?? Your picture looks so much prettier than my corporate outtings.
My best job is as a teacher. For the last 10 years, I am a Computer Teacher. I enjoy influencing young people.
The one I have now. Working with individuals with disabilities. I am the leisure staff that takes them out in the community. It is very rewarding to make their day and I get to have fun allot of the time as well.
Your job is hard to beat! Here’s my try. One summer I was paid to teach English. However, it was more of a social, conversation club. I hung out, told silly jokes, explained American slang, bowled, and sang Karaoke. The students were eager to learn and very friendly. I felt like a rock star. Cool post!
The best job I have ever had – I am in now. It allowed my visited 30 countries over last 8 years, live in three of them and have 5 months off a year….
I am really greatefull.
I think maybe It steel waiting for me- the best job I ever been paid for… but you have ๐ what a wonderful pic ๐
Wish to be as proud as you are now with your job.. You really have a great post! Thanks for sharing..
Best job was when I was a kid and living in Orlando I was an extra to Nickelodeon. The pay was the greatest but being able to have fun and be a kid and get paid for it was the best.
I’m not sure you could really call it a job, but I “played” a lot of financial games so graduate business students could study different behaviors. Typical game would last about two hour and I would walk out with anywhere form a low of $25 to a high of $900 depending on how well I played the game. I did that for about 3 years in college. Easy money once or twice a month and a lot of fun to do.
The best job I have ever had was an archaeologist at a National Park. I basically got paid a decent amount to go hiking off trail looking for artifacts.
Working at Victoria Secret’s as a stock boy when I was 19…CONSTANTLY SEXUALLY HARASSED just fantastic.
Life guarding would be up there for pay and general lack of stress lol
How about the opposite?
http://curiouscatlinks.blogspot.com/2007/08/washingtons-worst-jobs.html
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