What was the lowest paying job you had but enjoyed the most?

Car hop at Sonic
$2.00 an hour. My first job.

I really enjoyed working at a retail store selling designer jeans as a teenager when Jordache was so cool.

It got me out of a depression, I was good at it, and most of the people I worked with were teenagers who didn’t drink or smoke and so became set of friends that I didn’t have any peer pressure to do any of those things.

More recently (5 years ago) I worked two days as an elevation operator for the Jewish holiday at a resort. I actually enjoyed talking to the guests during the ride, figured out the most expedient process for getting to every floor, and appreciated observing the patience of Jewish guests.

Job I enjoyed?
That’s not an easy question.
I suppose when I was building telecommunications machines to transmit DSL signals. That was kind of fun. What made it better was the crew I was on.

The one that paid nothing was the most enjoyable.
Woodworking/furniture making on a voluntary basis.
My other jobs (that all didn’t pay very well) I really didn’t enjoy much, the exception being house painter.

Bookmobile clerk

Typo: elevator not elevation.

I was a counselor at a summer camp when I was 17. I’d say that was the most fun.

All of the boat jobs, whether teaching sailing as a teenager, yacht broker (I was lousy at sales, but loved working with the wooden boats, hence the low pay) and I had a small business yacht detailing for a short while. Loved the work, didn’t make a lot of money.

Fluthering. Also pumping gas and squeegeeing car windows for free.

15 years old. Car hop at root beer stand. 35 cent an hour. 50 cents an hour after 6pm.

I forgot about boat work I did. Spent three years as an instrument tech assisting with research on lakes and rivers. That was the most fun. Paid decent too.

Volunteer for wildlife rehabilitators. Paid zero. Was very fulfilling to try to help people who do that work, and indirectly, the animals.

I liked volunteering at an archives, because I was a history major and it was so interesting, having access to all that history. As a volunteer, you are thanked daily for your service. I don’t consider volunteering a job, though, because the parameters are different than when you work. For example, a volunteer wouldn’t typically be chastised for being late or doing something wrong, because if they piss you off, you just won’t return, whereas with a job, you have to take a certain amount of shit in exchange for pay.

When I first started working, I did a lot of temp jobs for a temp agency. I liked it because I didn’t get involved in office politics. I just did the job.

My first real job was for the Reader’s Digest, in the mail room. The work wasn’t particularly fun, but I had a lot of fun with my friends, joking around, and the Reader’s Digest in those days had a company store that had good prices, they had a great cafeteria that had great prices, and they had a bus that picked people up along a route (many bus routes) and drove us home for $3 a week. This was around 1983–5. When I went for the job interview, they had a Lincoln Town Car pick me up at the train station. I started in the mail room and then they needed typists to type checks, so I did that for a while and then I worked in the business correspondence department, typing business letters that were transcribed by people who put them on tape, and then we used transcribing equipment to listen to the tapes and type it out. That job is what got my typing speed up to a phenomental rate, and it’s still phenomenal to this day. I guess I’d say that was my best job.

Stay at home mom.

I never missed a moment with my children.

My uncle owned a tiny little used record shop and I operated it one summer for him. I was the only one in there. It was a lot of fun. I played music all day long and talked on the phone.