Ask Lemmy

Those people who go up alongside skyscrapers and wash the windows.

If you can get factory work somewhere with a union, the pay is high, stress is minimal, and the overtime is optional. I was an engineer at a place with a unionized shop. They went on strike, so the company recruited the office to work production until they could get real scabs in. Zero stress for two weeks.

The point is to find some place with a union. If you go somewhere without a union, the pay is shit, management will treat you like shit, and you're expendable. Plus, mandatory overtime.

If you're outgoing at all, waiting tables is the shit. I support a family of five working 32hrs a week. I meet interesting people, including celebrities. My coworkers are some of the kindest and funniest people you'll ever meet. And I easily get 15K steps in every working day at a minimum. Free food and sometimes drinks, of course as a perk. And your job is to make people happy, to make their lives better in an immediate and appreciable way, so it's very fulfilling work.

But it's not for someone with thin skin.

Anything you do with an statistics degree.

Dentists and dental hygienists are always happy.

According to my Instagram reels lately, working in a mine in Australia

I've done all kinds of random jobs but like to tell anyone who will listen that my time as a cleaner was possibly the best of them all.

I worked in a building that was entirely dedicated to operating and adminning a traffic tunnel, so there were normal office rooms but also cool control rooms full of flashing lights and interesting displays and friendly people who were only too happy to infodump about it all.

The top floor was entirely given over to a conference room featuring a massive scale model of our tunnel but also the surrounding road system, complete with tiny toy cars. That room also had a hot drinks machine that was entirely free to employees so most of my breaks were spent up there with a book drinking hot chocolate.

Yeah, cleaning toilets and buffing floors is not exactly going to keep your mind occupied, but that just means it's free to wander to more interesting places. No stress, nothing to take home at the end of the day.

If you can get by on the generally lower pay and get to clean somewhere interesting there are a lot of unexpected perks, tbh.

Stagehand work is tons of fun, honestly! If you're American or Canadian and live somewhere with a decent music/stage production scene there's probably an IATSE local in your area you can do gigs with as overhire.

I've been watching a guy on youtube be a linesmen. Seems like a good job if you like electricity and a little danger in your life.

Geotechnical jobs.

I live in a major US metro area, and finding time a damn soils engineer was a nightmare. There are very few around and it can take months to get on their calendar because they’re spread so damn thin.

Something really boring-sounding at a corporation, like auditing the document reviews, or matching invoices with purchase orders, or filing regulatory paperwork.

Trades. Learn a trade. Electrician?