What the Chief Enthusiasm Officer taught me

This could be my office if we were made into legos. Image via

In order, here are the jobs I've held:
1. Babysitter. Regular gig for two kids, plus lots of occasional jobs.
2. Receptionist at a gym (this is hysterically funny for people who know me). The gym was owned by the father of the two kids I regularly sat for. It was a very small, shitty gym. One of our regular customers often used our phone to order pizza to pick up on her way home.
3. Receptionist at a hair salon. Owned by a client at the gym. I wasn't old enough to drive, so I rode with her the forty minutes each way. This was a bad idea. I also once had to pick out an anniversary card for her husband, whom she did not like. Also a bad idea. Benefit: free haircuts and dyes.
4. Playgroup facilitator at a shelter for victims of domestic violence. "Playgroup facilitator" is a fancy way of saying I made decent money (I was paid out of a grant) to play with kids. The facility was chronically understaffed, which led to a lot of burnout, but kids are pretty great no matter what they've been through. Benefits: I left each day appreciating that, no matter how shitty things were going, I was not in fear of my life at any point during my day; I got to play with a lot of babies.
5. English teacher for high school, then middle school (the move to middle school was not voluntary). Overall exactly what you'd expect. The district I worked in is on its sixth superintendent in six years. The principal had a habit of "making an example" of teachers who didn't toe the line she wanted them to. Guess who her "example" was my last year there? I quit. Benefits: I got to talk about metaphors and Oxford commas; I discovered that middle schoolers are in fact human, mostly. [Note: yes, I write like this, and yes, I taught English. I know.]
6. Editor. Basically, I edit laws to get them ready for publication. It is not an exciting job, at all, but I'm pretty good at it and we have internet access, so that's nice. Benefits: pretty decent salary; no real dress code; I'm paid to read stuff all day, even if it's stuff I wouldn't read by choice.

So on my way home every day, I pass a Little Ceasars pizza place on a busy intersection. They pay some teenage dude to stand at the intersection and act like a maniac to get attention for the business. We refer to this kid as the Chief Enthusiasm Officer, because he seriously seems like he has never had more fun in his life than standing in the cold with a boombox and a pizza sign. In the summer, he played a cardboard guitar with their slogan on it, and I once watched him pause in rocking out really hard to pretend to tune the cardboard guitar. Genius. Sometimes he wears a mullet wig; once he wore a werewolf costume. Today he was wearing a Santa hat and beard, and gesticulating, opera-singer-style, to Christmas carols. And I thought, I have not been that excited about my job since I quit teaching.

I guess it's time to start looking into getting another teaching gig, huh?

What jobs have you loved? Hated? Been really enthusiastic about?