You are probably wondering whether there are any people who do not only earn good money but also enjoy their work and get a lot of pleasure out of spending every single hour at their working place. Indeed, it is very easy to believe that you need to work your socks off, spend twenty-four hours a day at the office, no weekend, no vacation, just to be able to have some money left by the end of the month after paying the bills. In fact, there are some amazing jobs that are not only well-paid but also enjoyable and look very close to being dream jobs. Let us look closer at some of these cool places where people are happy to do their work.10. Fake executive
If you are a white male, have a suit, and can look like you are an important person, you may work as a fake executive in China. No experience required. No education required. Just pretend that you are the boss.
Big Chinese companies hire a fake executive to look well-connected to the Western World (mostly U.S.) and to show the community their importance in the world of business. This is not a year-contract job, you will only be asked to be present at the ceremony, to attend some dinners, maybe to tour the factory or the company office. You know, to show yourself around. For the rest of the day, you may just enjoy the hotel services or pretend you are working hard at the office. If you look like a real cool boss, you may even be asked to give a speech.
This job is becoming more and more popular, but you may expect to find this kind of job only in big Chinese cities or somewhere not far away from them. Due to the local tradition, no ladies are allowed. No need to know Mandarin, the interpreters will translate everything you say in the way they want. Basic acting skills are welcomed.
You may expect to get $1,000 a week with all expenses paid by the company.
9. Water slide tester
If you see a lonely adult man in a swimming suit who zips down the hotel’s water slide several times in a row, it can certainly be just a person who is trying to recapture his lost childhood, but it can be a water slide tester as well.
A water slide tester is usually hired by a hotel chain or a big travel company in order to check how fun and how safe the water slides are. You need to focus on whether you are sliding down quickly enough and whether it goes smoothly, notice how much water the slide uses, and generally evaluate the adrenaline factor of the water attraction.
This kind of job will give you around $30,000 a year, with all your travel and allocation expenses paid. You travel by airplane from hotel to hotel, check in, put on your swimming outfit, and go directly to the pool. After the main job is done, you need to write a report about your feelings while sliding and send it both to the company that hired you and to the hotel manager.
The water slide tester job does not require any special degree, you just need to be older than 22 years old, you need to be reliable, stay calm under pressure, and learn as many synonyms for the words “fun,” “water,” and “slide” as you can to write a unique report for each case. And it would be nice if you could swim well. You know, just in case.
8. Panda custodian
For those of you who love spending time with animals, The Giant Panda Protection and Research Center in Ya’an, Sichuan province in China offers a job of a panda custodian. You will have to stroke little fluffy bears, give them food, provide the animals with everything they need, and receive all the love they will give to you in return.
The salary is $32,000 yearly plus free meals, transit, and accommodation near the research center. Generally, the center does not require much from the applicants, they just need to be older than 22 years old, have good writing skills, photography skills, and have some basic knowledge about pandas. The center expects that most applicants will be office workers who got tired of the stressful city life and who want to change their office work to a peaceful vacation-like job with cute animals.
7. Ice cream tasters
Imagine a person who says “I paid for this Tesla Car by eating ice cream.” Sounds like a joke, but in fact, ice cream tasters earn quite good money ($60,000 yearly), plus, of course, they have free ice cream of all the possible flavors every day.
As an ice cream taster, you are expected to evaluate taste, consistency, texture, smell, and a number of other features of every portion of ice cream. Well, we all understand that in any case it will mostly be only about the taste. Therefore, you are expected to like ice cream, otherwise, this job may turn into real hell for you. On the other hand, will you still love ice cream like before after you taste your 5,000th ice cream sample?
6. Ethical computer hackers
This part of work requires a solid computer education and a natural desire to crack and hack programs and systems. You may do it just because you are a naturally curious person, or you can earn money in that working as an ethical hacker.
Ethical hackers are hired by the security departments of big organizations (or even the national government) in order to find out whether their information is stored safely enough. It means that a hacker absolutely legally tries his best to penetrate a computer system and gets money for this (the yearly salary can be up to $150,000).
The purpose of this job is to find the weak places that the “freelance evil” hackers may use to break down the system. Once an ethical hacker finds the vulnerability, they should document it and provide advice on how to fix the problem. So, generally, ethical hackers are there to improve company’s overall security.
5. Chief listening officer
Do you like to procrastinate while working and browse the Internet for hours instead of actually doing your job? Maybe then it is time to make reading stuff on social networks your main source of income? A chief listening officer can earn up to $95,000 yearly for observing and monitoring comments and opinions that customers and clients leave on the Internet about a certain company.
Basically, you need to focus on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other social networks to track all references to your company. You need to find out what people are talking about the products and services, whether they are satisfied or disappointed. You collect all the complaints, all the tips and ideas people want to be realized and then deliver this information to the company departments.
For instance, if your company’s Facebook is full of bad reviews of one product, you send this information to the Customer Service Director, so that they can solve the problem and improve the situation. It is also very important to let people know that the clients are happy with the excellent service, so they remain motivated to do their job further on the same high level.
4. Voice-over artists
If you have a nice voice and a good accent, you may earn your money for simply saying things. The voices you hear on TV and radio commercials, in award presentations or backstage theater reading—all these pieces of work are done by voice-over artists. You may remember storytelling voice-overs in some popular movies, such as Fight Club, Blade Runner, Moulin Rouge!, or The Shawshank Redemption.
A voice-over artist, especially if they have a unique voice, may earn about $80,000 yearly on average. No need to write your own text, just read the script as well as you can.
3. Video game tester
If you spend your free time playing video games, maybe it is time to change your job and get money for your hobby? Video game tester may sound like a dream job, but the $50,000 yearly for doing this are quite real.
There are different kinds of tasks a video game player has to do. Some check completely new games in order to find bugs or mistakes while playing. Others may be hired by ordinary players for helping them attain higher levels in games.
In most cases, video game player is supposed to be an office worker, but some smaller companies are okay with working from home, too. There are some qualities a video game tester must have: you need to have very good attention, be able to work in team, avoid being angry, negative or sarcastic, and, what is probably the most important, you should not get bored playing the same game for a long time, sometimes for days, weeks, or even months.
2. Hotel test sleeper
From time to time, most office workers dream about sleeping during working hours, but for Beijing-based Zhuang Jing it is not a dream, she is paid for sleeping in the best luxury hotels. Jing works for the online company Qunar, and her task is to find out the quality of the service in the hotel.
Jing was selected together with other two recruits out of 7,800 candidates. In every room, she needs to check whether everything around her fits each guest’s needs. Is the pillow soft enough? Is the bathroom crystal clean? Are there any fingertips or water marks on the plates and glasses? Is it quiet at night? Is it convenient to get to the hotel from the public transport stations?
Jing spends only one night in every hotel, and every evening she writes her opinion and notes in a review. She does not have to be on duty every single night though; Jing has started her hotel research back in March 2010, and by now she has reviewed around 200 hotels. It is very important to her to stay unrecognized, so Jing is not craving fame, she just enjoys the nights in the best Beijing hotels for money.
1. Chocolate taster
This job exists not only in Roald Dahl’s world about Willy Wonka but also in real life. Can you imagine: all you need to do is examine the smell, the taste, and the quality of the finest chocolate bars, and you will get paid for this!
Chocolate tasters can have a contract with one big company, but in most cases, they are hired by different chocolate manufacturing companies, food science companies, or pretty much any place where chocolate products are manufactured or sold. An average chocolate taster earns between $30,000 and $60,000 per year, though if you are extremely good at this work, you may earn even more.
What is also nice about being a chocolate taster is that you are not obligated to eat chocolate, you are required to taste it. It means that you can save your body from being fat and still enjoy the delicious taste of the most amazing kinds of chocolate in the world.
Chocolate testers are expected to know and understand all the details of the chocolate manufacturing. Sometimes they do their work in a dark room so they cannot be fooled by the nice appearance of the chocolate bar. The taste—that what is really important!
