Beer and Ice Cream — Good Work If You Can Get It

ABC News takes a look at some of the best summer jobs — ever.

ByABC News
July 24, 2007, 12:50 PM

July 25, 2007 — -- Did you spend your college summers waiting tables or working as a thankless intern?

Would you have rather worked on the space shuttle, drank beer or watched pornography?

A few lucky folks are spending their summer doing all those things, and more, in some of the country's most coveted jobs.

ABC News scoured the country looking for summer jobs that are not only fun to do but also come with great stories. These are the types of gigs that make people gasp, "You get paid to do that?!"

They include playing video games, tasting ice cream, driving a jet boat and being a nanny for a millionaire couple's kids. That last job came with a Mercedes, weekends on a yacht and a jaunt to Hawaii.

This is simply a sample of some great gigs out there. Feel free to share your own summer work experiences and thoughts for the best and worst jobs in the comments section on the right.

Cybill Yanus has a philosophy about summer jobs: "If it's not fun, why do it?"

OK, so that's not her own phrase, but that of Ben & Jerry's co-founder Jerry Greenfield. But, having worked for three summers for Ben & Jerry's, Yanus has definitely adopted it.

"I don't want to be in a position a job that I can't have fun with," she said. "If you don't like what you're doing, you need to find something else."

Yanus started giving tours at the company's original ice cream factory in Waterbury, Vt. She worked her way up to the team that oversees tour guides, children's activities and the parking lots.

CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS OF THE BEST SUMMER JOBS

"No other place in the world are you going to be paid to talk about ice cream all day long," she said. "It is a job, and we do make sure that things are running, but when it comes down to it, we're pretty much all kids at heart."

Tour guide jobs at Ben & Jerry's start at $8.50 an hour.

Oh, yeah, and you also get three free pints of ice cream every day.

"Most people do end up taking home the three pints, but we don't eat them ourselves," Yanus said. "We actually find that we become very popular during the summertime when people find out we work for an ice cream company."