My current job title.

More specifically, I'm the vault controller for a ski area, so when I tell people my occupation they assume that "vault" is some bit of gnarly halfpipe-related jargon. It is not. It is the kind of vault that you put money in. It's about 8' x 12' x 10' with a 2-inch steel door.

Economically, a modern ski resort is like a city in miniature. Picture a company town or frontier outpost. It has houses, restaurants, shops, bars, coffee stands, a clinic, a repair shop... and, of course, plenty of public transportation. Me? I'm the bank.

My basic job description is to watch over a closet full of money and make sure the pile remains approximately the same size and shape. This is of course complicated by the fact that nobody goes skiing with exact change in their pockets, so cash-handlers from all over the business are constantly coming to me to "make their money weigh more"-- sell large bills for small and vice versa.

At the end of the day, every dollar that goes on or off the mountain goes through my vault and my festive panoply of Excel spreadsheets. As a side-job to all this, I'm also responsible for anything else on the mountain that's small and valuable-- lift tickets, most notably, of which I started the season with 400 thousand, forming a vast white monolith that could only be sorted via stepladder.

I also print promo vouchers for our marketing department, keep tabs on a couple ATMs, and perform various other minor accounting chores. It's essentially like being the banker in Monopoly, except with fat stacks of real cash.

If all of this sounds boring to you, then I'd say that your ears are just fine; it's dull as toast. Fortunately, the gods have blessed me with a bean counter's obsessive, nigh-infinite attention span. Most people would go bonkers.

Though did I mention that the job comes with housing and a free season pass? When they let me out of the nerdery at the end of an afternoon, there's 1,125 skiable acres of natural powder out there...

I'll take that over the cube farm any day.