When you were growing up, the shows and movies you watched made the real world seem so easy. The characters always seem to enjoy every second they're at work and have plenty of free time for an active social life. Once you got older and started working, you probably realized these portrayals weren't exactly true to life. It's not really as easy as they made it seem to get into the field of ice cream flavorist, and your boss probably won't laugh it off after you screw things up for the tenth time. Studios have put out some movies that make us feel a bit better about our jobs, like Office Space and Horrible Bosses, but we still wish we could find a job that writers made up. If these fictional workplaces existed, we'd apply immediately.
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Pawnee Parks Department
There's no one on the planet more passionate about their job than Leslie Knope, assistant director of the parks and recreation department in Pawnee, Ind. On Parks and Recreation, she organizes everything from penguin weddings to harvest festivals to unnecessary stakeouts. The atmosphere in the parks department office is casual and the team is like a weird family. Even the people who work there and generally hate everything kind of love their jobs. Employees get to work on a wide range of projects, put ridiculous personal photos in presentations, and engage in an ongoing war with the libraries department. Basically, if you work for the parks department, you can do whatever you want and just blame it on Jerry if it goes wrong.
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Bridge of the Starship Enterprise
Don't pretend like you wouldn't jump at the chance to work at an office in space. The bridge or command center of Star Trek's Starship Enterprise would be a great fit for people who are very organized, can work well under extreme pressure, and don't mind the idea of potentially dying from alien crafts or space-borne diseases. And the Enterprise has the best focus on diversity we've ever seen. Where else could you find walking computers, non-Earthlings, and William Shatner all under one roof? The Enterprise is what we hope all offices in the future look like, especially if there are ways to teleport from one place to another and the possibility of turning off gravity.
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TGS
Tina Fey is said to have modeled the show 30 Rock after her time as a writer and actress for Saturday Night Live, and we can only hope this is true. Working in any position in The Girlie Show offices at NBC would be a dream for most people. The writers goof off all day bouncing fart jokes off each other, the actors are complimented constantly and given time off work to fulfill important tasks like creating a porn video game, and even the NBC page is seen as an important part of the team. Making the environment even more attractive is how accessible a top executive at NBC is to his staff, giving life advice and playing poker with even the lowliest employees.
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Lacuna Inc.
The slightly disturbing yet totally brilliant company in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind found a way to erase specific memories from a person's brain allowing them to forget a traumatic relationship. Sure, we wouldn't want anyone tinkering with our heads, but it would be pretty entertaining to work there. You'd get to learn lots of embarrassing (and probably hilarious) secrets without feeling uncomfortable since the person was going to forget soon anyway. It'd be like being the most helpful therapist ever. The best job at a company that deals with memory-erasing technology would probably be in human resources. Every time there was an internal dispute, you'd just make the employees forget about it so you could go about your work in peace.
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Wayne Enterprises
Any company that provides the funding for a superhero has got to be a good place to work. Wayne Enterprises is the money-maker for Bruce Wayne, or Batman, and it has several divisions within its scope of power. The biggest one is Wayne Technologies, which finds and researches alien technology, an apparently profitable and seriously awesome job. If you set yourself apart from the other employees, you could even get to meet Batman himself and hang out in the Bat Cave. There are plenty of opportunities at Wayne Enterprises for those who aren't tech-savvy, though, and even if you worked in areas like the food, entertainment, or steel branch, there are probably plenty of perks for being employed by the Caped Crusader.
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Empire Records
Kids today don't understand the magic of a record store, with its rows and rows of CDs, bins of vinyl records, and staff of music lovers and experts. But if you've seen Empire Records, you see its appeal. Hanging out at Empire Records would be cool, but working there (which is basically being paid to hang out) would be even more fun. The teenage employees get to run the store, which means blasting the music while they prepare to open, making impromptu announcements over the loud speakers, and rubbing elbows (and more) with the famous musicians who make appearances at the shop. When you take into account the team's exercise program that includes dancing and chasing shoplifters, it's hard to imagine a better place to work.
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MacMillan Toys
It's a little bit unsettling that MacMillan Toys in the movie Big would hire a guy without checking his resume a little more thoroughly, but besides that tiny detail, the company would be a fantastic place to go every day. The world needs more jobs that kids (and adults who think like kids) would enjoy. Even if you enter into the company in a low-level, paper-pushing position, the possibility for promotion is huge. If a 12-year-old can get bumped up to a huge office with a secretary just by playing with toys, it seems like anyone can, especially people who like to goof off. Then you get to spend your days telling people what you think about buildings that turn into robots and Nerf guns.
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Crane, Poole & Schmidt
If you're going to spend three years and tens of thousands of dollars in law school, it seems only fair that you have the chance to end up at a law firm that doesn't bore you to death. Sure, Crane, Poole & Schmidt takes on some serious issues, but the attorneys don't take themselves too seriously, using cynicism and a dry sense of humor to win cases in court. In the real world, some of their tactics would not go over so well, but if lawyers could get away with being sarcastic and pulling ridiculous stunts to make a point, the rest of us would probably lay off the lawyer jokes.
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WNYX
The crew at WNYX of NewsRadio makes working at an AM radio station (that unsurprisingly reports the news) seem like it would be endlessly entertaining. In reality, it's probably a stressful job with strange, neurotic co-workers and lots of thankless hours of editing interviews. We prefer the fictional version. The WNYX staff gets into ridiculous situations, makes a joke out of their jobs, and accepts each employee as one of their own, even the station's handyman who admits to being the Unabomber. The owner of the station contributes to the silly atmosphere by coming around often to disrupt work and start another scheme to find a wife. Some real news stations should start taking notes.
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Bluth Company
As an employee at the Bluth Company from Arrested Development, you probably wouldn't enjoy yourself too much since the company's a "Don't Buy" stock and the former executive is in prison, but at least you'd get to see the crazy antics of the Bluth family. The real estate development firm has an uncertain future, but it'd be hard to worry about your job with hardworking Michael Bluth in charge (and when you're constantly distracted by the family's chicken dances). Many employees enjoy close friendships with the family, such as the one-armed man who helps teach the Bluth children important life lessons. If worse comes to worse, the Bluth Company also owns a banana stand, lovingly referred to as the big yellow joint, where there's always money to be found.
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