With temperatures set to soar to above 34C in parts of the UK today, you may well be wishing you had taken the day off to enjoy the breeze at the beach, surf in an ocean, go to a music festival, eat massive amounts of ice cream – or just stick your entire body in a freezer. But what if your job actually involved doing these tiresome tasks all day long? To help put your air con troubles and the stink of your colleagues’ sweat out of your mind, we’ve rounded up five jobs you probably wish you were doing today.
Surfing instructor
The job: Teaching people to surf
Salary: £10,000 a year
Workwear: A wetsuit
You’ll wish you were doing it because … “You get to spend eight hours a day on the beach,” says Ben Clifford, instructor at the Surfability surf school, Swansea. “I love it when it’s hot, because everyone’s happier, which makes teaching much easier. And the wetsuits dry out more quickly.”
Clifford received a grant from the Prince’s Trust to set up the school, which caters exclusively for people with disabilities. “It’s brilliant, helping people who can’t usually access the beach because of their disability to connect with the ocean and do an extreme sport in the sunshine. Sometimes we’ll surf tandem, so my students will sit or lie on the front of the surfboard and I’ll catch waves with them. Their faces when they catch their first ones are priceless – and the weather plays a big part in making it a fun experience.”
Any downsides on a hot day? “I get these ridiculous wetsuit suntans, where my hands, feet and face are brown but the rest of me is really white,” Clifford says. “Apart from that, no. When you get sunshine and waves together, it’s awesome.”
Music festival coordinator
The job: Liaising with artists during festivals
Salary: £16,000-£20,000 a year
Workwear: T-shirt and skirt/shorts
You’ll wish you were doing it because … “You get to hang out in the sunshine and meet all your idols,” says Isabel Salas-Wardman, 23, a festival coordinator for Harrogate International Festivals. “It’s a lovely atmosphere on a sunny day. Everyone’s so happy and there is a great sense of camaraderie in the team.” It’s hard work, she says, but there’s still time to grab an ice cream on a hot day and listen to the music or watch a theatre performance. “I really enjoy my job when it’s hot. All day long we’re outside helping these amazing artists set up and rehearse, and then as the sun sets we’ll crack open a bottle of ale, sit down and enjoy the festival.”
Any downsides on a hot day? “Sometimes you have to carry heavy equipment around in the heat, but everyone helps each other, and we have a really good laugh when we do it,” says Salas-Wardman. The only other downside she can think of is that she does occasionally get ice cream on her clothes.
Penguin keeper
The job: Feeding and looking after the penguins at a zoo
Salary: £16,000-£22,000 a year
Workwear: Shorts, short-sleeved shirts, hats and boots
You’ll wish you were doing it because … “You feel like you’re on a holiday resort, only with penguins,” says Adrian Walls, head bird keeper at Penguin Beach at ZSL London Zoo. “It’s a unique place to work.” Every day he heads straight for the zoo’s beach – not far from the centre of London – to give the penguins their breakfast. “On a hot day they’ll sit on the beach and sunbathe, then cool off in the super huge pool. Penguins are like little people, each has got its own character. We get to know them all individually.”
To make sure that even on the hottest day of the year the temperature never rises above 30C, huge fans blow a breeze around the beach and jets of evaporated water are squirted into the air to create a constant cooling mist. “It’s the best job in the world on a hot day – and if you really want to cool down you can always find an excuse to go for a dip in the pool with the penguins.”
Any downsides on a hot day? “Going home smelling of the fish we feed the penguins,” Walls says. “It makes you very attractive on a hot tube train.”
Ice cream researcher
The job: Making sure the ice creams your firm manufactures are good quality and suitable for UK tastebuds
Salary: £16,000-£28,000 at graduate and junior level; £28,000-£40,000 at a senior level
Workwear: Normal clothes
You’ll wish you were doing it because … “On a hot day you go out to ice cream parlours, small retailers and ice cream vans to eat ice cream,” says Anna Brogden, research and development manager for Walls. “We’ve got to make sure the quality of our products are being maintained down the supply chain, and a hot day is going to be the most challenging for the retailers. So, we’ll buy 20-30 individual ice creams to try on a single hot day to see how different products hold up. Some, such as Solero, are made with softer ice cream than say, a Magnum, so are more vulnerable when it’s hot outside,” she says.
When a heatwave is predicted, Brogden knows she’s going to have a fun day at work. “It’s fantastic seeing people on the streets enjoying your ice creams, the fruits of your labours. No other frozen food is pleasurable to eat, so you get a real sense of achievement when it’s hot and you meet people enjoying your products.”
Any downsides on a hot day? “You might not want to know this, but sometimes you do get a bit sick of eating ice cream,” Brogden says. “You can eat so much ice cream that you don’t want to eat any more.”
Flower fridge manager
The job: Ensuring the fresh flowers that arrive from overseas growers are good enough quality, and choosing which varieties should be included in different bouquets
Salary: £25,000-£54,000
Workwear: A heavy, insulated coat in winter, an overall and jacket in summer
You’ll wish you were doing it because … “It’s very refreshing on a hot day to walk into a very large fridge full of flowers and cool down,” says Tim Woodhouse, technical and new product development manager for Morrisons Flower World division. “The temperature is kept at four to six degrees all year round to keep the flowers fresh. Morrisons, for example, is a market-leading retailer for lilies and we have to keep them cool to ensure they arrive in store in peak condition for the customer.”
Woodhouse spends his days nipping in and out between the fridge and the factory, which is kept at a more ambient temperature. “One of the best parts of my job in the summer is that I get to spend half my time in the cool of the flower fridge and the other half enjoying the warmth of the day,” he says.
He also loves his job because bouquets of flowers are associated with important times in people’s lives: “You know your work is making an awful lot of people happy. And when you walk in it smells fantastic, the scents of the hundreds of thousands of flowers in the room come together and the overall impression is something very fresh and green.”
Any downsides on a hot day? “You get really used to the cool, so sometimes I find the heat hard to deal with,” Woodhouse says. “When I go home, I do miss my fridge.”
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