Odd Job: Run Post Office, Monitor Penguins in Antartica




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The Port Lockroy base in Antarctica is accepting job applications for positions that involve running a post office and monitoring penguins.


The U.K. Antarctic Heritage Trust charity is accepting applications for positions at its Port Lockroy base located on the frigid continent that includes running a post office and monitoring penguins.

The Port Lockroy base, located on Goudier Island in the Palmer Archipelago that is west of the Antarctic Peninsula, is also looking for a base leader, shop manager and general assistant who will work at the gift shop and post office from November 2022 to March 2023.


The post office receives roughly 80,000 pieces of mail every season and the penguins are being monitored for the British Antarctic Survey with a report due after service is completed.

The base, which helps with conservation efforts and offers information to visitors, will be open to the public for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Workers will be living in conditions that include limited power, no running water or internet access. Applications must be sent in by 7:59 p.m. EDT on April 25.

Those outside the U.K. can apply but must have the right to work in the U.K. Training for the jobs will take place in Cambridge in October.


Dream of waking up & seeing Antarctica in all its glory? Penguins plodding around, the sun peeping over snow topped mountains. A job like no other. Join us & help protect Antarctica's heritage & conserve its precious environment. Apply by 25 April. https://www.ukaht.org/latest-news/2022/we-re-recruiting-port-lockroy
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I'm sure to most people this sounds like a horrible job, but somewhere out there is that one person who this would be their dream job. To that person I say, go follow your dream, and Godspeed.
 
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$1635 salary per month for no running water, no electricity, no internet, and it's literally freezing cold.

Fuck that, you can work at a gift shop in a zoo and see more than penguins every day.
 
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KiwiFuzz said:
And the catch is...?
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The catch is that you're spending 100% of your time on one of the most barren wastelands on the planet, where time literally stands still because sunsets and sunrises don't happen normally. Days will no longer have any meaning to you. You'll be able to count the number of faces you'll see in a month on one hand and still have enough fingers left over for a game of cat's cradle. The penguins will be the only living, stochastic parts of your otherwise boring and clockwork routine, but your job will be to monitor them so even that's been reduced to pointless soul-destroying busywork. There's usually no Internet access or running water. Here's hoping you remembered to bring enough reading material to stave off insanity.
 
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Wonder if anyone has had the balls to order a darknet drugs pack to the antarctic post address yet lol
 
I've visited Port Lockroy. It's very pretty when you come in on a ship and visit. Then sail out through the Neumayer Channel. Breathtakingly beautiful.

I don't know how it'd be for months on end. If you actually sail around and explore. That'd be cool, but instead, you're just manning a gift shop, living in a small shelter and looking at penguins. Waiting for the excitement of rich tourists to come through.

The islands are in a bay, and early in the season it's covered in ice and you can walk around it. As the season goes on, that would slowly be melting, constricting you to a small island. I imagine that'd be quite freaky.
 
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No social media of any sort, not even indirectly. That actually doesn't sound that bad.

Internet is accessible only by satellite and that only about 12 hours a day, and research-related bandwidth is obviously the priority. Just sending an email is $3. All use is strictly monitored (no P2P or streaming obviously) and must be scheduled in advance.

You'd have to hope there wasn't at least one absolutely miserable bastard there because you'd be stuck with him.
 
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