So, she writes, "I landed the job and left my solitary cubicle for the maelstrom of a director's office, where a staff of account executives and writers began reporting to me."

It wasn't long before the recognition and congratulations faded, and Ms. Shapiro found herself attending meetings, completing reports, directing staff and resolving conflicts. She was spending very little time working alone and no time on hands-on creative work. "It was getting hard to deny that I was unhappy," she writes. "Work wasn't fun anymore."

Finally she went to her boss and told him she wasn't happy, that she missed creative work. "He tried to talk me out of it, told me I was doing a great job, that I was making a mistake," she says.

After a time, she resumed her work as a writer. "How do I feel about it now?" she says. "Well, the boss who promoted me left over a year ago. I don't know whether my new boss knows this story, but she likes my writing. I sometimes think about the perks and the money and what might have been but know they aren't what make me glad to come to work every day."

Some jobs aren't so much turned down as lost because someone else intervenes -- or refuses to.

As far back as he can remember, Harry S. Langerman of North Miami Beach, Fla., yearned for a career in restaurants. He began as a busboy in 1928 in Philadelphia. He served with the Seabees in World War II and afterward found a job operating a Navy cafeteria outside Philadelphia.

An older brother had promised to finance his first restaurant when Mr. Langerman was ready -- and if the brother approved the venture.

Mr. Langerman studied his trade. He read restaurant magazines. And in 1949 or 1950, he says, he read an article about a restaurant in California called McDonald's.