One summer during college in the early 1990s, I landed a cushy job reading residential water meters for the local utility. The pay was excellent—thank you, taxpayers—and I enjoyed working outdoors in the warm weather. But what made the job so memorable was the minimal work requirements.

Each morning after we’d punched in and donned our uniforms, a half-dozen of us summer hires—mostly college kids like me who had gotten the job via our parents’ connections—would pile into a utility van. Waiting behind the wheel was a genial...