This Is Work?

For Some Trade Association Staffers, a Day on the Job Means Riding Roller Coasters, Drinking Beer or Playing Blackjack. Jealous Yet?

Headquartered in boxy buildings in downtown Washington and on plaza-cluttered boulevards of the 'burbs are hundreds of trade associations. They handle public relations and standards and practices for almost any kind of industry known to man, from telecommunications to candles, manufacturing to greeting cards.

So it's no surprise that the D.C. area is an ant farm of association workers. Washington has a higher concentration of people who work for trade associations than anywhere else in the country: about one in 10 employees, according to a 2007 study by the American Society of Association Executives, which itself has headquarters here. The city's fat Rolodex is crammed with blandly titled groups with broad missions, but there are some whose very names make them stand out: the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (roller coasters!) and the National Confectioners Association (candy!), for example.

We talked to five folks who were lucky enough to find jobs at associations that specialize in such tasty or otherwise captivating subjects. To find out more about them, read on.

David Christman, 31, Alexandria

Director of state and industry affairs, National Beer Wholesalers Association

Yes, the office has a bar. The two dozen employees gather there every Friday at 4:30 for "beer education," which involves sampling Belgians, pale ales or any other themed liquid buffet.

"I don't know if it gets a lot better than that," says David Christman, who for the past seven years has worked his way up at the National Beer Wholesalers Association, from assistant to coordinator to manager to director. "I use the line, 'I'm the envy of every fraternity brother I've ever had.' Sometimes it's negative because friends don't think I do a lot of work. They think we're drinking beer in our offices."

Which, technically, they are.

"But it's work hard and play hard."

Founded in 1938, five years after the repeal of prohibition, the group represents more than 2,700 beer distributors, the folks who shepherd 13,000 kinds of beer from brewer to retailer nationwide. Christman joined the association after working in the Senate. He takes three or four trips a month, visiting supplier partners, state legislators, responsible-drinking groups and other niches of the beer industry. Samuel Adams founder Jim Koch has given Christman a private tour of his brewery and a sample of his $125-a-bottle brew Utopias, one of the strongest beers in the world. ("It tastes more like an after-dinner drink," Christman reports. "It's maple-syrupy.")

So with a vast knowledge of beers and brewers and a weekly beer education, what is Christman's favorite brew?

This is a bad question to ask a guy who represents the entire industry.

Though he'll admit to an inherited affinity for Yuengling, which is brewed a short drive from his home town of Hamburg, Pa., he technically can't play favorites.