Obviously you had the skills to do whatever various jobs you applied for. Not everyone has that. I didn't enjoy all the jobs I had but caring for the needs of my family came before welfare or any social assistance help. Surely you recognize there have been many changes since you were in the workforce, I know I do. As an example. Do you recognize the change that robotics & computerization are replacing manual & clerical jobs?
One of my jobs when I was in college required NO SKILL at all. Inserting sheet after sheet of cardboard to make milk cartons could be done mechanically. The job paid well and made me determined to never do factory work.
My brother retired from working for the state of PA in heavy equipment. He was suppose to be a supervisor, and had his own office, but hated computers/office work. He had his secretary do 99% of his office work, while he was in the garage, and in the field, helping mechanics.
Many times people do make wrong choices, even in the work industry. One time I took a job with a fence building company. That lasted 4 hours and had the driver take me back to the office. I quit! I had no idea why I took the job in the first place, when I remember not liking doing it on the farm. I turned down a job once because the companies Shipping/Receiving area wasn't computerized.
I know the worst job I ever had . I was barely out of school, in the days where you could apply for a job and start the next day or even the same day. A little bakery which served lunchtime rolls and sandwiches were hiring. I'd only ever worked in an office as an office junior , but this job was paying more money, so I took it. I started at 9am, and was immediately put to work in the back room making sandwiches . about 2 hours later I was told to go out and serve customers. No till training, no training at all..so I go out and the first customer comes in and she asks for 3 of a certain type of cake.. I wasn't familiar with the name so I said I didn't know which they were could she point them out in the display cabinet.. I didn't get another word out before the Manageress, started screaming at me, how stupid I was, top of her lungs, in front of the customers. I hadn't had one minute of training but there she was screaming blue murder at me!! I walked out and never looked back!!!
I guess I should have posted after graduating college you had an education which made it possible for you to pursue employment that suited you. I and millions like me with no college took what was available. Those with trade skills fared better, I suppose though that would fall into the category of working at what you enjoy. My job history is varied with most of my jobs after getting out of the NAVY falling into the category of I don't like the job but my wife & kids like to eat. I look back on that variety now as building blocks for being ready to step into a job that paid well & with benefits. I really enjoyed that job but again it was a building block to a better opportunity. Going from blue collar to white collar with no college education stunned a lot of college educated other department managers. Best of all, made it possible to retire early at age 54 after 23 years with the company I worked for. I think my situation isn't unique, But now I look at how times, robotics, computerization & global economics have altered the kind of opportunity you & I had.
My favorite job would be in EMS. Since I did pretty much every job there is to do in EMS, I don't know if I could pick one of them as being the most favorite, but it would be in that field. I have enjoyed most everything I have done for a living, excepting a couple that I bailed out on quickly. As for driving a forklift, there is something fun about that. When I worked at Hoerner-Waldorf bag company, anyone who could figure out how to drive a forklift could do that on the graveyard shift, and I enjoyed it. We usually ran only a skeleton crew from 11 pm to 7 pm, so we didn't have a dedicated forklift driver. When Champion took the company over, we weren't even supposed to be in the warehouse unless we were hired to work in the warehouse, and only the people who were hired to be forklift drivers could drive a forklift. We still didn't have a dedicated forklift driver on the graveyard shift, though. There was one person in the warehouse but he was usually busy loading trucks and stuff. The swing shift driver would simply drop enough rolls of paper to get us through before he left, and we were supposed to use handcarts to move our production out of the way. By then, I was an acting supervisor, though, so I'd still get on the forklift if I wanted to.
Broadcast Engineer. 4 years of trade school just to discover that technology was changing and the need for licensed broadcast engineers was going to become a thing of the past. Low paying television studio work was boring. Being a camera operator or weather girl made for long mundane days. I had basic skills operating any piece of equipment and most tools from growing up on a ranch. I could make more money as a carpenter, welder, heavy equipment operator, explosives specialist, etc. Time always went fast on those jobs.
Females make the best forklift operators in my opinion. So many times I remember males loading lumber bundles on a flat bed either didn't have the skills, in a big hurry, or just didn't care enough to place them so they could be unloaded on the other end without a real hassle. I never had any problem with a female loader. On one small commercial building project, I was the flat bed truck driver and unloader, since my specialty was finish carpentry. It made the brawny shirtless rough framers feel like men to give me the runner job. "Girls work" they called it. I was fine with that because, I knew, they knew, that their work better be accurate, because if the big boss man saw me tearing out any of their work so I could finish it in an acceptable fashion, they would catch hell.