Playing evening music/ background music
I'm in a wind quintet which plays evening music for your standard events- dinner parties, functions etc. We've been booked twice to play for the local yacht club's garden parties- for which we charge our flat rate for two half hour slots. The reason this was easier than any other gig, ever:

1. We were there for the whole party, as the hosts required us to "mingle" and discuss music with the guests. We had one rule: no alcohol, which was self imposed as playing while drunk= jazz. This meant that we spent most of our evening eating caviar, salmon sandwiches, tiramasu and little aperitifs that were more of an artwork than anything else in the mansion we were at.

2. Although we played through our program for a whole hour each half rather than 30 minutes, we had a nice break between each piece where one of the many guests would discuss loudly with his dinner partner everything he knew about music, looking to us to nod and congratulate his cultural expertise. Bach, Tchaikovski- easy to get confused, right? ;)

3. At the end of the evening one of the guests had the idea of passing around a cup for "tips" while we were still playing. We didn't know about it until we were presented with it- it more than doubled our fee for the evening.

To anticipate one of the answers that always appears when the words "easiest job" appear on QOTW, playing is much, MUCH easier than conducting. Seriously.
(Sivvus trolley collision in the fruit aisle led to a jam, Sat 11 Sep 2010, 16:19, Reply)