It was mid-afternoon on Friday, March 11, 2011 when the ground in Tōhoku began to shake. At Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, it seemed like the shaking would never stop. Once it did, the reactors had automatically shut down, backup power had come online, and the operators were well on their way to having everything under control. And then the tsunami struck. They found themselves facing something beyond any worse-case scenario they imagined, and their response is a study in contrasts. We can learn a lot from the extremes they experienced about finding happiness and satisfaction at work.