I haven't read all of the thread, so apologies if I'm repeating what's been said already. Sunfish and others, with rather ham-fisted attempts at irony, you comment on how easy the job is, and how you know this to be so because when you've been allowed to visit the flight deck, the crew are doing not very much at all.
I would have thought that someone as obviously as intelligent as yourself (sorry, couldn't resist an attempt at some ham-fisted irony of my own) would have quite quickly come to the conclusion that you wouldn't have been invited on to the flight deck unless it was in a period in the cruise when not very much was happening at all.
I can remember flying with a captain a very long time ago who said that the greatest compliment he had ever been paid was by a five year old who visited the cockpit and loudly proclaimed: "But you're not doing anything!" He said that if he appeared to be not doing anything, he was obviously ahead of the game, which is exactly where he always wanted to be.
People have often asked me whether it's boring flying long haul. I have two answers to that question. The first: "Yes, but you have no idea how much work we put into keeping it boring, 'cause in an aeroplane, boring is good." The other, to people I know a little better, is: "So, if you're flying off on your annual holiday, who would you prefer at the controls of the aeroplane taking you there, two pilots who are bored to snores because nothing out of the ordinary is happening, (quite possibly because they've carefully planned for it to be so), or two guys on the very edge of their seats barely coping with a succession of critical problems?"
The most frequent reply to that last question is: "I'd never thought of it that way."
My wife just underwent a very complex operation and the surgeon gave her a video of the op. as a memento. He made it look like a piece of the proverbial, a completely no-sweat procedure that went without a hitch. I know that that particular procedure wasn't even possible as little as six years ago (thanks in part to laproscopes (sp?) and micro cameras).
I'm not likening my job to that of a surgeon's, but I think the similarities in the perceptions of an observer to a job done with skill and minimal dramatics holds true.