If you're an adult more often than not, you'll be trading your time for income. Therefore this is a safe comparatively in offensive question to start a conversation. Given a working person spends around half their waking hours working, many will opt to choose something interesting to them. Whether it's the culture, the vision or the nature of the work it can lead onto more interesting topics of conversation.

It's a lazy one, but so is remarking about the weather or mentioning something about current affairs.