Summer Jobs and the Livin' Ain't Easy

By Sarah

There are a few things I'll remember even when I'm in the throes of senility: the theme song for Gilligan's Island, the name of the albino kid in my first grade class (Whitey. Natch.), ABX-25C - the license plate on my first car - and how to make a Whopper.

Like the odor of French fries that settled in the polyester fibers of my brown and orange uniform, the four pickle/ketchup/mayo/lettuce/tomato configuration is forever embedded in the wrinkles of my gray matter thanks to the job I talked my way into when I was seventeen, the summer before I entered Tufts and was desperately in need of cash.

I'd already been working at the KFC - then unabashedly known as Kentucky Fried Chicken - two blocks away on Easton Ave. in Bethlehem. There I learned to pull out hot trays of chicken pieces and add two thighs and two breasts (or two "chests," because my prudish manager couldn't bear to say
"breasts"), and two drumsticks. Coleslaw. Rolls. (Because there weren't enough carbs.)  Then I tucked them nicely and neatly into the red and white-striped box I'd folded between peak times.

It was at KFC where I learned, strangely, to make cheese steaks by first dumping a handful of white onions onto the flat grill. Then I'd peel off several pieces of Steak-Ums, push them around with a spatula and arrange the mush in a rectangle over which I would place no more than three slices of ochre American cheese in diamond formation. Roll on top. Flip. Wrap in foil.

When I wasn't cooking cheese steaks or filling buckets of mutilated poultry in the 109 degree kitchen, I was chatting with the disaffected "chicken guy" who dipped mounds of chicken parts in goo and coating in the back.  Sanitary it was not and his attitude wasn't helping.They were cutting back on hours at KFC and he was tired of closing. Word had it, Burger King was hiring - and the hours were good.

I pity the kids who have to spend their summers lying on beaches or frolicking around wooded summer camps. They never knew the adrenaline rush of three whispered words: Health. Department. Visit. Or how to steam and stuff an entire cheeseburger into your mouth without the manager noticing. What about soda abuse? There's a reason you pour your own, now, because the soda jerk was the last hold up that separated fast from regular food. I've been there and it ain't pretty. Suddenly, everyone's staring at you expectantly as you mark a D for Diet Coke and push in the appropriate plastic lid mark for caffeine free.

And don't even get me started on shakes - the vanilla, strawberry, chocolate mixes. The "seasonal" mint. Scew them.

"You're gonna have to work faster on the shakes," the manager said to me one evening after the 5 p.m. rush. (It was Bethlehem. People eat early.) She didn't trust me to work the cash register because, unlike her, I was off to college. Though she didn't know that since the only way she'd agreed to hire me was if I could work in the fall.

"Can you work in the fall?" she asked. 

"Yes," I lied.

"Because I don't like college kids."

 "Me neither."

At the end of August, of course, I had to go to college. My friends were returning from the Shore where they'd been scooping ice cream and lollying about their summer houses in Avalon or Stone Harbor. The chances that they'd come into BK and cause trouble were damn good. The uniform was incentive enough.

I needed an escape plan.

"Guess what?" I announced Aug. 15th to the manager. "The scholarship came through."

"It did?" Katie, a twenty-something ne'er-do-well and my best BK bud had set the whole thing up. "Oh, Sarah. That's wonderful." And she punctuated this with a big hug.

The manager, hands on hips, was suspicious. "Just came in, huh?"

"Yup. That means I can go!"

"Weee!" Katie screamed, loving this since she and the manager were in a constant war. Katie knew. The manager knew. I, of course, knew. But we acted like we didn't.

"You never did get the hang of shakes," she grunted.

On Aug. 20th - my last day - they threw me a little party. Everyone was proud I'd gotten the scholarship. They stuck a candle in a Whopper Jr. I pretended to cry.

This is what I learned from my summer job. How to make lethal food. How to survive sweat-shop conditions. How to make friends with co-workers with iffy criminal records. How to trick The Man.

But I never did learn how to master those shakes.

How about you? What did you take away from your crappy summer job?

 

Sarah

Comments

[Doc In CA]

Crappy jobs...ah, the memories.

Bucking hay in the middle of the Northern California summer with the coolest day being around 86 and the hottest being a 114 degree day in the middle of four 100 to 108 days. We'd start before the sun came up and spend most of the daylight hours grabbin' those hay bales.

Have I mentioned how much hay particles make you itch? Or the excitement of picking up a bale that a rattlesnake is sleeping under? Or having a mouse run up your pants leg in the hay barn?

I made some good money that summer, but I was too tired to spend it until around Hallowen.

[William]

Selling used cars in Las Vegas while in school has somehow dropped off my resume....

[Sarita]

I did the summertime fast food gig, too. Fun!

[Margaret Maron]

Housing tobacco - big dirty green leaves that left my hands coated with tar by noon every summer day. Glad to have done it, glad I never have to do it again.

[Kathy Reschini Sweeney]

I worked white collar jobs growing up. Department stores, banks, that kind of thing. No food, but spending days in the basement of a bank physically filing checks was something I would not like to repeat.

[sarah]

One summer I worked as a secretary at two places: a construction trailer and the Tufts conference bureau. I sucked big time. But my typing skills did improve and I had a blast.

But tobacco? No freaking way.

[Judith Bandsma]

Gee, I never had a summer job (wasn't even allowed to babysit) until I ran away with the carnival.

[DebbraSue]

The summer before my senior year, I got to stay with my grandma and go to work with her at a place that made hospital surgical drapes. Grandma worked on the other side of the building where they made actual drapes for windows, not people.

Because I was only 17, and my Grandma was in the next room, I wasn't allowed to run the electronic scissor to cut the cloth into the desired size. The machine was basically an upright circular saw that had a razor sharp disc on it. It could cut thru twelve inches of fabric like butter.

After this lovely cobalt blue fabric was cut, it was my job to take a stack and hem them with an industrial machine with a specific color thread, which indicated the size of the square. I had blue boogies every day that I worked there.

I also would help lay out the fabric on the huge table to be cut. You didn't wear nice clothes because you were constantly leaning over the edge of the table and the front of your shirt would get pilled and snagged. The smart women wore aprons or smocks, but of course, I was way too cool for that.

It was a pretty good job for a summer, it wasn't in food service, and I was away from my pesky brothers for the week.

[Holly Gault]

Judith, what a tease. Truly, a carnival?

[Sandi]

My first summer job, not counting babysitting, was detasseling corn. They sorted the crews into boys and girls so there was no funny business in the fields. We met at the school parking lot at 6:00 am and piled onto a bus. Most of the fields were within a few miles so there wasn't much time to chat. We lined up at the end of the field, one girl per row, skipping every fourth row. We walked endlessly, popping the tassels, whips and suckers off the top of each stalk. Sometimes the corn was only waist high, but sometimes you had to reach above your head to grab the tassels. There were no bathrooms, of course, so we took a roll of toilet paper back into a completed row when nature called. Once a girl looked up and saw our male supervisor watching her. She flipped him off, called him a perv, and finished her business.

I discovered that I was allergic to the corn pollen when my hands swelled up so I couldn't get my too-large class ring off. A pharmacist friend recommended an antihistamine and long sleeves, so back I went for the rest of the summer (and the next) wearing long sweatpants, socks, my dad's old long-sleeved shirt, gloves and a bandana twisted into a headband. The other girls all worked on their tans, wearing tube tops and short shorts. At the time I was envious (except when they came out of a particularly tall field with corn leaf scratches all over their arms). Today, I'm grateful because I have less risk of skin cancer.

My favorite memory is our epic romance novel storytelling sessions. Three of us always lined up together and created wild stories, one person starting and the rest adding on as we made our way through the fields. Sometimes we came across ears of corn infected with a fungus - gray or black deformed kernels that were truly disgusting looking. It's called corn smut, so of course we titled our story "Smut Among the Tassels." By the way, that corn smut is actually edible - it's called huitlacoche and is a delicacy in Mexico.

[Joshilyn Jackson]

I once had a summer job as a puppeteer. Tru fax!

Sarah this whole thing made me grin.

[Marcia in OK]

Hey Doc - during an Oklahoma summer, I helped cook for a hay crew. In an old fashioned farm house on a wood cook stove using cast iron skillets.

Summers between college I worked concessions and gifts at an outdoor ampitheater. The first year I made popcorn every night for the eleven week season. And, I learned every song and every word of dialogue to R&H's Oklahoma.

During the college school year, I worked in the University accounting office opening mail. It came in duffel bags. I date stamped very piece.

What did I learn? I can make a mean batch of scratch biscuits with gravy, I hate popcorn, and I avoid my mail and have piles on my kitchen counter. (All the important stuff arrives by e-mail.)

[sarah]

Sandi. That's a great story. All of it. Corn Smut. Could be a euphemism for so much.

[Mary Stella]

I grew up at the Jersey Shore. (Ventnor, not Stone Harbor or Avalon but that picture up in the blog made me nostalgic for those beautiful wooden lifeguard boats. Not to mention the handsome lifeguards of my youth.) First job -- working for Dad in the Radiology Department of the hospital. Second job, when I was 17 - working for the local radio station. Fun!
Worst job, the summer that the station couldn't rehire me, I worked for two weeks and two days at the flagship store of a chain of souvenir shops on the Atlantic City Boardwalk. The owners were paranoid and racist -- positive that tourists only wanted to come in and shoplift, particularly if the tourists weren't white. By the time a customer had reached the half-way point of the store, six salespeople would already have approached and asked if they needed help. That's how desperate the owners were for us to keep an eye on potential thieves.

Right, like anybody wanted that cheap electro-plated jewelry, the shell boxes imprinted with Souvenir of Atlantic City, or sea monkeys enough to steal them and risk imprisonment.

I also learned how to work the t-shirt iron, pressing on decals. I got a second degree burn the day that the manager freaked out because a group of questionable youths entered the store at the same time. She bumped into me and knocked me into the iron.

The man who owned the place was also a lech. Nobody went to the staff lockers or break room without a buddy.

Thank God the radio station decided my paltry wages wouldn't break the budget and hired me back. I never would have lasted at that store.

[Karen in Ohio]

Sarah, the chicken chests made me spit coffee.

Doc, if you had read Thomas Hardy you'd have known about the pitfalls of haying. Well, except for the rattlesnake. And I don't think it gets quite that hot in England.

My first non-babysitting summer job was to clean the classrooms at the convent where I went for freshman year of high school, since I had to earn the money for my Catholic school tuition. After that year the girls' school and the boys' school were combined into the new high school. In the meantime, I walked and rode the bus to the 'hood where the nuns stayed on for a few years, and with another girl, cleaned every single room that had had non-nun types in it for decades.

The other girl was from the neighborhood, which had fallen on hard times, and she was my first black friend. She was on the local unicycle team and she had a much older boyfriend, so she was about as exotic a creature as I'd ever met up to then in Hamilton, Ohio. We took our lunches every day, and one of the nuns would lead us to a little room on the convent side (the only room we were allowed into on that side), and she would give each of us a frosty cold Coke in a little green bottle, and an apple. Neither of us had ever eaten fresh apples before, if you can believe that.

The next two summers I cleaned classrooms for the new high school with a different crew, but it was never as much fun as that first summer when it was just the two of us with the nuns and that quiet, lovely old building full of memories of thousands of Catholic girls.

[Jewelry Making]

Life is not a bed of roses. This is life should be. To work hard and be happy and contented.

[Alan P.]

My first job was as an usher at the Varsity Theater, the St. Louis home of the Rocky Horror Picture Show from 1978-199something. I worked concession, the box office and the door, in addition to being in the theater for parts of Rocky. I popped a lot of popcorn. It wasn't until much later that I learned that it was not normal to have $4000 in cash in your desk every night. I became very good and very fast at making change. I am teaching money math to the princesses now. They hate it, but they are good at it. It freaks out the high school pukes I work with at Domino's. They need the computer for $17.87 out of a twenty.

Back to the movies. For the most part, it was a great time. Going to the movies was free. Popcorn was free. Saw "Stripes" three times a night, three nights a week for 8 weeks.

For two years, every Friday and Saturday night, I got the job of standing between the screen and the crowd dancing to "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" and "The Time Warp." The princesses like the Time Warp, but they won't be seeing the movie for awhile. I still have trouble getting "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" loud enough. I got used to having six foot tall speakers three feet from my head.

The wonders of modern technology, I have built a CD of my misspent youth including Tim Curry, the "rock star". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIgGrzQVK3g . I had it playing while delivering one night. The mom at the door said she remembered the song. My first thought, "How do I ask a soccer mom if she dressed up for Rocky in front of her children?"

[Hank Phillippi Ryan]

I DID THE SAME THING!

So funny, Sarah.

The Dairy Queen only wanted hire people who would work there forever, so I said--oh, yes, I'm not going to college,who needs it.

We had a battle over what I would wear--they insisted on "white outfits" but they were not happy when I arrived in a white canvas miniskirt and white oxford shirt--they had the polyester nurse look in mind. I prevailed, and became a master "dip cone with a curl on top" maker.

But then--shock of all shocks! My parents had decided to take us all to Europe for two weeks in August, and so...what could i do, I had to quit.

And I went to college as previously planned. Noone really believes the kids, do they?

[NancyP]

Ah, lying about going back to school. It's good training in fiction writing.

One summer, two other girls and I drove to Southhampton and got waitress jobs. We stole a cheese Danish every day and split it in the bathroom. I dumped clam chowder on a customer. We hated the owners, who dipped into our tips, and we had a wonderful time.

[Harley]

Godfather's Pizza, where I learned that if you don't put out for the manager, your hours are going to be cut.

And tap dancing at the Nebraska Repertory Theatre, where I learned what shin splints were, and how you can dance even if you have the flu, and how there really is no business like show business and how lucky, lucky, lucky I was.

[Carol R]

The worst job I ever had was made worse because of my height (or lack of it). The job was picking mushrooms for Dole. They are grown in dark Quonset huts in large flats filled with horse doo-doo. They grow in the dark so miner's hats with a battery pack that straps to a person's back are provided along with a knife to cut off the mushrooms. The only way I could reach to the middle of the flat was to lie in the doo-doo. The only way I could reach the top flats was to climb on the bottom flats while using the wall for balance. This was considered farm work so it was piece work, no minimum wage. I never got fast enough to make close to minimum wage. The mostly undocumented workers who could make the job pay were not so randomly rounded up by INS (usually just before the once a month pay day) but they were always back by Monday. Every time I buy mushrooms in a store I think of the kind, cheerful, but sadly undocumented workers who tried their best to give me advice on how to make a living in h%##!

[Kerry]

First non-babysitting summer job was courtesy of the city of Pleasant Hill, CA. I and a dozen or so other teens had been selected for a special trip to PH's sister city, Chilpancingo, in Mexico. The city kindly gave us jobs hoeing weeds in parks and along city streets to help us make money for the trip. We were, naturally, the Saturday Morning Hoers. We worked too fast, though; we frequently finished our allotted sections early.

After that it was the Gap, working the back-to-school rush. It was awesome, actually. Above minimum wage, good overtime, friendly and supportive bosses, and a killer discount. It was a shock to descend, the next summer, to . . .

McDonalds. Where I learned to suck up sexual harassment - including frequent pinches on the ass - and to kiss a lot of butt to get the hours I needed. Ultimately it didn't work, though - I got fired, allegedly because my drawer came up short $10 (after a break in which it had come open . . .). I suspect it was because the head manager figured out that I was headed for college and decided to get rid of me.

Once I hit college, I worked more different part-time jobs than I can probably remember. I do know that I will be forever grateful to my parents for teaching me how to answer a phone well and insisting that I learn to type!

[judy larsen]

I'm killer when it comes to bagging groceries. That's what workingbat the Winn-Dixie taught me.

[Laura (in PA)]

I worked for my dad during the summer before I was old enough to get a real job. He painted and wallpapered for a living, so I was put in charge of painting the trim and helping clean brushes. I ended up learning how to wallpaper like the best of them (not that anyone uses wallpaper anymore), and I'm still a good painter, though I don't like to do it.

I was a Candy Striper for a summer with a friend of mine two days a week - one day we worked at the front desk and got to deliver the flowers that arrived for patients. That was fun. We also brought down discharged patients in their wheelchairs - it was best with the babies going home. My other day I worked in the hospital pharmacy delivering carts of drugs/IVs to the nurses' stations on the floors. I was a little scared when I had to deliver to the psychiatric floor, what with all the locked and barred doors.

My first real job was in a drug store - sometimes on the pharmacy counter ringing out the customers and their prescriptions. The old ladies with their 4 change purses, and the young studs asking if we had condoms in an extra large (they were sold behind the counter then). Join the real world, buddy. The other job I had at the store was counting back the drawers and readying the deposit. I can still to this day add up a long line of figures on a calculator or adding machine without looking at the buttons. A worthy skill indeed.

[sarah]

These stories are fascinating! But, Carol, I will never be able to freely buy a package of Dole mushrooms again.....!

[Debby]

Of course, I did the traditional babysitting. No other girls were brave enough for some of the kids in our area, and none were willing to take on more than a couple at a time during group outtings.

My first alternative job was working up at my church camp in the Poconos. Started off as a waitress, then housekeeper, and ended up as a counselor the summer that I turned 17.

During the school year, and scheduled precariously around marching band, musical, and all my other activies, I worked at our local stand-alone McDonald's. They had another building for the birthday parties and play area. They thought that I had built in radar due to the time when I got bored, so took to scrubbing the base boards with hot soapy water, and then climbed on the counter to clean the ceiling tiles of the ketchup that some punk kids managed to squirt up there...when, lo and behold...health inspection. Passed with flying colors, and I got a raise.

My senior year summer, I was a nanny for a neighbor, so no more camp counselor for me. :(

In college, I had to work for my grant, so had a job at Harrisburg State Hosp in the geriatric ward. I helped with the occupational therapy and had a grand time with the residents. We did ceramics, painting, games, movies, and pet therapy.

One more time around working at McDonald's before graduation, and then I joined the regular work force. Two travel agency jobs, and then here...for 24 years.

[Pam aka SisterZip]

I didn't have a summer job, I worked all year at Dairy Queen. (Hank...Let's all go to the Dairy Queen)

The owner was a friend of my dad's so I had the job and didn't have to interview. It was a great place to work. Neloma loved her kids and treated us very well. We got all the food we could stand to eat/drink. She knew that after your first month you would be so sick of it that you would bring your lunch from home and stop drinking soda because of the kidney infection. And she was right.

I had to wear the white nurses uniform with a red acetate apron that repelled everything. It would run down the apron and onto my pants. Finally she let us stop wearing them. My mom told me she could always tell what I made that night by the stains on my butt. I would wipe my hands on my backside. After our shifts on the weekend, we would drive around town and meet up with the other kids from McDonald's, Burger Chef (remember them? This was the early 70s), Jack-in-the-Box and party. Cops would chase us off every lot but Dairy Queen because Neloma figured she could keep better track of us that way. We had to stop by to show off our dresses (she only had boys) for every Homecoming, Sweetheart, Spring dance. If we didn't show up for Prom she said she would fire us. I have pictures of my date and I in front of the walk-in cooler door before Prom.

The absolute worst part of the job was the semi-anual Banana Split Sale. We would have people lined up 10 deep at the counter and all the way down the side seating section. Neloma would station me and another person on the ice cream machines because she knew we would draw it out slow enough so it wouldn't get too soft. We all would do whatever we could to avoid working Sunday night of the sale...that is when the crazy church people would show up and not want to leave.

We had store parties, graduation parties (she actually wanted to hire kids going to college), birthday parties. We even conned her into going to the mini golf place and bouncing around in the Moon Walk. Caused a good attack of angina that scared us kids to death. She just took a nitro and laughed.

I loved that job!

[Laura Libricz]

The summer after high school I got a job cleaning the bank on the ground floor at One Bethlehem Plaza. The night watchman would lock me in there and go on his way. The bank was decked out with this deep-piled gold carpet and every inch of it had to be vacuumed. Every foot print and every swipe of the vacuum showed so I had to move backwards and make three-foot-long orderly back and forward passes. And the managers' offices! Each office told a little story. What personalities were revealed by how they kept their desks. Kind of a lonely job, I guess.

[Becky Hutchison]

One summer a friend and I decided to get a job at Disney World. At the last minute she pulled out, so my mom drove with me from TN to FL. Well, evidently you just don't show up at DW at the beginning of summer and get a job. Who knew? I decided to stay in FL and work since I was there.

My aunt and uncle lived in Clearwater, and allowed me to stay with them until I found something. And the only thing I could find was working as a maid at a seaside motel. It was AWFUL! I was 19, fairly fit and it was agony. I don't see how older women do that work day after day. I lasted all of two days.

But I still needed a job. So after several interviews I finally found a job at the Howard Johnsons on Clearwater Causeway. For six weeks I scooped ice cream, waited tables and dealt with a harassing manager. One day someone dropped a whole jar of tartar sauce on the floor, and he made us put the parts on top back in the jar. Eeewwww! One week a family of eight came in every night and sat at a different waitress station each time. Each person would order lots of food and top it off with sundaes each night. And only left a quarter tip. Do you know how much work is involved in making eight sundaes? And we still had other tables to serve. The waitresses were never so glad to see a family end their vacation!

On the plus side, we were paid every Friday, I made enough in tips that I could rent an apartment by myself in a place on the causeway, and every night when I got home from work (at 1 or 2 am) I would sit on the pier behind my place, read a book and listen to a Knoxville TN radio station on AM. It was a pretty lonely summer. I was 18, living by myself in a place pretty far from home, and vowing to get my college degree so I'd never have to work that kind of job ever again.

The next summer I worked in DC as an intern for my Congressman. It was a much better job than the one I had the year before, but I still didn't know that many people. So in a way I was lonely there too. I had a little more money, a greater cultural experience and wore nicer clothes to work, and I didn't smell like french fry grease all the time. But in my short summer in Clearwater I gained an appreciation for people who HAVE TO work minimum wage jobs because they have no other alternative. And that was probably the most important lesson of my adult life.

[Storyteller Mary]

My grandma got me my first summer job, office work for a publishing company, asking a man whose family she babysat for a job to help me pay for college -- first grandchild to go to college. It was downtown St. Louis, so I also learned to really navigate the bus system -- Dad said that to get the best advice, call and talk to the dispatcher, and that cut at least half an hour from my trip. Office work was the fall-back for liberal arts grads . . . including the Prudential job which led to a sales position, until I finally found a teaching position.
Our high school students worked too many hours at fast food, often to the extent that they'd fail classes. One young woman quit when they scheduled her during the week of yearbook deadline -- she was the editor and had told them months in advance. When the manager said "work these hours or don't work here" she left -- my hero!!

[sarah]

Pam, sounds like Neloma was your own personal Fezziwig. Ain't it funny how everyday people can make every day so special?
Thanks for that great story!

[Pam aka SisterZip]

You are absolutely right, Sarah. She was a tiny, round person, lol, but she had a huge heart and worked her tail off. She encouraged all of us to get involved in school and would adjust the schedule for all of us: cheerleaders, pompon girls, band, athletes, yearbook. And she didn't put up with bullying either. A little good natured hazing was ok, but she came down hard on anything that smacked of cruelty.

Learned a lot about how to treat your employees from her.

[Deb]

My first job, which I did after school (junior year in high school), on weekends and during the summer following that junior year was as a junior nurse's aide. My duties included delivering/helping people use/and emptying bedpans. NO comment! Sometimes we also had to measure the, uh, output. Other parts of the job included sterilizing thermometers, answering patient call buttons, making beds, etc. I don't think kids would be allowed to do any of this anymore, but this was back in the sixties.

Summer jobs I had also included working for part of the summer (the program did not last all summer) on playgrounds to supervise summer activities. I was working on a playground for my second or third consecutive summer when one day one of the youngsters asked me "what did that man give you?" after a supervisor dropped off paychecks for the playground workers. When I told her that it was my paycheck, her response was "I thought you came here to play with us because you LIKE us! I didn't know you were getting PAID to come here!" I assured her that I DID like all the kids and that in fact, I had requested to be sent there again that year after my employer asked me if I wanted to be assigned to a different playground. (I did NOT tell her that few people wanted to be assigned to our playground because it was in a "scary" neighborhood.)

I also had jobs for part of several summers working for a major company that manufactured hair care products, among other things. They hired kids to fill in for employees who were on vacation. We worked on assembly lines, filling hair dye boxes with dye, instructions, and any other items that had to be used with the dye. I used my employee discount to stock up on shampoo and conditioner for the whole next year! One summer when I worked for them, I was assigned to a warehouse they had in another part of our town. There were about half a dozen of us college kids whose sole job was to pick out undamaged empty glass bottles from cartons of bottles. The undamaged bottles would then make their way to the plant where they were filled with dye, etc. We finally caught on that the warehouse manager had run out of things for us to do but didn't have the heart to let us go before the end of the summer, so he would have his assistant SLAM the cartons down on the tables, thus assuring that a huge percentage of bottles would shatter, giving us an even more time-consuming job of trying to pick out the undamaged bottles, stretching our jobs out for the month. (I think we wore gloves.)

[Cheryl Watson Higginbotham]

All six of my summer jobs were in one place: Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. I worked as a office clerk for a machinery crew out of Fort Sill, Lawton, OK for one and half summers. Got pulled into a Fort Sam Houston office the 2nd half of Summer #2 because we were playing cards instead of being out in axle deep mud repairing reefer units that couldn't go anywhere anyway. I worked in Troop Issue the next two summers calculating by hand how much dry storage items (flour, sugar, salt, spices, rice, beans, etc.) it would take for the day's meals in 36 mess halls. The Cuban refugees were there and they would rob our trucks for the coffee and sugar...boy, did they like a little coffee with their sugar! Eventually, had to have MPs ride the delivery trucks. I will never forget the day the refugees rioted and we were all herded out of the office and out the back gate...scary! Last two summers were in a quiet finance office. Had great ladies to work with and the most beautiful man Capt. Tim Taylor I have ever seen in my life (his father was black and his mom was Japanese). He smelled of original Polo and to this day when I smell that cologne I think of him.
But these jobs paid for college and gave me adventures and people skills I would never have learned scooping ice cream or scanning groceries.

[Karen in Ohio]

Pam, your summer job situation sounds like my two best friends' when we were in high school. They both worked at the root beer stand, and everyone was like family to the owners. I loved going there and hanging out, when I could.

Laura, the same summer I worked at the convent, I also volunteered as a Candy Striper (and still have my uniform, which all three of my girls played with! 1966-67--boy, was it SHORT!). We had to take Red Cross training, some of which I still use (one teaspoon = 6cc). We mostly just ran errands for the nurses and delivered food trays, but I loved that job. When my great-aunt and great grandmother were in a car accident I was able to go visit them both without having to go through the rigamarole of registering at the front desk. Since my great grandmother died from the accident I was one of the very last to see her alive and to hold her hand.

[peach]

During my late elementary school years through early high school, my brothers and I spent most of June picking strawberries from our garden and selling them around town. Technically we got to keep the money, but that money never actually made it's way into our pockets. It was saved and used for extras during our yearly family vacations.

The summer I was 15 I spent my days being a cook/housekeeper/nanny to 3 elementary aged children of a local woman. I was working almost 40 hours a week and got paid only $60/week. I didn't make these arrangements, my mother did. I really hated this job.

I didn't work a summer job again until I had completed my Freshman year of college when I too worked at Dairy Queen. Even now almost 35 years later I know I could make a DQ cone with the curl on top with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back.

My last summer job during my college years was as a cook at a local golf course restaurant and lounge. I had applied to be a waitress, but they needed a cook. They hired me because of my "experience" cooking burgers at Dairy Queen. It turned out to be the best summer job of all as it gave me great confidence in the kitchen and in my own abilities as a cook.

If I had it all to do over again I would go to culinary school and become a chef. But I'm too decrepit these days to take the punishment of working all those hours in a kitchen.

[Josh]

Summer of 1979, McDonalds on Union Street in Allentown. Due to the factories that were still there, we were open 24 hours. I loved the 3 a.m. lunch rush, and, on Friday and Saturday nights, the 2 a.m. Rocky Horror rush. (Danny Roebuck, who went on to a reasonably long TV/movie career, was in that group.) We had to know the prices and add everything up in our heads, and there was no drive-thru, although it was added a couple of years later. (That ruined the aura of the place.)

Learned how to scramble eggs without any white showing. Learned how to ruin two dozen baskets of french fries by breaking a fluorescent light bulb across them. Learned some basic economics of the fast food business (shouldn't run payroll at more than 15% of revenue). Learned the difference between good managers, who would get the employees to walk that extra mile, and bad managers, who would get the (same) employees to grudgingly do the minimum. And had a lousy time that only has been fun in retrospect.

[gaylin in vancouver]

I didn't have summer jobs - I also babysat, all year round. I had some good parents/kids and some bad ones. I remember one boy who sat up in the middle of the night and vomited all over his bed . . . I got him cleaned up but there was no spare bedding and I couldn't get the washing machine to work. He ended up back in his bed with the blanket from the couch.

The last time I babysat it was for 2 boys, just at that age 10/12 where they didn't think they needed a babysitter, horrible kids. The oldest found his dad's straight razor and threatened me with it because he didn't want to go to bed. The parents were kind of icky as well, that was the end of my babysitting career.

[Laraine]

I worked in a KFC regional office, where the top guy's secretary would open the vault each day and bring out a notebook. She would give me the notebook, and a stack of 4x6" notecards, and tell me how many copies of each of KFC's top secret recipes to type out, to be sent by mail to the newest store in the franchise. I sat at a big old steel desk on a little platform squeezed in behind the front door of the office, next to the secretary's desk. There was an 'air freshener' machine mounted near the ceiling over my desk, and every few minutes it would puff out a heavy mist of some toxic-smelling substance. For some letters I used carbon paper in the big old electric typewriter (this was before Selectrics). There was no other paper or writing allowed when the notebook was on my desk, so that nobody could steal the secret recipes.
I quietly tried to memorize the recipe for their baked beans, but none of the other recipes interested me because my grandmother had already taught me how to make killer fried chicken and even better potato salad.
Hearing about or reading about other's summer jobs, the comraderie of the DQ or the pizza joint, etc., was like looking into a technicolor world from that very quiet little office. I don't think I had to lie about leaving in the fall for college.

[Pam aka SisterZip]

Gaylin, I had a family I regularly sat for and the mom always drove me home. One night they left a party a bit early because she wasn't feeling well. So The Dad drove me home. I didn't notice until I was sitting in the front seat with him that he reaked of scotch. Since it was only about 5 blocks from my house, I wasn't too worried. He drove normally so I didn't freak out or anything. And I was about 14...1969. This was when it was acceptable. He pulls in the driveway and got chatty. We talked for a bit & I kept trying to get in the house because it was after midnight. Mom would be up waiting for me. She always waited for me when I babysat these people. After about a half an hour I had to get rude and tried to just get out of the car. He grabbed my hand and told me he just wanted to talk. I shook him off and said that Mom would be mad. I could see the busybody neighbor watching out her window and I knew Mom would hear about it the next day.

Of course, Mom was reading in bed with the light on and I had to explain what happened. She didn't say much but told me I was not going to babysit for them anymore. I loved those kids; they were great. I really didn't want to miss the money, but The Mom agreed with my mom that it might be best if I didn't work for them anymore. It took a few years before I got it. Duh!

So I didn't babysit much, lol.

[Reine]

My summer jobs were pretty good, actually. One summer I had two student jobs. I lived in Divinity Hall on the Harvard Campus. Div Hall was constructed with front and back being nearly identical. I would crawl out of bed in the morning, eat breakfast in the Bio Labs Café next door, than cross the road to my job identifying the Iroquois collection for repatriation. After a few hours, I would cross back to the Bio Labs, eat lunch, drag myself back upstairs for a nap. When I woke up I would go out the backside of the building to my job in the Div School library, where I found lost books in the stacks. This gave me lots of time to read and ride the elevator, my favorite in the world because of the rapturous seizure-inducing qualities of its directional lights, as long as I was able to shut off all the other lights . . . brilliant. After another few hours I would go back to Div Hall and meet with students in Emerson's chapel (as we called it, because he gave his famous Unitarian address there) where I was tutoring in essay writing. I didn't really get paid for that. I did it for fun and because those students didn't want to take the official class on report writing. They thought it would stigmatize them. I don't know how I came to be respected for my writing by other students, but it was fun helping them out. They would bring me cookies and coffee, and if they're hard work paid off, they brought flowers. I think they copped the flowers from the dean's house or Julia Childs' on the way over. It was a great summer.

[Reine]

You can see by my poor spelling and other probs why I have difficulty understanding my supposed writing skills, but there you are.

[Reine]

Forgot to mention the first job was at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology where I spent many scary hours of my youth http://140.247.102.177/col/browse.cfm and fell into the job one day. I was visiting the collection with a professor who was grilling me on the origins of a moccasin. When finally left alone when my examiner saw another potential student-victim and wandered off, I stood in front of the rows of metal shelves staring at all the articles collected by archaeologists, some given but most stolen from graves. A woman who'd had her back to us turned and asked me if I wanted a job identifying the origins of items in the collection, so they might be repatriated. "Uh . . . Well yeah."

[Nora]

Oh...babysitting...and doing a temp work. Trudging along the MBTA to destinations unknown, I landed a summer job in Probate Court.DIVORCE...I brought some fun to it by suggesting we do "Probate Presents"...acting out the oddest cases of the day....strippers trying to divide their property...whips, chains...etc...oh the judge's face on that one....the sadness of children being brought into court to testify...the Probation Officer that committed suicide..."clients" that were encouraged by bad lawyers to go to court often...yet we always found an element of funny somewhere...like me falling down a staircase, half on the bannister, with legs dragging, or the time someone sent a judge an exotic dancer for a bday present...during court...oh.what.fun! Most things they did would be arrestable with today's standards...thank goodness I never worked a register!

[marie]

I had year round babysitting jobs. Summer was so short in Canada that we soaked it up as much as we could.
Looking back I guess my life has been a whirlwind of school, jobs, child rearing, eking out fun wherever I could. Life has been good.

[Avis]

I also am a Dairy Queen alumna (three years!), and can still make that curl! I also did babysitting, waitressing, two assembly line factory jobs, and a summer at McDonalds. This was all during my teenage and college years. After college, got my first full time job as a State employee, and have almost reached my 35 anniversary with the State.