Home > Snellville.Talk > Archives > 2008 > May > 28 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USSummer job horror stories?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s about time for some good old-fashioned horror stories.
Yep. The kids are out of school, the video games are going full blast, and you may have already heard the first whisper of “I’m bored.”
It’s time to pull out your collection of frightening summer job stories.
Everybody has at least one.
Maybe you picked up road kill off the south Georgia highways.
Maybe you cleaned bathrooms at Slumpy’s Bar.
Or maybe you worked for a political campaign.
Bring it out, shake off the cobwebs and watch the young eyes widen with every grotesque — and exaggerated — detail.
The best ones come from before the proliferation of fast-food restaurants — when teen jobs were more likely in dark stockrooms or mosquito-laden fields than at a drive-through speaker.
But even younger parents can play, because the real horror is in the telling.
My husband’s favorites are about his stints as a hotel maintenance worker in San Antonio, as a restaurant janitor in Ohio and as a stockroom worker at a Valdosta discount store.
My contributions are tales of cutting grass for the estates of the dearly departed (using push mowers and a machete), being a switchboard operator (remember Lily Tomlin’s “one ringy-dingy” in “Laugh-in), or serving as mobile librarian on a “Bookmobile” in rural Georgia. Some days I saw only the driver.
If your worst summer job was as lifeguard at the country club or Banana Boat girl at a beach resort, you have your work cut out for you.
Be careful not to overdo, however. Soon - far too soon - children reach the age where you want them to get a job. Pour on just enough to move them outside for sunshine and fireflies. Don’t warp their little brains. You don’t want them too picky.
Good summer jobs are elusive in the best of times. This year’s slumping economy has tightened the supply.
Sam Hall, director of communication for the Georgia Department of Labor, said experienced adult workers who have lost jobs in manufacturing, construction or financing may be competing for the seasonal positions teens often fill, many of which are in the leisure, retail or hospitality business. The rising cost of gasoline and its impact on disposable income could also affect how many seasonal positions are offered this summer, Hall said.
Here in Snellville, the city parks and recreation department has seen an increase in adults inquiring about seasonal jobs. The department’s summer jobs have long been filled, though, most by college students returning from last summer, said Cyndee Bonacci, parks and recreation director.
Complicating a summer job search is the already congested schedules of many of today’s teens. Fitting a job around high school sports or band practices, Scout camps, driver’s education and other obligations isn’t easy.
They should persevere, however. Think of all that is learned in those first days of employment:
• the importance of a strong work ethic, punctuality and social skills.
• the importance of a paycheck.
• the realization that work is — well — work.
• the realization that not all bosses are created equal.
• the realization that some bosses are not created at all; they are the result of scientific experiments gone bad.
After all, kids need fodder for their own summer job horror stories.
What’s your most memorable summer job story? What did you learn?
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By Brooke
May 29, 2008 2:06 AM | Link to this
I only graduated high school a week ago, yet already have a horror story from my summer job last year!
I was working as a barista at a local coffee shop that hosted entertainers on Friday and Saturday nights. We banned an entertainer that was disrespectful to my manager and didn’t follow our set rules. A few weeks passed by before he booked under another name and showed up to play. When we told him he couldn’t and that he had to leave, he began throwing chairs around and screaming obscenities at us. We ended up hiding out until the police came and stuck him in jail.
Completely terrifying, but I think the business I interviewed to work for this summer was impressed with what I dealt with. Obviously—I have a new job this year!
By mmh1
May 29, 2008 7:57 AM | Link to this
I worked at the Georgia Visitors Center on the Georgia/Florida border one summer. My main job duties were to re-stock the brochures and clean the bathrooms. People do not treat a public restroom the way they treat their bathroom at home. Luckily, I only worked there one summer!
By Ingle
May 30, 2008 9:03 AM | Link to this
My best summer job lasted for years, through the end of high school and into college breaks and weekends. Working at the now closed Pike Family Nurseries will always be some of my fondest job memories. Summer time meant the spring planting rush was over and long, hot days in the greenhouse streched out before me. To cool off we’d water houseplants, with liberal splash to cool off. Favorite activities also included lazily feeding the pond goldfish or helping customers browsing through shrubbery. It was the best way to get paid as a teenager and I loved being able to talk my boss into long long lunches that included me heading home to dip into the pool! If only grown up jobs could be so sweet!
By Kat
May 30, 2008 9:09 AM | Link to this
When I was in college, I worked for a temp agency while home on summer breaks. If you ever want a variety of bizarre jobs, try temping! I think companies hire temps for jobs their regular employees wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole. I guess there are some things you want done by somebody you’ll never see again and won’t have to apologize to!
Anyway, the worst assignment I had started with a phone call from the agency saying they had a “fun assignment” for me. It was at the Dwarf House in Hapeville, and there would be a team of temps working on a special project there. So far, so good.
They were purportedly doing a traffic study to find out where their customers came from and where they went when they left the restaurant. My job consisted of…wait for it…standing in the parking lot and clicking a hand-held counter every time a car left the parking lot and turned right on Central Avenue. In the broiling sun. On the black asphalt. For eight hours a day. For three days. But hey, all the chick-fil-a you could eat!
By the time I left in the evening I was not only hot and exhausted, every exposed inch of my skin was gritty from the pollution. That was around the time I realized that “fun assigment” in temp-agency speak is code for “hell on earth”.
On the bright side, jobs like that were a great motivation for me to return to college each fall!
By Lunatic Fringe
May 30, 2008 9:12 AM | Link to this
When I was a teenager back in the late 60’s I worked at a nursery. You don’t know what hot is until you spend hours at a time inside of a greenhouse in the summer six days a week. The only perk was I could take my mother dozens of roses on Fridays. My best sumer job was working as a lot boy at a new car dealership. All the gas I could steal plus they let me have the tires off of the cars they were going to wholesale. Plus I got to use the dealership’s vehicles whenever I had to run errands, which was often.
By amy
May 30, 2008 9:32 AM | Link to this
Working at the carwash baby!!!
It totally sucked. It was soooo hot. The worst part was standing on the black asphalt after cars had gone through the automatic washer, and having to vaccumm and wash windows. The better part about it was when they pulled me to work in the garage to detail cars which they occasionally did when they had a lot lined up. But Like the above comment stated—it motivated me to go back to college the next fall. For sure.
By OldSchool
May 30, 2008 10:00 AM | Link to this
One summer during high school, I worked the 3 a.m. to noon shift…packing pickles. Nothing quite compares to the aroma of garden mix (pickles, cauliflower, onions, garlic) at 3:00 in the morning!
Prior to that summer, I worked handing and stringing tobacco. They fed us lunches of white bread, pinto beans and a mason jar of cold water…yum. Not the best job but it was pretty good money and we had a blast chatting and joking while we worked. Not too many places you can do that.
Both jobs gave me great respect for the people who rely on jobs like that for a living. I also went back to school more determined to get a very good education!
By FCM
May 30, 2008 10:02 AM | Link to this
Burger King when I was 15. The milkshake machine was broken…and it was hot out. The drive thru thing didn’t work well. On top of it all, someone else at a BK in NC had a similar SSN as mine….want to guess who was not getting a paycheck and who was? I had to prove it was my SSN and that I was not being paid after 6 weeks of not getting check! They did finally pay me (after I stopped working until they did) then I quit and started working a PT job during HS at a retail store.
By JRT
May 30, 2008 10:08 AM | Link to this
Back in the 70’s getting a fast food position as a summer job was considered a plum and not at all easy to land. I would have jumped for joy landing one, believe me. But, there were no Hispanics around then to work the landscape jobs, so they often were taken by us students on summer break. I can count many apartment complexes around town that I helped lay down the new sod in broiling summer temperatures. By the end of the day, you would be filthy dirty and sweaty. The only worse job I had was working at a car battery recycler. You would have to wear a heavy rubber protection head to toe with mask and then beat the batteries all day with a sledgehammer to break them open to get at the zinc and whatever else they could salvage out of them. Combining the battery acid/fumes flying all over and wearing that stiffling protection in the summer temps was truly memorable. The pay was minimum wage and I think I lasted two weeks before I quit, after having lost about 15 pounds in the process(and I didn’t need to lose the weight). All in all, it sure gives me cause to be thankful for where I am today.
By Oh, Pool Boy!
May 30, 2008 10:15 AM | Link to this
Worked as a pool boy back in the 70’s in suburban New Jersey. Best job ever! Just like in the movies. Lonely suburban housewives home alone in their mansions wrapped in a towel - ‘nuff said.
By Ed
May 30, 2008 10:19 AM | Link to this
I worked for two summers in high school on a pulp wood crew. We went into the woods on a Monday, cut trees until Thursday and then went home. I made five times more per hour than the kids I knew working fast food. It was also great motivation to go to college and not have to do that after high school. I had respect for the older guys that did that for a living full time but I knew it wasn’t for me, two summers of that was plenty.
By John
May 30, 2008 10:19 AM | Link to this
RJ Reynolds Tobacco factory in Winston-Salem, NC. I’ve never been a fan of cigarettes but I was a poor college student and that job was one of the best paying summer jobs in the area.
I pushed hogheads of raw tobacco leaves onto the assembly line all day. There was dust everywhere so I went home with a nose full of tobacco dust everyday. When the line got jammed you had to crawl into into it and kick the leaves through…since they had been heated at high temperature,the flume you crawled into was about 120 degrees..yuck.
And guess what they do with the dust and debris? They sweep it all up and reconsitute it into man made leaves and run that through the line. I never smoked and never will…
But the worst thing was when you stacked the metal dollys that the hogsheads were on…they were about 150 lbs each. One time when I was stacking them this idiot on a fork lift hit one of them and it jammed my anke between the dolly and a metal barrier. I was lucky it didn’t break it. He did the same thing a month later. He didn’t mean to, he was just careless.
It certainly motivated me to get through college and get a degree though.
By trottsky
May 30, 2008 10:22 AM | Link to this
Six Flags has to be it. I remember working the pressure washer at Hickory Chip in Lickskillet. “The Hottsie”. The first casualty was Orange. He found out the force of the jet spray would rip the skin off of his finger. Then I got Jungle Rot so bad that when we went to Mableton to buy rubber boots, I sat in the car and waited as huge chunks of my soaked feet peeled off. To this day, I have no feeling in my souls………no pun intended.
By Sparkle
May 30, 2008 11:03 AM | Link to this
I was a teen age hooker. Great summer job. I was able to buy the coolest clothes for school.
By GaLiberal
May 30, 2008 3:03 PM | Link to this
Worst job: Building grain storage bins in KS.
Best job: Male stripper in gay and lesbian bar. Tips were good and the benefits were even better. Of course, it was the ’80s.
By tkangel
May 30, 2008 5:33 PM | Link to this
My worst job was at china cafe in uderground atlanta. Working long hour after school. A lot of violence at Underground. A lot of young people making fun of chinese food. I dreaded going to work.
By Rufus
June 1, 2008 5:17 PM | Link to this
It was 1970. I took a summer job at Chrysler’s Assembly Plant in Warren Michigan. It was a stamping plant where you actually form the contours of the fenders. 8 hours of noise, drug addicts, drunks, and heat. I was very productive and could perform tasks three or four times faster than anyone the supervisors had ever seen, so they quickly put me all alone in a forest of small machines where I was to forge smaller parts, which I did furiously to make the time fly. they’re probably still talking about the college kid that was such a fiend. I was making $20/hr in 2008 money. I saved some money, nearly 4000 dollars in 2008 money. Then, I started offering to drive these guys to and from work for free. Why? I dont know. Eventually my car broke down and I had to abandon my car in a very unsafe neighborhood. When I retured the next morning, the car was destroyed. Glass all smashed. engine torn to pieces, tires gone. total loss. Thank you, Detroit.
how ‘bout them redwings? WOW!
By KIM
June 1, 2008 5:54 PM | Link to this
My father did not believe in my sisters nor I working until we had graduated high school. But the day after graduation, I hit the streets of downtown Atlanta trying to find a job…June 7…after almost all summer jobs were looonnnnggg gone. So, I went to work for Manpower (a temp agency). One job was putting labels on glass cosmetic bottles, one day it was tagging dresses in a storage building that had no air conditioning, and another day, I did typing in an airplane hanger. But the very worst assignment was working for a local television station (still on today, despite me) where I had to prepare the daily log of programming. The ‘data’ came off a machine and then a person (me) had to cut these long rolls of ‘data’ into pages that compiled a book of programming. That way everyone on and off air knew what was going to happen. I never could figure out where to cut…so…I have no idea what they did. I remember Guy Sharp coming into my office and he was the nicest, most down to earth person imaginable. Only native Atlantans will know who he is. AFter that every summer I worked at Ashby Street Sears or went to school.
By sara
June 2, 2008 5:09 AM | Link to this
Best summer job: waitressing at Mt. Top Inn in Chittenden, VT…breakfast and lunch service. I was chosen to drive the pontoon boat for the pontoon breakfasts…pretty fun! Worst summer job: bottling salad dressing at Lighthouse in Sandpoint, ID. I lasted 1 day!
By fk
June 2, 2008 12:19 PM | Link to this
I seriously considered dropping out of school after completing my second year of college, 1983. That year, the local dept. chain where I had worked pt-time since a jr. in high school, closed. For the first time, I had to find a summer job. The only work experience I had was in retail, but I was not interested in making that a career. My worldly sense at 20 made me think it to be the most unstable industry as I had lost my one and only job. Since I had zero office experience, and was a rather weak typist, I wound up working for a temp agency that placed college students at factory jobs.
Everyone working the line was in college except the line supervisor and he would absolutely forbade us to speak while we worked. We packaged cheap plastic toys all day. It was a tedious job, and the no-talking rule was about to drive me over the edge, but the experience was a great lesson in life. I then knew what I did not want to do with the rest of mine, and that I needed either a degree or marketable skills to land a decent job. I think I worked there maybe 2-1/2 weeks when I made up my mind to return to college in the fall, and to get my butt over to the mall and fill out an application for Macys. The next summer, ironically, I wound up taking summer classes, and continued working part-time. That factory experience gave me the good sense to complete my degree, to be grateful for the opportunity to do so, and to improve my typing.
By Rosie the Riveter
June 2, 2008 7:06 PM | Link to this
Worst summer job ever - Hoover Ball and Bearing in Charlotte, Michigan back in the late 70’s. We assembled parts that went on cars. Remember crank windows? We assembed the hand crank piece, boxed ‘em up and and sent them off to the plant to be put on the vehicles. We put “rubbers up rails” - boy did we laugh about that job! That involved wearing thick, heavy rubber gloves and eye protection because you were laying thick rubber into a solution that softened it so you could slide it onto the rail - the bumper thing that went down the sides of trucks to protect them from door openings (I guess?).
It was my first time in a factory. Steel-toed boots (borrowed from a friend and a size too small - ouch!), shift work and all. Didn’t mind the hours, but how tedious! Place shut down sometime after I left when the auto industry tanked. Not much call for crank windows anymore, I guess.
By woodie
June 3, 2008 7:26 AM | Link to this
My son worked at Wendy’s for minimum wage and got layed off and replaced by multiple undocumented workers who couldn’t speak English. I wonder how often this scenario has played out across Gwinnett County.