Summer Jobs
Lileks has a great column up about terrible summer jobs. I liked the whole thing, but this excerpt especially:
From Fred, a taciturn description:
Concrete block plant. Small. Owned by alcoholic. No stacking machinery, just me and three other low-end laborers, often alcoholic. too.Learned: I could stack 70 tons of concrete blocks every day for minimum wage — and enjoy it. I might give up my current 52-year-old life, money, property for that health and strength again.
That’s the attitude. On one hand, there is no more mindless job: moving concrete blocks from one place to another. On the other hand, you strip your life down to the essence. Who am I? I am the man who moves the blocks. Someone has to. There’s more elemental satisfaction in moving 70 tons with your own sinews than moving $700,000 from one mutual fund to another; the latter is incorporeal, a financial fiction to which we all subscribe. The former is literally concrete: The blocks were there. Now they are here.This is why I’m glad I was a waiter in college: I did something that was actually useful, as opposed to flapping my gums in a newspaper. There’s no column next Sunday? You’ll live. But the waiter disappears, and your Eggs Benedict cool on the counter, ignored, undelivered. The essence of the economy, of human labor, of our entire mortal existence, consists of moving stuff from here to there, and it’s good to learn this early on. If nothing else, it gives you respect for those who keep doing it after you’ve danced off to some soft-handed profession.
On the other hand, we had a problem with refrigeration at the restaurant, and I cannot tell you how many people got the 24-hour Egg Flu after eating our Hollandaise sauce. So if you spent your summers reading books in med school, that’s good, too.
July 4th, 2005 at 12:24 am
Have you had any good summer jobs you’ll look back on with the same level of satisfaction and nostalgia?
July 4th, 2005 at 4:00 pm
Right now I’m working at Chick-fil-A. Maybe twenty years from now I’ll look at it with nostalgia, but right now, I just want out.
July 8th, 2005 at 7:08 pm
My worst summer jobs:
1. Night watchman (Midnight to 8AM shift)
2. De-tasseling corn
3. Mowing lawns
4. Painting houses
5. Scrubbing down yachts
6. Gopher for a construction crew
7. Selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door on commission
At least I never had to wear a funny uniform.
My best summer job - working in a train station in Germany booking hotel rooms for American tourists.
July 9th, 2005 at 1:36 am
Didjya notice the common thread? In 6 out of the 7, you were working outside. I could never have a job outside, at least not here in the South. I’d die of heat stroke. Now San Francisco, there I could work outside. I visited once for a church mission trip, and the cool breeze blowing off the ocean was just wonderful.
As far as door-to-door selling goes: I was once offered a job by Vector Marketing selling knives to people–Think Avon for knives and utensils. Turns out my dad had worked for the same company a long time ago and quit after two weeks and only one sale. I steered clear of that one, partly because of that, and partly because they wanted me to come in for training on the day that my brother was leaving for a couple of months in California. I decided that family is more important than any job, especially some crappy summer job like that. I have never regretted it either.
July 10th, 2005 at 1:11 am
The outside jobs were bad - but not because they were outside. After a year sitting inside in a classroom I enjoyed being out doors.
I suppose the worst was selling the vacuum cleaners. The companies pitch was if someone watched the demo, we’d shampoo a room of carpeting. So guess what? I did a lot of carpet shampooing but no one was ever interested in buying. It really sucked, but I stuck it out for a month.