I am sure we have all had a summer job at some point in our lives that was just so much fun or so personally rewarding that it was just icing on the cake that it came with a paycheck too. Some of these we would never have considered for a full time career, but were too rewarding to pass up or just too silly to refuse. It could have been anything. For instance, I was once a "contestant/talent wrangler" on a local game show.
Maybe for you it was something equally as silly like telling fortunes to tourists at some seaside resort or dressing up like a giant Goofy at Disneyland? Maybe it was something rewarding like clerking for a Supreme Court justice, or lopping the heads off of lab mice for the sake of medical science (my brother did that one). For the truly rewarding, it could have been building irrigation systems in Guatemala, or being a life guard at a nudist colony. You know, one of those summer jobs where at the end of the day you said "What fools! They are actually PAYING me to do this! Don't they know I would do it for free?" Well, okay, I don't think my brother was basking in the glory of murdering mice, but you get my drift...
So the question is:
What was your MOST fun/silly/rewarding/unusual summer job and why would you have done it for free if you could have?
15 comments:
Bev, Truth be told, all of my summer jobs stunk. . . didn't enjoy any of them.
I was either lucky, or spoiled. I never had to do a summer job.
Well, I did have my interesting winter job last year. :-)
My only "summer job" was a volunteer gig at the Southwest County Regional Library in Boca Raton, FL. I earned 64 community service hours (and no money). A friend recommended it to me and it was a good gig. As a "volunteen," I was only allowed to work in the children's department: shelving books, answering questions, posting artwork, etc.
Toward the end of the summer (this was '98), they put on a quiz-bowl type of program and they used me as a guinea pig to test the difficulty of the questions. Given that I was an above average but not gifted student, I knew nothing. :-)
my favorite was slinging trash (garbage man) for the township. It was hard work but put me in the best condition of my life and put 2" on my arms for football in the fall. Learned a lot of cool stuff from the full timers, too.
Andrew, look at it this way, you spent your summers finding out what you DIDN'T want to do!
Tam - You had the best job of all - not working! Somehow I bet you've made up for it though.
Scott, I forgot about your winter job. That was probably THE coolest job ever!
I should have said just any job rather than specify, but then in true Commentarama fashion, you did not follow the rules.
TJ - Summer Sanitation Engineer! I bet you learned alot about people through their trash or maybe too much...did you get to hang off the back of the truck?
Bev, That's the positive way to look at it. I prefer the "it sucked" way to look at it. I should have been a pirate....
Scott, That was an interesting job, though I don't think I'd want to do it. This whole "volunteening" thing going in schools now sounds like slavery. Yuck.
Andrew, you can be a pirate now! As a matter of fact you can start on Sept 19th...
I did indeed hang off the back of the truck and learned that the weatherman for the lead local news station in Philly had cocoa crisps at least once.
Bev: I got my first job when I was fifteen. I was taking piano and organ lessons at the local music store. They asked me if I'd like to work after school, and I couldn't wait. I got paid $1.75/hour and didn't have to pay for my lessons anymore. Best of all, I got all the new 45 records, and the all-new 33 1/3 LP albums at cost. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
My fav summer job was working as a desk clerk at a hotel during college. Everyone who worked there was in college. It was like one big summer long party. So fun. Can't believe they paid me.
See I knew eventually someone would come up with something!
LawHawk - for a 15 year old music lover that must have been THE greatest job ever!
And Writer X - I had a job once at a beach town (South Padre Island, Texas) working in on "Padre Island!" a musical version of the history of South Padre Island. We worked our butts off, BUT we were all great friends and were staying in a condo 200 yards from the beach for free. The beach was the real payoff since it came with pretty much no real paycheck. We were there for 6 weeks plus room (no board) for a total of about $300. But I count it as one of THE best jobs of my career.
Bev,
Now that sounds like a blast! I worked at a hotel located in the middle of cornfields in Illinois. Not exactly a tourist destination but we had so much fun. In fact, looking back, I have to wonder what a hotel was doing there anyway...oh, well. It was a job.
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