Worst Summer Job Contest Results
Worst Summer Job Contest
Hundreds of teens told us stories about their worst summer jobs. It was pretty brutal: you told us about working with meatball-throwing kids, filthy dishes, weird bosses, screaming customers and even scam artists. Here are the top three finalists - have you ever had a summer job this bad?
From hostess to janitor
April of last year I NEEDED a job! So I knew a couple of people who worked at this theme park and had good stories to tell. I went to the interview and they asked, “What position would you like?“ and the lady had given me a brief description of each. “Hostess of Ireland” sounded nice to me. You know - meet and greet people, help in aiding the fine boys around the area, etc. First training day comes and I’m being shown the ropes. I’m feeling confident with my little (ugly) outfit on. All of a sudden my supervisor hands me a broom and a dust pan and tells me to sweep the trash for 15 minutes. 15 minutes turned into two hours, hours turned into opening time, the dust and broom became a part of the outfit! Oh, that was not it. Now I’m scrubbing toilets and mopping the floor! I am a teenager with teen friends who go to this park all the time. And what did they see?? Oh… not Shay the “hostess” but Shay the Janitor!
— Shay G.
Tan lines and trash cans
I wasted two summers of my life at the water park. At first it was nice, I liked it. I soon learned that standing in the sun from 11-8 sometimes without ANY breaks wasn’t as nice as I thought. There were many times when I would be stuck standing waist deep in water. When the temperature of the water was warmer then the air outside for hours, once you get out of the water you can’t feel your legs. The break “room” was actually four tables behind a fence with umbrellas, where you would have to sit regardless of the weather. After closing I would take bleach and pour it down all the stairs of the enclosed slide towers and spend the next half hour in it squeegeeing dirt, water and bleach down every stair as it ran into my Crocs.
Normally later on we would bring the bee-infested trash cans to the center of the park, even being allergic to bees wasn’t enough to get out of this one, because being a water park they had the shot just in case. We would then take the trash bags out and bleach the inside of the trash cans. Do you know the nasty stuff you find in a garbage can at a water park? Even as a minor we would have to stand under pouring water no matter the weather. After closing from a thunderstorm we would open back up for three guests and go back out and stand in a freezing cold rain. However, the worst part was the tan lines. But a 45-hour-a-week pay check is nice, so I stayed. The parties were nice too.
— John I.
Turkey wings
In May of 2007 my parents decided to split so me, my mom and my siblings decided to move to Fresno. I needed a job right away to help my mom out with the kids so I was up for any type of job. Well I finally applied for this company…. There were 2 sides to this company and it had to do with turkeys. One side people were killing the turkeys and others were degutting them. So there was blood, guts, and many pieces of turkey insides everywhere, and let me tell you the smell was not pretty at all. Thankfully I did not have to work on that side, they just took me there for the interview/orientation.
What I had to do was still awful. The employers did not really teach me how to do the job, they just gave me a knife and I literally had to ask around for help. It was a really fast job - I had to cut bones off the turkey. My first day I was cutting turkey wings which everybody still says is a hard job especially for a female, but I had an awesome coworker who really helped me out. I got yelled at a lot because I was doing the job slow the first couple of weeks, so I dreaded going to work every morning but I always kept in mind my brothers and sisters and how to help my mom get by with the bills. So I stayed there for like 4 months until I could not take it any more. So now I am going to school to be a medical assistant.
— Adriana S.