As summer approaches, many of us are applying for jobs or internships. While there’s always the dreaded fast food jobs, I interviewed some of the students and staff at UD to find out what their absolute worst summer jobs were.
Junior theology major Tatiana Rios describes a summer spent as a party hostess as her worst job ever.
“In December 2018, I was a senior in high school and I really needed a job, kinda like my first job ever. It was a birthday party hostess gig where we would dress up as princesses and host little girls’ birthday parties,” said Rios.
“Over a course of like two weeks, the supervisor was fired, I became a supervisor, and I had to basically run this little mom and pop shop by myself. My boss was crazy, literally so erratic, eccentric, and she was great but also I don’t understand why she made us do what we did.
“Over the summer, going into my freshman year of college — I quit before I started college here — we did like a princess summer camp and those days were literal hell . . . I had to dress as Jasmine and a little kid called me fat, and then she spilled milk down my back. It was really terrible because I basically had to run that place by myself when my boss did who knows what.”
Ah yes, the joys of working with kids. Rios also recalls an event where her boss mobbed her with young children.
“I barely had a day off. There was one time [when] my friend was there to pick me up. I’m trying to leave early because it was my day off, and instead of just letting me go, my boss tells all of the little kids to run after me and not let me go. [My boss] locked the door so I wouldn’t go, so my friend’s just seeing me trying to unlock the door and these little kids just grabbing at me.
“Needless to say, that place is not open anymore. There’s other places that do a better job, I’m sure. That place I really learned patience and how to get through things. It was also just so crazy that that was basically my first job ever. That was my worst summer,” said Rios.
Working with children seems to be a recurring theme in the worst summer jobs, although not always as extreme as being caught in a stampede. Brother Juan Gabriel Seiglie, O.P. recalls his worst job as being a tutor.
“I was working retail and the retail job wasn’t bad, but what was terrible was I had a second job that summer and I was working at an ACT tutoring test prep center. I was hired to teach ACT and SAT test prep and when I would show up, very often my student would cancel so they would throw me at a student whose teacher had canceled and I would be teaching fifth grade math instead,” said Br. Seiglie.
“On top of that, I had to drive an hour between the two jobs, during rush hour, in order to get there. So just the combination of terrible traffic to get there for an hour’s worth of work — which wasn’t enough pay to make up for gas and dinner — to then teach something that I wasn’t hired to teach and hadn’t done in eight years, was the worst job I’ve ever had,” concluded Br. Seiglie.
Summer jobs, though temporary, aren’t always the greatest. Next time you find yourself in a job that you hate, remember that you aren’t alone. There’s always someone out there working a job just as bad as yours.
