Summer Jobs: Best and Worst

Happy #FearStreetFriday podcast friends!!  In honor of our latest episode, THE DEAD LIFEGUARD, we're talking about summer jobs.  In high school and college, we've all had jobs for the summer, some we liked, some we loathed-- and we're going to tell you about the best and worst of them.

Of course, our jobs were no North Beach Country Club-- which was both awesome and terrible at the same time (awesome because they got to LIVE there with a personal chef and limited supervision, terrible because.... well, the body count). For more about just how terrible NBCC is check out this month's podcast. For more on our favorite and least favorite jobs, keep reading.

Best:

Gen Con 

•  I'm not sure if this counts as it's only a week long, but volunteering at Gen Con used to be the highlight of my summer. A week long gaming vacation in milwaukee (currently in Indianapolis) where I was the kid willing to do all the crap jobs just for the chance to play some games or hang out with the special guests (like the time I got to hang out with James Marsters!). I wouldn't give up those exhausting, hella fun weeks for anything.

Worst:

Server at Denny's

• My summer jobs were also my after school jobs and my first was enough to turn me off restaurant jobs forever. I was a server at the Denny’s in front of the under 21 club, Jetz. Between knife fights, working through Christmas, and working the Sunday after church brunch crowd I never want to step into a Denny’s again.

Best:

Six Flags Ride Operator

• I worked at a Six Flags for five summers so I must have liked it. My first summer was after my senior year of high school and I got a job as a ride operator. You know, those people who check your seat belts and come over the speaker to say a whole thing about how you should be careful that no one ever listens to? Yup, that was me. They originally put me on the wooden roller coaster and it was an all girls crew and then the boys on the Superman got in trouble so we had to switch rides. My final summer I worked as a team leader in the children's part and all I did was teach teenagers how to run the rides and make sure they didn't mess up. I did clean up a lot of puke though. And I got heat exhaustion once. That wasn't fun. But there were also good perks. Like free  admission to the park, a guest pass with every paycheck, and our Six Flags had a preforming arts center so I got to meet a lot of musicians. Like two members of the Backstreet Boys. I checked Howie's seat belt. 

Worst:

Day camp counselor

• I didn't have any really terrible jobs. One year after college I worked for an after school program and they had a summer camp that I had to work at. Basically there were hundreds of kids that we would have to entertain for the afternoons after some of them went to summer school and others just showed up. Mostly it was a lot of board games, kickball, and trips to educational things they had no interest in like science museums and botanical gardens. But I did get to go to the zoo twice. 

Best:

Pittsburgh Pirates customer service rep

• One summer I worked for the Pittsburgh Pirates (the major league baseball team in Pittsburgh), and I gotta tell you it was pretty fun.  I got to see a lot of the players behind the scenes and worked over every inch of the park.  PNC Park has some of the best city views in sports period.  It's consistently ranked in the top of "Best Baseball Stadiums" lists from Travel and Leisure and USA Today.  It's just a really nice place to be.  Plus, fireworks nights, and we got free stuff a lot, and almost all of the fans I interacted with were awesome.

Worst:

Wal-Mart cashier

• Meh.  I'm sure there are MUCH worse summer jobs out there, but I wasn't that fond of being a cashier at Wal-Mart for that one summer in college.  I mean, nothing bad happened, and the people I worked for were (for the most part) really nice.  It's just PEOPLE, ya know??  Customers at Wal-Mart are all types of people-- and some of them are RUDE.  And some of them have 9999999 coupons.  And some of them buy roasted chicken at 8 A.M. when I'm hungover.

But that's just our terrible jobs. To find out more about why working at North Beach Country Club would have been so terrible, what we mean when we say she was "hot dead," and what Cassi thinks happens to every character who has the same name as her, check out this month's podcast for our thoughts on THE DEAD LIFEGUARD!