Culture

Top five: Worst summer jobs

With summer right around the corner, now is the time to accept those job and internship offers you’ve been working on since September. For those of you slackers who enjoyed the spring but gave no thought to the summer, these are the top five jobs to avoid after arriving home.

5. Communications specialist for cutlery products (aka telemarketer)

Do you think you could deal with all the annoyed people on the other side of the phone as you try to sell a boatload of products made in a massive warehouse in China? Didn’t think so. The only upside is the fact that you can either work from home or in an air-conditioned office.

4. Zookeeper

If you want to know where all that food a hippo eats goes, you’ll find out while working at the zoo. Besides cleaning up bird poo, horse poo, giraffe poo and hippo poo, you have to deal with the fact that you’re in the hot sun with whiny kids, annoying parents and the ever-present stench of animals. But all the same — if you love dogs, what’s to say you wouldn’t feel bad after cleaning up Mr. Hippo’s big lunch?



3. Working at a T-shirt shop on the Jersey Shore

If this is your job, you might as well say ‘just my luck’ and buy as much Ed Hardy gear as possible. Try to get a job that’s at least somewhat dignified instead of just something to pay your gym, tan and laundry bills. If not, you can at least spend it on that new 24-pack of hair gel or a tanning bed for your living room.

2. Fry cook

If you dread saying ‘May I take your order’ this summer, avoid entering the fast-food industry. The ‘McJob’ might start to take over your life. Whether you’re working at Burger King, Dairy Queen, McDonald’s or even Kimmel Food Court, keep in mind that the customer is always right. That hamburger did have a hair in it, no matter what you say.

1. Wal-Mart cashier

As Paris Hilton once said, ‘Wal-Mart … do they, like, make walls there?’ But this is coming from a celebrity known for having an awesome ‘summer job’ — doing nothing. Being a cashier for America’s largest publicly-owned corporation is rough. A full 70 percent of employees leave within their first year. This kind of work will make your think twice about starting your impressive resume late.

— Compiled by Andrew Swab, asst. feature editor, [email protected]

 





Top Stories