Kris Krug, Flickr
School’s officially out, so while your friends are sleeping ’til noon and mooching off of their parents, you can build your resume and stack some serious cash with a fun summer job! Check out some of these local jobs that will teach you important life skills such as work ethic, time management, and documenting sexual harassment:
Barista At A Local Cafe
If you’re an early riser and coffee lover, being a barista could be a perfect job for you. You’ll learn important transferable job skills like multi-tasking, providing great customer service, and how rejecting your shift supervisor’s sexual advances will most certainly get you assigned all of the worst cleaning duties.
After you’ve become tired of discreetly recording your supervisor telling you he can help get your shift covered if you help him with something (wink, wink,) you can take the valuable real-world experience you’ve gained with you to your next job, where you’ll already be a pro at never going into the walk-in fridge without a buddy, and nervously laughing when the bagel guy tells you how he wants to “fuck you a latte.” Calm down, they’re just jokes!
Scooping Ice Cream
Ah, the classic summer job of scooping ice cream at the local sweet shoppe with other teens. You’ll make some good money (plus tips!) and easy friendships with the other women working there who will show you the ropes, like how to avoid your 22-year-old assistant manager with a goatee and lifted truck who tells you how great you look from behind while scooping samples for little kids.
Remember that old food service adage: “If there’s time to lean, there’s time to email yourself the details of the dream he told you about where you were only wearing your apron.”
Baby Sitting
If you’re hardworking and patient, taking care of children could be a great job for you. As a nanny or babysitter, you’ll be responsible for entertaining the kids, driving them to their activities, and dodging inappropriate comments from the children’s father when he gets home from the bar.
As you bond with the children, you’ll get used to finding Cheerios everywhere, having a purse full of snacks, and a phone full of dick pics Mr. Miller “accidentally” sent you for the third time this week. If you were hired through an agency, you can “be difficult” and go through a shit ton of paperwork to be assigned to a new gig (you’re already learning so much!) but if you’re watching the neighbor’s kids, you may just have to avoid Mr. M until you’re old enough to move out of your parents’ house. Sorry.
Kiosk Attendant At The Mall
If you love chatting with people and don’t mind standing on your feet during your shift, selling phone cases from a kiosk at the mall can be a great place to be catcalled by the weird guy who works at the perfume counter just a few spots down from you.
You’ll learn all about time management, meeting daily goals, and successfully avoiding the intense leering of that creep bathed in cheap cologne.
Keep in mind, switching shifts to avoid this weirdo undressing you with his eyes is a short-term solution that will eventually get you fired for being “difficult”, but hey, at least the mall security guard walking you to your car thinks you look prettier when you smile.
