"Shopping urban in mom's suburban" and other adventures in summer employment

Before I begin this post in earnest, I feel the need to say this: I don't hate people. Per say. Really. I don't. Uh-uh. 'Kay?

Now, I'll say this: I have become an academic because I hate the "real world" (ie, corporate America and middle-class public life). And yes, often "people" are implicated in this hatred. However, in academia, people are secondary to ideas. Yes, people have created these ideas, but we can encounter them (the ideas and the people who created them) through written language. And honestly, that's how I feel most comfortable encountering others, particularly the scary but predictable monolith known as the general public.

But, because I'm still a student and my stipend ends in May, every summer I must leave the (relative) shelter of the academy and immerse myself in what I have come to know as the cesspool of public life: low-paying service jobs. Generally, these jobs are effective in that they send me running back to the university with open arms willing to be filled with books, papers, whiny students, and an even lower paycheck.

Here's a list of the crap jobs I've been forced to take over summer vacations since I was eighteen, ordered from least to most painful:

7. Office Assistant, DU English Dept.

Not a bad job, overall. I sat in a sterile, florescent office all day, but with people I could at least tolerate. The worst part of the job was photocopying ENTIRE 400-page books for a prof who needed to send the originals back to the library before she could read them. Yes, it was tedious, but at least I was working with books.


6. Library Student Assistant, McCartney Library

This was also a highly tolerable summer job. I had to put up with Dr. Moran, the hair-brained, high-tempered, and bird-like head librarian, and I had to "shelf read" pretty much the entire day, but again, at least I was constantly surrounded by books, which soothed me.


5. Temp, Office Team

I thought temping would be ok; after all, a lot of friends had done it with modest success. I should have known this would not be true for me. I was first sent to an Audi dealership in Monroeville, where I was expected to do three jobs rolled into one. This included answering the phone, which rang constantly; filing a never-ending pile of service invoices, which were organized poorly and placed in a separate room; and cashing out disgruntled service customers, which I technically wasn't supposed to do according to Office Team policy. Oh, I also had to screen calls for the business manager, taking the name of everyone who called for him and paging him to find out if this person was important enough to speak to. This happened about every five minutes. At the end of the two hellish weeks they offered me a full-time gig, but I ran far, far away. After a subsequent week-long stint at a poorly organized company where I had to ring a DOORBELL to get in every day, I quit the agency.


4. Ice Cream Scooper, Bruester's

This job seems painless enough, and you're probably thinking, as I was when I took the job, how difficult can scooping ice cream really be? Well, let me tell you: it's pretty damn difficult when you're 20 and working with 15-yr-old drama queens; when you've got shit for muscles and the ice cream is frozen hard; when the cash register tells you the total, not the amount of change you're supposed to give back, and you're bad at math; and when the corporate office is located across the street and calls to complain every time the line grows to more than five people long (which is ALL the time on summer evenings). My favorite incident was when one of the corporate bitches made me throw out an entire sundae because I had put it in the wrong kind of cup and used a little too much ice cream. I wanted to quit on the spot and walk out eating the sundae myself, but I needed the money, so I stayed for another month.


3. Freelance Editor

Why is this job worse than those listed above, you ask, when it seems like the perfect job for me? Well, because I had to work with Jaime, an insurance salesman who thought he was a genius but couldn't write to save his life. I had to read, like, the hundreth draft of his terrible manuscript and then ever so gently tell him how he should rework it (ie, rewrite it coherently). He did not take this so well, and sent me and the secretary for his publishing company about a million angry emails in which he criticized MY ability as an editor and basically acted like a condescending prick. And as you may know, it doesn't get much worse than a painfully mediocre person acting like a condescending prick. Then, I had to meet with him in person and spend three hours listening to his boring and inadequate explanations for why the manuscript sucked. I think I'll stick with teaching, where students HAVE to accept my criticism or else get a bad grade.


2. Housekeeper, Blossom View Nursing Home

Two words: Shit and piss. Everywhere. This is all you need to be told about this job and why it ranks second-to-last on the list.


1. Assembly Line Worker, American Thermoplastic Company

I don't even know how to START describing why this was the WORST summer job ever. Ok, how about here: I had to work on an assembly line with two frat boys and a strung-out Vietnam vet named Mickey, and we had to box binders with college names printed on them as fast as we could in order to receive a good "score" for the day. I made $7/hr listening to Mickey talk about his ex-wife and her name, Dina, which he claimed was tattooed on his penis. Oh, and I had to cover for him, working twice as fast, while he stared off into space. After Mickey was fired (he failed a urine test), I had to work with a kid who lied constantly, telling me to do this or that and then laughing hysterically when I believed him. Meanwhile, I was constantly hit on by big burly dudes who were intrigued by the fact that I was in grad school ("So I hear you're one a them smart chicks, huh?"). HELLLLLLL. I was actually relieved when I was diagnosed with mono after a month of work and had to quit.

You can understand, then, my angst at having to go out into the real world, once again, and find a summer job. Having ruled out doing most of the above ever again, I decided that I would venture into an area untouched by my experience as of yet: retail. Also, I wanted a job I could walk to. Luckily, I live two blocks from several retail chains. So I tried to make myself look cool and disaffected and started asking for applications.

Three days later, I found myself in the midst of a "group interview" at Urban Outfitters, where most employees clearly think they are both cool and disaffected. There were about eight of us in the group, including two managers, and I immediately guessed that all of them were younger than me. Luckily, I look like I'm 18, so I didn't discredit myself right away.

I shouldn't have worried about that, because it soon became clear that just about everyone in the group was a complete idiot. (If this sounds mean, I'd like you to refer again to the opening sentence of this post. It's still true! Really!) There was a glam-punk kid who let everyone know that he fancied himself a writer; a girl who supplied too much personal information every time she spoke, as if she were writing in a diary; another girl who spoke far too loudly, making me wince; a girl who claimed to be a dj and told everyone she was "a lover, not a hater"; and finally, an awkward girl who told us that she didn't feel "cool enough" to work at the store.

Here are some questions that the managers asked us during this interview:

If you could take only two items to a secluded island, what would they be?

If someone gave you $100 right now, what would you do with it?

What CDs have you bought recently?

Name your two greatest strengths and weaknesses.

What's one thing that really upsets you?

All I could think was: Seriously??? You're going to hire me based on my answers to these questions? Sweet.

But there was a catch. Everyone else had to answer too, and as they were all complete idiots, you can imagine what kind of opportunity these questions afforded them to be completely idiotic. I got through it by mentally stabbing myself in the eyeballs about a thousand times.

The next day, I got hired. Unfortunately, so did a few of the idiots, which made me feel very insecure.

Then, I went to training, where all of us new hires and two managers went over a few booklets that outline company policies. On the back of each booklet this phrase is printed: "Shopping urban in mom's suburban." Maybe I'm thinking about it too hard, but I still find the phrase baffling. My favorite policy, located in the customer service pamphlet, is an all-important acronym, VIBE: Values and Interaction to Build our Environment. Every employee on the sales floor is expected to put VIBE into action, to make it a verb, not just a noun. Shit.

During my first shift, I worked with a guy named Nick, who, while showing me how to run the fitting room, also embodied what VIBE really means. He started telling me that the company wasn't doing as well this year, because "who wants to pay fifty fuckin' dollars for a t-shirt?" Then, he brought it home: "I really don't give a shit about this company." I laughed, relieved to have immediately found someone as apathetic as myself about corporate success. We were totally vibin'.

The job is easy, and I found myself liking it, in an apathetic sort of way. Basically, I fold and straighten clothes for five hours, which appeals to my not-so-hidden compulsiveness about clothing.

However, it soon became evident that I would need to get ANOTHER job, since the store seems to think "part-time" is about six hours a week. So, through a circuit of connections, I found myself employed at a failing tie shop that has literally six customers a day. The manager was about to quit because the corporate office wouldn't specify if/when the store is going to close, and she needed a few employees to basically hold down the fort until this happens. It's the perfect summer job, in a lot of ways: I'm alone with books, the internet, and satellite radio for most of the day, and the company has already written off the store, so there's very little pressure to actually sell anything. In short, a good foil to the VIBE philosophy.

So far, I'm pleased with my summer foray into retail, because I get to work with other people who hate people. I mean, who seriously dislike people sometimes. Yeah.

But, only time will tell where these jobs will fall on the crab job list. I'll keep you posted.