As college students with little to no real-world experience, it is often difficult to find a decent summer job. Many settle for jobs as a lifeguard or store employee. Sometimes we land jobs that make us think they’re going to be new and exciting, only for them turn out to be laborious, time consuming and basically the worst job you could possibly have. Here, three students describe jobs that really put a damper on their summers:
When Rutgers University sophomore Snehann Kapnadak got a job with Vector Marketing, a sales firm selling cutlery and knives, he thought it would be good business experience. Little did he know what he was in for.
“Many times I had to drive more than an hour away to go sell knives, and a lot of the time people wouldn’t even buy them,” Kapnadak said. He noted a time he tried selling knives to a friend’s relative who lived far away and her dog bit him. “She didn’t even give me a pity buy,” he said. Basically, Kapnadak said the job was misleading. “They make it seem like you’re guaranteed payment, but you only get paid if you get people to set up appointments and actually buy stuff,” he said.
Another student who faced a problem with a summer job at a marketing firm was Brandeis University sophomore David Wolkoff. He worked for Red Rover Public Relations, an agency in New York. “They completely exaggerated the level of responsibility I’d have and the type of work I’d be doing,” Wolkoff said. “When I got there, I was doing middle school level stuff that was redundant and boring.” Unlike Kapnadak, Wolkoff decided to end his misery early. “I interned their last summer for two weeks before I quit.”
A more common job for college students is a camp counselor, but for some, the task includes much more than they bargained for. Tufts University sophomore Shayna Schor was a “shadow counselor,” meaning she was assigned to watch one girl in a group of 15, but the other girls didn’t know this. While shadow counselors are usually assigned to campers with a disability, Schor said this girl just didn’t know how to behave.
“It was really hard because I had to deal with this crazy little girl plus I was basically the counselor for the bunk because the other counselors did nothing,” Schor said. She also had to keep a journal every day to send to her parents. To top it all off, she was only tipped $20 at the end of the summer.
Overall, there are many summer jobs that give us false hope and we often end up doing anything from administrative work to manual labor. So, what’s one lesson we can learn from these experiences? Make sure to ask questions and know exactly what you’re doing before agreeing to a job that may just ruin your summer.
Photo: at http://www.toomanymornings.com/?p=1990
