As unemployed college students, we don’t have many choices to make money other than getting hired for an awful, time demanding, minimum wage job. Whether you choose to be a professional ice cream scooper, lifeguard, waitress, camp counselor, part-time nanny, tutor, or clothing retailer, you’ll most likely want to pull your hair out at every minute of every day. At least until your monthly check arrives and you rip it open with glee, waiting to cash in all that hard earned money, right?! Wrong. So wrong. Because in the end, you’ve barely made any money, but what’s more important is that you’ve learned all the lessons that prepare you for your future employment when you’ll be receiving real paychecks.
You don’t really know what a sh*tty summer job is until you’re working a ten hour shift and have to sanitize the bathrooms, clean the pool, do the dishes, serve people their food, and get yelled at by every stinkin’ customer out there. You can’t even argue with any customers either, because then you’ll be fired. You remind yourself that you do it for the money, you do it for the tips. You think you know what respect is, but you don’t really know it until you have to thank a customer with a fake smile for visiting the restaurant you worked at, even after they didn’t leave you a tip, ask for an impossible order that’s not on the menu, demand free refills, and give you snarky remarks.
At the time, you take the job and put up with people’s impossible requests because you need the money. I mean, really, how else are you going to pay for all the clothes in your closet? Mom and Dad cut you off, and you’re on your own. As young drizzy once said, started from the bottom now we here. Everyday is a struggle. But by the time you get to an office, you’ll know how the work environment works, and how it’s a dog eat dog world. You’ll know how to respect people, even when you don’t want to. You’ll know how to pick up after yourself, and how to recover from mistakes. It might seem like the job and money that you earned weren’t worth your time, but you’ll come around to realize your full potential.