Monday's Question of the Day - June 6, 2016

It's the first official day of Summer Vacation for my kiddos!    I enjoyed our school year; but man this teacher is ready to have some more relaxed days!  As relaxed as life with 2 kids can be anyway!  

Did you have a summer job when you were a teenager?

I did not work over the summer when i was a teenager.  I spent usually 4-6 weeks out of state visiting my Dad, Grandparents, etc.  I had friends that were required to work year round; even help pay the family bills!  So I appreciated that my Mom and Step-dad wanted us kids to prioritize school and family time.  I did however have extra responsibilities around the house.  I was the oldest of 5 and there were usually at least 3 of us home over the summer.  Every morning my mother would leave us each a list of what we were expected to do.  It could be anything from mowing the lawn to walking the dog or cleaning certain things inside, laundry, deep cleaning something, etc.  I remember when I was in middle school my step-dad would wake us up some days with his whistle and start handing out chores.  (And I knew right then I would never be cut out for the military...   It didn't take DH long after we were married to learn that I do not wake quickly or pleasantly if you expect me to jump out of bed!)  We were allowed to set our own sleeping hours; but we had to be done with our assigned chores before they got home from work.  

Looking back I'm surprised we were never expected to make dinner once or twice a week.  We can all cook.  We were responsible for hand washing dishes though!  Most of my step-siblings held jobs either during the school year or the summer break if they didn't go spend much time with their Mom out of state.  They did everything from ice cream and sandwich shops, grocery bagging and life guarding.  During the school year the rule was that working could not interfere with our school work or school activities.  So for the financially ambitious ones; summers were for working hard.   

I had a job but it was all year. I was a dishwasher in a small cafe, I did it from age 14-18.

Not exactly. I did bits of babysitting for friends of the family, sometimes picked up actual paid work at the yard my horse was at (before and between horses, riding schools would pay in free rides :winkblue: ), and from 16-18 I taught music to a couple of people (recorder).

I was a kitchen slave at our local hospital when I got older. From 4-7 at night and every other weekend. We were responsible for taking the carts of food trays up to the various hospital floors. Then we'd have to bring all the dirty dishes back down to the kitchen and run everything through the massive dishwasher. It was OK, I guess....gave me some spending money.

Pretty much just babysitting. A lot.  One summer was more of an "au pair" gig, one family for the summer during the daytime.  Watched the kids while the mom sat around the pool with her friends

no, i didn't. my sister got the very few babysitting jobs available in the hamlet in which we lived. my dad worked long hours, and on weekends worked around our property. he never assigned us specific chores, but we did help him.

LOL...I had a summer job from the time I could reach the cash register at the motel by standing on a milk crate!  I can barely remember a time that I didn't work at my mom's motel for at least a couple of hours after school, and all summer full time.  I finally talked her into letting me get an outside job when I was 17...at a friend's motel, same old same old, and STILL put in a couple of hours a day for her!

I worked as a secretary  / office assistant for a community organization. I remember my guidence counselor sending me on an interview for a job at a financial institute / bank one summer. I had no interest in banking or business or finance whatsoever. I don't remember what the job was exactly. Something with large computers and databases or something. The job was way too far even if I was hired- two hours by public transportation.

I detasseled corn for two summers. When I was a freshman and sophomore in high school .  Also helped do hay on a farm that was owned by a friends uncle. That was actually pretty fun....although it could be tiring if it was a really humid day........... The people that owned the farm were super nice. They let us hang out there even when we weren't working. There was a huge gravel pit that had filled in with water in one of the back fields.... We would jump in that to cool off after putting the hay up in the haymow.

Columbine said:

Not exactly. I did bits of babysitting for friends of the family, sometimes picked up actual paid work at the yard my horse was at (before and between horses, riding schools would pay in free rides

),

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I did pretty much the same. I never had my own horse but I used to work at the stables in return for free rides. From the age of about 16 I used to work from 5 pm to 8 pm every Thursday in the British Home Stores restaurant..

It. Was. HELL!

I can well imagine that the BHS restaurant was hell Norachan - I remember them as being very dreary, soulless places *shudders*

I started working at age 14 until 17, when I began my training for an x-ray tech.

I worked as an assistant 'bookkeeper'/clerical person at the local newspaper distributor office. I had to answer phone calls, set up and calculate the newspaper boys charges and delivery spots, complaints, and bills.

I worked from the time I arrived, after school, until 5pm and all day on Saturdays. On Saturdays I was there by myself with the boss, and the 2 adult carriers. 

Oh yes. I got my first job at 14. I worked in the bakery at Pathmark (grocery store chain in NE US) wrapping bread . I worked throughout my teenage years at different grocery stores. I used to get the working papers from school, bring them home, my brother would forge a doctor's signature and I'd bring them back to school the next day. This was in the mid 1980's.

Not a "summer job" per se, rather an "after school" job. I did work full-time in the summer though. Basically doing clerical stuff for a manufacturing company walking distance from my high school. $5/hr was AWESOME to 17-year-old me!

Not exactly. From grade school, I always stayed with family who were big tobacco farmers. We worked in tobacco and I made a little money. Whatever I had went to my dad to help buy me things to start the school year.

Norachan said:

I did pretty much the same. I never had my own horse but I used to work at the stables in return for free rides. From the age of about 16 I used to work from 5 pm to 8 pm every Thursday in the British Home Stores restaurant..

It. Was. HELL!

:dead:

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I bet it was.

I didn't work during the summer holidays but I worked every Saturday from age 15 to 18 in a hairdressers. The tips were good and the wage reasonable.

I didn't work during high school, but I did the summers in college. I worked as a clerk in a department store and as a typist for the Office of the Surgeon General in Washington, DC. This sounds impressive, but we lived nearby and the federal government hires thousands of students during the summer. The office I worked in was very small, less than 8 people, and I typed on a manual typewriter, not an electric one, but a manual one where you had to push the keys down. I had very strong fingers by the end of the summer and made no -0- mistakes. That was really the old days. No copiers, no faxes. We used carbon sheets for copies.

DreamerRose said:

 
I didn't work during high school, but I did the summers in college. I worked as a clerk in a department store and as a typist for the Office of the Surgeon General in Washington, DC. This sounds impressive, but we lived nearby and the federal government hires thousands of students during the summer. The office I worked in was very small, less than 8 people, and I typed on a manual typewriter, not an electric one, but a manual one where you had to push the keys down. I had very strong fingers by the end of the summer and made no -0- mistakes. That was really the old days. No copiers, no faxes. We used carbon sheets for copies.

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That's what I learned on, and a manual adding machine.  Not a calculator, but a big, whonking adding machine that you had to pull a handle down on after you entered a number.  Mom learned on a manual as well as a young woman and typed 140 wpm with 0-1 mistakes.  She thinks she could have typed faster if the machines hadn't kept jamming.

I remember those adding machines! In fact, the first calculators were just about as big. I can't believe your mom typed 140 wpm - the keys did jam, and there was a limit to how fast you could type because of it. The reason we have the QWERTY keyboard today is because the keys were placed so they wouldn't jam. I learned to type on a manual typewriter, and to this day, I can't use the number pad on a keyboard because manual typewriters didn't have number pads and I've never learned to use it.