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The AfterEllen.com Huddle: Our best and worst summer jobs

Even though summer is nearly over, we were inspired by Rachel Maddow this week, when she told Jimmy Fallon about her worst summer job. What was your best (or worst) summer job?

Anna Pulley: My first job ever was waitressing at a retirement home for $5.25 an hour (and no tips). In my two-month tenure there, I was pinched, berated for the shoddy quality of creamed corn, “chased” (can you be chased by an octogenarian with a walker?) by a gentleman named Odie (like the dog in Garfield), who, true to his name, barked at me while slowly inching his way toward me. Some time later, Odie was found crawling the hallways of the retirement home naked from the waist down. Despite these less-than-stellar qualities, he was actually pretty funny. Every day, he would ask the wait staff to slip him some liquor in his coffee, even though there was no booze allowed on the premises. And every time he would ask, startled, “What do you mean they got no booze? What am I supposed to do?” An excellent question, Odie. And one that propelled me to greater employment shores-the shoe department at Mervyn’s in the mall.

Daniela Costa: I’m going to share my best, because I’d rather not think about what a horrible barista I was. I got a summer gig just before my last year of university as a research assistant of sorts for a historical agency. I got to spend a bunch of time at the city archives looking at old phonebook records and tax assessments through microfiche readers. And on special occasions, fire insurance plans! That’s not faked enthusiasm. I got to do a lot of funky research and writing around old buildings and sites. Plus, I got paid! Winning all around.

Erin Faith Wilson: I picked up a summer job my sophomore year of high school at Taco Bell and my life was never the same. My friends worked there, too, but they quit after a few weeks-but not me! I clearly loved the way my hair smelled of greasy taco meat every day and I came to terms with gaining a few pounds due to free food while on the clock. I must have really liked the way melted cheese was stuck to the seat of my pants and learning that the cinnamon twists were actually fried noodles. Yes, I gave it everything I had for a whole year and was literally so good at making tacos that they offered me a management position once I turned 18. Sadly, the position was not exactly where I saw my life headed so I quit the summer before I left for college, but always wonder what it would have felt like to have “manger” on my name tag.

Lucy Hallowell: The summer before college I worked in the maintenance department of this company that made like electron guns or something. The maintenance department consisted of two giant, middle-aged men and me. I mowed lawns, spread gravel in the parking lot, changed the oil on trucks, and made retaining walls out of old railroad ties. The guys thought it was hilarious to watch me try to lift the stuff they could lift easily. The low point of the summer was when the boss who was a severely anal-retentive guy (we would get in trouble if we did not perfectly perpendicular to the curb) bought a new backhoe. My job was to pressure wash it until it shone. It was over 90 degrees and for two days I wore a rubber raincoat and rubber rain pants while I washed it with 200 degree water. I have never sweated so much in my life or been covered with more grease and mud. And all that for the princely sum of six bucks an hour.

Kim Hoffman: I got a summer internship at a PR agency in London when I was 21. My mom’s British, so I had all these ideas floating through my head that I’d try to get a dual citizenship and live in some basement flat in London. Turns out, I missed America way too much and never thought about it again when I came back in August. But for those summer months in the UK, I made a ton of instant coffee and tea, set up conference meetings like a pro, fetched editors’ dry cleaning, drug store photos that needed picking up, workout clothes they left at home, you name it-and even though much of it was typical intern bitch work, I loved every weird, confusing, fast-paced second of it. Sure, I fell down a flight of stairs after coming in from a windy rainstorm that knocked me off my feet, got completely lost when I was supposed to drop off sample juices and pick up a contract by a certain time, with no working phone or map to guide me, only that spare piece of paper your boss hands you with chicken scratch for directions (the laws of being an intern require handwritten instructions be 80% unreadable). I took charge at that job though, and eventually approached the people I admired the most after observing who was who. I went to this fabulous gay guy named Giles who needed an extra hand with press releases and press boards. Then I approached a senior editor named Dee. I thought she was so brilliant and self-assured-she made no apologies. Whenever I hear the song “Acceptable In the ’80s” or anything by Seal, I think about that space and how much Cadbury I shamelessly ate at my desk.

Chelsea Steiner: When I was in high school, I dreamed of becoming a veterinarian, so I took a job as a “kennel technician” at the local vet’s office. Guess what a kennel tech deals with? POOP POOP AND, OH YEAH, SO MUCH MORE POOP! I loved working with the animals, but 90% of my job was cleaning kennels. You don’t know diarrhea until you’ve cleaned up after a Great Dane. Trust me on this one, guys.

Chloƫ: When I first moved to LA, I found a dingy apartment behind Hollywood Boulevard. I found a job nearby, at a tattoo shop on Hollywood/highland run by a tiny Iranian gangster named Amir who owned all the tattoo shops on the block and would strut around, tossing a pistol in the air like a baseball. Most of the tattoos artists were on their way in and out of jail (this was the dregs, Amir took a huge cut), patrons were drunk tourists from Anytown, USA, and I was to work the register and sell pipes, bongs, leather jackets, knives, tasers, etc. Crack pipes are called oil burners and made of clear, flimsy glass. I sold crack pipes to soccer moms at 11am and gutter punks at 11pm. Moral of the story: you never know who is smoking crack-although, you could make an educated guess.

Bridget McManus: My best summer job was working as an usher at a movie theater. I got to see all the big blockbuster movies as many times as I could watch them, free concessions and I worked inside a theater that blasted the air conditioner. It was Heaven.

Ali Davis: I keep laughing as I’m running through all my old summer jobs because none of them top the year and a half I spent selling pornography as an adult. Probably the most amazing summer job I had was working as a production assistant for a Shakespeare in the park production of The Merry Wives of Windsor. If you recall, that one is not one of Wil Shak’s greatest works, but boy howdy does it play well for a giant daytime crowd.

My job was to get up at the crack of dawn, drive to another suburb, pick up the assistant stage manager, drive into Washington, D.C., run lines with the actors, go get stuff as needed, sweep, drive the actors between the rehearsal space and the venue and between the venue and their apartments, go get whatever insane thing the director needed at the grocery store, drop everyone off, and whatever other gofer thing had to happen. But I got to watch all the rehearsals and all the shows and I loved being a part of the crew.

Best decision: Refusing to drive the company’s rental truck-as in an ACTUAL GIANT TRUCK that I had not been trained to drive-back through D.C. traffic to the rental place. Worst decision: Attempting to bounce a guy from backstage one night who turned out to be Falstaff’s boyfriend.

Grace Chu: The best summer “job” I had was an internship at a record label. I wasn’t paid but it was for academic credit, so I am unsure if it really counts as a job. But I left with over a thousand mp3s I ripped from their collection. No, I didn’t make them available on Kazaa. Don’t judge.

Laura Zak: My worst summer job was working at a water park called Water Country in New Hampshire when I was 15. I applied late so the only jobs left were in food service which translated to working the sausage cart. I only lasted one week because the park was a 40 minute drive one-way from my house and my mom couldn’t drive me anymore. But in that one week, three couples were caught having sex in the lazy river, I was yelled at by many sunburned faces for not cooking their hot dogs fast enough, and I accidentally poured a day’s worth of burger grease on my legs during clean-up one day. On the plus side, I made employee of the week for the one week I worked there.

My best summer job was working as a nanny for a three year-old boy on a 50,000 acre conservation ranch in Colorado one summer. It was basically living in a cabin on a private, stunningly gorgeous National Park and hanging out with a chill little boy and two dogs all day, hiking, exploring, riding horses, and reading books. Also, he had two wonderful moms and the month I returned to college from this experience, I started dating my first girlfriend. Coincidence? Perhaps. Or I, too, dreamed of a future living in a natural paradise with a wife, child, and horses.

Dana Piccoli: The worst summer job I ever had was working at a waitress in a Midwestern chain restaurant where my fellow waitresses hated me and stole my tips. My best summer job was working on campus the summer between my sophomore and junior years, performing in the college’s Freshman Orientation Cabaret. It was a total blast, I got to play a queer character which I created, and just have fun. Sure I also had to work two other jobs to pay my rent, but that’s neither here nor there.

What were your best and worst summer jobs?

Valerie Anne: My worst summer job was the summer after senior year of high school when I worked at Target. And not one of those awesome “Super Targets” like they have now. Just regular old Target. I was a “team member” in the clothing department. The best days were when you got to be in the fitting room because you could sit down. But the worst days were when you were assigned to the Baby & Toddler section. That section is the Bermuda Triangle of that godforsaken store. Tiny clothes strewn everywhere, no matter how clean you thought you got it. You wouldn’t even see a person in there, but sure enough, the second you turn your back, an entire rack is back on the floor.

And I don’t know if it was just my horrible hometown or our society in general, but the people were ANIMALS. I had grown humans pick up a shirt on a hanger, look me in the eye, and throw it to the ground. And they were so RUDE. Unprompted rudeness like I had never experienced until then. And I was in HIGH SCHOOL. I’d seen things.

The best retail job I ever had was Barnes & Noble, for obvious reasons. And because I met the first girl I ever loved there and even though she did permanent damage to my heart I wouldn’t take back a single second of it.

Ali Davis: I keep laughing as I’m running through all my old summer jobs because none of them top the year and a half I spent selling pornography as an adult. Probably the most amazing summer job I had was working as a production assistant for a Shakespeare in the park production of The Merry Wives of Windsor. If you recall, that one is not one of Wil Shak’s greatest works, but boy howdy does it play well for a giant daytime crowd.

My job was to get up at the crack of dawn, drive to another suburb, pick up the assistant stage manager, drive into Washington, D.C., run lines with the actors, go get stuff as needed, sweep, drive the actors between the rehearsal space and the venue and between the venue and their apartments, go get whatever insane thing the director needed at the grocery store, drop everyone off, and whatever other gofer thing had to happen. But I got to watch all the rehearsals and all the shows and I loved being a part of the crew.

Best decision: Refusing to drive the company’s rental truck-as in an ACTUAL GIANT TRUCK that I had not been trained to drive-back through D.C. traffic to the rental place. Worst decision: Attempting to bounce a guy from backstage one night who turned out to be Falstaff’s boyfriend.

Grace Chu: The best summer “job” I had was an internship at a record label. I wasn’t paid but it was for academic credit, so I am unsure if it really counts as a job. But I left with over a thousand mp3s I ripped from their collection. No, I didn’t make them available on Kazaa. Don’t judge.

Laura Zak: My worst summer job was working at a water park called Water Country in New Hampshire when I was 15. I applied late so the only jobs left were in food service which translated to working the sausage cart. I only lasted one week because the park was a 40 minute drive one-way from my house and my mom couldn’t drive me anymore. But in that one week, three couples were caught having sex in the lazy river, I was yelled at by many sunburned faces for not cooking their hot dogs fast enough, and I accidentally poured a day’s worth of burger grease on my legs during clean-up one day. On the plus side, I made employee of the week for the one week I worked there.

My best summer job was working as a nanny for a three year-old boy on a 50,000 acre conservation ranch in Colorado one summer. It was basically living in a cabin on a private, stunningly gorgeous National Park and hanging out with a chill little boy and two dogs all day, hiking, exploring, riding horses, and reading books. Also, he had two wonderful moms and the month I returned to college from this experience, I started dating my first girlfriend. Coincidence? Perhaps. Or I, too, dreamed of a future living in a natural paradise with a wife, child, and horses.

Dana Piccoli: The worst summer job I ever had was working at a waitress in a Midwestern chain restaurant where my fellow waitresses hated me and stole my tips. My best summer job was working on campus the summer between my sophomore and junior years, performing in the college’s Freshman Orientation Cabaret. It was a total blast, I got to play a queer character which I created, and just have fun. Sure I also had to work two other jobs to pay my rent, but that’s neither here nor there.

What were your best and worst summer jobs?

Miranda Meyer: Best job was definitely working at a horse barn. Yes, there was a lot of shoveling shit, but of all the excrement in the world, I can tell you horseshit is some of the least nasally offensive. (Cows, now-THAT can be a lot to handle.) I had a whole crew of barn friends to get into wood shavings fights with, I had Authority Over Younger Children (I did this job from ages 13-16 or so, but during the school year it was once or twice a week and during the summer I was like, helping run a summer camp), and I got to hang out with horses all the time. Also in the winter we would have to break the ice on their water buckets and I would feel like I was in My Little House On The Prairie. A HARDY PIONEER.

Worst? I mostly really liked being a dispatcher, actually (autonomy! Problem-solving!), but my goddddddddd the sexual harassment I went through at that place was unreal.

Trish Bendix: I once worked in the gift shop of the Hard Rock Cafe in Chicago for a summer and it was the worst job I’ve ever had. They played the same terrible music videos all day (CREED!!!) and if you weren’t busy, you were made to refold T-shirts, even if they were already folded, and I am a horrific folder. It’s a wonder I got the job in the first place. Still, the hours were terrible, the pay was crap, and once they asked us to start trying to push their wares on tables of tourists while they were eating, I quit.

Valerie Anne: My worst summer job was the summer after senior year of high school when I worked at Target. And not one of those awesome “Super Targets” like they have now. Just regular old Target. I was a “team member” in the clothing department. The best days were when you got to be in the fitting room because you could sit down. But the worst days were when you were assigned to the Baby & Toddler section. That section is the Bermuda Triangle of that godforsaken store. Tiny clothes strewn everywhere, no matter how clean you thought you got it. You wouldn’t even see a person in there, but sure enough, the second you turn your back, an entire rack is back on the floor.

And I don’t know if it was just my horrible hometown or our society in general, but the people were ANIMALS. I had grown humans pick up a shirt on a hanger, look me in the eye, and throw it to the ground. And they were so RUDE. Unprompted rudeness like I had never experienced until then. And I was in HIGH SCHOOL. I’d seen things.

The best retail job I ever had was Barnes & Noble, for obvious reasons. And because I met the first girl I ever loved there and even though she did permanent damage to my heart I wouldn’t take back a single second of it.

Ali Davis: I keep laughing as I’m running through all my old summer jobs because none of them top the year and a half I spent selling pornography as an adult. Probably the most amazing summer job I had was working as a production assistant for a Shakespeare in the park production of The Merry Wives of Windsor. If you recall, that one is not one of Wil Shak’s greatest works, but boy howdy does it play well for a giant daytime crowd.

My job was to get up at the crack of dawn, drive to another suburb, pick up the assistant stage manager, drive into Washington, D.C., run lines with the actors, go get stuff as needed, sweep, drive the actors between the rehearsal space and the venue and between the venue and their apartments, go get whatever insane thing the director needed at the grocery store, drop everyone off, and whatever other gofer thing had to happen. But I got to watch all the rehearsals and all the shows and I loved being a part of the crew.

Best decision: Refusing to drive the company’s rental truck-as in an ACTUAL GIANT TRUCK that I had not been trained to drive-back through D.C. traffic to the rental place. Worst decision: Attempting to bounce a guy from backstage one night who turned out to be Falstaff’s boyfriend.

Grace Chu: The best summer “job” I had was an internship at a record label. I wasn’t paid but it was for academic credit, so I am unsure if it really counts as a job. But I left with over a thousand mp3s I ripped from their collection. No, I didn’t make them available on Kazaa. Don’t judge.

Laura Zak: My worst summer job was working at a water park called Water Country in New Hampshire when I was 15. I applied late so the only jobs left were in food service which translated to working the sausage cart. I only lasted one week because the park was a 40 minute drive one-way from my house and my mom couldn’t drive me anymore. But in that one week, three couples were caught having sex in the lazy river, I was yelled at by many sunburned faces for not cooking their hot dogs fast enough, and I accidentally poured a day’s worth of burger grease on my legs during clean-up one day. On the plus side, I made employee of the week for the one week I worked there.

My best summer job was working as a nanny for a three year-old boy on a 50,000 acre conservation ranch in Colorado one summer. It was basically living in a cabin on a private, stunningly gorgeous National Park and hanging out with a chill little boy and two dogs all day, hiking, exploring, riding horses, and reading books. Also, he had two wonderful moms and the month I returned to college from this experience, I started dating my first girlfriend. Coincidence? Perhaps. Or I, too, dreamed of a future living in a natural paradise with a wife, child, and horses.

Dana Piccoli: The worst summer job I ever had was working at a waitress in a Midwestern chain restaurant where my fellow waitresses hated me and stole my tips. My best summer job was working on campus the summer between my sophomore and junior years, performing in the college’s Freshman Orientation Cabaret. It was a total blast, I got to play a queer character which I created, and just have fun. Sure I also had to work two other jobs to pay my rent, but that’s neither here nor there.

What were your best and worst summer jobs?

Natasha Negovanlis: Some of you have heard this story already, but last year I had the pleasure of walking my first red carpet which was definitely a highlight of my career so far. Then the very next day, when I returned to my bartending job and went downstairs to clean the bathroom, someone had taken a shit on top of the closed toilet seat. This was no drunken accident. This was a giant, premeditated, turd, just staring me in the face. Keeping me grounded and humble? Maybe.

I just had to laugh at the juxtaposition of signing autographs for two hours and then cleaning up human feces. So I guess you could say my life is still in a perpetual state of both the worst and best summer jobs ever. Now excuse me, while I return to trying to remove hot sauce stains from the crotch of my favourite shorts. Hashtag, server problems.

Elaine Atwell: My worst summer job was also my briefest. The summer before I moved to New Orleans, I was desperate for employment and I answered a Craigslist ad that promised $400 a week and was, in hindsight, too good to be true. The job was going door-to-door, selling mass-produced paintings. The paintings leaned heavily towards Reverential Portraits of Ronald Reagan, Great Moments In Sport, and Sexy Olives. You were supposed to barge into office buildings and scream at people until they bought your awful “art.” And you almost always ended up getting kicked out by security. I learned that the “pay” was based solely on commission and you were encouraged to be a “rhino,” meaning you needed to have a thick skin and, presumably, a huge tusk.

I came home sobbing and begged my girlfriend never to make me go back there (not that she made me in the first place, but I was distraught). She agreed it was awful and I should make my money elsewhere.

I lasted one day.

Miranda Meyer: Best job was definitely working at a horse barn. Yes, there was a lot of shoveling shit, but of all the excrement in the world, I can tell you horseshit is some of the least nasally offensive. (Cows, now-THAT can be a lot to handle.) I had a whole crew of barn friends to get into wood shavings fights with, I had Authority Over Younger Children (I did this job from ages 13-16 or so, but during the school year it was once or twice a week and during the summer I was like, helping run a summer camp), and I got to hang out with horses all the time. Also in the winter we would have to break the ice on their water buckets and I would feel like I was in My Little House On The Prairie. A HARDY PIONEER.

Worst? I mostly really liked being a dispatcher, actually (autonomy! Problem-solving!), but my goddddddddd the sexual harassment I went through at that place was unreal.

Trish Bendix: I once worked in the gift shop of the Hard Rock Cafe in Chicago for a summer and it was the worst job I’ve ever had. They played the same terrible music videos all day (CREED!!!) and if you weren’t busy, you were made to refold T-shirts, even if they were already folded, and I am a horrific folder. It’s a wonder I got the job in the first place. Still, the hours were terrible, the pay was crap, and once they asked us to start trying to push their wares on tables of tourists while they were eating, I quit.

Valerie Anne: My worst summer job was the summer after senior year of high school when I worked at Target. And not one of those awesome “Super Targets” like they have now. Just regular old Target. I was a “team member” in the clothing department. The best days were when you got to be in the fitting room because you could sit down. But the worst days were when you were assigned to the Baby & Toddler section. That section is the Bermuda Triangle of that godforsaken store. Tiny clothes strewn everywhere, no matter how clean you thought you got it. You wouldn’t even see a person in there, but sure enough, the second you turn your back, an entire rack is back on the floor.

And I don’t know if it was just my horrible hometown or our society in general, but the people were ANIMALS. I had grown humans pick up a shirt on a hanger, look me in the eye, and throw it to the ground. And they were so RUDE. Unprompted rudeness like I had never experienced until then. And I was in HIGH SCHOOL. I’d seen things.

The best retail job I ever had was Barnes & Noble, for obvious reasons. And because I met the first girl I ever loved there and even though she did permanent damage to my heart I wouldn’t take back a single second of it.

Ali Davis: I keep laughing as I’m running through all my old summer jobs because none of them top the year and a half I spent selling pornography as an adult. Probably the most amazing summer job I had was working as a production assistant for a Shakespeare in the park production of The Merry Wives of Windsor. If you recall, that one is not one of Wil Shak’s greatest works, but boy howdy does it play well for a giant daytime crowd.

My job was to get up at the crack of dawn, drive to another suburb, pick up the assistant stage manager, drive into Washington, D.C., run lines with the actors, go get stuff as needed, sweep, drive the actors between the rehearsal space and the venue and between the venue and their apartments, go get whatever insane thing the director needed at the grocery store, drop everyone off, and whatever other gofer thing had to happen. But I got to watch all the rehearsals and all the shows and I loved being a part of the crew.

Best decision: Refusing to drive the company’s rental truck-as in an ACTUAL GIANT TRUCK that I had not been trained to drive-back through D.C. traffic to the rental place. Worst decision: Attempting to bounce a guy from backstage one night who turned out to be Falstaff’s boyfriend.

Grace Chu: The best summer “job” I had was an internship at a record label. I wasn’t paid but it was for academic credit, so I am unsure if it really counts as a job. But I left with over a thousand mp3s I ripped from their collection. No, I didn’t make them available on Kazaa. Don’t judge.

Laura Zak: My worst summer job was working at a water park called Water Country in New Hampshire when I was 15. I applied late so the only jobs left were in food service which translated to working the sausage cart. I only lasted one week because the park was a 40 minute drive one-way from my house and my mom couldn’t drive me anymore. But in that one week, three couples were caught having sex in the lazy river, I was yelled at by many sunburned faces for not cooking their hot dogs fast enough, and I accidentally poured a day’s worth of burger grease on my legs during clean-up one day. On the plus side, I made employee of the week for the one week I worked there.

My best summer job was working as a nanny for a three year-old boy on a 50,000 acre conservation ranch in Colorado one summer. It was basically living in a cabin on a private, stunningly gorgeous National Park and hanging out with a chill little boy and two dogs all day, hiking, exploring, riding horses, and reading books. Also, he had two wonderful moms and the month I returned to college from this experience, I started dating my first girlfriend. Coincidence? Perhaps. Or I, too, dreamed of a future living in a natural paradise with a wife, child, and horses.

Dana Piccoli: The worst summer job I ever had was working at a waitress in a Midwestern chain restaurant where my fellow waitresses hated me and stole my tips. My best summer job was working on campus the summer between my sophomore and junior years, performing in the college’s Freshman Orientation Cabaret. It was a total blast, I got to play a queer character which I created, and just have fun. Sure I also had to work two other jobs to pay my rent, but that’s neither here nor there.

What were your best and worst summer jobs?

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