Tag Archives: summer job

Creating the Job You Want When Working the Job You Need

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This past summer I worked as a sales associate at one of my favorite stationery stores. I succesfully found and secured an intterview for the job by using a site that functions similarly to Handshake. When I was hired for the job I was expecting to learn how to do new tasks since it was my first, and probably only, retail job. To be honest, although I was excited to be working at a stationery store, the basic job description did not sound particularly engaging at first. As expected, I learned how to engage with customers, work the register, and discuss product. Yet, it was what I brought to the job from prior experiences and my own passions that made me excited to go to work every day.

On one of my first days of work, my manager asked me off-handedly if I happened to have good handwriting. I replied that I thought so and would love to give any special projects she had a try. She handed me a blackboard and a chalk marker, and I headed to the back table to work on what would become my first masterpiece.

After that, I became the regular signage creator at the store. While working on the register I would be simultaneously creating signage for the store. I blended the expected responsibilities of the position with the new tasks I adopted. Soon, I was helping create window displays and crafting models to advertise what customers could make in our workshops. I felt like I was creating in a meaningful way. What I was spending time crafting was seen my hundreds, even thousands of customers, and added to the atmosphere of the store. I loved being creative at what could’ve been “just a summer job”.

Beyond designing my job to be an outlet for creativity, I was able to teach kids at the small arts camp we ran. My manager asked me to help the kids craft with her, and from that day forward my shifts were scheduled so that I could cover the hours in which the kids camp was being taught. I learned how to engage with our youngest (and custest!) customers while having patience, compassion, and a smile. I had so much fun working over the summer, and it was all because of the duties of the job that I did not even expect to be doing. Perhaps most importantly, I felt a purpose in seemingly arbitrary skills like good handwriting in a world where we list skills like Word and Excel on our resumes, not calligraphy.

I learned that just like any situation, jobs truly are what you make of them. You can think of your summer job as “just a summer job”, or as an opportunity to learn new skills and to take on the extra responsibilities that you specifically enjoy. Ultimately, it is what you choose to do in your workplace that will be the bullet points on your resume. But beyond that, what you choose to do is what makes your workday enjoyable.

No internship? Don’t sweat it.

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So much has changed when it comes to summer work: my friends and I spend the majority of spring semester worried about applications, interviews, and affording internships, while my older cousins and parents ask why I’m not working at an ice cream place or camp, like they did in college. Sometimes, especially at a competitive liberal arts school like Scripps, it’s as if we are living in a new world that pressures us to network strategically and think about resume boosters 24/7. I read this article in Forbes the other day that explained why working a minimum wage job gives students an experience that is far greater than an internship. This article was a great reminder that working at a camp, in a grocery store, or ice cream place is actually quite advantageous:

  1. Responsibility. When working as an intern in an office, most often I’m given work that supervisors might not have time for, and believe someone who doesn’t know as much as they do can adequately handle the job. When working a minimum wage job, however, more times than not bosses will ask a lot more of you than what you signed up for originally. When working as a waitress, every day I would be asked to go above and beyond duties such as waiting on customers and cleaning the tables. And even more importantly, the office you intern in would still run efficiently without you. But slack off as a waitress and you could do some serious harm to the restaurant’s reputation or orderliness.
  2. Teamwork. Summer jobs usually require physical work and working with the public in not the most glamorous settings. This experience delegating tasks to co-workers and being a proactive team member during your shift is invaluable. I’ve learned how to be a leader, a responsible team member, and a dynamic communicator through my restaurant jobs.
  3. Communication. Working with the public and with people from different backgrounds is challenging, but there’s no choice in facing nerve-wracking situations that depend on clear communication when working a minimum wage job. From being a waitress and hostess I learned when to speak up and when to go with the flow, how to deal with mini-crises [with the public and with co-workers], and how to adequately annunciate problems/difficulties I was having to my boss.

There are a lot more qualities you get from working typical summer jobs than the ones I reflected on above. The underlying theme is that yes, internships are important for students to familiarize themselves with their potential career atmosphere, but it is by no means a bad thing to not have one for the summer. In fact, working as a camp counselor or ice cream scooper might even prepare you better for whatever you take on later in life than any office job could do.

Slidin’ into ur DMs lyke… or How I Got the District Manager’s Phone Number at My Terrible Mall Job

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This past summer I got my first real job, and while I’d like to jump straight into likes, dislikes, and of course, how I got in tight with upper management, I think I have to provide a quick overview of that particular experience

Day 1: submitted application, was interviewed and hired the same day

2 weeks later: started job, realized every other employee had quit the week before

Next month and a half: met managers and employees from literally everywhere, kind of figured out how to do my job, spent a lot of time in the store by myself

August: district manager hires an assistant manager who was one of her friends, which is totally simony

actually it's cronyism, but i've been watching a lot of the Borgias. Mostly for that face *swoon*

actually it’s cronyism, but i’ve been watching a lot of the Borgias.  Mostly for that face *swoon*

1 week later: 3 sales associates quit, new assistant manager is fired (either for stealing or being terrible at his job), the district manager resigns under suspicious circumstances. this makes me the only person employed at the store

3 days later: the regional manager arrives from Australia? Maybe? idk, and appoints a new district manager who hires a new assistant manager. I work exactly 40 hours a week so they don’t have to pay me overtime

It’s about this time that I put in my two weeks notice

So here we go

Best Things About My Mall Job

I learned a lot about mall jobs: the movie theater pays the best, food court discounts can save your life, hot topic employees are the friendliest, there is nothing in the back except for a scary hallway where the janitors can pick up trash, the most disgusting bathroom you’ve ever seen, also sometimes promotional materials

they can crush my soul, but not my snapchat game

they can crush my soul, but not my snapchat game

I made a lot of friends: I was hired just as the

Screen Shot 2015-02-05 at 9.10.01 AM

(I didn’t work at journeys, but it’s cool to know i have something in common with such chill proprietors of fly kicks)

which clearly happens more often than I thought. I’m not sure what proper protocol is in this situation, but for some reason, the solution for the 2.5 months I worked there was to bring in employees (usually mangers) from other stores. The greater Austin area was quickly exhausted of people willing to do this so then we got people from Houston (2 hr 30 minute drive), Dallas (3 hr. drive) and my personal favorite, Florida (3 hr. flight). This summer i worked under 11 managers, none of whom particularly cared about what was going on in the store. They did care a lot about vine compilations and Ariana Grande parodies so really,

imageshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQ8ViYIeH04

Employee discount: I got (and actually still get) 50% off all full price items. Funny story, I still get that discount because they never accepted my resignation letter. Hypothetically, I could walk into my store one day, scan in and hang out for a while and they’d still be obligated to pay me. I haven’t done that, but I do still totally abuse my discount privileges

"and then she said, 'that'll be $65', as if I was going to pay full price"

and then she was like, “you’re buying a lot of XL men’s shirts and flower crowns” and I was like, “yeah, FOR HALF OFF SONNNNNN”

Job experience/recommendations: up to this point I’d “worked” in my dad’s law firm, at a children’s art camp where I was payed in gift cards and Luna Bars (i actually have very few complaints about that), and at a volunteer tutoring program run through my school. none of these exactly screamed job experience, so even with the list that’s coming up, I’m still mostly grateful for this opportunity

"we're supposed to call everything we don't want to do 'opportunities'"

we’re supposed to call everything we don’t want to do “opportunities” (S9. E20)

So, without further ado…

Worst Things About My Mall Job

I was unprepared: The manager who hired me quit sometime in the two week period in between offering me the job and me actually starting. I guess all the other managers just sort of assumed that I knew what I was doing well enough to keep doing it without their help. Luckily, there was one sales associate who hadn’t quit in the last wave. She taught me how to use the register and the proper way to fold clothes. I owe her forever for that and she totally knows it so I ended up covering a lot of her shifts, and a lot of other people’s shifts which is partially why…

I got yelled at a lot: So funny thing about the company I worked for, sometimes they’d change the prices in the system before alerting the stores (via fax for some god-awful reason) about the change. Sometimes this meant that stuff was a lot less expensive than indicated on the price tag, and that was fine, but sometimes it cost more than advertised, and then the yelling started.

M92Hthn

The especially fun thing about this was that I didn’t always have a manager, and sometimes I was the only employee there at all. This is how I learned to do returns (something I technically wasn’t allowed to do as a sales associate) through intuition and a copy of the employee handbook from 6 years ago.

This happened:

Screen Shot 2015-02-05 at 12.59.08 PM

(didn’t work at Aveda either, that’s just the reflection of the good life in the window of my shattered work experience)

I’m mainly referring to the piles of broken glass from when the least secure storefront in America finally shattered, but also to that window promotion. If you look closely, it says 70% off original prices on sale items only. No one ever looks closely. No one.

One time we found a bag of hair in a dressing room: honestly i’m not sure what else to say about that

But here’s the thing, once the regional manager came in, I did end up getting some credit for the long hours I’d put in doing things that were so not included in my job description. While I have literally zero desire to ever go back to work in that store, I could if I needed to, and as a sign of a gratitude for me sticking around while he was transitioning into his new job, I have the district manager’s personal email address and phone number for references. Not too shabby eh? Or should I say shabby-chic?

Oh god, no I shouldn’t that was terrible, I’m so sorry. No more retail puns.

Salvation from Couch Potato-ness

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Hi everyone! Jasmine here. I’m so excited to return to Beyond the Elms this year. Living in a single has given me a lot of quiet time to reflect on my path at Scripps so far. I’ve had a pretty diverse set of experiences I’m looking forward to sharing through this blog, and I hope you’re looking forward to reading about them too. Since this is my first post, I thought I’d share what I’ve been up to since last fall, just to give you a sense of what my sophomore spring and summer were like. I’d also like to recommend a solid back-up option for finding summer employment!
Spring: Happy happy joy joy abroad!
I studied abroad in London last semester through Boston University’s London Internship Program. I went abroad early as a sophomore, was the first Scripps student to go abroad on this program, and both were reasons to petition the Academic Review Board. If you have any questions about this process, please comment below! I’d be happy to tell you about it. You can also read my previous Beyond the Elms blog posts or my travel diary here.
Return from London…and face plant.
While I was abroad, I made the mistake of forgetting all about planning for my return. I came home in mid-May with stuffed suitcases, an empty bank account, and no idea for what to do. All the application dates for my target internships had passed.
I pride myself on being the responsible sibling, the one my mother can always count on, so it was very uncharacteristic of me not to have a plan. It was the summer after my sophomore year, my last summer to experiment. By the following summer–my last summer as an undergraduate– the pressure of finding an internship in my intended field would set in. (At least, that was how I saw it–I don’t want to stress all of you out!) I was so desperate, I started looking at Craigslist and searching the classifieds in the newspaper. It was *so* last decade. Then my mother, in all her sensible glory, convinced me to reach out to a temp agency.
Temp Agency Proceedings
For those of you who have never worked with a temp agency, here’s how it worked: I called to set up an interview with the agency, where I gave them my resume and walked them through my skills and experience. I told them what kind of a placement I wanted and what I hoped to learn. They contacted me in a few days with an opportunity fitting my description. After I gave my approval, the agency set up an interview with the employer. Through the agency rep, the employer extended an offer, which I accepted, and I started work the next week. Most temp agencies have separate departments for those seeking short term and permanent or long term positions. Summer work is considered short term, while a recent grad would most likely be seeking a permanent placement. It’s important to know that arrangements can change, given both your and the employer’s approval. My position was originally meant to last two weeks, but my employers ended up keeping me for ten, meaning my work lasted the whole summer.
Salvation from Couch Potato-ness Pros and Cons
It was frustrating finding out that the agency charged my employer $18/hr and that I only received $12 of that. It wasn’t particularly glamorous, compared to the lectures and press views I attended in London. But my job at the San Francisco branch of a nationwide engineering firm gave me a solid glimpse of civil and structural engineering despite my having no experience in those fields. And being an office assistant meant I helped and met everyone–whether that was the Vice President who needed a presentation updated, a project manager with shelves to reorganize, or a visiting employee in search of a good place for a lunch meeting. I learned how to compare costs of renting per month and booking hotels per night (Excel spreadsheets with formulas), how to work a comb binding machine (YouTube), and how to handle an upset client (stay calm and use what we at CP&R affectionately call the friendly, “baby lamb” voice). I even met the president of the company! I also gained transferable, basic office accounting skills I could put on my resume.
Moral of the Story
If your summer plans fall through at the last second, a temp agency might be a good solution. I made excellent professional connections and developed skills relevant to my intended industry. I also gained light IT skills I didn’t realize would be so useful in an office. Experimenting with a surprise company in a surprise industry helped me practice adaptability and strengthen my observation skills. It also broadened my level of exposure to other sectors of the economy–insight that will set me apart from other applicants in future. On a final related note, here’s an article on why diversity of thought is important in the workplace.