Jones is a third-year political science student. E-mail comments
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There is a collective abscess on the rear of the UCLA student
body that deserves mention today. I speak not of sexually
transmitted diseases or the orally transmitted concept of
“diversity” ““ rather, I’m speaking of the
seasonal horror known as the Summer Job.
These periods of employment, usually marked by repetitious
actions and mental fatigue, are indeed a joyous respite after nine
months of unvarying lecturing courtesy of our beloved
professors.
Having performed the exact same action for weeks on end while
earning close to minimum wage, we, the employable youth of America,
are reduced to seeking revenge for our humiliation at the hands of
the buying public.
 Illustration by ERICA PINTO/Daily Bruin The wide variety
of dead-end, no-brain, low-wage jobs available in our humming
economy is best summed up by the phrase, “The horror! The
horror!”
How bad can summer employment really be? Let us compare
notes …
My first job was as a “parking aide” at a local
community theater. The title was the only glamorous part of
the job (and the only factor that kept me from being laughed out of
subsequent interviews). The reality of the job was grim:
Disneyland-style parking assistance on a grass lot for perhaps 300
cars each night, half the “patrons” being broken-down
seniors out to see one of a succession of broken-down 1940s
musicals.
Many patrons took great amusement in the arm motions that us
parking attendants make to direct them to their spaces. In turn, I
took great pleasure in giving them a different
“gesture” as they drove away.
For those patrons who decided to give our merry crew a hard time
““ parking in handicapped spaces without the required tags,
for example ““ they were treated to an impromptu three-man
door-handle shower once the show started.
I learned very few things from this job ““ one, standing up
for hours sucks. And two, people are stupid. Though I didn’t
know it at the time, these were more than isolated observations
from a single job ““ they are in fact universal truths.
A year later, clued in on the concept of a Second Job, I went to
work at a Cold Stone Creamery. If the name causes you to knit your
simian brow in confusion ““ perhaps even imagining work as
Steve Austin’s corner-man ““ you’re a little off
the mark (although, as I recall, Yokazuna’s sister, or
someone similar in size, was a repeat customer).
Cold Stone demonstrated that while the customer may be king,
some people have taken this figure of speech too
literally. Some of the whales that beached themselves in front
of our display case looked like they’d literally had King
Arthur’s entire Roundtable for lunch, with a side order of
King Midas for their mid-afternoon snack.
The most bizarre benefit of that job became apparent in later
job interviews. Never mind other references, like UCLA. The
Human Resources manager at more than one job interview took more
interest in my Cold Stone experience than anything else. More often
than not, after half an hour of regaling me with tales of how they
once waited 40 minutes in line to satisfy a
late-night/mid-day/early-morning craving for a Sweet Cream with
Cherries, I’d get the job offer.
The biggest problem for any college student is managing to find
a job that naturally ends about the time you leave for school in
late September. With these jobs being few and far between, the
alternative is the yearly song and dance done for the interviewer
““ “Oh, no, I’m not going to be going back to UCLA
after this summer. I’m, uh, sick of the L.A.lifestyle.
I’m, ah, going to settle down here for at least a few years
and reorganize my life.” Well, HR drones, if you believe that
line of slop, I suppose you deserve an employee who gives you only
three months of service!
However, the flip side is that many hiring personnel are on edge
for any sign that you might not be staying past the summer. So
many of them act like they expect you to work there the rest of
your life that they must really think you’d spend year after
year working for a Target or Wal-Mart.
Their paranoia is usually counterproductive. Rather than hire a
college student for three months and be assured of solid, competent
work for that period of time, they’ll instead hire someone
who shows no signs of spitting the bit.
And more often than not, this strategy produces an employee who
finds the work “too hard,” and high-tails it after
three weeks. All in all, a truly idiotic approach to
hiring!
Even more frightening is that there’s no end in sight to
this yearly charade. Giving the employer every indication that you
are in for the long-haul ““ an absolute requirement to get
even the most drudgerous job ““ only to pull out after three
months, does not a positive job recommendation produce.
The end result is that each summer, you’re starting fresh,
looking for a new employer and explaining, each and every time,
that you have no intention of returning to school in three
months. This pattern, despite how many years pile up, becomes
as obvious as a kick in the ass.
For those students who stayed in L.A. over the summer to land a
plum internship: well, you can probably count on stellar job
experience and a positive recommendation at the
end. Me? I’ll try to manage with all the clean air,
lack of traffic and lower prices that come with living outside of
Los Angeles.