HR Capitalist Summer Jobs - My Best and Worst...
July 28, 2016
The gang at Fistful of Talent (my other blog, multi-contributor) did a weekend post a few years back on best/worst summer jobs. Go check out that post here, but in the meantime here's what I outlined as my best/worst summer jobs:
Worst - was working at a grocery store, bagging groceries. Was stocking some shelves and saw the classic KD opportunity to exceed expectations. Some lady was looking for a ham to be sliced and guess what? Sure – young KD jumps behind the counter and takes care of it – and proceeds to clip half the top digit of my thumb with the blade. Luckily, the digit got saved because my thumbnail stopped the blade.. I can still see the slice mark. #goodtimes #childlaborlaws
Best – After my thumb nearly got cut off, I went to the local radio station and got a job as a DJ, with my summers filled plugging in station IDs on the KC Royals baseball network. No meat saws. #best #job #ever Bonus – we were country in the daytime, top 40 at night. Only in America. Shout out to KMEM in Memphis, MO.
You guys and gals are HR pros. Of course, you had weird summer jobs. And they just made you stronger, right?
I worked fast food every summer (and then again for 2 years after college... yay for graduating in 2008 right into the recession), and while some of them were terrible (getting into a screaming fight with my high school coworker in front of customers was not a high point for me) it also taught me how much stuff like mission and business philosophy matter.
I made fun of business majors in college (I was Poli Sci and was gonna change the world, obvs) but working at a food place that started as a corporate store and then went franchise gave me stark lessons in valuing employees, believing in your corporate story, and seeing how well a business can run when people love their shitty jobs despite their being shitty.
Posted by: Kimberlee, Esq | July 28, 2016 at 02:20 PM
Back in the summer of '95 I worked part-time at a milk dairy...part of my job was to dispose of all the spoiled milk that was returned from the grocery stores. We had to throw the rotten milk jugs in a machine that would crush the jug and separate the spoiled milk into a big metal drum where a guy would come pick it up to feed his pigs...worst job ever...
Posted by: Michael Wolfe | July 29, 2016 at 02:41 PM