What was your favourite summer job? Mine was at a teahouse

[applegrove]

on top of a mountain and a waterfall in Lake Louise, Alberta. I showered every morning in the waterfall. We cooked, waitressed and washed in two hour shifts. Then we prepped and cooked dinner for a few hours. Dinner was usually at 10:00 PM and involved a lot of wine. We slept in cabins. No electricity. Great earthy customers. Beautiful flora and fauna. I'd watch rain storms happening below at the Chateau Lake Louise from above the rain clouds at the tea house.

[Xipe Totec]

1. Roustabout on a gas drilling rig in northern Mexico

Both the best, and the worst job I've ever had.

Man, going through a rig shut down, pulling up the drill pipe, was the most harrowing experience of my life.

Diving under the already pulled drill string, as a rogue piece of pipe came barreling down the ramp, after 24 hours of continuous work, was the most frightening, surreal experience in my life.

Why my father put me through it, I will never understand.

[Brickbat]

2. Mine were all intensely annoying, compounded by the fact that I worked two or three at a time.

One of them was working 12-hour shifts in a bottling plant. Yours sounds much more enjoyable.

[carlyhippy]

3. attendant at a video game arcade

make change for rolls of quarters,played video games when it was not busy, sold pre-made sandwiches and fountain sodas, flirted with the guys, not a bad job.

[MiddleFingerMom]

4. 15 years old -- a live-in lifeguard at a private campground...

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...that you had to be a member in one of two different credit unions
to camp there.
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My own three-room cabin. Girls, girls, girls. Complete freedom and
autonomy.
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.
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I had given up finding a lifeguard job for the summer and had gone
camping the weekend before Memorial Day with my uber-nerd friend
Ron (plaid pants, black glasses held together with electrical tape, and
electronics nerd -- this was LONG before computer-geekdom) who
had the COOLEST hobby in the world. He refurbished the interior of
Triumph Spitfires with all sorts of electronic gadgetry -- rivaling some
of James Bond's toys. PLUS about 12 speakers hidden and blasting
away in those little tiny compartments.
.
Called home on Saturday and found one of the lifeguards at the local
YMCA where I volunteered had a potential job for me. Found out where --
and Ron's mom came and picked me up and took me 20 miles to the lake.
.
All I had were cutoff shorts, so I borrowed Ron's gooberful plaid pants
(that ended about 4-6 inches about my shoes) as the only possible
"professional" attire. Had learned it was associated with credit unions
so pictured my interview to be with some old silver-haired no-sense-of-
humor bank president.
.
Got to the lake and was greeted by the WILD-haired young guy wearing
a Choo-Choo Charlie engineer's cap and asked for "Mr Woods".
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Stuck his hand out and said, "That's ME!!! Pleased t'meetcha!"
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I might STILL be doing that today and be very very happy.
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My boss (the guy from the Y) and I were both ignant bachelors... and
LIVED on Chef Boy-ar-dee spaghetti kits and waffles.
.
Some of the regular full-season campers took pity on us and invited us
to dinner several times a week. One family in particular (originally from
Georgia) went fishing every day and frog-gigging every other night, so
we had a LOT of yummy yummy froglegs and I began my life-long love
affair with hushpuppies.
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AND a shorter-lived love affair with their daughter Deena.
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[applegrove]

5. Sounds lovely.

[grasswire]

6. wow......one of the continent's most beautiful spots

You must have some wonderful memories. I love that place.

[applegrove]

16. Yeah it was wonderful. And the tea house was so far up a walking trail that all the assholes

got weeded out and our customers were just wonderful and so happy to be there.

[doc03]

7. This summer best job ever (retirement) n/t

[applegrove]

17. LOL! Well said.

[CrownPrinceBandar]

8. Working for Travis County Parks (TX)..........

For 3 years I was a park technician at several parks around Lake Travis and Lake Austin, near Austin TX. I worked at various parks, but my superiors thought I had the personality to deal with Hippie Hollow, a clothing-optional beach, so I ended up working there most of the time. Saw some interesting things, yessir.

[applegrove]

22. Yuk. I would never want to work near a nude beach.

[driver8]

9. That sounds perfect. My favorite summer job was the summer before my senior year in college.

I worked at the college bookstore -- mainly in the warehouse.

It was hot and dirty, but I had a blast working there. We worked our asses off and I dropped about 20 pounds and was in amazing shape when school started. It was just me and one other guy who was a permanent employee -- when we finished our work, we would hang out and smoke pot.

I think this was my favorite summer job because this was my favorite summer of all time.

[seaglass]

10. This is going to sound really bad but...when I was 17 years old my dad got me a state job

it was some kind of jobs program for teenagers and my birthday happened to be near the top of the lottery for a job.

Anyway it was painting at a college. I worked with a crew of all males :-) near my age and a little older. We had a blast painting hallways and dorms until the regular maintenance guys told us to slow down we were painting too fast.

So the rest of the summer consisted of painting in the mornings then going over to one of the dorms where we kept a refrigerator stocked with beer and playing cards all afternoon.

[frogmarch]

11. Toss up between two WY dude ranches

One was atop a mountain in the Big Horns and the other was in the Tetons. Both were very rustic, and at one of them there was no electricity.

I worked on dude ranches every summer during my high school years. I cleaned cabins, cooked on trail rides and had lots of other duties too. Loved it.

[applegrove]

18. We had tourists on horses who would come up to the Tea House. Those cowboys worked hard and hardly

got paid anything at all.

[cemaphonic]

12. Worked at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

It was just an office gopher type job, but a very interesting environment. This was right in the middle of the Bosnian-Serbian phase of the post-Yugoslavia wars, so there was a lot going on.

It was also funny how top-heavy the military employees were - There was a Rear Admiral in charge of the mail room, and very few people below Lt. Colonel (or Master Sergeant on the NCO side) in the office. Though I suppose that was somewhat true on the civilian side as well. 2 of the 3 people at the top of the administrative food chain were direct Presidential appointees.

[Amaril]

13. I spent the summer of my freshman year of college

Living at the beach in Ocean City, NJ with a bunch of girls (there were 6 of us in total) I knew from school. We lived in an old beach house that had been converted into two apartments -- we had the bottom floor & 4 guys from Seton Hall (who always had the very best pot) lived on the top floor. We (the girls) all worked at McD's -- it was a crap job, BUT the manager LOVED us and agreed to work out the best schedule ever for us -- we worked four 10 hour days 8:00pm - 6:00am, Monday - Thursday.......so, not only did we get to party our brains out every single weekend, but we got to sleep on the beach every day during the week.

I've had a lot of great adventures since then, but that one will always stick with me. It was the last time I had that completely uncomplicated freedom of youth. I dropped out of college the following year, got a job, got married, had kids.......etc., etc. I don't regret the path I chose (especially glad I had my kids so young, 'cause now they are grown and adventure with me), but there is a part of me that longs for those days......when I could pack everything I owned in my Chevy Chevette Scoot and be gone in a flash. (smiling fondly at the memories)

[applegrove]

19. Sounds heavenly. My brother had a job in a restaurant near the beach

in Australia. He spent early evenings putting whipped cream on deserts and then partied on the beach. Then he'd sleep during the morning. I was always so jealous of him for that experience.

[Tobin S.]

14. I've never had just a summer job

I've had a regular job since I was 16. My current job is my favorite: Owner/operator of a semi rig.

[TZ]

15. Watching bird pron.

I spent a summer working for a professor of mine at the University of Maryland. He was studying sexual selection in Great and Spotted Bowerbirds

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotted_Bowerbird
Basically I watched all the courtship rituals and recorded different aspects of the behavior and whether or not a male was successful. It was pretty interesting, full of avian sex and violence (other males would come and steal stuff or destroy the bower when the owner wasn't around..or when he was which usually ended in a bird fight). Sometimes it was a PITA though like counting the number of times a male screeched during a particular courtship (headache inducing) but overall it was fascinating. At one time I could comfortably say I was one of the world's foremost Spotted Bower Bird experts...:)

[applegrove]

21. LOL!

[JoeyTrib]

20. My summer jobs all sucked

Actually my current job sucks too.

[FreeState]

23. A cafe - loved it

That and the tearooms /sarcasm

[Inchworm]

24. Maintenance at high school and hospital

Over two summers.

At the high school I was flame thrower dude. Whenever someone got into a hornet's nest while clearing a bank they'd call me over.

At the hospital I got to clean the birthing room, ride lawn mowers for hours, and use the incinerator.

Good times.

:hi: