AIN

AIN’T NO CURE FOR THE SUMMER JOB BLUES

Summertime is upon us, and you know what that means. It means it’s time to start complaining incessantly about the heat, as if that will somehow cool us all off.

But more importantly, it’s time for you youngsters to head out and get that summer job that you have been so eagerly anticipating. In fact, I can even guess how you made the decision to get that summer job: your mother or father sat you down and said, "Get a job." You said you didn’t want to. You were informed that your two options for the summer were (1) get a job or (2) get a job.

But where in the world should you start looking? Back in the glory days of the late 1900s, you could design a poorly conceived website business and be bought out by a multi-national conglomerate for $40 million. But, alas, those days are over, so it’s time to get a real job, one that will only pay you $40 million if you work there for the next 800 years.

I suggest that each and every one of you eager young beavers head out and find a back-breaking manual labor job. Sure, you could go get a cushy job at a department store or a movie theater. But how will you learn the importance of a hard day’s work if the most strenuous activity in your day is folding khakis?

I have held two such jobs in my day, and it has done volumes to make me appreciate air conditioning. The first job was a yard service that a friend and I started. We placed an ad in the newspaper, advertising all of the yard help you could possibly want.

This may have seemed like a good idea, but it turns out that people who want quality lawn care do not call a couple of teen-agers. People who are way too attached to their money call teen-agers.

Our first job call was from a man who wanted his yard mowed. He told us that he would give us $10 to mow the lawn. Since we were idiots, we agreed. What he called a lawn, most people would call "Kansas." After mowing the enormous yard, the man came out and told us that it didn’t look like we had mowed anything. He told us to lower the mower and do it again, if we wanted to get paid. Let’s just say that once we were done, our hourly rate was about $0.50.

The next job call we got was from a man who was installing a sprinkler system. He wanted us to dig the trenches in his yard using a ditch witch. This was my first foray into machinery ineptness. Not only were my trenches crooked, I also expertly sliced a water line, creating a nice fountain in his yard.

There were several other jobs, mostly random yard maintenance jobs, including one guy who had us pick up crabapples from his yard, all the while telling us about his sword collection. Needless to say, when you are hearing the detailed account of how someone got a Japanese sword in World War II, you keep one eye on the crabapples, and one eye on the man.

Once the summer was over, we did some quick accounting and found that our entire take for the summer was about $100 apiece. There are undeveloped nations where that would be laughable.

The next summer, I opted to stay in the world of outdoor labor, but went to an established plant nursery. My job was to weed all of the plants in the greenhouses. There were about 20 greenhouses, and each one had several hundred plants. By the time I would get through the last greenhouse, the weeds would have already started sprouting up in the first few. It was a vicious cycle.

One of the most memorable events during my days as a professional weeder was the brutal attack I received at the hands of a mockingbird. Apparently, it had built a nest in one of the greenhouses, and I made the mistake of entering its lair. The bird began screaming at me (or, at least as much of a scream as a bird can do) and started dive bombing me. On one pass, he actually made contact with my head, knocking my baseball cap off. Realizing my tender head was now exposed, I high tailed it out of the greenhouse, leaving the mockingbird and the weeds alone.

Now you may think it would be a lot easier just to go get that cushy job and not work in the searing heat. But before you do, keep in mind one important thing: one day, you will have children. And you will want your children to get jobs. And you’ll have a lot more fun at their expense if you can regale them for hours about the awful jobs you endured as a child. I know I will.

So I guess you are now ready to enter the workforce of summer jobs, and I know you’ll find it rewarding. As you start looking, do keep in mind that I know one place that’s hiring. And my yard is much smaller than Kansas.