Summertime Jobs!

To celebrate our Summertime issue for Black voices, we asked our contributors about their most memorable summer jobs. Let’s get to work!

Cija Jefferson

I worked at McDonald's. My friends and I worked the 7-3pm shift. We liked to get off early so we could take a nap during the hottest hours of the day, and then stay up all night driving all over town and kicking it with the boys we were crushing on. Then we'd get up at six in the morning and do it all over again.

Helena Baptiste

My mother had my brother when I was 11 years old. She made it clear that it would mostly be my job to take care of him. I took care of him the first few weeks of the summer, but my mom was told by the daycare that she could afford to put him in that she had to take the opening they currently had if she wanted to ensure him a spot when school restarted. My mother was terrified something would happen to her baby (although she had no such qualms about leaving me with strangers when I was an infant), so she made me accompany my brother to daycare each day to look after him. The church ladies who worked at the daycare told me to take care of the other children as well. I told them that I was there to look after my brother but they said that since I was there I might as well help with all the children so I did. Those little old ladies nearly worked me to death. There were too many children there and they were ill-prepared to take care of most of them. One baby was humongous. He probably should have been sitting up and crawling by then but he was so fat he could only scoot along the floor. He was so heavy no one tried to pick him up, it would have been like picking up a flour sack full of watermelons. The best they could do was two or three of them would grab him and drag him across the floor. He was always a happy baby and he would inch his way across the floor as fast as he could as soon as lunch was brought in. As big as he was I think there must have been something medically going on. His mother came to pick him up from daycare and I was shocked to see that she was a tiny, petite woman. She picked him up and slung him on her hip and stood there talking with the church ladies as if he weighed no more than any of the other infants. That day I not only learned what love would do but what love could do—without compromise or complaint—and it both filled me with joy and broke my heart.

sheena d.

I spent a summer working as a bank teller. The bank was close to a Subway and we had to accept their deposits. You know that wilty lettuce fake bread chemically smell that you can’t get out of your clothes, if you make the terrible decision to eat there? Well that odor was baked deep into the cash they'd drop off, and if you accepted their deposit you’d get a whiff of it every time you had to open your drawer. So I’d close my drawer and go on break to avoid having to deal with it. When a coworker caught on, she laughed but made me agree to at least accept the deposits from a local summer school. This included dollar bills that had been in kids’ socks and mouths. I agreed and still think I got the better deal.

Averi Jones

Hopefully, the best job will be this summer. I am making a collection of notebooks to sell.