Blog 4
A summer job I held last year was at the local drive in movie theater, The Starlight Drive-Ins. It was a minimum wage job and since it was at the drive-ins had pretty late hours. The only reason I decided to even take this job was because it allowed me to do an unpaid internship with a radio station throughout the days. So, for a good chunk of my summer I would travel from the station to the drive-ins and then straight to bed. During this job, I found myself around a bunch kids who many of them this was their first “real” job and it really showed. They had little to no work ethic at all, and seemed to lack complete common sense. There were a couple other college kids, who for various reasons were stuck there as well, and the nights we worked together were usually the smoother nights of the summer. Other than that, I really felt out of place during most of my shifts at this place and to add on top of it all it was all at night. So, besides the sometimes frustrating co-workers, I swear the drive-ins found at least two different ways to kill my social life last summer. The first one was the night hours were when most of my friends would be free to do just about anything but I was busy selling tickets. I can’t remember the amount of things I missed out on because of those hours. The other way it attempted at killing my social life was the little pay I was getting while working there. The minimum wage would not have been so awful if I were able to work about 8 hours a day, but the drive-ins aren’t even open that long on a daily basis. I think the days I got paid the most was when we were showing the “Avengers” movie and I was closing, and that’s only because that movie seemed to never end some nights. So even on the nights I was off from work, I barely had any spending money to do anything worthwhile.
In hindsight, I really should have looked for better employment through the summer. But the late hours of the drive-ins are what let me work at the radio station. Even though I received no pay while at the station, I didn’t mind that work at all. I found that stuff enjoyable and that made the drive-ins that much more miserable. Now, this summer job wasn’t a complete hell hole. It did have its moments where it was kind of enjoyable. This job essentially became one of those situations where you have to try to make the best of the situation or you will just make yourself more miserable each and every day. I guess one big plus would be I got to see just about every big blockbuster of Summer 2018 for free when I was working there. But I definitely will not be looking for any job remotely similar to this one any time soon.
