As it’s that time of year, some of our writers shared stories of their most terrible summer jobs. In the comments, our readers responded in kind - though actually, some of the jobs sounded pretty good. This reader clearly very much enjoyed being an ice cream driver, and a job where you’re not actually expected to do anything for seven weeks sounds like our idea of heaven.
But yes, some were pretty bad. Here are 10 of our favourite awful summer job stories, entertainingly told.
1) ‘They gave a bonus if you stuck it out for a week’
2) ‘I could have made a fine black ink with my snot’
I had a two week summer job once, cleaning the boilers at the local textile mill.
This involved climbing through the inspection hatch inside the chamber where the fuel oil jets heated the pipes, and scrubbing the pipes down with a wire brush. At the end of the shift, I could make a coal miner look neat & tidy. I didn't head straight home, but down to the river with soap, for three latherings and rinses to get clean.
The disposable paper dust masks were useless, and I could have made a fine black ink with my snot and a little bit of water.
3) ‘It cut the top of my shoe off so perfectly I could see my be-socked toes underneath’
I grew up in the 70s and my father had a strong work ethic by which I mean he believed that from the earliest possible age I should work (How are you ever going to learn the value of anything if you don't earn it was his mantra). So I was loaned out to various friends for odd jobs, mowing the lawn, etc. One particular job for the summer (I was 12 or 13) was working in a friend's market garden. One day, I was using this large diesel lawnmower, with furious rotating blades when I moved my feet in too closely and it cut the top of my shoe off so perfectly I could see my be-socked toes underneath. Unfortunately, they were my brand new school shoes. When I returned home instead of sharing in my good fortune, my father shouted at me and sent me to my bedroom for ruining the shoes. I've always hated summer jobs.
4) ‘Mine was working on the ghost train in a northern seaside town’
Guardian contributor Mine was working on the ghost train in a northern seaside town throughout August. I took the money and pressed this pedal with my foot and off trundled the train into God knows what, because I was supposed to walk through and check it every morning. I never did though. I was fourteen. What fourteen year old walks through a ghost train alone?
I think My only customers were two teenage couples and a lone man, for the whole time I was there. What the lone man got out of is a mystery to me.
I had a battery operated transistor radio and some earplugs which I pressed to my ears to drown out the creepy guy on the shooting range's world wide collection of Remember I'm a Womble. He played it in Japanese over and over again when he found out it was driving me mad.
I can't listen to that song even now without feeling palpitations and a feeling of overwhelming dread.
5) ‘I was given the demeaning task of helping the farmer to ‘extract value’ from his prize bull’
Alderclough Farm in Cumbria, 1992. I was given the demeaning task of helping the farmer to 'extract value' from his prize bull. Apparently Big Bob, as he was known, reacted badly to Mr Fraser's rough, calloused hands. He said that, at the tender age of 13, my softer palms were much more suited to the task. I did that job every Saturday morning for a whole summer. Suffice to say, when I went back to school that September I didn't feel so intimidated in the showers after rugby as I had felt the previous year.
6) ‘His job involved driving around the park in a small green cart in frog costume collecting rubbish from the bins’
In 1991, I travelled to Europe from Canada with my brother to see the sights and meet relatives in the Netherlands. We stayed with an aunt in The Haag, who had two sons, both around the age of my brother and I. The elder of the two was working at a theme park on the sanitation team for the summer and, strangely, had to go to work dressed as a frog. When he came home at the end of one day, he looked very dejected and proceeded to tell us how his job involved driving around the park in a small green cart in frog costume collecting rubbish from the bins. Near the end of that day, he had tried to drive up a hill after emptying a bin, but the incline was just a bit too steep for his vehicle; his cart flipped, trapping him helplessly underneath. Instead of helping him, visitors to the park watched and laughed as the frog 'dust-man' scrambled beneath the vehicle. After telling us the story, he returned to his meal, finished it and went to bed. While sympathetic, my brother and I appreciated our work-free summer even more as a result of his misfortunes.
7) ‘Part of my job was looking after the armadillos’
I had a summer job at a government medical research facility, and part of my job was looking after the armadillos. They were very sweet creatures, and useful for their scales, which allowed them to be a perfect model for leprosy in humans. They were all infected with leprosy, and the staff tried different cures on them.
One day I accidentally left the door slightly open when I went to lunch. By the time I got back, 50 leprous armadillos had escaped, and were roaming happily across the local countryside. They posed no threat to humans, but my boss could perfectly envisage the newspaper headlines if it got out. The army were called in to help, and after a lot of tracking, by nightfall we'd finally rounded them all up.
8) ‘I was given the plum job of taking van loads of dirty roller towels collected from various pub toilets’
I worked one school summer holiday in a big laundry. I was given the plum job of taking van loads of dirty roller towels collected from various pub toilets, unrolling them and folding them then hanging them on rail that would carry them off to be cleaned. Quite a lot of them had obviously been used to mop up various bodily fluids. I think the job was reserved for keen young schoolboys they were hoping to tempt into a career in the commercial laundry business.
The job was also memorable for the constant teasing I got from the female workforce, including threats to have my trousers off and give my manly parts a coat of shoe polish. Fortunately never happened.
9) ‘There is a jelly gun that squirts hot jelly’
When I was 18 I put the jelly in pork pies in a factory called Pork Farms in Nottingham, England.
there is a jelly gun that squirts hot jelly and you poke two holes in the pie and then squirt hot jelly into the pie until it fills up - then do the same again to the next pie and so on and so on until you go insane.
Great breakfasts in the canteen, though.
10) “Dad! It’s the Betterware man!”
My worst summer job was my first ever job aged 16 and straight out of school, working as a commission-only Betterware catalogue door-to-door deliverer. I was given a single road to deliver to, a very steep hill in a rough neighbourhood of Sheffield. Right before I started I was given a list of houses on that road to avoid. As I approached the first house on this list an 8 year old boy playing in the front garden somehow worked out who I was and started screaming "Dad! It's the Betterware man!", I hastily walked past, skipping a few other houses I should have visit just so I wasn't anywhere near this family.
I finished the route in about two hours having been chased by a massive dog that wanted to kill me and after delivering catalogues to what turned out to be empty houses (deducted from my commission). I had not enjoyed the experience much.
Towards the end of the week I went back and collected the catalogues (it took two seperate trips), getting sworn at by a woman in her early 20s because I'd interrupted her having sex with her boyfriend in the middle of the afternoon. I'd sold a grand total of £80 worth of junk for which I would received a 10% commission as my wage. I worked out that I was getting paid about £1.50 p/h to do a route that was crammed full of anti-social arseholes, some of who wanted to give me a kicking just for who I worked for. I told my supervisor I was quitting immediately. He shrugged and left without paying me. Betterware still owe me £8.
Mine was recycling plastic coathangers. This required holding the coathanger under a pipe spouting very hot air for long enough to loosen the glue holding the label in place, but not long enough to melt the hanger. And then peeling the label off with a stanley knife.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Oh, and the hot air pipe was at a height perfectly suited to someone about 5'2" tall. I'm a big guy. I was in agony, bending over all day, hands covered in burns and cuts. They gave a bonus if you stuck it out for a week, as most people wanted to leave after a day. I got my one week bonus, and never returned.