Your Summer Job Stories

Summary

All of It Podcast Summary: "Your Summer Job Stories"

Introduction

In the July 22, 2025 episode of All of It hosted by Alison Stewart and produced by WNYC, the focus centers on the quintessential American tradition of summer jobs. Titled "Your Summer Job Stories," the episode delves into personal anecdotes, listener experiences, and the broader cultural significance of summer employment. This episode aligns with New York City Food Week, offering a flavorful backdrop to the discussions about summer jobs that shape personal growth and cultural understanding.

Hosts’ Perspectives on Summer Jobs

The conversation kicks off with Alison Stewart introducing the theme of summer jobs, highlighting their role in granting teenagers their first taste of independence and financial responsibility. She welcomes her team members—Kate Hines, Jordan Loff, and Zach Goddard Cohen—to share their own summer work experiences.

Kate Hines emphasizes the parental viewpoint, stating, “You have to get a job if you’re not playing sports” (03:01). Her first summer job was at Anthropologie, where she recounts a particularly daunting interview process. Kate describes, “I had to run around this giant Anthropologie and just grab things that I thought looked cute and put it together” (04:37), illustrating the pressure and creativity involved in securing her position.

Jordan Loff offers insights into the value of shared experiences, explaining, “Work is really like the first experience that your kids are going to have where they are not in a hand-picked group” (01:52). He underscores how summer jobs provide teenagers with opportunities to expand their social circles and adapt to new environments.

Zach Goddard Cohen shares a contrasting perspective, noting that his parents did not encourage summer employment, which initially impacted his work ethic. Reflecting on his experience, he remarks, “I didn’t have a very good work ethic until I went and got summer jobs and, like, learned how to pedal to the metal and get it done” (02:37).

Memorable Job Experiences

One standout story comes from Kate Hines’ tenure at Anthropologie. She describes a scenario-based interview where she had to assemble an outfit under time constraints: “I had to create a fake outfit, including accessories that you would recommend to Ruth” (04:37). The high-pressure environment and the need to think on her feet left a lasting impression, highlighting the challenges young workers often face in their first jobs.

Zach Goddard Cohen reminisces about his time at Red Hook Lobster Pound, sharing detailed memories of the demanding kitchen work: “The smell of the vinegar as it’s evaporating directly into your face is still in my nostrils right now” (06:57). He elaborates on his role, explaining the differences between a Connecticut roll and a Main roll, showcasing his acquired culinary knowledge (07:42).

Listener Stories: Diverse Summer Job Experiences

The episode features numerous listener calls, each bringing unique perspectives and experiences:

• Camille from South Orange recounts her unusual summer job at the 1984 New Orleans World's Fair. She worked in the Wonder Wall, selling hybridized patio plants: “I learned how to stay cool and pace myself. And I also got to read a ton because it was pretty quiet” (09:07).

• Carol from Brooklyn shares her internship at WNYC during the summer of 1986 and 1987. A memorable mishap involved inadvertently broadcasting a song on the live feed of All Things Considered: “All of the New York listening area heard for about 20 seconds” (12:42). This incident underscores the unpredictability and learning curves in media-related jobs.

• Richard from Babylon describes his physically demanding job clamming in South Bay: “I really found I wanted to work at an office after that. It was really hard work” (18:06).

• Kareth from Jersey talks about working at shore landmarks like Jenkinson’s and Markell’s, highlighting the importance of overcoming fear and building a strong work ethic: “My father taught me a very valuable lesson. About not being fearful and marching up and asking adults for a job” (24:26).

• Peter reflects on his role as an assistant organist at a boys military camp in 1965, interacting with celebrities like Judy Garland and observing iconic events like Dylan’s electric performance: “That was the high point of the most glamorous job I ever had” (25:27).

• Alistair from Manhattan describes his challenging position as a Package Belt Person (PBP) for UPS, dealing with strict managerial demands and the stress of meeting high productivity rates: “These managers were all PVP's. And I've never seen another guy stack wall like a Tetris pro” (28:53).

Additional listener submissions include varied roles such as detasseling corn at 13, cleaning fish at a New Jersey fish market, and working at a bank vault. These stories collectively illustrate the broad spectrum of summer jobs and their impact on individuals.

Lessons Learned from Summer Jobs

Throughout the episode, both hosts and listeners highlight the valuable life lessons gleaned from summer employment:

• Responsibility and Independence: Engaging in work outside the classroom fosters a sense of responsibility and self-reliance.

• Work Ethic: Challenging jobs, such as clamming or working in high-pressure environments, instill a strong work ethic and resilience.

• Social Skills and Networking: Jobs that involve interacting with diverse groups teach important social skills and can lead to meaningful connections.

• Financial Literacy: Managing paychecks, such as Kate Hines’ experience with car insurance costs, provides early lessons in financial responsibility.

• Problem-Solving: Handling unexpected situations, like Carol’s inadvertent broadcast or Alistair’s stacking challenges, enhances problem-solving abilities and adaptability.

Conclusion

The "Your Summer Job Stories" episode of All of It offers a rich tapestry of experiences that underscore the cultural and personal significance of summer employment. By weaving together personal anecdotes from the hosts and diverse stories from listeners, the podcast paints a comprehensive picture of how summer jobs contribute to individual growth and cultural fabric. This episode not only entertains but also serves as a reflective piece on the enduring value of summer work in shaping character and fostering community.

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Note: All timestamps are based on the provided transcript and are indicated in brackets for reference.

Transcript

[Alison Stewart]

This is all of IT on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. Congress has voted to end federal funding for public broadcasting.

[Caller]

Boo.

[Alison Stewart]

It means the WNYC and WQXR will lose nearly 6 million over the next two years. Your support is critical. Please stand with us and start or increase your monthly sustaining donation now at wnyc. As you've been hearing, it's New York City Food Week here on ALL OF it. Later in the hour, we're going to talk about where to get a great burger. Tomorrow we'll go straight to dessert. We'll talk about some of the city's best ice cream places. And on Thursdays, we'll talk tacos. And of course, on Friday, we will talk about the most New York of all, pizza. Now, who's going to serve you those items? Well, it could be someone's summer job. When school gets out for the summer, millions of teenagers join the workforce. It's a classic tradition of an American summer, the first real taste of independence, a chance to make money and to learn what it's like to have responsibilities outside of the classroom. Everyone has a story about the odd job they held or a memory about a day on the job that went wrong. Maybe it's something you laugh about today or maybe it launched you into the career you have now. As we hear your stor, we're also going to hear about the summer job some of our all of it producers had back in the day. I'm welcoming our team members Kate Hines, Jordan Loff and Zach Goddard Cohen to the studio. Welcome to all of you.

[Kate Hines]

Hello.

[Zach Goddard Cohen]

Hello.

[Alison Stewart]

All right, before we get started with this, Kate, you are the parent in the group. You and I are the parents in the room. Why do you think a summer job is a good thing for a kid?

[Jordan Loff]

Because I'm a big believer in shared experiences, especially ones that you don't entirely control. You know, kids that are teenagers have generally been to school and you know, parents have a lot of oversight in kids education. They know the teachers. They're on the pta. If your kid goes to summer camp, again, it's a very controlled environment. I feel like work is really like the first experience that your kids are going to have where they are not in a hand pick group of other kids in your neighborhood. It's a place for them to really stretch out their boundaries and do something entirely new with a group that the parents aren't involved with in any way. And I found that really valuable myself as a kid and my kids found it valuable when they were teenagers.

[Alison Stewart]

Zach, how did your parents talk to you about working during the summers?

[Zach Goddard Cohen]

I actually didn't. When I was a teenager, I had to, like, wait until I was an adult. My mom was very keen on, like, the kids have their summers. And it wound up biting me in the butt because I didn't have a very good work ethic until I went and got summer jobs and, like, learned how to pedal to the metal and get it done.

[Alison Stewart]

Well, you have an excellent work ethic, might I say. How about for you? How did your parents talk to you about a job?

[Kate Hines]

My parents rule was if I wasn't playing sports, I had to get a job. So when I was cut from the lacrosse team, much to my dismay, that meant I had to go find a job since my afternoons and weekends and summers were no longer going to be filled by practices for sports. So that's how I ended up having to get my first summer job. And I also had a car that I got to drive to school and drive around, which was very lucky of me. But that also meant I had to pay for my own gas. So I had to figure out how to make some money to drive around my little Honda CR V. Kate, do.

[Alison Stewart]

You remember the first time you went out there and you had to apply for a job? What that was like as a teenager?

[Jordan Loff]

Yeah, I mean, I think my first job, I worked under the table for a long time. My first job was when I was like 12 or 13 and I waited tables at a local pizza place. And I say, wait tables. I got fired because I used to make people come to the counter to pick their orders up. I didn't want to bring it to the table because I was lazy. But I basically just went down to the. I just went down to the cars like, do you need anybody? And they were like, yeah. My next real job was working in a movie theater. And I did have to apply. I had to fill out a whole paper and have an interview experience. And I must have done well because I got it.

[Alison Stewart]

Were any of you intimidated in going out and looking for a job? What do you think?

[Kate Hines]

I had a really scary interview process when I worked at Anthropologie. That was my most intimidating experience. I had to fill out all the forms. Everyone there, as you can maybe imagine, was very fashionable. And it was my first experience working with people much older than me. My first summer job, I worked as an kids summer camp and birthday party person. So I was mostly working with other teenagers. Anthropology was a lot of women over the age of like 40 and 50 who really had their Stuff together. And the interview process for that was that I showed up and they gave me a fake scenario. They said, like, Ruth is looking for an outfit for her. It was her 20th high school reunion. It's a barbecue outside in July. You have five minutes to run around the store, create a fake outfit, including accessories that you would recommend to Ruth. And so I literally, I was sweating bullets. I had to run around this giant suburban anthropology and just grab things that I thought looked cute and put it together. And then I had to explain to them why I picked the outfit. So I was like, it's July. I don't know, she might be hot. So I picked a light fabric. Anyway, I got the job somehow. But I just remember running around anthropology like a chicken with my head cut off, looking for a nice chunky necklace that Ruth might want to wear to her to her fictional high school reunion. So that was. I was definitely intimidated by that experience.

[Jordan Loff]

Did you ask for background about who Ruth was? Did you try to get in her head?

[Kate Hines]

I was like, how scared is she of her high school reunion? Is she nervous?

[Alison Stewart]

Is her ex boyfriend gonna be?

[Kate Hines]

Exactly, exactly. No. I had no follow up questions. As an 18 year old. I was like, please just let me survive this.

[Alison Stewart]

Zach, you worked at a seafood restaurant in the city.

[Zach Goddard Cohen]

Yeah, Red Hook Lobster Pound.

[Alison Stewart]

How did you end up there?

[Zach Goddard Cohen]

My friend Jackson was the manager of that spot and he like recruited three of us to be like in various different places because they had the, the facility in the CBGB's little alleyway, and then they also had food carts that would just be around the city. So I unfortunately was not getting to go around the city. I was like, at the facility. But he was like a very intimidating cook person, kitchen person, and I was extremely not. And so he would. I was extremely nervous to like, try to do a good job for my buddy Jackson.

[Alison Stewart]

What memory stands out for you from that time working at the seafood restaurant?

[Zach Goddard Cohen]

So the. When you clean a griddle, I was back of house. So when you clean a griddle, you, the griddle is on. You pour vinegar on it and have to scrub it really hard with a heavy like brick kind of scraper thing. The smell of the vinegar as it's like evaporating directly into your face is still in my nostrils right now. It's so, so intense. And like the heat on your hand, if the glove has like even one small hole in it, just very. The people who work back of house, like, it's occupational hazards. You can get hurt easy. It's crazy.

[Kate Hines]

Could you ever eat at Red Hook Lobster Pound again, now that you've worked there or do you know too much?

[Zach Goddard Cohen]

I would definitely eat there again. I know enough to know that it's tasty.

[Alison Stewart]

It is tasty.

[Zach Goddard Cohen]

And how it's made. I know the difference between a Connecticut roll and a main roll. No.

[Alison Stewart]

Would you like to share with a class?

[Zach Goddard Cohen]

Oh, thank you for asking. Yes. A main roll is you make the lobster salad with equal parts lemon juice, mayo and celery, chopped celery, and then that's just the lobster on there in the toasted bun. The Connecticut roll is you poach the lobster in clarified butter for about a minute and then pop it in the bun, a little more butter on top and then paprika and scallions. Very easy, very tasty.

[Alison Stewart]

Listeners, we are talking about summer jobs with Team Olivet and with you. What is a memorable summer job you had growing up either in high school or college? Were you a lifeguard, an ice cream scooper? We want to know. 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC. Or maybe you found yourself working at a totally random and strange summer job. We want to hear your stories as well. 212-433-9692. And did you take away any lessons from your summer job? Our number is 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC. Let's get to some calls. Let's go to Camille in South Orange. Hi, Camille. Thanks for calling all of it.

[Caller]

Hi, Allison. I have been a fan since the 80s. I love your show.

[Alison Stewart]

Thanks.

[Caller]

And I, I fall into this strange summer job category. I worked at the New Orleans 1984 World's Fair when I was in high school. And it was an amazing place because they used a lot of the same giant papier mache sculptures that they use on Mardi Gras floats. And I worked in this outdoor structure called the Wonder Wall, which was trying to simulate like a Mardi Gras parade. You know, floats all connected. I had to sit outside in New Orleans in the summer all day selling a patio plant called miniature weeping crepe myrtles that has been hybridized by a botanist at Louisiana State University. So what I learned was how to stay cool and pace myself. And I also got to read a ton because it was pretty quiet. So I read my way through the library while I waited for customers, and it was, it was kind of amazing.

[Alison Stewart]

Thanks for calling in. Let's talk to Carol from Brooklyn. Hey, Carol, thanks for calling all of It.

[Caller]

Hi. Hi. So, yeah, I also have a very random and strange summer job. This summer of 1986 and 1987, I was an intern at WNYC.

[Alison Stewart]

Well, all right, then.

[Caller]

Yeah, it was. I worked for a show. Well, so the way it happened was I was a big Doctor who fan, and they, like, had the Doctor who presentation trailer in Central park, and I hung out there so much because I had nothing to do that I ended up, like, being a tour guide. And it was being sponsored by wnyc. And the woman who worked for that, she thought I was pretty cool. And she said that I should talk to the guy who produced Kids America, which was a show that was on in the 80s. And so I met with a producer, and he really liked me. And so he kind of. You know, I was the only person who really knew current music. Like, they all knew, like, the kids songs, but I knew top 40 because I was a teenager. And so then they. They put me in charge of, like, getting various kinds of music. So I came across this song called Star Trekken, which couldn't be released in the United States because of, you know, Paramount blocked it. But I got a copy of a 45 from England, and I wanted to put it on a cartridge, which, you know, you probably remember is what we used back then, and. Yes, yes. And it was literally, like, 20 minutes before air time, and I had to get this thing on a cartridge. And I went from control room to control room to try to, like, to just dub it onto a cartridge. And everyone was busy. They kicked me out here, there, and everywhere. And so I went into Control Room 1. Well, little did I know that Control Room 1 was controlling the live feed of All Things Considered coming up from D.C. and the woman who was in the room, her name was Lucy, and she was. She and I were friendly. And so I said to her, are you on the air? And she was like, well, no. I'm standing at the side of the room talking to someone. Of course I'm not on the air. And I was like, okay. And what I meant was his board live. So I was like, well, you know, I see the needles moving.

[Alison Stewart]

I know where the needles moving, but.

[Caller]

Clearly they're just listening to the feed. So I popped in my, you know, cartridge. I put my, you know, 45 on the turntable, and I turned on an oscillator. So all of the New York listening area heard for about 20 seconds was.

[Alison Stewart]

You'Re our favorite person. Didn't that happen during kids Day here at wnyc?

[Jordan Loff]

Yeah, there was I think a minor mishap with bring your child to work day. But I just wanted to throw out a fun fact about kids America. It first started as small things considered.

[Alison Stewart]

This one is a tee up for you, Kate. It says best high school summer job ever was Teaneck, New Jersey. Dairy Queen. 76, 79. Unlimited free ice cream. After closing, we could trade with the local pizza shop. Wonderful experience. Now, you also worked in Teaneck.

[Jordan Loff]

I did. I'm pretty sure the Teaneck Dairy Queen was on Teaneck Road. I worked on Cedar Lane, which was then called the Cedar Lane Cinemas, and I worked the concession stand at the movie theater. And the big challenge for me was we popped our own popcorn. And we did it with, like, this old fashioned giant metal popper. And at the end of the night, you had to clean the popper. And unlike Zach, which used vinegar and, you know, hard work, we used easy off. And so we would pour this, you know, violent chemical in the popper. And we all, you know, you had to do it before closing. So you were kind of like hustling to get out of there and go have your summer fun. And we would, you know, clean the easy off out of the popper and then, you know, go do our thing. And all my friends were like, oh, you must eat so much popcorn. And I was like, really? No, we don't. We really don't.

[Alison Stewart]

We don't. You also worked at the Bergen County Mall.

[Jordan Loff]

I did. This is. My mother will never let me forget this. I kind of hope she's not listening. I worked at, like, one of those stands in the mall that engraved things, engraved ornaments and beer steins. And I kind of had a tumultuous teenage relationship with my mother. And at one point she comes in and she wants to buy, I think a beer stein for a friend of hers and have me engrave it. And I was so mad at her for some fight that I can't even remember. I wouldn't give her the discount. I made her pay full price. She won't let me forget it.

[Alison Stewart]

Still not to this day. Okay. Jordan, you're known as the person who organizes things for our team. You had a job organizing birthday parties.

[Kate Hines]

Yes.

[Alison Stewart]

For little kids. So this is in your blood organizing?

[Kate Hines]

I guess so. I guess I've been a. What did you call me? Like a cruise captain event.

[Jordan Loff]

You just did the bridesmaid weekend.

[Kate Hines]

I did. I did. Just plan. I'm a maid of honor for a friend, and I just planned. I just came back if my voice is a little hoarse. I spent a whole two days with 22 people on a joint bachelor and bachelorette party, which I planned myself. So, no, that went really well. So, yes, I'm no stranger to organizing parties. Yeah, I worked at the field house in Fairfield, Connecticut, which is just basically an indoor field complex where people would play, like, indoor soccer, other indoor sports. But on the weekends, they would host children's parties for kids who just basically wanted to run around. But maybe it was the winter, so they couldn't run around outside. So it was a lot of capture the flag. It was a lot of soccer games. People cried always. You know, you had to help the kids who were unhappy with their kickball performance or whatever else was going on. But my favorite part of that job, and I probably shouldn't share, is that often the end of the party was always that we would serve pizza and cake to all the kids. But what often happened is that the parents way over ordered pizza. They would have, like, you know, 10 full pizzas for 12 kids, and there was just no way that they were gonna finish all of it. So what my friends and I would do is we would go around, we would hand out the pizza, and then when the pizza box maybe had three slices left in it, we would shuttle the pizza box away into the area that was the garbage area, otherwise known.

[Alison Stewart]

As where you're having lunch.

[Kate Hines]

Exactly. And so we would do that with a couple pizzas, and then by the end of the party, we would have, like, a full pizza left for the rest of us that we would just eat. I'm sorry to all the parents of Fairfield, who I might have stolen a little bit of your party pizz, but. And I got really good at cutting cake. That was the other thing I learned from that job.

[Alison Stewart]

Let's talk to Richard. He's calling in from Babylon. Hey, Richard. Thanks for making the time to call. Oliver.

[Caller]

Hi. Hi, Alison. My summer job was a little different from, obviously, everybody else's. I was a clamor. You know, during the summer months, we'd be able to go out and go clamming out in the great South Bay and earn our money. And what's interesting was the. You know, you get up at, like, dawn, and you get out there on the great South Bay or off Pavilion or West Islip or those areas, and it'd be continually, you know, boats coming out, more boats, more kids, more boats. And it was like you could almost at some point, you. There was so many out there, you felt like you could walk from boat to boat. And it was interesting from the standpoint of it, you know, taught you a responsibility to get up. You had to, you know, size all the clams when you brought them into the dock to sell them to the commercial buyers. And, you know, I'm not sure if they wound up on different restaurants in Manhattan, but there was, it was an interesting, interesting job from that. And it, you know, definitely built up upper body strength and good tan. And, you know, at the, you know, after you came in from the dock and usually by, by 11:00 clock in the morning or noon, you'd sell them and you'd grab the surfboard and you'd get back on the boat and head over to the beach and get a little surfing in until the.

[Alison Stewart]

What did you learn from having that job clamming?

[Caller]

I really found I wanted to work at an office after that. It was really hard work.

[Kate Hines]

He said. Only emails for me after this.

[Alison Stewart]

Thank you, Richard, for calling in. Listeners. We want to know what your memorable summer job was growing up. Our number is 2124-3396-9221-2433 wnyc. We'll have more calls. We'll have more with team ALL OF IT after the break. You're listening to ALL OF IT on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart in studio. With me, I have all of its producers, Zad Jordan Lof, Kate Hines and Zach Goddard Cohen. We are talking about the science summer jobs that we held. We want to hear about your summer jobs as well, Zach. This one says, I worked my summers through college painting houses both interior and exterior. To this day, I do all of my own painting thanks to those jobs. Another text says my first summer job was as a land surveyor's assistant. It was an incredible way to become familiar with much of nyc, from Times Square to Tottenville, from City island to Coney Island. When you were working and you got your first paycheck, how did it feel?

[Zach Goddard Cohen]

A little weird. Like, oh, oh. Because usually, I don't know, it was like school and you don't get a paycheck but you put in all the effort and then you just get a grade at the end. Like, who knows? But here's this thing that now I'm holding in my hand and what, do I have to cash it or how do I turn this into stuff that I can spend? It was, I don't actually remember all that well what I spent it on exactly, but it felt like the start of like, oh, this is how, this is how everyone else does it. This is how money gets made.

[Alison Stewart]

How about for you, Kate? When you got your first check. Did you spend it? Did you save it? What did it feel like?

[Jordan Loff]

Well, that I do remember, as Jordan said, I had a car. And because I was living in New Jersey, and this was New Jersey in the 80s, which was like the car insurance, highest price in the country. I had a car that was bought, I think, for $300. My car insurance bill was $1,300 a year because my mother was like, I'm not putting you on my car insurance. Like, if you hit someone, I don't want to be sued. So I paid for my own car insurance. So a huge chunk of my paycheck went to my car. But I was really proud that I was able to afford it and could pay for it myself.

[Alison Stewart]

And, Jordan, you had a situation with people who. How shall we say, shoplifted?

[Kate Hines]

I did. I did. And I also want to add to the paycheck conversation that at Anthropologie, you got a 60% discount on all clothing. So unfortunately, working there was also sort of like a shopping expedition for myself. So too much of my paychecks went right back to my employer, which was unfortunate on my part, but yes. So I had. Sometimes when I worked the cash register, I would have people try to get away with things. And one time a woman came in and she had a giant bag of returns. And the way returns worked at Anthropologie was you had to fully process them before you could give the customer any of their money back. So I had to scan all the tags back in, like, re tag everything. And as I was doing that, I would scan the tag and it would say, oh, here's a beautiful cashmere sweater. It should be blue. It should have a turtleneck. And the sweater I was holding in my hand with the tag on it was, like, moldy and full of holes. And I was so confused. But I was also a child, so I sort of kept scanning them, and eventually I said to myself, these aren't. This is not an anthropology brand. And so naively, I sort of looked at the woman, and I was like, oh, are you sure these are from our store? And she was like, yes, I'm very sure they came from your store. And then I could tell she was getting nervous. And then I sort of alerted my boss, and it turned out that what this woman would do is she would shoplift a bunch of clothes from an anthropology, take the tags off of those clothes, and re tag like, moldy old clothes from her house with the anthropology tags, and then try to return them to get or Sorry. She wouldn't shoplift the clothes. She would buy them so that she could get all the tags and then get her money back by returning fake, like, nasty clothes from wherever in her attic. And apparently she was notorious for doing this around the Connecticut area. And she almost got me because I was an unsuspecting teenager.

[Alison Stewart]

Looks around, summer job, going to that.

[Kate Hines]

One, I was an easy target for sure. Sure.

[Alison Stewart]

Let's talk to Susan in Astoria. Hi, Susan. What was your summer job?

[Caller]

I had a Messenger job in 76 and I didn't ride a bike. I was not good on a bike. I didn't want to get killed. Back then there was no, you know, protection. So I had a foot messenger and public transportation job. And it was based out of a company called Cosmic Messenger Service on Water Street. And I lived in the east vill and I didn't really know very much of the rest of the city. And I found out the hard way. On my first run, I was sent to Harlem to an envelope factory. And I hadn't realized so much that Broadway goes from east to west. So from the east side where I was, I took the wrong train and I ended up lost. And I walked through a lot of, like, past a lot of vacant lots and things and. And I was wearing these, like, messenger type pants with lots of pockets, like cargo pants. And I remember a man and a lovely elderly black man saying to me, well, this is all well and good, but where's your bicycle?

[Alison Stewart]

Thank you so much for calling in. This one says I worked a night shift in a hardware factory making turnbuckles and operating a third thread roller. And the summer before, I worked in a bank vault all day counting money. Let's talk to Kareth. Hey, Kara, thanks for calling, all of it.

[Caller]

Hi, how are you doing?

[Alison Stewart]

Great.

[Caller]

You said my name right, which never happened. Thank you so much.

[Alison Stewart]

I love it. You're calling in from Jersey. What's going on in Jersey?

[Caller]

Oh, well, I just wanted to share a story about how my father, shortly after I became eligible to work as a teenager, drove me down to the boardwalk. I grew up at the Jersey Shore and dropped me out of the car and said, come back when you have a job. Head up onto the boardwalk and see what you can find. And I did. And I worked for several years at two well known shore landmarks. One was Jenkinson's and one with Markell's.

[Jordan Loff]

Point Pleasant.

[Caller]

From Point Pleasant, shucking clams, pooping ice cream, making candy. You name it, I did it. But my father taught me a very valuable lesson. About, you know, not being fearful and marching up and asking adults for a job and instilling very strong work ethic.

[Alison Stewart]

All really good things. Thanks for calling in and let's talk to Peter. Hey, Peter.

[Caller]

Hi, can you hear me?

[Alison Stewart]

I hear you. Great. You're on the air.

[Caller]

Yeah, okay. Oh, yeah. Okay. This was the summer of 1965. A friend of mine was connected to showbiz and he got a job working at the Forest Hills Music Festival as a kind of a general gopher. But he had to go to summer school. So I ended up getting the job. And so I was, you know, on helping everything out and I was helping get Judy Garland up on stage. She seems like she'd been drinking a bunch of. And I had to help her up and I know. And then Dylan played. Was also the year that Dylan went from acoustic to electric. So the whole audience was in uproar and we're attacking the stage. So it was a very eventful job. And met Frank Sinatra, Alan Ark, you know, all these well known people. Anyway, that was the high point of most glamorous job I ever had.

[Alison Stewart]

Zach has a question.

[Zach Goddard Cohen]

Peter, I actually, I was. You called it a gopher. I didn't know that that's what it was called. But I did that for a music festival at the. In Woodstock where the musicians needed like shuttling from where they were staying on the site to the stage and then also from where they were staying down to the airport, like LaGuardia. Just like Long lot of driving around and just whatever anyone needed to get done. Is that like was. It was like a catch all kind of thing?

[Caller]

It was definitely a catch all thing. But I was too young to drive, so that was not in my job description. But I did everything else. You know, get them food, you know, get them something to drink, help them up if they were too unstable, whatever they needed.

[Alison Stewart]

This is a great text. Making popcorn, a movie theater. The butter topping machine shot the stuff into my hair and it took a week to wash it out.

[Jordan Loff]

Been there.

[Zach Goddard Cohen]

That movie theater butter also is really intense and it sticks butter in the staying power. Right.

[Alison Stewart]

Does anybody. Do any of you have. Well, you told us about your shoplifter. Do you have any memorable stories from your job?

[Zach Goddard Cohen]

Not stories so much as like, I still know how to cut scallions really tiny.

[Alison Stewart]

Oh, really?

[Zach Goddard Cohen]

Yeah. You use your, your knuckles as a sort of guide and very, very slowly work your way down the scallion.

[Alison Stewart]

Oh, I love that. That's what you take forward. Did you take forward anything from your summer jobs?

[Jordan Loff]

Kate I made a lot of friends. For me, summer jobs were about making money but also socializing. Yeah, but I really do feel like I worked with a lot of different people and I worked with the public, which was a real eye opener for me. Like random people coming in off the street to just talk to you. When you worked at the movie theater it was very educational.

[Alison Stewart]

Let's talk to Barry from Manhattan. Hey Barry, thanks for calling, all of it. We want to hear about your summer job.

[Caller]

Uh, oh no you don't. I was for two summers I was the assistant organist at a boys military camp upstate.

[Alison Stewart]

Oh boy, I'm scared to do a follow up with that.

[Jordan Loff]

Was Donald Trump enrolled?

[Caller]

It was, I say it was great training, but yeah, seven days a week, six days a week at 7:15 in the morning I played for the chapel service.

[Alison Stewart]

Well, there you go. Well, thanks for calling. I have so many questions. Alistair in Manhattan on line nine. Hey Alistair, thanks for calling all of it.

[Caller]

Hi Alison, longtime fan. I just wanted to describe probably my worst summer job. I've had a bunch of different summer jobs but this summer I was in high school. I was what's called a PBP, which is a package belt person for UPS. It was from 6pm to 9pm and on that entire three hour shift you're in a 40 foot trailer with a conveyor belt fed into the trailer. And your job was just to stack the trailer and you had to do it in these, in this specific way. You had to build these walls. And then after two weeks of being there and it's 100 degrees outside, but it's 120 degrees inside these trailers. I mean it's so hot cycling. And then about two weeks into the job a guy comes in and he says, well your touch rate is good. I was like, well what's a touch rate? Because well you're touching 60 boxes a minute but we need you to get up to 200 boxes a minute. And so then I'm like really figuring out how to stack these boxes. And then you know, then you learn tricks, right? You learn, you put up a wall that's waist high. Then you, and you put it three feet from the, from the last wall. And then all the odd shape stuff you just throw behind that wall. And then you, then you make the wall go up to the top and then you're good. But then another manager two weeks later came in and he came in with a two foot stick and he pushed it between the boxes and he couldn't touch the other wall. You had to take down the wall and build it again. And then, you know, so then you're building these walls and you're touching. Your touch rate is good. And then two weeks later, there's a guy, a manager that came in about the levelness of your wall, make sure your walls were level because they didn't want the walls to fall or in transport. And then finally, the final manager after the my month in Imagine, comes in and goes, did you get my salts? And I was like, no, what's a salt? And he goes, oh, it's a package that doesn't belong in your truck. And I was like, I wasn't even told I was supposed to look at the addresses. And he goes, no, you just look at the zip code. So in addition to touching more packages and building the level walls, now I had to pick up the boxes and spin them and make sure that the zip code was right. But that day, he put the salt in early in my shift, and we had to take down every wall that I built up in the last three hours and find the salt that he put in. And these managers were all PVP's. And I've never seen another guy stack wall. The guy was like a Tetris pro.

[Alison Stewart]

We're gonna stop you right there, but thank you so much for calling in. I want to read a few more before we end. This says, this is from John and Fanwood. I worked at a band uniform factory pressing. I saw large white fur drum major hats go by. I saw them two nights later at the RNC when Nixon was nominated.

[Zach Goddard Cohen]

Wow.

[Alison Stewart]

This one says, my first summer job was detasseling corn at the age of 13. The hardest work I've done to this day. And I'm 62 years old. What did I learn? That I was allergic to everything in that corn field. And then this one says I worked at a fish market in Hackensack, New Jersey, in the 90s cleaning fish. I still found scales stuck to my skin a week after I stopped. The lesson is, you work hard, you learn something, you make a little bit of money.

[Jordan Loff]

Alison, just briefly, I'd love to know a little bit about your summer jobs.

[Alison Stewart]

Definitely one, I worked at Friendly's in Bloomfield, New Jersey, as a hostess and scooping ice cream. I could scoop. I had a bicep like you wouldn't believe. But you would go home at night and you would find, like, fudge behind your ears. Oh, that was the worst.

[Jordan Loff]

Saving it for later.

[Kate Hines]

Exactly.

[Alison Stewart]

Well, all right then. And I worked as an in a bakery, and I had the 5 to 11 shift because I was a teenager and I could walk there. And none of the college kids wanted the early shift because they were out the night before drinking. And I was like, yes, I can be useful. And then my final one, I was a babysitter. I told this in a meeting. And they had a dog named Wells, and Wells was this big bulldog, and no one was paying attention to Wells. And one day I got a call that said, Wells is in the hospital. He's sitting in the hospital. He wants people to pet him. And I've got the baby, so I put the baby in the carriage. I'm like, how am I getting Wells out of the hospital? So I grab hot dogs out of the refrigerator and I go down to the hospital and I'm like, hey, Wells, here's some hot dogs. And Wells was like, good deal. And so I, like, walked back up the road with Wells and the baby.

[Zach Goddard Cohen]

Wait, Wells was not a patient at the hospital?

[Alison Stewart]

No, Wells was a dog.

[Kate Hines]

But he had escaped.

[Alison Stewart]

Yeah, he escaped.

[Kate Hines]

Oh, he just was looking for love.

[Alison Stewart]

He was just looking for love. Yeah, he kind of didn't stay in his little pen. He went off to the hospital looking for love. So we made sure we gave him love and hot dogs once he got back to the house.

[Kate Hines]

That's a good name for a memoir. Love and hot dogs.

[Jordan Loff]

Wells Story.

[Alison Stewart]

Wells Story. Thanks to everybody who called in. Thanks to Zach, Kate and Jordan for sharing their summer experiences.

[Zach Goddard Cohen]

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[Kate Hines]

I need a coffee.

[Caller]

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[Zach Goddard Cohen]

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[Alison Stewart]

Since WNYC's first broadcast in 1924, we've been dedicated to creating the kind of content we know the world needs. In addition to this award winning reporting, your sponsorship also supports inspiring storytelling and extraordinary music that is free and accessible to all. To get in touch and find out more, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.