9 summer jobs you’d have to be insane to want to do

Summer jobs are a rite of passage for everyone. They exist in that hazy area between childhood and grown up land, which means that you generally get treated like crap in exchange for no money because that’s an important life lesson everyone needs to learn. But some of these jobs are worse than others. In fact, some of them are downright insane, and should probably be done only by convicts or robots, or maybe even robot convicts. And so if you find yourself on the summer job market, be sure to avoid any of these, nine of the worst summer jobs that you’d have to be crazy to do.

9. Lifeguard

I know lifeguard seems like it would be a good summer job, but that is woefully wrong. You think you’ll just get to chill by a pool all summer, working on your tan, surrounded by hot girls in bikinis, but the reality is that you spend all summer long chasing around bratty little kids and making sure they don’t shit in the pool and clog up the filters, which guess what? You get to clean every day. You’re basically a glorified babysitter, only with a higher chance of drowning. And the only ladies you’ll see hanging around will be grandmas with sandpaper skin and boobs hanging down past their belly buttons, and if that’s your thing, well then hey, this might be the job for you after all. For everyone else, it’s just nightmare fuel that they’ll have to work out with their therapists later.

8. Grill Cook

Hey, cooking out on the grill is a cherished summer institution. I get it. Now imagine standing over a flaming grill for eight hours straight under a hell sun in 90 degree weather. That is the sort of scenario the church cooked up as an eternal punishment for swearing at Jesus or masturbating too much, or whatever they damn people to hell for nowadays. Grilling is cool. Being outdoors in the summer is cool. Combining the two during a heat wave while a-holes yell at you to hurry up with their food is quite literally uncool.

7. Internship

Look, I get it. It’s all about connections, but you’re literally working for free and doing the most demeaning and dehumanizing shit you can imagine just so you have something to toss on a resume, or on the off chance that you impress some old rich dude with your ability to clean up his dog’s poop. It’s kind of insane that we treat internships not only as respectable summer jobs, but as a necessary step on the road to success. Then again, I get paid to make dick jokes so maybe I shouldn’t be giving you career advice. On the other hand, I get paid to make dick jokes.

6. Road Crew Worker

There is no hotter place on Earth than a long stretch of asphalt in the middle of July. It’s miserable. And if that’s not bad enough, you get to spend all day worrying that some asshole is going to come flying at you in his car at 80 MPH and shatter every bone in your body. But hey, on the bright side, at least you get to deal with angry people giving you the finger and treating you like shit all day because you’re causing a traffic jam.

5. Door to Door Salesman

This one seems relatively harmless, but let’s think about it for a second. Basically, your job is to knock on every damn door in town and annoy people. Even if you’re doing a good job, everyone still hates you. The reality is that half of those will either slam the door in your face or call you an asshole, which I’m guessing takes its toll after a few days. But even if you can stand the mind-numbing tedium of “walk, knock, get yelled at,” you still run the very real risk of something worse happening. You never know what kind of serial killer cannibal goon is going to answer the door and then invite you down to see his basement, AKA his dungeon. And even that’s probably better than accidentally disturbing some poor dude with post-traumatic stress disorder who answers the door with a shotgun blast. Seriously, this is not going to go well.

4. Theme Park Attendant

This one is a lot like being a lifeguard, in that you spend all day herding bratty kids. Of course, at least a lifeguard has water to keep him cool. You just get to stand all day in the hot sun, smelling greasy carnival food. And speaking of all that greasy carnival food, guess who gets to clean it all up when some kid horks all over the place during one of your rides? And even if your day is blissfully uneventful, at best you will hear idiots screaming in your head 24 hours a day. Every time you close your eyes to go to sleep, there they’ll be, screaming like fools. No wonder most carnies look like they’re completely insane.

3. Campground Worker

Okay, this one probably wouldn’t be all bad. You get to hang out in a place where people pay just to spend a few vacation days, and for the most part your job – and life – would probably be pretty chill. But there is one massive, massive downside here that makes it a deal-breaker – who do you think is going to have to clean the outhouses? Look, say what you will about the other jobs on this list, but at least most of them won’t involve you trying not to gag in a hazmat suit while you fish some poor fool’s car keys out of a literal shithole at two in the morning. Sure, they have pumps and hoses and all that, but someone’s still got to get his hands a little bit dirty, and you can be damn sure it’s gonna be the poor dude making minimum wage just trying to make enough money to cover a month’s worth of tuition in the fall. Plus, there’s always a chance you’ll get eaten by a bear, and nobody needs to worry about that in the 21st century.

2. Mascot

Whether it’s for a sports team, or worse, for some horrible fast food joint, this is just a terrible, terrible idea. First of all, you’re just inviting abuse from bratty kids. No one sees mascots as actual people and so parents will just laugh every time one of their kids walks up and punches you in the balls. Second, just imagine how hot it is inside of one of those things. Then imagine all the sweaty idiots who wore it before you got your hands on it. I don’t care how often it gets washed – which can’t be that often – it has to smell like the inside of Jabba the Hutt’s butthole. I’m convinced that this is the sort of thing that turns people into serial killers.

1. Medical Testing

Look, dudes, I know this one is alluring. You get paid a lot and don’t actually have to work. But this is not going to seem like a good idea when you roll up to the ladies missing all your hair and your fingernails, looking like a zombie and then having to explain that you have right different forms of syphilis. Do not do this. I mean, jerk off dudes under a freeway overpass before you sign up to be a guinea pig. At least then all you’ll need is some hand sanitizer and a shitload of alcohol. Memories fade, but anal super-warts from testing that new salve from the rainforests of the Amazon last a lifetime.

Mascot image by GTS Production/Shutterstock
Internship image by Shutterstock
Theme park image by Radu Bercan/Shutterstock
Medical testing image by Shutterstock