by Marc Phillippe Babineau

Created on: April 16, 2010

The worst summer jobs are those that do not allow you to enjoy the great outdoors, or to at least interact with people.  Jobs like washing dishes in a Chinese all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant, or cleaning port-a-potties at construction sites come to mind when talking about the worst summer jobs out there, but even then, there are worse jobs to be had.

During the summer months, when students are looking for, well, pretty much any job that would pay them at least minimum wage, there are some real stinkers that the hardy students could probably get hired on for.  With jobs like picking up road kill and cleaning the road of the mess left behind from the collision between an 18-wheeler and a doe, the students with hardy stomachs and being very needy of a job can usually find something, but maybe not so close to home.  Students who desperately need money to finish college, or to save up for their first car, can find some horrible job out there that nobody else is willing to do.

Don’t laugh, I had a job in Northern Ontario as a mosquito counter.  What we had to do was go to about 25 different collector boxes every day, each marked on a topographical map (no GPS or smartphones back then!), and count the number of mosquitoes in each box, write the number down in our books, and then move on to the next box.  We were given an ATV, a tent and all the cooking and water-purifying equipment we needed;  yes, we had to camp in tents, in the home of the mosquito clouds.  They did not make strong enough bug repellent back then for this job!  But, being a government job with Forestry Canada, it paid very well.

Oh, there are worse jobs than counting mosquitoes, especially when you take into account that I was able to fish for speckled and lake trout every morning and evening, all summer long.  However, the next summer I felt I needed a little change, and went with a friend to the Northwest Territories, where we had to paint all of the radar dishes for government, armed forces and civilian purposes.  These were 28 feet in diameter and bigger, and stood about six to ten stories high, so we had to wear harnesses, swinging around, trying desperately not to touch the radars with our feet.  And, when it rained, we waited.  And, when we waited, we did not get paid, as the job was on a per-unit basis.  Who would have known that it rains that much way up there?

So, what has been your worst summer job, and would you do it again, now, at the age you are now?  Would you clean port-a-potties in the Nevada desert?  The heat really makes those things smell worse than anything you could ever imagine, and that would include working at incinerators or for crime scene clean up companies.  There are jobs cleaning up after people who have died and have nobody left behind, who had only been found because some neighbor, a postal worker or some other person noticed some awful smell in the area.  Could this be the worst job out there?  No, it pays very well, and the worst jobs ever end up with the employers going bankrupt before you even get paid (I have the luxury of that happening to me more than six times).

As long as they pay, the worst summer jobs are, after all, still jobs, and much better than  staying at home and not making any money at all.

Learn more about this author, Marc Phillippe Babineau.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.