"Summer jobs build character. They put a little cash in your wallet. They instill humility and a willingness to wear a paper hat. They also prepare you for life." - Popular Mechanics Magazine, June 2017

Mike Rowe

Photo Source: Getty Images / Popular Mechanics Magazine, June 2017

Article by Popular Mechanics, June 2017, "What I Learned At My Summer Job: A Collection Of Wisdom."

"The summer after high school, I had three jobs. First, I rode on a garbage truck at Maryland's Gunpowder Falls State Park. My job was to stand on the back and get the drums full of two hundred pounds of crap.

One day I slipped in some unthinkable slime, fell off the truck, and face-planted right in front of a family having a picnic. I broke my nose, fractured my jaw, loosened three teeth, and got my boot caught as well. I was actually dragged for about ten feet and lost most of the skin on my palms and my chin.

I was desperate for another job, and of course no one is going to hire me when I looked like the loser in a really, really long cage match. But in 1980 Spider-Man made some sort of re-emergence and Kmart decided they wanted Spider-Man to sign autographs.

I just sat there wrapped in this rubbery latex suit sweating and stinking, slowly oozing blood and ointment, and stifling screams while kids squatted on my broken legs that had no skin. I was just thinking, Yeah, this goes on the list of stuff not to do.

The third was selling magazines over the phone. It became this fascinating challenge because I hated every second of it, I really and truly hated making these phone calls and disturbing people, but I was good at it. I was making six to eight sales, and $50, an hour. In hindsight that was the job that taught me for the very first time that just because you're good at something doesn't mean you should do it.

That was a big summer of lessons, foreshadowing from the garbage truck that eventually got me to Dirty Jobs. The cautionary tale of Spider-Man: I always wanted to act and be on stage but after Spider-Man? Screw that. And this weird cognitive dissonance of the success of doing something you loathe.

All of that in hindsight was a pretty good backdrop for a career in entertainment. The following year, I dug graves." - Popular Mechanics

 

Above article by Popular Mechanics, June 2017, "What I Learned At My Summer Job: A Collection Of Wisdom."

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