From park mascot to movie theaters, Twin Cities readers share their summer jobs
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Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios
Aimee Jackson's first job growing up was selling bratwursts at a Renaissance festival, complete with an era-appropriate costume and a thick cockney accent.
- By the end of her shift, she'd be "hot and sticky from serving food and pop, probably nursing at least one bee sting, and always a little bit humiliated."
Yes, but: She has no regrets. Like many seasonal teen gigs, the job built character, instilled an appreciation for her future (air-conditioned) office work, and made her "forever kinder towards service workers."
- "Honestly that's the point of teen jobs," Jackson, who now lives in St. Louis Park, wrote in response to our recent Axios call for your summer job stories.
Why it matters: Most of us had at least one summer gig in our youth. Trading tales about conditions and pay is practically a rite of passage.
Zoom in: From sorting lingerie to sporting mascot costumes, readers had plenty of memories to share. Here are a few more:
👙 "My summer job in 1962 was in the receiving department of Dayton's department store in downtown Minneapolis. I worked in the sub-basement unpacking, counting, and ordering price tags for women's underwear." — Kathryn B.
🧥 "I buttoned fake fur trim onto the hoods of winter jackets at Sharpe Coats in Minneapolis — and then steam-pressed the coats before hanging them on racks. No air conditioning in the warehouse. But I made a whopping $2.10/hr back in 1977." — Mark D.
- That's about $10.54/hr in 2023.
🍕 "Selling non-name brand frozen pizzas (and pizza pans and cutters) door-to-door, which had to be to delivered (frozen) a few weeks later. I had never tasted them myself. Amazingly, I sold quite a few!" — Brian H.
⛺ "Camp counselor at my council's scout camp. I figured I was on call 24/7, six days a week for 90 days, making the equivalent of a stick of beef jerky every day." — Chris S.
🌽 "My first summer job other than babysitting was detasseling corn. Hot weather, long days, walking through rows of corn with no breeze. ... And there were typically no bathrooms until you got to a farm for your lunch." — Mary R.
🎢 "Costumed character at a family-owned amusement park. Got paid a whopping 35 cents an hour. .... On scorching hot summer days I got to put on a variety of costumes: a panda bear, a frog, a rabbit, a bear, a basset hound, and an eight-foot-tall Mother Goose — think I lost 4-5 pounds every time I struggled into and out of that last one."
🎥 "Working at the MANN Cina 4 Theatre in West St. Paul for $4.25/hr cash as an usher and at a concession stand. The big movies that summer were 'Batman Forever,' 'Pulp Fiction,' 'Johnny Mnemonic,' 'Judge Dredd,' to name a few that I recall. We would get late-night, staff-only screenings at 12am which was cool." — Christopher G.
The bottom line: While these jobs didn't always do much for our bank accounts, they made life richer in other ways.