Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Workin' for $1 an hour

I had an interview for a summer internship yesterday.
 Every summer since Freshman year of high school, I’ve spent my afternoons sitting by a pool at a day-care, lathering Hawaiian Tropic Oil on me & the SPF 50 on 5- 10 kids before they all hopped in the pool for 3 hours a day & a snack in between. I got a ton of sun, my friends could come hang out while I did it & I made $8/hr. It was the dream job & the daycare owner loved me. 
However, on the off chance that I’d ever try to get a real job, I need some experience outside of putting sunscreen on babes and shoving on floaties. So, on the last day last year, I told the day-care owner that this summer, I was going to have to get a real job. I told her I probably wouldn’t be back. 
But, March rolled around & I had no good job leads so I called her. I wanted to know if she had filled the spot for my job & she had. Her grandson is just now driving age & he’s going to be doing it this summer.
 I instantly got really sad, my perfect job, gone. 
I had given it up though, so I had no one to blame but myself. 
Without the job at the pool, I knew it was time to start looking for jobs so I did. I applied a few different places over spring break and then found out who the director of Marketing/PR is at our local Parks & Rec and emailed her asking if she might be looking for an intern.
She was. SCORE.
So we set up a date to meet & yesterday was the day.
It wasn’t long into our conversations that my fear came true, “our internships are unpaid”, she said. 
She lost me at that.
I can’t work for no money, especially during the summer. 
I tried to pretend that I wasn’t thinking, “shit, shit, shit” in my head & sat there listening.
Eventually, she said that it was just too bad I was there for an internship because she really needs a babysitter for her 5-year-old daughter & 9-year-old son. 
Babysitting all week 8-5 is definitely not something I wanted to do, but it seems that my options are limited, so we began to talk about it. 
She asked me if I knew so-&-so girl who had babysat the last 2 summer & I did.
“The thing is”, she said, “I don’t know if I could afford you”.
So I just asked her what she paid the other girl.
“Well, I can’t really remember”, she thought about it for a minute, “I think I paid her $8 a day when she had one kid and $10 when she had both.”
My head exploded. 
$8 a day working from 8-5, are you kidding? I would be better off not working! 
She told me a lot of stuff about how the 5-year-old doesn’t even get up until 10 or 11 and a lot of stuff I don’t even remember because I was too busy thinking, “You have got to be kidding me!”
So the lunch ended & I left pretty much defeated & shocked. 
I didn’t have a job & she was asking me to work for $8 a day! 
As soon as I got home, I called Drew & told him the story.
“Ali! I’m sure she meant $8 an hour” he said, “People in Mil-Asia work for that!!” 
I hadn’t even thought that maybe she misspoken.
If she meant $8-$10 an hour, it could be pretty good for 40 hours a week.
I emailed her & sure enough, she had misspoken. She wasn’t trying to take complete advantage of me. 
Even though I didn’t want to be babysitting 8-5 Monday through Friday, I need a job & this one will pay very well. 
So I will be trading the cute dresses I got for the potential internships for bathing-suits & flip-flops. 
I’ll be babysitting once again!! 


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3 comments:

Dree said...

Yay - congratulations on your new job! Unpaid internships are a joke - they totally use us because they know they can. Babysitting is how I spend my summers, too! Enjoy!

Aly @ Analyze This said...

Ugh! We needed an intern here in my Event Planning/Marketing area!!! I wish you were staying in town!

Nikki said...

HAHAHA to what Drew said