Everyone's had a worst summer job, but some are definitely worse than others.

40+ Worst Summer Jobs People Like You Have Had
Photo by Rémi Müller

Growing up, I had almost a dozen summer jobs.

Most of them were pretty standard: working in a factory shipping department, taking shifts in a restaurant, conducting phone surveys, and so on. Nothing too memorable, they just happened to take place during the summer.

But there was one summer job that was just… out there.

When do you usually start looking for a summer job?

By far, the worst summer job I had was as a frozen seafood door-to-door salesman.

I hadn't even known that seafood was something people sold door to door, and truth be told, I haven't come across it since.

The adventure began when a friend and I responded to a classified ad in a local newspaper.

We were invited to an “interview”, which turned out to be an ultra-slick sales presentation for us and 20 other people on how to sell shrimp and lobster to unsuspecting homeowners.

I started getting skeptical when told that we needed to buy our seafood sales quota from the company before we actually sold any, and I straight up quit after shadowing an “experienced” salesman make only 2 sales in a full day's work.

Thankfully, that was also the shortest job I've ever had.

Not everyone is so lucky.

Here are some of the hilariously bad summer jobs people have had.

Free: Download The 50+ Mostly Unusual Places to Find Summer Jobs, a handy checklist to keep track of where you applied for summer jobs.

From the Chive

  1. Porta Potty reservoir cleaner
  2. Recreational Vehicule (RV) reservoir cleaner at a campground: “a shitty job”
  3. Cow pen cleaner
  4. Crime scene clean up crew
  5. Carnival booth operator running “rip off” games that are impossible to win at
  6. Package delivery driver with a truck that doesn't have air conditioning
  7. Tying knots in fiberglass strands at a factory
  8. Hotdog cart guy
  9. Scraps collecting at a meat packing plant
  10. Painting oil tanks, by hand, outside in the Texas heat
  11. Sanding department worker at a chair factory
  12. Selling organic, free range meat door to door (so this does still happen!)
  13. Lobsterman deckhand
  14. Summer camp athletic trainer for 6-10 year old kids
  15. Rickshaw runner


worst summer jobs 1

From Uproxx

  1. Golf caddy: “The money was fine… but it didn’t make up for the (multiple) golf clubs thrown at me”
  2. Restaurant stove duct cleaner
  3. Telemarketer
  4. Customer support for a money transfer service for people in prison
  5. Highway department worker: “Some of my tasks included discarding dead roadkill… spraying weeds with poison, and re-paving roads in 100-degree heat”

From The Motley Fool

  1. Diaper changer
  2. Camp counselor
  3. Truck Loader

worst summer jobs 2

From Business Insider

  1. Sales associate in a kids clothing store
  2. Gas station attendant
  3. Flour mill worker
  4. Ice cream scooper at a state fair, with overtime for helping melt a giant butter cow
  5. Kitchen duty at a summer camp
  6. Credit card debt collections agent: “I was horrible because I could never collect and spent a lot of time life coaching or just listening to people's problems”
  7. Selling yard weedkiller door to door

Jimmy Fallon summer job stories with Hashtags: #MyWorstSummerJob

From Slate

  1. Pounding steaks with 128-ounce cans of diced tomatoes
  2. Outdoor concert usher
  3. Data entry at a temp agency run by a criminal: “It turned out that Bill’s carpeting business wasn’t a business. It was a front within a front.”

From Vice Canada

  1. Working in a garbage truck that services parks: “You know what's in park garbage cans? … Diapers and dog shit.”
  2. Stock car racing bouncer
  3. Chicken slaughterhouse “kill room” cleaner
  4. Lawn aerator
  5. Front desk manager at a seedy motel with a racist, scumbag owner

worst summer jobs 3


From The Morning Call

  1. Parking lot attendant at a golf course
  2. Collecting broken landscaping and riding mowers for a repair business
  3. Elementary school janitor

READ NEXT: 🌞 How To Quickly Find Student Summer Jobs You'll Actually Enjoy

Question of the article

What was the worst summer job you ever had? Tell us in the comments.

Free Bonus

Download a checklist of The 50+ Mostly Unusual Places to Find Summer Jobs to keep track of where you applied while getting ideas for new places to try.

Click the image below to get access to The 50+ Mostly Unusual Places to Find Summer Jobs:

The 50+ Mostly Unusual Places to Find Summer Jobs


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Jacob Share


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