14 Year Olds Summer Jobs

by Eli
(New Jersey)

14 Year Olds Summer Jobs

My summer student job as a teenager was working in my uncle's deli. Prior to this my only work experience had been as a newspaper carrier. I primarily worked up at the counter serving customers. I learned to work a cash register and scale. Every day during the summer I would show up when the store opened a 9am. I was theoretically supposed to work until 5, but my uncle always wound up letting me leave early.

Most days I was free to enjoy the warm weather and sunshine by 4pm at the latest. There were a wide variety of strange customers. One was an extremely fat man who, amazingly enough, was also a volunteer firefighter in town. I couldn't believe how much food he purchased on a daily basis - it could have fed my whole family! Another strange customer was a snow plow operater by the name of Ted who mostly just hung out in the deli. He was a close friend of my uncle's and, during the summer, didn't really have much to do. He was an interesting guy to talk to and I enjoyed his company. The best part of this job was saving up enough money to take a trip to Europe the next summer.