No, I’m Not On Vacation—Here’s What Hourly Workers Actually Do All Summer
A tourist asked me that yesterday, actually. I was wiping down the checkout counter at the grocery store by the lake, my shirt sticking to my back from the walk-in cooler humidity, and she leaned on the belt and said “Must be nice, having all summer off like the college kids, right? Got all this free time to hit the beach.” I just laughed and said “Something like that” because I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’ve worked six days a week for the past month.
I know what hourly workers do all summer, because I’m one of them. Mia who waits tables at the breakfast diner downtown picks up every double shift she can get. Tourists come in hungover from camping or boating, leave 20% tips instead of the 10% the broke regular college kids leave, so she’s trading every weekend off for extra cash. Last week she told me she hasn’t been to the lake once this summer, even though it’s 10 minutes from her apartment. Her 12 year old sister goes to day camp during the week, and Mia’s only days off are Mondays, when camp is closed but all the camp counselors have off too so no one can watch her. Mia can’t afford to take a Monday off to take her swimming, so their mom watches her after her own shift at the local nursing home. That’s just how it goes.
Jake, the line cook at the bar down the street, got a second job doing landscaping this summer. His rent went up $130 when his lease renewed, and his hourly at the bar isn’t enough to cover it even with weekend tips. So he’s up at 5:30 every morning, mows lawns and pulls weeds for a local landscaping company until 1 in the afternoon, showers at the YMCA for $3 a day, then goes to the bar to cook burgers and wings until 10 at night. Last week he was 10 minutes late to his shift, said he fell asleep in the walk-in fridge while he was grabbing a box of frozen fries. Said it was the only cool spot in the whole building and he just zoned out for 15 minutes. Manager gave him a written warning, didn’t care that he’d already put seven hours of physical labor in that day already.
The other day a guy left me a $5 tip on his $18 grocery order, winked and said “Treat yourself to something fun this summer!” I thanked him, folded it into my apron, and later added it to the water heater fund I’ve got going. My water heater started leaking last month, and if I don’t replace it soon my landlord’s gonna charge me for the water damage to the kitchen floor. That $5 didn’t get me an ice cream cone or a day at the beach, it got me 1% closer to not being evicted. That’s summer for me.
It’s not all back-to-back shifts, though, if I’m being honest. Sometimes managers schedule you these weird split shifts because they don’t want to pay you overtime, so you end up with three or four hours of nothing in the middle of the day. Going home isn’t worth it—gas is $3.50 a gallon, my place is 15 minutes from the store, so I just park at the city park a block away and sit in my car with the windows down. I got this beat up 90s romance novel from the library sale for 50 cents, I read a chapter or two, eat a cherry popsicle I buy from the gas station, and swat mosquitoes. It’s kind of nice, honestly? It’s the only quiet I get all week. But it’s not vacation, you know? I’m just killing time until I have to go back and work.
Another thing no one really talks about—we’re all saving as much as we can right now because we know the slow season’s coming. Once September hits, all the tourists leave, the lake closes up, and the town gets quiet. Management cuts hours, because they don’t need as many people working when only the old regulars are coming in for their weekly milk and bread. Last winter I was only getting 18 hours a week, I had to borrow $200 from my mom to pay my electric bill when the heat was running nonstop. So every extra shift I pick up this summer, half the money goes straight into a mason jar savings I have for winter. I don’t get to spend it on fun stuff.
My cousin posted a reel on Instagram last week of her drinking wine on a hill in Tuscany, captioned “Summer break is my favorite break!” All my aunts commented under it tagging me saying “When are you gonna take a nice trip, honey?” and I just didn’t reply. What am I gonna say? That I can’t take three days off, let alone two weeks, because if I do my manager will give my regular hours to someone else who said they need more work? That I can’t afford a $200 plane ticket, let alone a hotel in another country? It’s not that I’m bitter, exactly. It’s just that people have such a different idea of what summer is, if they don’t work hourly.
Tonight I got off at 7:30, stopped at the gas station for a cheap lemonade and a bag of cheetos, and I’m sitting on my porch right now. The people two houses down are having a BBQ, I can smell the hamburgers. My feet still ache from standing all day on the concrete floor, and my old fan in the bedroom died yesterday, so I’m gonna use the extra $120 I made covering a coworker’s vacation shift this week to buy a new one. Tomorrow I have to open the store at 6am, so I gotta go inside and pack my lunch in an hour.
Some days I make more than I do in the winter, some days I get these weird little quiet moments in the park that are kind of nice. But I’m not on vacation. That’s what we do all summer, mostly. We work, we save for the slow times that we know are coming, we grab what little bits of cool and quiet we can get between shifts. That’s it. There’s no big punchline, no nice wrap up. It’s just how summer goes when you get paid by the hour. (Word count: 1127)
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » No, I’m Not On Vacation—Here’s What Hourly Workers Actually Do All Summer