Summer Jobs

This summer practically everyone has a summer job, so I got one. I work at Lagoon in the merchandise department, so if your ever at Lagoon and I'm there working please refrain from laughing hysterically and move on. I really think that all teens start out working way too early, I mean we can't even drive, but we're off earning minimum wage, or less than minimum wage, it depends on where you work. But I'll take what money I can get, and at fourteen, 4.65$ and hour isn't so bad. It can be worse, for instance I worked at Crestwood Growers during the months of January, February and March, and it was not a pleasant experience at all. Our job at Crestwood was to take trees from Idaho and plant them in buckets then fill the buckets with dirt from a pile about the size of the average house. There was usually twelve pairs of 14-15 year olds working on Saturdays, and as the trees came in semi trucks, each day of work usually took about nine hours. It was pretty darn hard, and on days when the tree trucks were late, we then loaded planted trees into more trucks for about six hours. All that for about 4.18$ an hour wasn't worth it, but money is money, and I couldn't get it anywhere else.

When I started working the merchandise stands all by my self, some pretty weird things started happening. One of my intensely weird stories happened just last week, and I still can't get over it. It all started falling into place when I broke the cash register...
I was starting my shift at Rad Brad's (the store that you have to pass through to get to Lagoona Beach) and I was doing pretty good when this strange old man came wondering in and repeatedly asking where the sun tan lotion was. I directed him to the little rack stuffed chock full of all kinds of lotion, but the old man said kept saying "I don't want that, I want some lotion!" I had no idea what to say, so I apologized and told him that we didn't have the kind he wanted. He totally flipped out! He started rampaging around the store stating that "You really have it, you just don't want me to have any!" I was on the verge of running out the store and looking for someone with higher authority for help, but I decided to try one more time. I told him "Sir, I'm sorry but we don't have that kind of lotion, but if there is anything else that we could help you with we'd be happy to." Just as I said this, he stopped immediately and said, "Oh, in that case, where are your nearest bathrooms?" He said this as if he hadn't been ranting for a full five minutes, and, being a little shell shocked, I pointed him in the general direction trying to find the right words.
Another time happened at the same store, and the day was going pretty well. That's when my supervisor Becky came and told me she needed me to replace the other supervisor at the booth near Rattlesnake Rapids. It's a small booth, with no walls so people just walk through, and the racks hold sunglasses, necklesses, and other assorted novelties. Of course I said yes, and she explained to me that she thought that I was the hardest working, so I would be working the booth all by myself while both the workers up there took their breaks. It was a living nightmare. As I started working the bo0th, a lady came and asked me how much a small bag of polished rocks cost. As I turned to the price roster, I noticed that this booth had no price roster, in fact, there wasn't price tags on anything! So I had to call in to Merchandise headquarters and get the price for everything in the store as the line got longer...
Well, to sum it all up, the register ran out of receipt paper, the credit card machine malfunctioned, and Headquarters called to tell me that they told me the wrong prices! AAAUGHH!
It was way hard work, but the moral of this story is....work may be hard, but at least you learn the value of a dollar.

Oh, and in case your wondering, after taxes and uniform costs and other costs, my first pay check came to a whopping 13.89$ OH YEAH.

Test

I hate end of level testing, I just gets so tiring after a while. I know that we need the testing though, because it's the only way to see if any of us learned anything or not, but some tests are really lame. I think that if you get high grades all throughout the school year, you shouldn't have to take the tests. Of course this would conflict with the large amounts of students that fly under the radar and get barely passing grades, but when it comes to the end of level tests they cram all the night before and pass the test with pretty good grades. I still think though, that if you survive through the end of the year without completely failing a class, you shouldn't need a test at the end of the year to prove that you know it.

Another thing that I've heard throughout the school is that teachers don't review all that they should, and some kids don't do well because they forgot the massive amounts of information given to them at the beginning of the year. I have to agree with them on this point, we all could use a little more review. But I'm not saying that not everyone reviews, just some of the teachers refrain from refreshing. All in all, I know testing is a necessary item, but that doesn't mean that I have to like it right? In fact I don't think anyone at all likes it. Whoever reads this, I pay money to the first person who can show me someone who likes testing!