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The Plant
April 24, 1997 issue
The job search is on
By An Dieu Pham
It was Monday morning. In the office of one of Montreal’s Student Employment Centres, Greg Feng, a second-year Social Science student, was scrutinizing the boards where job offers were posted. From time to time he jotted down something on a piece of paper. Like many students nearing the end of the winter semester, Greg is searching for a summer job. After a few phone calls, and an hour later, he obtained an interview for a fast food counter in Old Montreal.
Many of us will shortly find ourselves in a similar job hunting predicament. Those who are fortunate enough to succeed will most probably be employed in the sales and service industry, according to Annick Langlois, Director of Canada Human Resources Centre for Students. Langlois said that part-time and summer job opportunities are good, though “unfortunately we have a lot of employers that only pay minimum wages. But we try to [make a deal regarding] the salary with the employer,” she said.
Nonetheless, students do not seem picky about the minimum wage issue; Something is better than nothing. “A waiter job or something… I’m looking for pretty much anything, because I need the money,” said Mackenzie Charles, a Vanier Social Science student, who was also browsing the job postings at the employment centre. An anything kind of job could be anywhere from fast food counters to telemarketing to pushing an ice cream cart.
So what is it like to be working these types of jobs?
For Kitana Smith, a second-year Commerce student, who works at McDonalds, it is a job where “bosses push you as much as possible to be faster, and you can’t answer the customers even if they’re wrong,” she said.
For Fanny Lachance, a nursing student at CEGEP Maisonneuve, working at McDonalds made her “become more tolerant and patient. Lachance explained that her tasks consist of taking orders, taking care of the cash, serving customers, mopping the floors, and checking the foods’ expiry date. Lachance said that “a lot of stress is involved because managers are evaluating your performances so often. Your feet hurt so much at the end of the day, from running around,” she said. Albeit, “it’s an honest paying job,” said Smith. “It’s not a bad pay for a small job… there are promotions, and outings that are paid for you.” Moreover, Lachance said the job brings her personal satisfaction. “In one of my evaluations, they said I wasn’t fast enough and that I didn’t smile enough when I was serving customers. But knowing that I’ve improved since, the personal satisfaction I get from it is a really rewarding feeling.”
Another typical service job is waiting. Paid minimum wage ($5,95) plus $10-$15 of tips a night, Cindy Mason, a second-year Creative Arts student, described her waiting job in a fast food restaurant as methodical and mindless. “It doesn’t take much thinking, it’s very simple,” she said. Her job involves taking orders, serving drinks, preparing different juices, cleaning tables, preparing bags for French fries, mopping floors and filling up salt, pepper and vinegar bottles.
Although Mason complained that her boss is “a real pain in the neck because he criticizes every trivial thing,” she says she likes the job for its monotony. As for Doris Rissa, a second-year Social Science student and a waitress at Pizza Donini, the toughest part of the job is the late shifts. “It’s hard in the beginning, but once you get the hang of it, you could do it with your eyes closed. And the tips are good,” Rissa said.
Yet another service job, not unlike waiting, is bartending. To enjoy this job, “you have to be night person since bars usually close around 3:30 a.m.,” said Mason who had previously worked as a bartender. “It can be fun, lots of joking going on.” Although she admitted that she quit because she was tired of the atmosphere.
“There’s only so much I can take. It could be depressing after awhile, people sitting around, telling how miserable they are. Then someone would be drunk and starts hitting on you.”
However if serving food and drinks is not your cup of tea, but you would still like to tend to customers, then the fashion retail industry might be the way to go. “It’s pretty fun. You get to meet all kinds of people from business people to kids,” said Nadia Richard, third-year History student at UQUAM and salesperson at Sirens clothing store. Richard said even though the job is not related to her studies or career goals, “you learn very important things like people skills; it forces you to come out of your shells.”
In most clothing stores, the salary is either minimum wage or on commission. “It’s not bad, but it’s not the best because we put in a lot of hours,” said Richard. “9 to 9 on your feet, it’s long…it’s painful. It’s hard on the nerves and it requires a lot of concentration to serve your customers and keep an eye on the store, and keep the store in order, all at the same time.” And keeping cool with “rude customers and customers with attitude” is also part of being a salesperson, said Richard.
Though people hired in sales jobs usually go through training where they learn the five-step technique to ring a sale, Richard said the most important thing to know about the job is “asking customers the right questions to help them find what need, and knowing your store by heart.”
Rissa whose second job is selling jeans said getting special discounts is also a perk she likes about her work. However trying to reach the sales quotas is a constant pressure. The way they keep track of employee performances there, Rissa explained, is a sales record book, where “I get a stupid gold star if I reach the quotas and a red dot if I don’t.”
For those who don’t want face to face interaction with customers, perhaps telemarketing is more suited to their taste as it was for Rachel Brown, a Commerce student at Champlain College. Brown said that though not all telemarketing companies are dishonest businesses, one company she worked for in the past summer “was the worse job I’ve ever had in my life. I didn’t like having to lie just to sell. I felt very bad about it, but I needed the money,” Brown said.
Telemarketing firms, Brown said, are rather strict on selling quotas. She added that these types of jobs usually don’t require experience because companies hire and fire on employees (who are not meeting their standards) on a regular basis. In any case, they provide training sessions to new employees, teaching them various “telemarketing strategies to convince people to buy.”
But for a low-pressure and less supervised job, there is always baby-sitting. Jessica Viens, first- year Social Science student and Georgia Fillipas a second-year Creative Arts student, both agreed that being with kids is the best part about this line of work, despite it being underpaid most of times. Wages vary from $3 to $5 an hour. It goes without saying that baby-sitting requires people who have patience and who like kids. “Once this kid didn’t want to take his bath… but beside that it’s usually lots of fun, said Fillipas.
But if you want to get out of the house, into the sun and onto a bicycle, perhaps you would like to become a small child’s idol, the ice cream man/woman. Popsobec is one of the companies that own ice cream carts and hire people to pedal around and sell frozen delicacies.
Andy Rivas, a McGill graduate student in Languages, has an ice cream cart in front of the Biodome. On an average day, which is noon to 5 p.m., Rivas said he earns about $50. The pay, a percentage of what he sells, varies from “$50 to $150, and sometimes more,” depending on the weather and events that are happening.
“Meeting people from everywhere and the money are some of best things about it,” said Rivas. Unlike working in parks, Rivas said being at the Biodome, “you can just stand there, and people will come to you.” But the less pleasant part, he said is “standing in the sun for so long and when it rains I can’t work.” This seasonal job begins in April and ends in October.
Another location chockfull of seasonal jobs is La Ronde where you can work and get tanned in the same time. Beside having free access to the amusement park, “it’s a lot of fun to be outdoors,” said Cynthia Perri, a second-year Pure and Applied Science student at CEGEP Maisonneuve, who worked at the park during the past two summers.
“But the heat is the worse thing, when it’s like 30 degrees three days in a row,” said Pierri. Employees do a little bit of everything, she explained. “They choose to guard various rides, or they do general maintenance to clean the place. The salary is good even for new employees; they make above minimum wage.”
Pierri said new employees are given a training session at first, then every time they work at a new ride, someone would accompany them to show the safety and mechanical procedure of that ride. Students can apply for jobs at La Ronde through the Bureau Acces Montreal.
Of course the list of employment possibilities extend as far as the imagination, where self-employment is also a possibility.
For Greg, meanwhile, it’s been a week after his interview. He calls back the restaurant manager. Unfortunately, he did not get the job.
“They said they wanted someone with more experience in fast food counters…Anyways, I saw an ad for this telemarketing job downtown. I’ll give it a try,” he said.
And so the search continues.
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