JOBS: Behind the Summer Toil Lies an Opportunity

Jack Clune has had the last laugh, that’s for sure. He’s on the boats out in San Diego Bay all day, and earning $4 an hour to boot.

“And it was such a close call,” he says. “Half of us from USD (University of San Diego) High School decided to go to Sea World, the other half decided to come here to work as deck hands on the ferries and tourist boats, because one of our fathers worked for the company.

“The Sea World guys thought they’d be riding Shamu every second day, getting to know the dolphins, dancing with “City Lights” . . . Know where they are? They’re in a warehouse where you never see the light of day! They could be in Chicago for all they can tell. Whereas we, we’re out here sailing in the sun. Nice people. Tips on the restaurant boats. Boy, did we get a good laugh. As a summer job, who could ask for anything more?” Clune said.

A casual look at youths at summer jobs--those who found their own as well as those who found positions through public and private employment programs--shows they have infiltrated the workplace at just about every echelon.

In fact, you could be forgiven for believing the whole of San Diego is run by students this summer. In restaurants, parks, hospitals, even the mayor’s office, you come across these faces that are too bright to be lifers in the job, too eager to please to have been dealing with the maddening habits of humanity for anything more than a month or two.

For a tourist-loaded, building-boom border town like San Diego, the summer swell reaches beyond the beach and the barometer. Places such as the zoo, the Wild Animal Park, ice cream factories and Seaport Village all have to expand for the crowds--the summer segment of the staggering 30 million people who visit San Diego each year--and they depend on good, cheap, young labor.

It’s almost impossible to ascertain how many summer jobs there are out there. But 1986 figures show that nearly 45,000 11th and 12th graders in San Diego County worked this summer, and that doesn’t count other young people who have left school and those at junior colleges.

San Diego has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country--right now it’s just over 4%--although, as always, it’s an entirely different story for teen-agers. In California, youth unemployment ran at 17.6% in July.

Star and Crescent Boat Co. officials say that people love to have students playing sailors. Even professional crew members seem to like them around, despite having to teach them everything from wrapping hawsers around bollards to issuing pails to queasy customers. “It’s just a lot of fun having them on board,” said Coronado ferry skipper Will Wilson. “It’s nice to have fresh faces.”

One of Clune’s early bits of fun was at his own expense. Not long after he began--he knew nothing about boats at that point--he was sent to the paddle wheel of the Monterey to belay a hawser. He slipped and went overboard, providing that afternoon’s tourists something to write about on their post cards.

But apart from that, it has been the greatest summer for him and his school buddies. They’re going to try to reserve the same jobs for their college years.

Across the waters in posh Coronado Cays, underneath a 100-gallon gas water heater, 16-year-old Bill Carey is unscrewing a broken pilot feeder tube.

“OK, Bill? See it?” asks his boss, Glenn Shirer. Shirer was in the Navy for 22 years. When he says “just so,” things are just so.

“This is a high-recovery burner; 400,000 BTUs, so we can’t get it wrong. It’s probably three-eighths or seven-sixteenths. OK? See if you can get that assembly out of there. And that’s just the start. Today I’m going to show you how to build a new one of these, on the spot.”

Shirer had been fixing the plumbing in the home of young Carey’s parents one day at the beginning of summer. As he worked, Shirer asked Carey what his plans were for the summer. Carey said he had been thinking vaguely of getting a job cooking somewhere, as he had done back in native Ocean City, N.J., at Vito’s Pizzeria on the Boardwalk.

“How about working for me?” Shirer asked. “I could teach you a lot, if you’re prepared for real hard work.”

Next morning Carey was at it, learning how to bend tubes, clear drains, install Roman tubs, fit friction rings, analyze garbage disposal breakdowns and pacify maids frightened from flooded floors.

“I had wanted to be a pilot, but I might do this instead. There’s so much to learn, and it can be a good business,” Carey says.

And the worst job?

“The toughest?” He looks like it’s a silly question. “Clogged-up toilets.”

“Bring You Own Banana! Help Make Our 300 foot Banana Split!” reads the sign 16-year-old Tanya Ware and 15-year-old Arlene Oquendo are helping make. It’s just another idea they have for keeping the youngsters under their charge creatively occupied. They have been hired by the San Diego Housing Commission, at $3.35 an hour (though they are paid by REGY, the San Diego Regional Youth Employment Program) to spend the summer keeping kids of a Southeast housing development off the streets and creatively occupied.

This week, they are making puppets for a puppet show, painting pictures and teaching the kids--mostly 6 or 7--to lip-sync to rock records.

Other weeks, they’ve made water slides, taken the youngsters to Padre games and taught them to play soft hockey--with a sponge rubber ball and sponge rubber wrapped sticks.

Annie McMullen, who manages the housing complex, said the girls have been the best--they’ve filled the vacuum for all these kids during vacation time. They’ve also had to worry about problems such as abandoned children and child abuse.

Arlene has earned about $800 this summer. She wants to spend it on clothes. Tanya is giving her mom $100 of each monthly payment. The rest will go to school clothes and supplies.

Even in the mayor’s office there have been half a dozen seasonal workers. Charity Jackson and Janita Johnson, both 17, from Southeast San Diego, have been working for $3.35 per hour in the office, typing out the mayor’s letters, keeping records and picking up computer skills in the process. Jackson wants to come back full time when she graduates.

Susan Beel, who’s studying for a communications degree, has been interning in the office--no salary, but getting credit at UC San Diego--just for the experience of working in the corridors of power. She has written many a letter on behalf of the mayor--thanks for contributions, thanks for suggestions, congratulations on awards.

“I was never quite conscious that other people probably actually write 90% of the material that goes out under the mayor’s name,” Beel said.

She also watched the muscling of departments in the ever-robust jockeying for power--people wanting to make sure their representatives were at certain meetings, were part of budgetary decision-making.

“It’s been a real eye-opener--just how many people and sensitivities the mayor has to think of in everything she does and says. She’s thinking on her feet every moment of the day,” Beel said.

Does it give her political ambitions herself?

“Not me. I’m no good at thinking on my feet. I’m better writing things down calmly. But it’s good experience.”

Even Mayor Maureen O’Connor once dipped her feet in the pool of summer work. Her first job was as a maid at one of the Mission Bay hotels. The money helped pay her way through college.

Another citizen’s first job was a little different. The Rev. George Walker Smith, black activist minister of Christ United Presbyterian Church, started out earning 50 cents a week in Alabama, taking care of 300 chickens, when he was 9.

“That started me off early with an appreciation of the dignity of labor,” he says, even though it was “near slave conditions.” Now, after 31 years as minister of Christ United, he’s still fighting for work opportunities for the mainly minority youths in his part of town.

Things are not right around Fir Street. Here, among youth, the unemployment rate is 30% to 40%, according to Smith.

Part of the problem is considered demographic. Progress is moving north: Rancho Santa Fe, Rancho Penasquitos, the vast building developments either side of Interstate 5. The builders, the office glass-houses, the Taco Bells can hardly get enough labor to keep to schedule. Local youths, generally white sons of white-collar workers, want--and can get--classier jobs in high-tech companies or law offices, Smith believes.

Transportation Problem

So then one of the problems for other youngsters becomes transportation. Catching buses from Southeast San Diego can be all-day affairs. But even downtown, all the scarcer summer jobs--cooks, waiters, hotel front-line employees--go to white kids, Smith said.

“How many minority kids do you see hired at Seaport Village, huh? It’s not just inner-city problems, or transport, it’s attitude. How many minority youths has the Port District hired this summer? The battle for equality just goes on.”

Of course, there is a plethora of organizations with dizzying initials and acronyms set up to help young people get jobs, particularly summer jobs. REGY, RETC, MAAC, OTS, SER, PIC all are outfits created to help one or other aspect of the problem.

REGY is proud of the fact that it has helped 1,100 disadvantaged young people find jobs this summer. In fact, it is still running classes to help them make the most of their chances when they’re applying for jobs.

“It’s OK to brag about yourself!” shouts Alma K. Tijerina to a class of mainly minority kids who need tail-end summer jobs to help them through the next semester. “Remember, each time, there are others behind you waiting to brag about themselves.”

“What do you expect from this job?” asks the rangy kid behind the desk playing the boss this time.

“What do I expect?” calls Demetria Peoples, 19, turning to Tijerina in desperation.

Communication the Key

“Well, think about it. Money, yeah, we know we all expect that, so don’t mention that. That’s not an answer. You expect to learn new skills. You expect to meet new people. The main thing is they want to know you have good communications skills. If you can communicate well with them, you’ll be able to with their clients. Come out with something positive, that’s the main thing.”

Tijerina is perhaps the most important link in the job-seeking process for young people: She gets them practicing in front of peers all the awkward questions bosses throw at applicants. She tells them about appropriate dress, about consistency, all the things that bosses yearn for in their employees.

“Now I want everyone to repeat this after me,” she says as the class ends. “Loud, good and loud. A good employee is: On time! Neat! Honest! Drug Free! Reliable! Exhibits positive attitude! Uses appropriate language . . . . “

The class is breaking up.

“And don’t forget tomorrow’s Job Fair. They’re hiring directly!”

The Job Fair was held in Smith’s church hall at 30th and Fir streets. Representatives from Wendy’s, Taco Bell, and even the California Conservation Corps with its severe pamphlets containing a dozen reasons why applicants should not join their ranks, wait for young hopefuls screened by the rows of job counselors. Lines of kids have turned up, mostly beautifully turned out for the occasion. Demetria Peoples and her sister Paulette are here. Demetria gets a lead for a receptionist’s job at the Atlas Health Club in Mission Valley.

“Now remember,” calls Tijerina as Demetria leaves for the interview. “Be positive! Ask questions!”

“She’ll be fine,” Tijerina says later. “She speaks up for herself. She just needed a little confidence from our practice sessions.”

Meanwhile, back on the ferryboat Silvergate, Jack Clune’s deck-hand shift has been taken over by 18-year-old, soon-to-be college freshman Liana Durham. She was hired to run the snack bar aboard, but that didn’t make enough money. So she collects tickets and throws ropes, a lone young woman among the 10 or so deck hands hired for the summer, and continues saving her earnings for her next car.

Four days later, Demetria has gotten through to her second interview. They’ve promised to let her know this week.

Did she answer all those questions like: “What do you expect from this job?”

“That’s the problem,” she says. “I couldn’t.”

“Why?”

“They never asked them.”