Summer Jobs--Learning While Getting a Salary

Editor’s Note: The Times has selected three Los Angeles-area youths to write about their summer job experiences and impressions. Their essays will appear over the next few weeks.

Some of her friends thought Claudia Rios should take it easy before beginning college this fall. Instead, the 17-year-old South-Central Los Angeles resident took a summer job at a medical center near Hollywood.

“My friends say, ‘Can’t you just kick back?’ ” said Rios, an aspiring physician. “They don’t understand. I’d rather work.”

Rios is one of more than 23 million youths nationwide who will make this summer a working vacation, sacrificing fun in the sun for cash and on-the-job experience. Although often temporary and sometimes menial, summer jobs can nevertheless leave a long-lasting impression on teens as they take their initial tour of the working world.

These early jobs can play a major role in shaping attitudes toward work and future career choices. A summer job can offer a first look at “the social and interpersonal aspects of work, the ethics of working and exposure to new and different adults,” said Linda Laughlin, executive director of the National Youth Employment Coalition, a New York-based group.

Even a job that leaves a young person bored can be of help in the long run, said Jerome M. Rosow, president of the Work in America Institute. “It creates an incentive to go back into school. They say, ‘I don’t want to get stuck in a job like this.’ ”

Brent McFarland knows about boring jobs. The 17-year-old San Pedro resident once worked in a fast-food chain and vows he never will again.

His current summer job fits in with plans to enter the architectural field. McFarland earns $5 an hour taking measurements at building sites, finishing up blueprints and working on office chores at Rodin Bieberly Associates, a San Pedro architectural firm.

McFarland had drawn up a set of blueprints for a house his parents are building when the architects at Rodien Bieberly, who were overseeing the project, took note. They offered him a job last spring as part of the work-study program at San Pedro High School, where McFarland will be a senior next fall.

“I was really looking forward to getting this job,” he said. “I wanted to work at something I enjoyed and not something I had to do.”

McFarland has already learned some lessons that were never taught in the classroom. For instance, the lanky surfer has taken to wearing slacks and ties at work--even though his co-workers dress more casually.

“You kind of catch more respect in a way,” said McFarland, one of six employees at the firm. “I’m the youngest one here. So, everyone tended to pick on me a bit. It’s gotten a little better since then. People look at you differently. It’s kind of weird.”

McFarland wanted his job primarily for experience. But 16-year-old Jennie Fuguet of Dana Point needed a job to pay for insurance on the 1981 Honda Civic her father had given her. While financial reasons were her main reason for working, Fuguet wanted something that she felt was lacking in her life.

“I thought it would make me more responsible,” said Fuguet, who will begin her junior year next fall at Capistrano Valley High School. “Usually everybody else has to pay for my stuff.”

So, on a busy Memorial Day weekend, Fuguet began her first job by serving popcorn and soda from behind the concession stand at the Edwards Cinema in Mission Viejo.

“There were a lot of people, and I was so nervous,” she said. “But there was this other girl who trained me and helped.”

Fuguet’s evening shift, which begins at 6 p.m. and lasts until the theater closes, lets her enjoy the beach during the day. But it puts an end to nights out dancing or roller-skating with friends.

“I don’t get to see (films) anymore,” said Fuguet, whose moviegoing is now limited mostly to 15-minute work breaks in one of the theaters. “I get so intrigued, but then you have to go back to work.”

While Fuguet drives to work in just 15 minutes, it takes Rios an hour and a change of buses to commute from her home in South-Central Los Angeles to Kaiser Permanente’s Los Angeles Medical Center.

But the time and effort are worth it, said Rios, a Jefferson High School graduate who will enter UC Riverside this fall as a biology major. Rios, who earns $4.24 an hour, helps discharge and transfer patients as part of the company’s summer program for economically disadvantaged youth.

Rios’ main reason for taking the job was to gain experience working with patients, which can be a tricky matter.

“You have to learn that sick people are not the best people to get along with,” said Rios, who has performed hospital volunteer work in the past. But “I like working with people. I don’t like being by myself.”

Her full-time summer job means that Rios will have to sacrifice time with family and friends. But she has few regrets about taking her first steps down a career path.

“I’m ready. I’m finally going to get out into the real world. It’s about time,” she said.