Summer Jobs for Jess

So Jess will be working part time at "awesome," which is what I call my job. It is awesome. She'll be working with the summer camp program, backing up the instructor, doing prep work, cleaning, doing dishes.

It's funny because her prerequisite for a job was to not work with children and to not work with food. And she's doing both at the same time.

I understand her not wanting to do those jobs, she hates children in large quantities for extended periods of time. She also didn't want to work at a pizza or coffee shop or in fast food.

The job at "awesome" is a little different. She'll be in a teaching setting. She'll be doing setup and prep, which will be different all the time. She does dishes at home very well, and at awesome she'll have a dishwasher... and it is in short bursts of time.

Her schedule is such that she has a ton of time open on other days. So I encouraged her to find a second part-time job, and figure out how to dovetail them together.

We got a call from our pastor the other day, saying that the church secretary had given her notice, and last Friday was her last day. He asked if Jess wanted to fill in for the summer because no one was biting at the job posting. So he offered the seat to her while she's here for the summer. She starts on Monday, which is great because her position at awesome doesn't start until the end of June. And it pays 5 more bucks an hour than the job at awesome does... so it will fill in the gaps very nicely.

Jessica isn't religious. She is more of a skeptic or an agnostic than anything else. When we stopped going to church, it was probably at the worst time for her development as someone who would be a believer. But we just couldn't be led by the voice coming out of the pulpit at the time, and we were both soured by the overall experience at the church we were going to, so we just stopped going for three years. We're at a nice church now, where politics aren't preached from the pulpit, and where the congregation doesn't pressure you into doing stuff. Or make you feel guilty for skipping 4 weeks straight (which I always hated).

Our pastor knows that Jess isn't very "churchy," and that doesn't bother him. He wanted her for her smarts, her ability, and her willingness. We have a lot of tourists stop at our church because it is a rather historic building with a world famous basement, and people just drop in all the time and want info. He feels that she'll be great at handling visitors, strangers, and will be able to communicate the historical importance of the story clearly and kindly. I'm kind of psyched that he asked, because other avenues of job hunting weren't paying off for her. She had applied to a couple places, but without work experience in retail they're not calling her.

So, it looks like she'll be a busy bee for a couple months. Which is good, she can contribute more to her education costs and get some experience, not just in the kitchen but an office.