School was over and I was in need of pesos, so I picked up the local newspaper for my hometown of Tacoma, Washington, and checked out the classified ads. There were very few employers looking for high school students, and I was just about to look elsewhere when I noticed an ad for summer festival workers.

You work for a weekend and get $7.50 an hour plus free drinks. The upside was short-term work with good pay. The downside, since I was 15, was that my mom had to work with me. So I ended up picking up other people's trash for three days in grungy clothes in front of my whole hometown while Mom parked the entertainment's cars and got paid much more. She also got a walkie-talkie. And all I got was heatstroke! Never will I do grounds maintenance at a festival again.