Image: Cubicles, 2006. Wikimedia Commons.
If you, like us, are sulking at your desk while the rest of the world festoons Facebook with holiday snaps, perhaps you'll find some comfort in these tales of less-than-ideal summer jobs:
1. Caregiving in Suburban Amsterdam
In the torrid height of an Amsterdam summer, watch a substitute caregiver sweat out his shift in an enigmatic old man’s stifling house in Anton Valens’s “The Ohio Hat.”
Image: Hoofddorp, the Netherlands, 2007, photographed by Tasja. Wikimedia commons.
2. Cucumber Picking in Schnelldorf
Then snoop through Martin Karbowski’s “Gastarbeiter,” his diary of his stint as a guest worker in Germany, slogging through eighteen-hour days in the cucumber fields with a crew of larcenous Bulgarians and Poles.
Image: Virginia, 2013. Photographed by the US Department of Agriculture. Creative Commons.
3. Lovesick Museum Maintenance in Estonia
And for a summer job with unexpected benefits that backfire, check out Mehis Heinsaar’s “Death among the Icebergs,” set on a tiny Estonian island, in which a hulking museum maintenance man is swept off his feet by a Chilean student’s sudden passion, only to find himself just as abruptly frozen out.
