My Summer Job in 2006: Airport Parking
There comes a time in every poor students life when they have to give up lying around all day playing Xbox and eating cold pizza has to give way to the summer break when work becomes the dish of the day. There are a huge range of summer job out there for students to full, providing them with a crucial source of income, but also allow them to get some valuable life experience and meet some interesting people. When my student life was in full swing a mere four years ago, I was obliged to give up my planned summer of loafing around to go and work in airport parking.
As I live very close to Gatwick airport I was able to easily negotiate a position as a car parker with a well known parking company. Despite my slight annoyance about being ripped from the cosy confines of my bed on my first 6am start, I was quitely confident I’d enjoy the job, mainly becuase I knew Id’ get the chance to drive a heap of expensive, fast cars! Gatwick hotels. I wasn’t disappointed, within my first couple of days I had driven a BMW M3 a Bentley Continental GT and BMW 745, I was like a kid in candy shop.
The novelty of driving all these different cars quickly wore off however as mundane Honda Civics and 1987 Land Rovers were only occasionally punctuated by boy racers dreams. The workload itself was heavy and created a lot more physical fatigue than you might guess, after parking one car we were required to hot-foot it to a van that we jumped in the back of which took us back to the reception to park our next vehicle, this went on for 12 hours! By the end of a shift we all felt like we could have slept in a ditch next to the runway, let a alone a plush suites in Heathrow hotels!
