By Annie Jones
Kathleen Corrigan feels fortunate that she only saw one or two penises at work this summer.
She didn’t clean the David statue, paint nudes, or write for Playgirl. The second-year radio and television arts student worked 12 to 13 hour days for a landscaping company with a “huge crew of smelly boys” who liked to play an interesting game. They would hide behind things, wait until somebody approached, and then whip out their penises.
But Corrigan adds she was lucky. Usually the boys were usually nice enough to warn her when they were about to unveil their peckers.
Corrigan is among the multitudes of Ryerson students who sign up for sometimes less than desirable summer jobs to earn enough cheese to return to our hallowed halls in September.
Another student with a shitty job (literally) is Ashley MacDonald, first-year sociology, who whisked up wads of toilet paper for wads of cash by “cleaning shitters” at a campground.
MacDonald, who now claims to be a pretty good toilet cleaner, recalls, “Someone shit in the sink once. I didn’t clean it up but somebody did.” The Shittler, as the suspect came to be known, welcomed MacDonald one day with a question mark on the mirror written in the prankster’s fragrant namesake.
One second-year RTA student, who wishes to remain anonymous, worked at local downtown radio station. He spent his Saturday nights working from 4 p.m. to midnight for a month and a half without pay. The student says he hassled the station to pay him for two months, until the station manager said, “I’m the station manager of a Toronto radio station and I’ll pay you when I’m good and ready, and if you fight me, I’ll make you unable to work in the industry.”
Alana Comeau’s career wasn’t threatened by her summer job, but her safety was. Before entering her second year at Ryerson this fall, Comeau tended bar on a cruise ship where she worked around exposed wires, and spent five shifts in a hull that had a carbon monoxide leak.
The ship wasn’t exactly the Love Boat either.
The cruise was owned by a woman and her husband, except that term was used loosely. “[He] started screwing a really young bartender,” Comeaus says. The new couple later moved in together.
Her worst shift on the S.S. Drama Queen had Comeau cleaning the ship from 9 a.m. to 2 a.m., not exactly mixing drinks.
But whether it’s being alarmed by someone’s anatomy, or cleaning up foreign feces, isn’t it all worth it when you pass under the watchful eye of Egerton Ryerson, walking to the class that you worked your buns off to pay for?
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