A summer job can
By Kinohi Nishikawa
be an elusive thingAFTER completing my first year of college in New Hampshire, I was eager to come home to Hawaii for summer vacation. I couldn't wait to get my hands on a bowl of saimin, a car's steering wheel and -- most importantly -- a newspaper so I could begin searching the classifieds for a summer job.
I wanted to work to lift some of the exorbitant costs of a college education off my parents' shoulders. During the rest of the year I help pay my way through college by preparing and serving food in a dining hall.
I assumed that it would not be too difficult to get a job in my hometown. I'm responsible and reasonably intelligent. At Kamehameha Schools I was an honors graduate and a Sterling Scholar awardee. I didn't expect to get every job that I applied for, but I believed that my intelligence, personality and job experience would earn me a steady summer position.
After a month of ad-highlighting and form filling, I became disheartened by the vicious cycle. Nobody was willing to grant me the chance to prove my determination and productivity.
A vacuum cleaner store representative insisted she needed no new employees for her telemarketing staff, yet her classified ad asking for help appears in the paper to this day.
A "staffing service" (just a snobby title for a temp agency) secretary said she found my 65 words-per-minute typing speed and professional attitude impressive. She guaranteed that I would have work by mid-June, but I have yet to receive a phone call confirming my first assignment.
Being a host on a catamaran cruise sounded like an ideal job at first. When I was informed, however, of the company's refusal to validate parking for the employees' parking lot, I calculated my daily "earnings" at around a negative $10. That was one instance where I didn't mind receiving a rejection notice.
One fast-food joint thought it would be funny to call me back for a two-minute second interview. The manager simply wanted to confirm my inability to remain with the company for more than one year. Besides, she lectured, the training period lasts three months! They must offer some really intense burger-flipping lessons.
AFTER enduring countless experiences like these, I felt like a modern-day Job hopelessly in search of a job. I was enraged, shocked, defeated, humbled. During my period of unemployment, I sold mangos on the side of the road.
The bottom line was that no company would hire me for just three months. I was not upset so much by being denied the chance to perform jobs I knew I could handle, but I was upset by being lied to, deceived by and manipulated by almost every potential employer.
Considering how increasingly mobile Hawaii students are becoming in their scholarly, athletic and cultural pursuits, I am incensed by the idea that other young people also have to endure this treatment simply because they choose to leave home temporarily.
In all honesty, getting a job would have been easier if I had just told interviewers that I was a University of Hawaii student planning to live in Hawaii for the next three years.
It was a tempting alternative, but telling a lie would have placed me on the same level of those employers inept enough to believe that an easy-to-fabricate time commitment is the best indicator of quality, dedication and character.
Kinohi S.S. Nishikawa is a 1997 graduate of Kamehameha Schools and is gainfully employed as a pizza delivery driver for Domino's through September, when he returns to Dartmouth College. Rant & Rave is a Tuesday Star-Bulletin feature
allowing those 12 to 22 to serve up fresh perspectives.
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