A summer job in Spain... is it all it's cracked up to be?

A summer job can be a rewarding experience if you’re sensible.

You’re young, perhaps single, just finished your exams, have no commitments and have three or four months ahead of you in which to enjoy the summer before starting college, returning to college or entering the dreaded grown-up world of full-time employment, paying taxes, renting your own place and basically forgoing all the pleasures of youth for a perceived humdrum existence of working for (to use seventies parlance) ‘the man’…

So what’s the perfect thing to do, the ideal way to have one last blast of a summer before biting the bullet and joining the rat race? For hundreds of thousands of youngsters the world over the answer is to get a summer job abroad. Along with a few mates, what better way to wave goodbye to a carefree lifestyle than work in a bar in a tourist resort, share a dingy one-bedroom flat with eight others and start every day with a debilitating hangover? And for many Brits, Irish, Scandinavians, Germans and French, the Costa del Sol is one of the favoured areas in which to do so. And who could blame them? Sun, sea, fantastic nightlife, cheap accommodation, the promise of adventure and plenty of similarly liberated youngsters to engage with is a lure that proves too great for many. But those very same juicy, dangling carrots that entice them over in the first place can be the very ones that prove to be their downfall too. It takes a particularly level-headed type of youngster who can navigate the potholes of the summer job highway.

Fresh off an easyJet or Ryanair flight, the hopefuls drop CVs into bars, restaurants, cafés, nightclubs and hotels as the job hunt gets underway. It’s estimated that this summer close to 100,000 new work contracts will be signed in Andalucía from June to September, and nearly one million for the whole of Spain. The majority of these will be in the services industry catering for tourism. There are usually plenty of jobs going in the aforementioned types of establishments and young seasonal workers usually fill the posts. However, many don’t last.

The majority of the summer job casualties find that they perhaps overestimated their ability to combine 10 shots of tequila the night before with waiting tables in a busy family restaurant at lunchtime the next day. With the odour of last night’s rum and coke oozing from every pore, a pounding headache in the unforgiving midday heat and a gaggle of giddy kids running around and screeching as they are wont to do while on holiday, the summer employee often finds they have underestimated in equal measure how difficult a summer job can be. They soon find themselves quitting or being fired.

Each year a large portion return home early with their tails between their legs and nothing but sunburn and shame to show for their efforts. The ones with a bit more common sense however, can end up having a fantastic summer, earn a bit of money, perhaps learn a bit of Spanish and amass a great deal of life experience. It may take a bit of will power – especially if you’re young and looking for fun – but by not hitting the bars and clubs every night after work a summer job on the Costa del Sol can be a highly rewarding experience. The work is usually quite intensive given the large amount of tourists but that makes the downtime all the more enjoyable. You can hit the beaches during the day, get yourself a nice tan, meet some newfound friends for lunch, explore the many areas of the Coast, and then go to work and hopefully earn some good tips.

A summer job on the Costa del Sol is exactly what you make it. By reigning in the urge to party – at least occasionally – you can find yourself holding down a decent job and having the summer of your life. So many people who now live on the Coast are people who came here for a summer job and loved it so much they never left. Even if you do go home at the end of the season you’ll have a host of stories to tell and a well-deserved sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. But caution needs to be exercised if you’re not to become one of the Costa del Sol’s many summer job casualties…