Being a Camp Counselor

Ever since I was eight years old, being a camp counselor always sounded like the coolest job ever. When I was finally old enough to be a counselor at the camp I went to for eight summers, I was so stoked! I got to pull out my big pink trunk and back up all my outdoorsy but still cute summer clothes. My friend Erin and I drove there together and when we got there we couldn’t wipe the smiles off our face. “This is going to be the best summer ever!” but boy was I wrong….. It was only the second day of the first session, and the first day was my day off so really I haven’t done anything to show weather I was a hard worker or not. I was sitting with my cabin during breakfast, and Portnoy, my boss strolls right on over with a creepy grin on his face. “Helloo Ally can I talk to you after breakfast?” “Uhh yeah sure, I’m almost done!” I became a little nervous but I knew he couldn’t have been mad at me because it was only the morning of my first day. After I finish breakfast, I tell my girls to get ready for the day and I go to look for Portnoy, I found him… “Lets go on a stroll.” Ew another creepy smile he gave me. We begin to walk and he talks to me about how he likes his camp to be run and that us previous campers are difficult to train. I just look at him in confusion, I have no idea where this is going because I haven’t been difficult at all. “You are one of my worst counselors Ally.” He said in a stern voice, my eyes began to glaze over. I’ve never been criticized on my work effort. “But it’s my first day, sir. How can you assume this??” I was in shock, this was no longer going to be the best summer later. Because of our little talk I was late to my activity that I worked at so my other boss yelled me at. “As the weeks went on, some were better then others but my dream of being a counselor did not live up to its expectation. My bosses were assholes and never appreciated my work or anyone else’s. On the night of the 4th of July, three of my bosses, were arrested for dui’s, public intoxication and fighting with a police officer. It was a sad day but we were now down three bosses and a few weeks after that Portnoy fired two of our employees for not doing, the best job that they could do. This made my job a lot more stressful. We figured out our under staffed problem a few weeks later and all we had to do was trudge on. I was a relief counselor and slept on a cabin with 6 other female counselors. On the second night of the third session, we found a bat flying around in the cabin. Of course we all freaked out like little girls and fled to our staff lounge, which we called “The Palace” it was no such thing as a palace. The next day, we went to our cabin to see if the bat was still there. Oh it was still there plus 3 other bats sleeping on the ceiling. For the next week, we had to sleep in our staff lounge, in an up right position on a lumpy couch. I was in hell, I was tired and irritable and one day after my shower I went into my trunk to pull out some clothes, I found a bat sleeping right on top of my clothes. I lost it, I started yelling and screaming and then crying. I decided to take my hour break off early and I called home crying, my dad offered to come and pick me up because he felt so bad. I decided to stay at tuff it out I only had 2 and a half weeks left and I’d just make the most of it. Being a counselor had a lot of up and downs, good stores and bad stories. I am glad I did it, I learned a lot and I even had a lot of fun. When I got back home, I decided to not ever go back to work at that camp ever again.