In honor of the summer, each week we take turns to recount a summer job we had back in the day. [Editor's Note: Back in the day refers to when we were in school...sigh...college].

I had a slight panic attack this evening when I realized I had to write a post about a summer job and thought that I didn’t have any more summer jobs to write about. Alright, maybe not a panic attack but I didn’t know what to write about until WG2 informed me that my summer marketing internship counted as a summer job. So, with WG2′s approval, that’s what I’ll be writing about today. And next week.

I spent the spring of my junior year applying to every single editorial magazine internship that I could find. I had a phone interview here and an in-person interview there but nothing transpired. I had already sent my check to NYU for their summer housing program and needed a summer job desperately. My uncle was able to hook me up with an internship position at his financial company. Not exactly my dream job but it was a paid internship so at least I’d make some money.

Weeks earlier I had told the mother of the family I nannied for that I was looking for a job at a magazine. She had a friend who’s sister worked for a women’s magazine. She gave me the sister’s contact information and told me to send my cover letter and resume because they were looking for marketing interns. “Marketing?! I didn’t want to do that,” I thought to myself. “That’s what my Dad does and that’s boring”

When I hadn’t sent my resume or even reached out to the sister, I recieved a phone call from the mother pretty much yelling at me for not doing so. I was slightly shocked at first that she was scolding me for this but realized that she had reached out to someone on my behalf and was doing me a favor. It was rude of me not to take action. She called back later and apologized for acting like my mother but her first phone call was exactly what I needed. A little kick in the tush.

I immediately emailed my resume and soon had an interview lined up. I wore my my Andie Anderson interview outfit and was ready to find out why exactly a magazine needed a marketing intern anyway. What I learned was exciting and I really wanted the internship.

A few days later I recieved a phone call from my interviewer and found out that I got the internship. I was thrilled. But then I realized, I had to call my uncle and tell him I couldn’t intern for his company because I was offered a internship that I found more intersting.

WG2 and I moved into our NYU dorm for the summer and spent our first weekend in Manhattan watching Grey’s Anatomy DVD’s and exploring Canal Street. Then it was time for my first day and I was given the scariest task a boss could ever give Working Girl One: Phone calls. Over 150 phone calls.

Looks like Paul Thompson over at AskMen.com was wrong about women in the workplace. Not that any of us ever thought he was right. Women aren’t emotional, grudge-holding bitches. They are what companies need if they want to make money.

As a Working Girl, I often find it difficult to keep up with and stay in touch with my friends.

When I was younger, I moved a few times. I’m not talking the next town over, I’m talking halfway across the country. Twice. Since then, I’ve never been all that great in keeping touch. I’ve developed a pattern, after losing touch with many friends, of staying close with the people who are close by.

But lately, even with my friends who live in Manhattan, I feel like I’m losing touch. Sometimes I have no idea what’s going on in their lives. We are all on different schedules and doing different things on the weekends. My local college friends and I are finally getting together for dinner this week.

With my friends who are further away, I always have good intentions. To-do lists and post-its crowd my dresser with notes: “call so-and-so” or “send friend a birthday card.” I even go so far as to purchasing the card but it never gets mailed. You should see the box of cards I have.

Email doesn’t make it any easier. After sitting at a computer all day at work, and sometimes all evening to work on this lovely little blog you’re reading, the last thing I want to do is type up an email. I’ve tried taking time if I’m eating lunch at my desk for a few personal emails but I usually get distracted by an email popping up on my screen or a coworker popping up at my desk.

Sometimes I’m even this way with my family. I go far too long between phone calls to my granny and I could certainly call my mom and dad more often to check in.

I should mention that I’m not a phone person. Not at all.

Staying in touch is something at which I’d like to get better. Much better. How do you Working Girls keep in touch with friends and family? My first change: starting this weekend, I’m going to set aside some time on the weekends to make my (few) phone calls and send my emails. Instead of spending my Saturday morning perusing Facebook, I’ll actually get in contact with people.

Meeting Notes is a weekly feature. Here we will dish on tidbits, news, and important things we think Working Girls should know. So scroll down to hear what we think you should glean from this work week.

• Things not to do during your summer newspaper internship: Plagiarize. Colorado Springs Gazette intern, Hailey Mac Arthur, took passages from a New York Times article, used them in an article for the paper and was caught. [via Gawker]

• Want to make some moolah? Become a pharmacist. They have highest median wage for all female workers. [Forbes via Jezebel]

• The AP recently sent it’s employee’s guidelines for social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. It outlines several things including: managers cannot “friend” their employees on Facebook but employees may “friend” their bosses and they’d love it if employees could put links to AP stories on Twitter. [via Gawker]

• Many of us Working Girls are cooking for one every night. Need some cooking inspiration? Check out What We Eat When We Eat Alone, a book that includes some interesting recipes for one. What do I eat when I eat alone? Mayonnaise Sandwiches (must be Hellman’s). Told you it was interesting. [via Serious Eats]

• We aren’t the only Working Girls in town. Karen Burns is the ultimate Working Girl, she’s had over 50 jobs! She had some questions for us and we happily answered. [via Karen Burns Working Girl]

My boyfriend and I fight about two things: how messy I think he his and his work hours.

I work your typical 9am to 6pm schedule. He is a sports writer/editor for a newspaper and works from 2pm to 2am five days a week, days that change every week and include weekends. As someone with a conventional work schedule that doesn’t change, his schedule frustrates me a great deal. He, however, accepts this as the nature of his industry.

I’ve mentioned his love for his job before and that he’s wanted to be a sports journalist his whole life. He works, hard, long, odd-hours for unreasonable compensation and loves it.

He and I approach work in very different ways; I, while I love my job, work to live and he lives to work. Add that to his crazy, always changing schedule and you have one very frustrated girlfriend. I get annoyed when he isn’t off on weekends and I want him to go to a party or I find myself alone with no one to hang out with. I get annoyed when he make plans with friends on a day he has off because that’s time I’m losing with him (I know, I have to work on this one).

We also live in two different cities. He is only an hour and fifteen minutes outside of New York so it’s not far enough to be considered long-distance but it’s not close enough that I see him as often as I’d like. Again, frustrating. Eventually, likely later this year, we’ll move in together. Here in the city (a huge give on his part). So we’ll at least be sleeping in the same bed at night but could still go days without being awake together at the same time.

In my perfect world, we’d have similar work schedules. Schedules that didn’t include nights or weekends. I could make plans with my friends without checking if it’s his night off or we could take a weekend trip without using his vacation days. As much as I hope that will happen and happen soon, it doesn’t look like it’s in the cards.

My M.O. with this situation is to get upset, fight and then get over it only to get upset a few weeks or months later. A draining cycle for both him and I. So I’m wondering, how am I supposed to deal with this long-term? How do those of you who have significant others with opposing work schedules deal?

When we first met Bethenny Frankel on season one of Bravo’s The Real Housewives of New York she was portrayed as the commitment-phobic 30-something runaway bride. As season one went on and then season two we learned several Bethenny-isms and that Bethenny Frankel is a hardcore Working Girl and therefore my latest Working Girl Idol.

Bethanny started her company BethennyBakes after attending The Natural Gourmet Institute for Health & Culinary Arts in New York. She’s worked with a number of celebrities including Mariska Hargitay and the Hiltons.

So when she’s not trying to understand the words that come out of Kelly Bensimon’s mouth or gallivanting around the Hamptons with Jill Zarin, Bethanny is catering events, working with celebrities, running BethennyBakes, contributing to Health Magazine and writing diet and cookbooks. (And I complain about working 9am – 6pm, going home, watching TV and going to bed. sheesh!)

She recently released her first book ‘Naturally Thin – Unleash Your Skinnygirl & Free Yourself from a Lifetime of Dieting’ (which I still have to get my hands on) and is already working on a follow-up which will feature her signature Skinnygirl Cocktails. Yes, please!

Watching Bethenny on Real Housewives, you can see she has amazing energy. (Probably from eating so well!) It’s inspiring to see a woman on a reality show who has found her passion, is working hard and is a dedicated Working Girl. She’s created her own company from the ground up, branded and marketed herself and her company. If that’s not great success, I don’t know what is.

“There is nothing that I would not do for hard work,” Bethenny says on her reel on her website. “I have such passion, such drive. I’m willing to jump in, I’m willing to make a fool of myself, I’m will to work till the end.” The perfect attitude for a Working Girl!

[source, source]

I receive a ridiculous amount of emails everyday. When I’m sitting at my desk all day and opening each email as it come in, it doesn’t seem like much. When I’m sitting on the beach all the day and leave my Blackberry at the house, it’s overwhelming.

I’ve never once ordered a single item from Bluefly. Do I really need daily emails from them? Do I need to be signed up for each and every newsletter NYMag publishes? Or Daily Candy? Or Food Network? When was the last time I printed a recipe (two weeks ago) and actually cooked it (um…)?

And that’s just my personal email account. In addition to that, I have my work account, my Working Girl account and a super secret account. Yes, I have a super secret account. An account so secret that I forgot the password. Awesome.

The problem with me, my email accounts and all of the aforementioned emails is that nothing stresses me out more than having a number next to “Inbox.” That number could be 3,434 or 3. It is so stressful to me. So every time an email pops up I have to open it.

Before I learned what archiving was I kept every single email. Talk about stressful. After over two years of working, I’ve finally developed a decent system for organizing my work emails. I still read them as soon as they come in but I do one of the following with each:

1. Delete
2. File
3. Respond and File
4. Keep in Inbox

The items in my inbox only remain there until I gather the information I need to respond. I typically try to accomplish this within a day or two.

Simple enough, right?

As simple as it is, it still took me nearly two hours to go through all my emails from vacation and I’ve yet to find a way to translate this to my personal accounts. I guess step one is to unsubscribe myself from all the newsletters I don’t even read.

In middle school, Abercrombie & Fitch was the place to shop. If you weren’t wearing A&F, you weren’t cool. Done and done.

My mother hated it. Hated that I wanted to shop there. Hated that I was so concerned about being cool. Hated the loud music. Hated the bratty employees. She let me shop there but only with my money.

Years later, I realized how ridiculous the store was. And how ridiculous it was that my classmates and I all wanted to look alike. That is was Abercrombie is about: uniformity. It doesn’t take long to notice that most of the employees are young and attractive. You wont find much diversity.

Twenty-two year-old Riam Dean is young and attractive. She also has a prosthetic arm. The British student was working at Abercrombie & Fitch to earn extra money while she was in-school. According to her, when her employer became aware of her prosthetic arm she was told she’d be working in the stock room until winter, when their uniforms would cover her arm.
Dean is now suing Abercrombie & Fitch for disability discrimination.

Abercrombie & Fitch has been criticized in the past and according to Jezebel, hiring managers at the store are given a guidebook of mostly photos of examples of the “look” minority employees should have. Their tipster said “all of the minorities, by the way, are as white looking as a person can be without actually being Caucasian.”

It’ll be interesting to see what happens with Dean’s case. Regardless, the allegations against Abercrombie & Fitch are appalling.

[source, source]

For three summers, I was a shop girl. A book shop girl.

Shortly before my senior year of high school, my mom drove me (cause I was awesome and still didn’t have my driver’s license) to our local book shop and forced me to go in and ask if they were hiring. By forced, I mean threatened. She wouldn’t let me drive my new hand-me-down car to school (when I eventually got my license that September) if I didn’t also have job to drive to.

I went in, I asked and they took my name and number. I left dejected and worried that I’d be the only senior taking the bus. Talk about LOSER! As we drove back to home, I got a call from the book shop. We turned around, I spoke to the owner and I had a new job.

For the last few weeks of that summer, I organized shelves, help other students find their summer reading books and got to know my coworkers. I was the youngest…by more than 25 years.

I never thought, at that time, that I’d become close friends with women older than my mother. The women I worked with became my friends. I spent three afternoons a week, every Saturday and every other Sunday with them.

One women, Linda, and I became very close. She was like the Aunt I never had. Not my mother bossing me around and not my grandmother worrying about whether or not I’ll meet a nice Catholic boy to marry.

She listened to me stress over my fights with my mother and listened to me worry that I’d never find a boy to even date. She’d buy me lunch every Saturday and I became the daughter she never had. She even considered, very briefly, setting me up with her son (he was a little too old for me)

I was probably closer with Linda than I was with any of my friends in High School. She had wonderful advice and great life experience to share with 18-year-old Working Girl One.

I cherish those summers (and falls and winters and springs) at the book shop. As stressful as working in retail can be at times, I miss it. I miss telling a customer about my favorite book or picking out a colorful picture book for a cute little munchkin but most of all I miss the women I worked with.