So, if one of your main goals for the trip is $$$, there are two ways things can go:
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You work 2-3 jobs without proper sleep or days off;
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You have very good English and work as a server, where you can make $100 per shift.
I basically combined both options and earned about $10,000 in three months.
Since I had restaurant experience in Russia and decent English, I got a job offer to work as a server in a restaurant. The base pay is standard - $2.13 per hour, which means you have to rely solely on tips. In America, it's customary to leave 20% of the total bill for service, which is great.
About the restaurant.
I worked in a typical American resort restaurant - the menu had burgers, sandwiches, hot dogs, seafood, etc. Try not to overindulge in all these treats, or you'll bring home 5-8 extra kilos as a souvenir (that's exactly what happened to me) ;)
In America, there is a different menu for every meal. In our restaurant, there were three - breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Breakfast and lunch were the day shift from 6:30 to 14:30; the dishes weren't very expensive, and it wasn't hard to serve, so guys with intermediate English worked during the day. Nevertheless, many managed to make over $100 in those 8 hours!
Dinner - working the evening shift from 16:00 to 21:00 is considered more prestigious because the average check is higher, it's harder to serve, and the tips are bigger. However, it rarely happened that I earned more than during the day.
I managed to work both day and evening shifts. I can say that Americans are quite simple and rarely complain (of course, you can't avoid complaints entirely in this job), so it's a pleasure to work. Don't be shy about your accent; locals are always interested in where you're from, what you do, and how you ended up in the States. So you'll definitely get to chat and practice your English!
Well, that seems to be where the pros ended...
The restaurant owners were an elderly couple (he was 69, she was over 55), who were actually holding up quite well. They still worked in the kitchen and managed the restaurant.
My employers didn't provide meals. For the guys who wanted to find a second job, they made a schedule that made it impossible to combine two jobs. Overtime was never given to anyone. And I won't even mention the scandals in the kitchen... Endless yelling, breaking dishes - by the end of the summer, this only led to laughter from the students. Every evening, the guys and I would find new reviews on TripAdvisor about how our visitors heard swearing in the kitchen during their lunch. However, if you treat everything with humor, you can live through these 3 months quite well. We had a fun team. Several Americans, Russians, Ukrainians, Yugoslavs, Jordanians, Poles, Lithuanians, Turks - such an attitude from the employers only brought us closer together.
A part of our team
My favorite part of the job - cleaning. It's not customary for Americans to hire cleaners for a restaurant. So after the shift ended, we had to stay for another 1.5-2 hours to sweep, wipe, wash everything, drag heavy chairs and tables, pots, etc., wrap tons of cutlery in napkins for the next day... and realize that you're doing all this for $2.13 an hour! In short, we worked like horses.
One of the last days. After the work shift.
