Should you bring your own car to a seasonal job? I see this asked all of the time and I think it really depends on you as a person. I went for years doing seasonal work without a car and never had a problem, or felt like I was missing out. Other people that I worked with over the years were miserable without a car, they were also the type of people that didn’t plan out their life.
One of the big cons for not bringing a car is food. A lot of jobs that I have had didn’t have an EDR (Employee Dining Room). So you were on your own for food, and I’ll admit, I had to go hungry a few nights because I was working a ton and didn’t have time to go to the store. Once the buses stopped running I couldn’t get to the store.
Another big issue is parking. In Vail, we were all living at a place called River Edge. If you didn’t get one of the lucky parking spots – you were SCREWED!! There was absolutely no where to park. A few people got away with leaving their car at Walmart and moving it every day, this involved a 15 minute bus ride each way from the parking lot. Others had to park in Vail’s ‘employee’ lot a few towns a way, a good 45 minute bus ride, and you had to pay for the bus.
Make sure if parking is an issue anywhere you get hired, that you get in writing what the parking deal is. Friends of mine in Vail ended up just giving up on their cars and only drove once every few weeks.
Luckily, almost every place that I’ve seen seasonal workers, there has been some sort of transportation available. Another good thing has been Amazon. You can almost anything you want delivered, often times cheaper than the local tourist trap grocery stores.
