Best Summer Jobs

Via NPR, a girl remembers her summer job at Seaworld Ohio:

And I would then pluck out the oyster, open it up with a knife and then just really plum around, dig around in that oyster for the pearl. I'd be really excited to find this pearl. If I wasn't excited, I'd feign the excitement. Then I'd wash it over, measure the diameter, and then I would tell them, I would appraise the pearl for them.

Mind you, I'm 15 years old, and the only instructions I really got from my supervisor was just to name two things: the color, the size. Then it was really my choice of how much price value to assign the pearl. So I would say: This rare black pearl measures eight millimeters in diameter. This would fetch you about $30 on the market, but here at SeaWorld, you only paid for the price of the mug. And, you know, of course, how could you not be excited by that? Look at that deal you just got, this treasure? These were seed pearls. They weren't, like, 100 percent pure, natural, rare pearls, of course not. Like, a seven-millimeter plastic ball with the thickness of, like, a fingernail coating of pearl on top. So kind of a sham, the whole appraisal.

I am kind of embarrassed to have been a teenage huckster in my very first job, but I'm really glad that I did. I think it's given me a lot of confidence. It really helped me to deliver what I have to say with assurance, and I can really see that now as a teacher.
No one wants a teacher who's just going to stand up and lecture about metaphor or simile or personification but, you know, if you can kind of make it more fun and deliver it in such a way that makes it interesting, then you're golden.

So, we were told that a sham appraisal experience as teenager helped her to gain confidence and be a good teacher.

I agree that teacher should make it fun and deliver it in an interesting way, but it is another thing when you try to make, or sell, a point by making things up. The distinction seems not to matter any more. Even those buying the pearls at Seaworld knew that the pearls are not authentic. A small "trick" is accepted. To tell "small" lies confidently is one of the most important traits needed for any job you can find today. If you can tell lies of any size confidently, that is even better. Maybe every teenager should take a job a husker or car dealer to help them to pursue their career later on.