Road trips, lake days, and late nights out are the typical summer plans for most teenagers. Although high school students only have a few more summers to enjoy, sooner or later applying for jobs and being employed will also be a part of their summer plans, even if the job they have makes for the strangest events of their summers. 

For seniors Anna Carlson and Thomas Bowers, summer was a time to relax, but also a time to put in hours at their jobs. This past summer, Carlson was a nanny for a family friend of hers. “I have worked there on and off for about two years,” Carlson said. “I officially started working there at the beginning if this summer.” 

On the second day of summer, Carlson and the young girl she was watching were outside, until they heard an alarm going off in the house. 

“I ran to see what was going on and we heard a loud alarm going off,” Carlson said. “I didn’t know whether it was the fire alarm or the house alarm, so we were definitely scared.” 

Carlson later realized the noise they had been hearing wasn’t coming from the fire alarm, but was coming from the gas alarm. 

“When I found out it was the gas alarm, we went over to the neighbor’s house,” Carlson said. “Many guys in suits came over to the house to investigate and we found out there was no gas, the alarm just randomly went off.” 

 Bowers is employed at Pizza West and has worked there for over a year now. Although Bowers day-to-day work routine is fairly consistent, he has also experienced unusual situations like Carlson has. 

“A couple weeks ago I came into work and there were a bunch of cops standing everywhere and my boss told me we had got robbed,” Bowers said. “It was pretty shocking to hear because you don’t usually see stuff like this happen where we’re at.” 

Several employees fear the idea of being robbed or broken into, but this was Bowers’ reality this summer. 

“It kind of gives you an eerie feeling knowing someone is targeting a place you’re associated with,” Bowers said. 

While summers are full of trips and relaxation, these two seniors experienced the hardships of giving up their days of sleeping in for some unexpected troubles at work.