JOBS
OUR CREW
…is the lifeblood of our store. They are literally the face of our business, and we take a lot of pride in the quality of the people on our serving team.
We target outgoing, pleasant, polite, well-spoken individuals. We pay no attention to sex, race, creed, color, religion, sexual orientation, etc. — we seek friendly personalities who can help us keep our customers happy, respected, and (sometimes…) entertained. Experience working at another ice cream shop is NOT something we put a lot of value in. We’ve found that many of those who’ve worked at other shops have sometimes been taught bad habits, and we don’t need the burden of helping them “unlearn” any bad practices they’ve picked up elsewhere.
While we add most of our new team members during the late winter and early spring, we’re always on the lookout for great additions who will help make our team better. Before you apply, read up on our requirements and hiring philosophy.
First off, the question we get asked most often: “Do you have any summer jobs available?” Unfortunately, the answer to that question is just about always “No”. Why? Well, even though we do the majority of our business in the summer, we’re open all year long. During the summer many of the college-aged crew members who’ve worked for us during their high school years return to the crew and will work as many hours as we can give them. So our focus on hiring new team members is to hire those who will be available to work during the “shoulder seasons” — Spring and Fall — to keep the store running when our older, college-aged kids are not around. So new applicants who can’t work during the spring (before May 1st) and fall (after Labor Day) are at a serious disadvantage when other applicants are available for those times.
And the second-most-asked question: “How old do I have to be to apply?” While we can hire teenagers as young as 14 years old, we try to only hire two or three who are under 16 each year. Those under 16 can only work until 7PM under the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Labor Laws, so we need to make sure we have enough older team members to staff our busy night shifts.
Our “ideal” hire: Sophomores, who are 16 (or who will turn 16 sometime before the fall), and who have enough weekday availability to work 2 or 3 days a week after school. Part of our hiring philosophy is to find young, eager, friendly personalities who can work for us throughout their high school years and hopefully return for a summer or two after they graduate and move on to college or a trade.
While most of our hiring is directed at teenagers, don’t be afraid to apply if you’re a little more “seasoned”! We’ve hired several older team members — parents or retirees or just anyone looking for part-time employment — who’ve helped us keep our store running. Just be aware that we don’t typically hire people who we think are looking at us as a short-term position. We like to keep our team members for the long term.
During the school year, our shifts run from right after school until dinner time (nominally, 2:30 to 5:30PM), then 5:30 to closing. Once school is out, we also add an opening shift of 11AMam to 2:30PM, though often that opening shift gets absorbed into a longer shift for our older staff.
While we understand that everyone would like to work when it’s most convenient for them, the reality of our business is that 60% of it occurs on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday — getting ice cream is a treat, and people tend to treat themselves more after their workweek is done. So those are the days we need our team members available to work. If you regularly go away with friends or family on weekends during the summer, it’s going to be extremely hard for you to convince us that this is the right job for you.
Hint: Submitting your application is the time to make yourself stand out! Don’t glumly hand in your application then wonder why you didn’t receive a call immediately. We’ll likely have 100+ applications each spring to fill maybe 5 spots on our team. So it’s up to YOU to make yourself stand out from the crowd. Show us your personality, your desire, your passion that makes you think you’d be a great addition to our team! Several current members of our team earned their spots through sheer perseverance in selling us on the idea that they’d be awesome additions.
In order to work here you’ll need (once you’re hired):
To provide an I9 form, showing that you’re legally eligible to work in the USA.
To provide a W-4 form, with your social security number, so that we can pay you and withhold the appropriate taxes.
If you’re under 18 years old, you’ll also need:
Permission from your parent or guardian (before you apply!)
A working permit from your school or town (once you’re offered a position).
SOME “NO NO’S” WHEN APPLYING:
We don’t hire through parents! When a parent comes to the store to ask us if we’re hiring, because their son or daughter needs a job, we consider that “strike one”. If a young adult really wants to work, we figure they’d be here applying themselves, right?
If you’re under 16 and participate in a sport or other activity that requires all of your weekday afternoons, it’s almost impossible for us to hire you and be reasonably confident that you’ll have a great experience here. Weekend shifts are just too busy for us to train new employees and you’ll be overwhelmed by the lines of demanding customers.
Don’t tell us you want to work here because “it looks like a fun/easy job”, or because “you like to eat ice cream”. While we hope it’s fun, and we don’t mind our team helping themselves to an occasional treat, those are side benefits, not qualifications. And it’s definitely not “easy”! We want team members who want to work as part of a team, do their fair share of the work and help us make our business the best we can make it.
So…having read all of that, do you still want to apply? Great! You can apply by any of the following methods:
Come into the store, ask for an application. We keep a stack of them at the inside counter.
Download an application right here: Mad Maggie’s Job Application (PDF Format). Once you’ve filled out the application, you can either bring it into the store or email it to us at ‘jobs@madmaggies.com’.
Again, we’ll receive somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 applications between January and September, so please don’t expect an immediate response, but we’ll be in touch to set up an interview if we have an opening that matches up with your indicated availability.
Check out some of our past year’s teams!