At Berkley High School, there are a variety of jobs that many students have. It seems to be very common at BHS for many junior and senior boys to have the same job: Startrax Valet Driver. Junior Ben Sanborn said, “Around 30, maybe 40 people at our school do this job.” As a driver, the employees park cars for customers when they attend various events in downtown Detroit. This article explores why this job has become popular among Berkley High School students. I talked to Sanborn, who is a regular employee, and Senior Cam Kizy who is a manager at Startrax Valet. Sanborn, described the typical process of the job, “When someone arrives to the event we take their keys, and park their car for them,” he continued, “We give them a ticket, and we put a ticket in the car, so when they come back they give us their ticket. After this we either walkie talkie or call the keyboard manager, who then gives the parker the key to go retrieve the car and return it to the customers.”
Going on, Sanborn then detailed the tiered pay system, “There’s 2 main bases: green team members start at $13.50 an hour and silver team members get $15. But some events will be $20 an hour if nobody wants to work it.” He continues to explain, “When you first join you start on the green team, and you have to work 10 jobs in three months to get promoted to $15 an hour which is the silver team. After you work another 10 jobs in three months, you get promoted to the maximum pay which is $17.50 an hour.”
The duration of a shift depends on the type of event. “Usually weddings are longer compared to events like Birthday parties,” Sanborn explains. He adds, “My favorite part about the job is driving all the nice cars, it’s a fun time. The best car I’ve driven is a Lamborghini SUV.
To gain insight into the management perspective, I spoke with Cam Kizy, a senior who works as a manager at Star Trax Valet, “I got this position because I’ve worked here for a year now and I’m one of the six other managers working here,” he expresses. “Here, each manager has a different job at parking, we write tickets for the cars so we can keep track of all the cars.”
He explained the pay for the role of managers, “There’s a base pay where it’s $70 for the first four and a half hours, and every hour after that you get $17.50 an hour.” Kizy also noted, “As a manager, you don’t have to park the cars, instead we go inside and talk to the private event host to meet the actual owner of the event who scheduled it; the parkers don’t do any of that.” He includes, “My favorite part is that each job we meet new people and work with other people.”
The two students, Sanborn and Kizy cover the advantages for working at Star Trax Valet, from giving us information on the pay, the experiences they get driving many unique cars, and interacting with new people. This job brings the Berkley community together and builds excitement in working.
