9. In Season 1, the cast actually worked in a T-shirt shop, and Vinny told Vulture, “We did the first season for free, zero dollars, except for the stuff we made at the Shore store.”
10. Store owner Danny Mark even revealed to Vulture their salaries: “I think it started at $10 an hour, then it went to $15 an hour, and then it ended up being $20 an hour.” Who’s the hardest worker? If you asked Merck, he would say Pauly D. Jenny and Sammy use their talents at the cash register. Meanwhile, he says the worst employees were The Situation and Snooki.
11. After the huge success of the first season, the cast received a significant raise, reportedly earning $10,000 per episode, according to the New York Daily News. According to The Hollywood Reporter, by the end of the series in 2012, it had grossed $100,000 per episode.
12. Have you ever wondered where GTL came from? You can thank the producers for worrying that the cast’s routines of going to the gym, going to the tanning salon, and doing laundry were so boring and mundane that there would be no show.
“We used to write on dry erase boards because we were always like, ‘OK, so-and-so went here, so-and-so went here,’ and every day we wrote ‘gym, tanning, laundry,'” Salsano revealed to Vulture. “Then we got lazy and just started writing ‘GTL.'”
