Every teenager should work one.
Yup. I was a service-station attendant/mechanic (among other things). Between all the work rules and minimum wage, a lot of teens aren’t getting started on the first rung of the employment ladder. They’re not being properly taught in school, and they’re not being allowed to learn in the school of hard knocks. This won’t end well.
[Update a while later]
As noted in comments, working jobs like that teaches you the value of an education. I wasn’t that motivated about college after high school until I had a job as a VW mechanic at the local dealership, then got laid off in the recession of 1973 (it was a recession for the country, it was a depression for Flint and Detroit). I went to community college, took pre-engineering courses, then transferred them to Ann Arbor a couple years later.
My full-time work career dates back to the age of 7, starting at one of the dirtiest jobs there is: cowboy. I had to do my homework on the bus because there wasn’t enough time to do it at home.
My first job was at age 14, walking dogs at a boarding kennel. Sure, I made excuses why I couldn’t work when I first started (I didn’t have my under-16 waiver from the school yet, because I was sand-bagging on getting it), I called in sick once in a while when I wasn’t actually sick, and all the other things that teenagers generally do when they’re finding their place in the world. But it was great exercise, I learned a lot about the value of showing up on time and staying until the job was done, met a whole bunch of people much older than me who taught me about life, and eventually made enough money to upgrade from my single-speed dirt bike to an 18-speed mountain bike, which also happened to be my transportation to and from work.
The funny thing is, I kept that job all through High School, worked there when I came home from college for breaks, and worked off and on through the summers of college when I wasn’t interning in my field. When the tech bubble burst as I graduated from college in 2000, I still had something to fall back on, as I had remained loyal and worked my way up the chain to a supervisory position over the ensuing 7 years. I eventually moved out of the state, but my experience in that kennel helped me land a paying gig at an animal shelter when I moved, which paid my bills long enough to get an engineering job.
My customer service abilities also landed me a part-time gig at a retail store while I was in grad school, and that job was still there for me when I graduated, as only 5% of my class of 40 was able to find a paying gig after grad school, too (want to know which sector of the economy will collapse next? I’ll tell you when I go back to school for another degree). I’ve never been too proud to work a “grubby” job, and that ethic has managed to keep food on my plate throughout all of my years and the couple of unemployment-related crises that came my way.
I was happy to hear that a friend’s teenage nephew had a gig working at a mechanic, and even more encouraged to hear that the nephew’s sole responsibility was sweeping floors and cleaning up the shop, even though he had a mechanical mind. It was refreshing to hear him talk about how he knew he had to pay his dues if he wanted to move up in the shop world, and gave me at least a little hope for the future, even if he’s the exception to the rule.
That’s one of the many things that has made me appreciate Mike Rowe over the last few years, too. His maxim is to work hard, keep your promises, and don’t be afraid to take any job that comes your way. Would that more young people took that kind of advice.
While he never said it in so many words, my father’s attitude was “If I have to feed you, I might as well get some work out of you.” I grew up doing all sorts of jobs around the house. My first job for pay was bagging groceries for, IIRC, $1.25 an hour. That wouldn’t be my last minimum wage job, either. It makes me appreciate what I have now.
Back in the 1980s when I was going through military satellite operations training, I had a female colleague who was a civilian electrical engineer. She told me that her father required all of her brothers and sisters to work fast food jobs while in high school so they would appreciate the value of an education. It worked for her.
Minimum wage? Luxury. /montypython
My wages for nine years of working as a cowboy was fifty cents. Not per hour, mind you, but TOTAL. My non-monetary wage was a lack of beatings if I worked hard enough. Dad was a piece of work.
Yeah, nothing like scraping out hog pens to get a little fresh air and exercise and motivate you to do your homework.
I was about 8 when I started helping my father wire houses. A sideline for him and no pay for me, adding lights and receptacles to old houses . I was the small fry that usually got to climb around attics with fluffy asbestos insulation and dangle the fish (itch, scratch, itch, scratch). I cut a lot of grass for many years, but my big break came when I was cutting the grass at the local radio station and I learned that if I got an FCC First Class Radiotelephone license, I could work inside where it was air conditioned and get minimum wage! The smartest decision I ever made was to turn down the offer of being Chief Engineer and go to college. It really was like WKRP in Cincinnati. In college I had an evening and weekend job at the local AM radio station, and a 2nd job as an electronic tech in the school physics lab.
I just realized while writing this comment that none of the stud walls had fire stops. Hmmm…..
My first job was a newspaper route, at age 10. I also mowed lawns.
A few years later, I worked as an electrician’s assistant. As a result, I could do home wiring before I was old enough to drive. I had several other jobs over the years, usually on summer break, sometimes during the year. Most were illegal due to me being under 16.
Fringe benefit of the many jobs I had as a teen? I can, and do, all sorts of everyday DIY things today that many people can’t; plumbing, wiring, electronics, auto mechanics, construction, appliance repair, etc.
Any discussion of teens working is incomplete without the biggest salient fact; most of the jobs traditionally held by teens are now unavailable to them, thanks to minimum wages. What used to be a pert-time-pocket money job like newspaper delivery now attracts adults with cars. A fast food stand isn’t going to be as likely to hire a part-timer when it has to pay full-timer-attracting wages. And, as for working day-labor type jobs, the flood of illegal aliens is pushing teens out of the market. As a result, the jobs that used to be there just aren’t, so many teens simply can’t find one (Teen employment rates, meaning teens looking for work who can’t find it, are in excess of 50%).
However, as bad as things are now in this regard, the government is doing its utmost to make it worse.
Hear, hear.
More agreement added to get past the filter.
Full time work summer when I was eleven. Dropped out of sixth grade in 1969 and have been working since. Parents got the paychecks until I was sixteen or so. Paid room and board at home after that. Work ethic is fine, education is mostly self inflicted, the gaps often show. Common expression at home, “educated idiots”. Self employed since 1986.
My first job was really grubby. At the age of 13, I worked as a towel boy in the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders locker room. It was grueling. The girls would come in from the field, glistening with perspiration, breasts rising and falling as they gasped for breath, then tore off their skimpy cheerleader outfits to head for the showers. And I had to be ready with towels as they came out, and help dry them off. There were always some who were cramping up, and needed a deep tissue massage. What an exhausting, messy job. And all that for $7.50 an hour.
I had to quit after the first season, because I couldn’t come up with the $7.50 an hour to pay them any more.