My wife and I are DINKs, but something I realized yesterday with all of our friends who have teenage children: None of them have a part-time job, not a single one. And none of their pre-teen kids have any unofficial jobs like mowing lawns either.
Not pointing that out to judge, rather my curiosity in understanding if this is an intentional thing and/or what is the cause of the shift. I'm not even trying to state whether it's a good or bad thing, just making an observation with an open mind to the reasons and factors at play.
I've asked the question and apparently its a mixture of:
letting kids be kids and not making them have too much financial responsibility
part time minimum wage not being enough to pay for car insurance or a car like we were able to
college becoming more and more competitive and kids needing more available time to focus on studies and extra curriculum activities to stay competitive
Mmmm ok butttttt we also have a generation of kids with increased social anxieties. I was a shy kid but my part time job forced me to get over that whether I was ready or not. I also had to respect a schedule and couldn't just quit because I wanted off for whatever reason. Either i traded shifts or sucked it up. But work with other teens my age was also fun.
You also have the chaos of scheduling, ie managers who do not care that they are still in high-school and schedule accordingly. Like finals exist, papers and homework exist. I dont know, I want to say that we made it work when we were their age but I don't think the people managing us or scheduling us were as petty as they are today.
The thing is I remember being the person responsible for finding coverage "that's the managers job" was NOT a thing when I was back in high school working my part time job. I remember having to ask my colleagues to swap with me. I also used to work alot of 5-9pm shifts...getting home at 9pm on a school night is crazy when I think about it now. I remember having to cram my homework in the 2 hours I was home before changing and walking to work.
In my case I really did just make it work... having a test was my problem to figure out when to study for... my parents didn't really ask much or knew how I was doing in school as long as I was passing. They didn't have the online portals like we do today.
I worked at a grocery store when I was in HS. Worked from 4-10 4 nights a week and an 8 hour shift on Sunday. I did my homework on the bus and in class. Made a lot of money selling my classmates bottles of awful booze for 3x the shelf price though haha.
I did buy myself a car and didn't have any debt after college, don't think that's possible nowadays.
Graduated in 2003, and I usually ended up cramming my hours into weekend shifts. But that's also because I had shit going on during the week too. Sports, music lessons, and somehow still had time to blow off homework to go hang out with people.
I used to manage a staff of mostly teenagers and part of my job was collecting availability and not scheduling the highschool students for work while they were in school or super late on weeknights (past 10pm). I also put exam weeks and breaks on my calendar so I knew when I'd have to cover shifts and when there'd be a lot of availability.
I thought it was weird that other managers would make people cover their own shifts if something came up. I had the list of everyone's phone numbers, a phone, and I was on the clock. Making phone calls was easier than cleaning or dealing with the public.
When I was a teenager, my boss for my part-time job was also doing that part-time, and her main job was as a school teacher, so she was very understanding of all of us prioritizing school. I didn't realize until later how lucky I was with that kind of arrangement and how fucked over so many people were.
217
u/LostinParadise4748 9h ago
EXHAUSTED but also wish I was smarter with my teenage money instead of blowing it on weed, accessories for my car, and name brand clothing.
The power of the dollar back then was amazing, I don't see half as many teens working bc what they make "isn't worth it" or something these days