“You work here? Is that allowed? 13?” – Unknown Tik-Tokker
The linked clip went viral this week. The reaction among the left that a 13-year-old would be allowed to have a paying job was horror. As I read their reactions to this, my 13-year-old self emerged from the recesses of my memories with a comment my 67-year-old self chose to translate as “Opposing kids getting jobs is so wrong on so many levels.” Only the real quote was much shorter, and not CoC-compliant. (Thirteen-year-olds can be quite blunt.)
When I was 13 (back when the dinosaurs roamed), the goal of every 13-year-old I knew, including me, was to turn 14. That meant we could get a real job. Like at a fast-food restaurant. Many of us were already working odd jobs — yardwork and babysitting mostly. Yes, really. My kid brother, two years younger than me, set up a babysitting service in our neighborhood when I was 12. We put flyers on doors and got enough business to keep our plastic model habits fed. Back then, no one thought it unusual for youths that young to be babysitters. (We were big for our ages, and no one carded us. I think the parents were pleased with an opportunity for a cheap night out. Besides, they knew where we lived.) My future wife did the same thing. (This was before I met her.)
But 14? You could get a real part-time job, maybe ten hours a week. You had to convince your parents, and part of the deal was you could not let your grades drop. I thought the killer point on that sales deal was they could drop my allowance since I had a J-O-B. (In reality, I think it was relief at my willingness to start adopting adult responsibilities and the promise of good grades.)
So a few months past my 14th birthday, I got a job at the local McDonald’s. It was on Stadium Blvd, between Jackson and Liberty, in my hometown of Ann Arbor. It was a mile and a half from my home, so I got there by riding my bike. (That was no big deal. I took my bike downtown, about two miles distance every day. How else would I get to the Public Library, Riders Hobby Shop, and the various bookstores there?)
The work was crap. It was a fast-food restaurant, and as a newbie, I started out emptying trash cans and cleaning the store. Only after I mastered that was I allowed a promotion to putting condiments on buns. From there, if I demonstrated reliability, I was allowed to run the fry station. (Never got to the exalted position of grill man, though.) But I proved to myself I could show up for work when scheduled (about 10 hours a week), and competently do the work I was paid to do.
I was paid. That was the glorious part. For exchanging my time to do work that others needed done, I got cash. (Well, a paycheck, even back then, although some of my friends working at mom-and-pop shops did get paid cash every week.) That was money I could spend as I chose — and I invested it in board wargames, plastic models, and books. (None of which I regret. I have some of those books to this day.)
After a couple of months, I had enough cash lying around I set up a checking account. (That allowed me to get books and boardgames mail-order, without bugging my parents to write the checks.) And I learned the basics of budgeting. I gave myself a weekly allowance allowing the checking balance to grow so I could afford large purchases. (A copy of Drang Nach Osten was one such project, although after playing that with some friends, I decided to pass.)
In other words, it put me in the habit of work and thrift, two things that have stuck to this day. I did not stay at that McDonald’s long (perhaps two or two-and-a-half years), but I always found some other job to work in my teenage years. I leveraged that into a job as a computer operator when I entered college. (They were new then, and it was amazing what you could accomplish in computers with a glib tongue.)
It is a habit I retain to this day. I am still working a full-time day job as well as my writing and other side gigs. I have no plans to retire as long as my health is good and I enjoy the work I do. And the work I do is fun. It is what I would be doing as a hobby if I were retired, with the added benefit they actually pay me.
The sad thing is today’s teens no longer seem to feel the same way about work as my peers and I did when we were teens. Or maybe they do, and society won’t give them the opportunities for work we had. The neighborhood teenager doing yard work died away sometime in the early 1980s. Today someone would call Child Protective Services if a 13-year-old was left unattended in a house without an adult present. And teens are increasingly priced out of entry-level jobs like the one I had at McDonald’s. I was worth the minimum wage I received working at McDonald’s back in the 1960s and 1970s. Today? With “Fight for 15?” I am not sure even my 14-year-old self would feel I was worth that much.
It may be one reason so many young adults have problems being adults. They are rarely allowed adult responsibilities until after they become adults — at 21 or even 25. I learned the basics of budgeting and balancing a checkbook when I was 14. I was given increasing amounts of autonomy by my parents as I demonstrated my ability to accept what I had already been given starting in my pre-teen years. And among my peers, there was a lot of pressure to grow up and become an adult, starting in middle school. Skip those steps, emerge from college with a shiny degree (assisted by helicopter parents) and you are suddenly, for the first time, told to be an adult.
It is a formula for failure.
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