it's pretty common for the second shift to start right around the time highschool gets out. or if it doesn't, the manager might be flexible. dinner rush doesn't usually start until 6:00 or so. there's also the weekend.
obviously highschoolers are not filling 100% of entry-level food service jobs, but they make up a pretty good chunk of these workers along with some college kids. it's a good option for someone who has literally no work experience.
For a lot of kids, if they don't have a job in high school, they don't have any of the things they want. When I was 14 I had a job so I could buy the things my parents couldn't afford which was almost everything. I wanted new shoes and new clothes so everyone wouldn't know how broke we were. I wanted a car when I turned 16 and I knew the only way that was going to happen was if I worked for it. I didn't like not having money in my pocket when all of my friends did.
No, someone who says “teenagers don’t need jobs in the status quo” comes from a place of privilege.
Someone can recognize the status quo and yet believe that the needs it creates ought to be changed. There was a time younger children needed jobs to. The reason they did was largely because the fact that they could be employed drove down wages for adult workers. One who said children didn’t need jobs at that time would be wrong, probably from privilege – children in working class families needed jobs. But they also shouldn’t have had them, and them as a class not having them also eliminated the need.
With teenagers the situation may not be precisely the same, but the divergence between perceiving what is needed now and what should be is the same.
Well, maybe where we disagree is that I see being employed by someone you're not related to as being a valuable life experience appropriate for a teenager, especially if you have loved ones around to teach you how to get, keep, and (if need be) leave a job.
okay, it's a good option if you want/need work and you're a highschooler. I guess we could debate whether it is a good thing for a highschooler to have a job in the first place. that's going to depend on the situation. if you're working tons of hours to support your family instead of keeping up in school, that's going to hurt your long-term prospects. if you're working a couple shifts a week so you don't have to ask your parents for $20 to go to the movies with your friends, I'd say that's an important step towards independence. you learn a lot of stuff at a shitty job that you can't learn in school.
Honestly - working crap retail and food service jobs during high school was as much (or more) valuable education than what I learned in school. Certainly motivated me in college to study and work hard. The value of working is not only in the money earned, and I will force my children to get part-time jobs during high school.
I feel similarly, but I think a big part of that is that my schooling was so bad. Ideally I'd have not had to work and actually been learning something (and that's the goal I have for everyone, as a collective political desire).
On the other hand, I notice people who didn't have to work as kids and went straight into college and respectable white collar jobs usually have absolutely no idea how the rest of their fellow citizens actually work and live, so I'm thankful for the perspective.
Why make your kids earn a profit for someone else? They should be learning and hanging with friends. You didnt learn more working fast food than in school. You hated it which motivated you. Not everyone needs to experience fast food to know its not a great career outcome.
I didn't work in food service but I did work a service job (supervising children, teaching robotics, and hosting birthday parties for kids) in high school. I did not manage to save any of the money I made, but I definitely learned a lot from the experience. Namely: most people have no respect for service workers, and some people seem to have active contempt for them. Quite unpleasant. I don't think high schoolers should have to work for a living, but then again I don't think adults should either. However, I do think the experience of working service jobs is one that more people should have.
Maybe. But I learned a lot of useful skills working that weren't taught at school. And working, along with sports and clubs, kept me out of trouble. I tell my partner all the time that when we have kids they're getting jobs in high school.
Finally someone said it. High schoolers toiling away in dead-end jobs is not necessarily 'good'. They can be learning skills that generate a higher long-term ROI.
I worked minimum wage jobs when I was 16, there were 14 year old kids working at the same jobs.
It wasn't like the kids who didn't work spent their after school time focusing on school. From what I recall, they mostly spent their time dropping by the fast food place to make fun of how stupid we looked in our fast food place uniforms.
only if they need the $ and there is no other option . the ROI from a high GPA and good grad school, makes the extra $ from a crappy part-time job insignificant.
imo this is one of those things that makes sense on paper but doesn't work out in real life. the extra lifetime earnings from a first job in hs/college are indeed insignificant. the value of a job is that, for many teenagers and young adults, it is the first time they have to navigate an environment that isn't specifically designed to cater to their needs. this is how most of life is when you finish school.
obviously highschoolers are not filling 100% of entry-level food service jobs, but they make up a pretty good chunk of these workers along with some college kids. it's a good option for someone who has literally no work experience.