By Holly the Assistant
I’ve been traveling a fair bit to conventions the last couple years with my elderly mother, and have gotten to see a fair bit of our great country from the non-local perspective. By and large, hotels have someone of Indian subcontinent ethnicity or some African ethnicity at the desk, and the rest of the staff is in the American Indian-to-Hispanic range, and very much NOT English speaking. Whether we’re in the Big Midwestern City, the Small Midwestern Town, the Western Resort Town . . . but last week we ended up in a Small Western University Town, and staffing was very different.
This particular university town is one I’m pretty familiar with. It runs about 20,000 people when school is in session, and half that when school is not. The university also hosts a very large and famous festival during the school year, now honoring one of the major contributors to the school, but during his life, he attended right up until the last year (and I got to meet him). For two weeks in the winter, the entire world shows up. The local hotels are definitely not resort quality, but they don’t belong in such a small town, either. Other than that event and graduation, they look to fill their rooms by hosting whatever conventions they can attract, and they’re pretty good at doing that.
The worker population at those hotels reflects exactly the local demographics. European ancestry, that American Indian-to-Hispanic–but these are all native English speakers level fluency–and a small smattering of other. Front Desk/Housekeeping the day we checked in said she was in the Large Animal Veterinary program.
Americans will take these jobs, if they are allowed to. American university students will take these jobs. Americans who have every expectation of rising far, both in social standing and in income bracket, beyond this work, will take these jobs. They won’t stay there for thirty years: the young lady I talked to would much rather treat sick calves, but they’ll take them and work at them. Hard. That hotel was as clean or cleaner than any of the others, the breakfast prep area was clean (and they had the door open so we could see them breaking the eggs to scramble, unlike the other hotels), their computer system at the front desk was no worse, and they were pleasant and hospitable.
Meanwhile, my own young adult children have been working, not in hotels, but in similar types of low paying low prestige jobs, while working on their own plans for life improvement. Food, mostly. They don’t intend to stay there for a career, but it gets their bills paid (because they know how to be frugal) and builds their savings for the next step.
But I’m noticing that a lot of American parents are trying to protect their kids from those low-paid and unpleasant jobs. Not so much in my region, where half the population farms or ranches, and young adults work on a family corporation owned farm or ranch, or if old enough legally for the neighbor’s ranch. But folks in other regions. And more here every year. “Well, Matt can’t get a job because he has travel soccer.” Don’t do that to your kids, please. My oldest had ballet (which was more hours than his travel sports friends per week) and got a grocery clerk job at sixteen. They worked with him on scheduling. Mostly. And when they didn’t, he learned how to leave a job and find another.
You learn something from those low level jobs that you can’t learn from sports, arts, and other paid-for activities, that you can’t learn from school. Some of the most wildly successful adults I know came from families so poor their parents took their income for the family when they worked as teens, decades ago. The scramble, the hustle, the knowledge that if one job fails another can be found, showing up on time, when they have to pay you and for what, you can’t learn that from an activity your parents pay for you to be part of, or that the government mandates you participate in.
American teens and early twenties are willing to do those jobs, if they’re allowed to. Don’t say “We need immigrants because Americans won’t work.” That’s blatantly untrue. When they’re allowed to, Americans will work. (Americans will insist on being paid fairly according to law, and on safety, and on breaks, and you can’t keep their passport so they can’t leave, but we DO have laws about those things.) If you want young adults to not get into illegal activities to make money, give them legal jobs. Let the high schoolers have jobs even when they’re failing class: not working won’t make them care more about school, working will. Let them work on non-family-owned farms, which is currently illegal in much if not all of the country. Let the junior high and middle schoolers work. Sure, limit their hours, but let them have actual show up to and get paid jobs after school a couple days a week and on weekends. There is not one thing about running a cash register that the average twelve year old cannot do successfully and safely.
Get the government out of the way of Americans working. Get social class out of the way of young Americans working.
We’ll all be better off for it in the long run, and the kids these days will be better off for it in the very short run.
According To Hoyt 
c4c
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Absolutely. Working got me out of feeling sorry for myself while I was fighting cancer!
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I wanted to get my kids working for a second cousin’s produce business but she couldn’t hire them because of no child labor provisions in her contract with a grocery store chain. They did work as receptionists at a local car dealership where their aunt worked. Funniest thing I heard about that was when #1 left for college, people at dealership said they knew what to expect from #2; no, no you didn’t.
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I always wonder why some states, businesses, and counties define “child labor” as 18 and under, others 16 and under, one I saw was 21 and under [seriously?!?] without alcohol* being a consideration. Depending on the state, you can work on a direct relative’s** farm from age 12, but not on anyone else’s farm. Another well-meaning concept that results in a mess.
*Some places don’t allow under 21 to even carry booze from the bar to a customer’s table, so the restaurants and so on won’t hire under 21 because it makes staffing and service too complicated.
**Parent, grandparent, sibling, sometimes aunt/uncle.
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I remember a comment in Freakonomics. They were interviewing drug dealers. A drug dealer found out they were connected to the University system and said that he had a cousin who was a janitor there and could they, the researchers hook him, the dealer up also because his cousin was doing great.
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The average drug dealer still lives with his mother.
It’s like writing, acting, and academics: a very few superstars do very, very well, and the dream of being one draws all sorts of people to hold down the low-level ill-paid jobs.
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And, the average drug dealer makes about as much as a job at McDonald’s – this is known because many drug dealers actually do work in fast-food jobs. [Levitt & Venkatesh (2000)] Until those jobs are taken by AI, I suppose.
I went to boarding high school, so no jobs during the school year, and no connections to the 3 different places my parents lived while I was in HS, so no summer jobs, either.
Did have a couple of on-campus jobs as an undergrad the first time, and was a computer lab monitor/troubleshooter during my nursing degree.
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I never worked fast food. I very briefly worked one job mostly in the back of a grocery store, though, and endeavored forever after to avoid stinky jobs.
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I worked at MacD’s the summer of ’69. (Swing shift, so the Apollo 11 landing was radio only.) Learned a bit, learned to hate Big Macs, but could appreciate good fries. (We started from potatoes and did it all. Properly cooked and salted, perfection.)
When the school year started, I heard from the hardware store I previously applied for. Much better job. Did that senior year until it was time to go to college. Had a couple of different summer jobs (office-ish* in a steel supply outfit for two years, then an intern** at Big Electronics Firm before senior year, and over the Christmas/semester break).
(*) Had to mark steel in the warehouse (3/4″ plate overhead carried by traveling cranes got me twitchy), and once I had to deliver some custom “U” shapes to a job a few hundred miles away.
(**) Research lab. I did electronics assembly; die attach, wire bond and so on, plus “Hey, let’s have RC do this.” Winding a coil around a vacuum chamber bell jar was crazy…
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Try cleaning the outside dog runs at the height of the day in an Arizona summer.
$SPOUSE$ really didn’t understand that until I changed diapers on our oldest child without the slightest twitch. Even on the first one.
Made me wish that I had been allowed to keep my first job. Washing the pots and pans in the school cafeteria, water hot enough to melt the skin off if you didn’t wear the gloves.
“Fast food” I had managed to skip until I volunteered to work a U of A concession stand for our daughter’s Catholic school fund raising. A couple of stints doing breakfasts at McDonald’s for the same thing. Still no comparison…
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I am 11 years older than my younger sister (yes, she was a surprise, but a good one) so I learned to change diapers then. Trivial with my own kids. Not pleasant, often, but no big deal.
>
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I hear ya’ on the kennels. For a few years I shoveled out my uncle’s one small hog pen until he built three wooden slotted floor ones out of oak. (Oak is noticeably harder to nail into than pine.)
Remember kids, do not let homework or hog manure pile up.
Speaking of homework, please pray for my #1 kid who decided to take physics over the first five-week summer session instead of the ten week session.
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Oh, gad…festering pig manure is the worst of all possible smells. (As far as I know, anyway.) Back in the day, our congregation had a service obligation to the church-run pig farm, and the stink in the indoor farrowing pens was utterly indescribable. Everything you wore to the shit-shoveling day simply had to be thrown away. The smell couldn’t be washed out. It lingered in your nose and clung to your skin for *days* afterwards, showers and soap be damned.
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Holiday Turkey shipping out from the barn day … Dad, a friend, and I (it was for a youth group fundraiser, so we didn’t even get money for it). Mom made us strip down to underwear in the garage (dad went first, while we waited outside in the carport). Then we went straight to the shower where clean cloths waited. I don’t know what mom was going on about, we couldn’t smell a thing … for weeks.
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I remember a comment in Freakonomics. They were interviewing drug dealers. A drug dealer found out they were connected to the University system and said that he had a cousin who was a janitor there and could they, the researchers hook him, the dealer up also because his cousin was doing great.
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I remember a comment in Freakonomics. They were interviewing drug dealers. A drug dealer found out they were connected to the University system and said that he had a cousin who was a janitor there and could they, the researchers hook him, the dealer up also because his cousin was doing great.
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Work is absolutely necessary to support civilization. Preventing people from working destroys civilization. So does punishing workers by taking their money, and rewarding the indolent by giving it to them.
Work teaches five important lessons:
* Show up for work
* On time
* Every day
* Sober, and
* DO THE JOB.
It’s depressing how many ‘adults’ can’t manage to meet those simple requirements.
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You forgot #6, “they will in fact notice you took it.”
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Even though I knew intellectually about it and expected it, that first paystub, with the withholding detailed, was still a shock.
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And by the way, happy Juneteenth, the day we celebrate when the Republicans freed all the Democrat’s slaves, to everyone!
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Child labor laws made sense when 8 year olds were working 12 hours a day in the ‘Dark Satanic Mills’ — or the fields or mines or freight yards. ‘Protecting’ 14 year olds from bagging groceries for a few hours after school is idiotic, insane or evil. Or all 3. Could be all 3.
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There is a cultural problem/question of to whom the paycheck belongs.
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Except that child labor laws did not get passed until child labor was no longer a problem, and became a way of preventing poor children from taking work to improve their or their families’ lives (thus keeping them in their “proper place”, according to crusading female social reformers), or to interfere in entertainment (usually vaudeville) “for the good of the community”.
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It’s not just government, it’s AWFLs (Affluent White Female Liberals). To them, the idea that Their Children (not individuals, but Symbols of Their Superiority) would work low-class jobs is gauche. To them, everything is a status game.
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The dual premises that all children (definition extending well into traditional adulthood) must not under any circumstances work at all, but all women and men must work outside the home for their entire lives, has impacts, not the least of which the lack of any time for men and women to do any begetting of the little darlings.
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I know where you were: I turned down a job offer from that university. The science fiction was a tempting part of the offer, not that they knew that, and it was close to my hometown (but in the wrong state), but the department the job was in was too small, and I had a post-doc offer to a prestigious national lab. When I turned them down for the post-doc, they were understanding. Different choices, different life, I suppose.
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The holiday should be celebrated October 18, 1867, when the Tlingit Indians were forced to give up their slaves (some of whom were white) in Alaska. But who cares about history! In reality, slavery continued in Alaska after that official date, but it was outlawed by the Feds when we took possession of Alaska in 1867.
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Some Hispanos in New Mexico had slaves into the early 1900s. They were “fostered” into the family, but had been purchased from soldiers or other Indians. The last slave in NM (as recorded in the census books) died in the 1930s. She had refused manumission.
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The diocese in Maryland owned a farm with slaves. A priest sent to look it over declared it would be more effective to hire workers, and that therefore he had freed all the slaves except for an elderly couple who had belonged to the diocese their entire lives.
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I have reservations about allowing children, as opposed to teenagers, work because there are very few kinds of work they can do at a non-zero wage that benefits the employer. Teenagers on the other hand absolutely can work and should be allowed to. I think it is reasonable to cap the hours for teenagers under the age of, say, 16 and that it probably makes sense that schooling be required up to 16. After that there should be no limits. And no minimum wages.
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I would have to disagree with you there! I helped my dad make ski clamps every year since I was eight, and he paid per correctly punched part. I learned to use the drill punch and the deburring machine, my brother learned to weld at eight, we earned enough money to buy coveted Lego sets, and Dad earned a little extra income for the family on the side, so we could afford double house payments on a welder/machinist wage.
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Every farmer or rancher family would also disagree.
My cousins were operating multi-thousand dollar planting and farming machinery as soon as they could sit, touch, and manipulate the hardware. Qualification wasn’t age, it was size and strength.
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A lot of it is “run and get” type work, or “keep an eye on.”
Sorting things, too.
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I started hustling jobs to earn some cash in the 5 grade. I remember mowing for 25 dollars a pop. Lived in an apartment complex once that had an dead abandoned car on blocks that paid me 75 or 100 dollars to dissemble it enough to haul it off in pieces. Sold all the old school round ball bearings at school for 25 cents a piece also until school busted me for it. Later worked as a bus boy which got me under the 16 age limit. After 16, I worked grounds mowing in a different apartment complex we lived in in a different state. Once I hit 16 I worked as the odd jobs guy at a Honda dealership for a year or two. Worked at burger king for a year and worked as a FCC licensed master controller for a TV station part time on weekends as a second job once I hit 18.
Then realized that I was working 60 + hours a week and was living hand to mouth, month to month. Decided to go to college and get a degree and joined military for a single hitch to get college money.
Got out and spent 2 years trying to get those benefits because they lost my records.
Worked a security guard a college
worked as a crew member and then crew leader for the 1990 census
Worked for an Ice company doing their payroll
Worked as a salvage diver, everything from pulling golf balls from ponds on golf courses to recovering stuff in lakes, rivers and ocean. Golf balls was hardest work but paid best. Got to play with alligators in those ponds.
went to university starting in 92, several of the above jobs were done while in school. Took me 7 years to graduate, however I got a degree, minor and honors program degree. Last two years while in school I started my first computer company with 3 other friends. Only doing light course load. School threatened to graduate me if I didn’t finish thesis for honors degree. (I had finish what I needed for my degree and minor already)
graduated… got the thesis finished. Pissed of the computer science department because a business degree student did his honor thesis on a computer subject and made their students look bad in comparison at the presentation where we all presented. I found this out later when my advisor for the thesis and the director of the honors program complained about the flac they took from the computer science dept. :) just funny aside.
Once I started my first company, I only had one other job till today. Grew first company and bought out other people in it with me. Got bought out for a 30 % stake in a larger computer company, got bought up in that company for stock options in a publicly traded company and my co owners and some others involved did illegal shit that when I confronted them about it got me tossed out on my ear that day. Minority ownership does not guarantee employment. Saw a lawyer that said I could win a case against them but would there be any money left aft 2 to 3 years in court and 30,000 ish dollars in lawyers fees. I said no, they will go under in 6 months. so just out on ear… 6 weeks later customers started tracking me down as no one was fixing shit and I just started a new S corp and had about 30 percent of the existing customers in the next 3 months. Old company went under in about 4 months as predicted.
in 2000 worked as a Network security analyst for 18 months… reminded me why I didn’t like working for others, got thrown under the bus so they could retain a large contract.. funny how they paid me half a years salary for signing a NDA about the whole thing.
went back out on my own and been there since. Did a few salvage diving jobs with a friend here and there on the side until my body couldn’t do it anymore.
I know I have forgotten a few jobs here and there.
Sadly we are having major issues with our daughters and jobs. Its a lot harder for them than it was for us back in the day. The get really irked hearing stories about us working at their ages or younger when there is no opportunity for them people wont hire kids now. Youngest has an entrepreneurial mind set and has earned about a grand over last year and a half hustling little gigs she creates. Oldest, well she wants someone to hand her a job and gets irked when no one does. I have created a couple opportunities for her to run her own little business but she doesn’t do anything with it.
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THIS ⬆️⬆️⬆️
Traveling for the daughter product’s wedding I saw the same.
By-the-by Kelly Girls is dead for those in between jobs: also replaced by the outsource costs and in source profits oligarchs that Mr. Sowell warned us about.
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