Summer Job Jeopardy 2010

When I was a teen and I asked about getting a job, my parents told me that getting good grades and into college was my job and that I could continue to babysit (which I did regularly thanks to an older sister 10 years my senior who had friends with kids) but I couldn't have a job that interfered with school. That was fine. They gave me money for stuff, but not excessively. They bought my clothes and stuff but there was your typical teen push/pull about what to buy. In college they said they would give me 200/mo to pay for incidentals. If I wanted any more than that I had to get a job for it. I've worked ever since.

I started babysitting when I was about 10 and got a year-round job at 14. I worked for the National Park Bookstore. I am, to this day, baffled as to why they hired an inexperienced 14 year-old to work alone in the shop. There were park rangers roaming around, but still... On my first day, I was $20 short and I started to cry. Turns out that they kept the $20 bills under the drawer and hadn't told me. Later in high school, I started working at a video store as well. I kept doing mail orders for the bookstore and working in the video store until I left for college.

My parents rarely gave us a hard time about asking for money, but I wanted the freedom of having my own. I am like that to this very day and can't imagine relying entirely on someone else for my money. The thought makes me ill. =}

Christy@morethanmommy
Quirky Fusion ( http://quirkyfusion.com )
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Funny this topic came up - just yesterday my friend offered my 13 year old $10 per day to go over to her house at noonish and let her new puppy out in the back yard and play with it for about 45 minutes, make sure he had water and food. She wanted her to do this Mon-Thurs, $40 dollars worth for a mere hour per day.
What kid would not want to go play with a puppy and get paid a large amount of money at that? Apparently, NOT my 13 year old daughter. I was annoyed and if I didn't know any better I would have forced her to do it! But I have been down that road and it pretty much ends at a cliff.
At the moment when my daughter said – no thank you - I realized that perhaps I have given too much to her. She would be more likely to jump at the chance to earn money if I did not just hand it to her when she wanted it. I don't give her fistfuls of money but when she wants to go to the movies and I have money I take her. I guess I am learning along the way - and since I have a "second set" - I know what NOT to do in this regard!

I started working when I was 15 until I graduated high school. During the summer, I worked two part-time jobs. When I was in college, I worked 20 hours a week, had an internship two times a week, and I graduated early from a top 25 university. I would sometimes skip class to work so that I would have money to pay for my books. My parents only paid for my first year of college. When I look back, I often wish I had just taken out more student loans and had more fun instead.

Denise, at least your younger kids have your older ones to set an example!

And I love the idea of thinking outside of the box, JustPluckingDaisies! My middle child is very good at that. She is fluent in Spanish and speaks some French, so she is able to pick up tutoring jobs pretty easily, which gives her some flexibility.

TW your work history sounds a little like mine, except you got paid for your work caring for the elderly. That was something my grandmother required of me as a volunteer. I would accompany her to care for her friends and church members. We had a regular stint at a senior home teaching crafts...that I enjoyed. I can still make a mean paper-and-pipe-cleaner flower bouquet!

By the time of my senior high school summer, I had two full time jobs-- One at the court house clerk's office and one at a retail clothing store in the evening. I wrote the first check for my college tuition my Freshman year. Which meant that I actually saved most of that money,too. What a concept---Savings!!

My kids (now in their 20s) both had unusual skills-- DD was a high level figure skater and DS a talented piano player. They started teaching at the age of 12 and worked as assistant teachers in after school programs and summer camps all through high school. Both used those skills to get post-school jobs traveling and have been all over the world, while getting paid for it.

Sounds like your examples were pretty clueless, but what I hear now, from very motivated kids, is that there are no jobs, and I live in a region that was not as badly affected by the downturn.

I worked the breakfast shift at our local McDonald's in high school and college.

I'd ride my bike to work at 5:30 a.m. with my best friend, work until 11:30 and head straight for the beach.

I learned a lot about what I did (and didn't!) want to do with my life through that experience, and a ton about people and how they expect to be treated when they plunk down a couple of bucks for a meal.

I started babysitting about the time I was 11 or 12. Neighborhood jobs mostly--working for women I had known all my life. My mother never was more than a few houses down in case of problems I couldn't handle. I don't really recall any that I ever had to call my mother about, a few I should have, but hey, by that point I knew it all.

I had a few jobs further afield as I got older, a friend of my mother's daughter had a toddler, a few women from church needed sitters, one couple-whose name I forget, the child's name, and how I became their sitter as well-but I remember what their couch looked like and the fact that The Rockford Files aired during my babysitting time there.

I babysat for an interesting very religious couple who had taken in someone to provide for as a caregiver, even as her large brood wore her down. I remember the woman that was being cared for resented things like the rubber sheet to protect the mattress from incontinence and the way the woman raised her children.

I got called to help clean a house top to bottom for a woman who had just had a baby, was having some sort of mysterious difficulties, and had a number of very small children, one prone to wandering. I scrubbed for three days solid while wrangling children.

I did a one afternoon stint as a helper for an elderly woman who needed a companion and kept wanting me to drink her special smoothie. Her family thought she needed a full-time caregiver, others thought she needed a live-in housekeeper. I didn't quite provide the right companionship or the perfect ironing. They ended up hiring an older woman full day companion/housekeeper but she passed away soon after.

When I started high school, I got my first real job one summer-at a candy shop that also served ice cream. I got a call come fall that the owner (who hadn't hired me-her brother had-she had another store that she managed in the summer) felt we were astrologically incompatible. I then found a job in quick order at a toy store. (My mother took me the day I got let go and made me fill out applications all over-no sulking allowed.) I worked briefly at a shoe store one summer. I worked at a sheltered workshop for people with various disabilities--the "clients" made wreaths, dried flower arrangements and tended the greenhouse out back. I learned to make a bow for a wreath, a lot about herbs (one of my coworkers was studying to be an herbalist), and officially worked as a clerk for the attached store that sold the various crafts, wood crafts from another workshop, and pottery from yet another. That lasted until just about the time I got married when I got a job at an accountant's office for tax season.

Retro-Food.com

My kids are too young to be employed, but I always had a summer job. Actually, I had one that I kept all year round at a video store, and I babysat. But in the summer, I did those two jobs AND I was a camp counselor from 16 on. And when I was a teacher, I still took a summer job of teaching university summer classes.

Melissa writes Stirrup Queens ( http://stirrup-queens.com ) and Lost and Found ( http://lostandfoundandconnectionsabound.blogspot.c... ). Her book is Navigating the Land of If ( http://thelandofif.blogspot.com/ ).

My teenage situation was a bit unique. My parents made us pay for our own outings and our own clothes, so we had to work - but my parents also wanted us to have flexibility to enjoy being young and discouraged us from getting a traditional job with lots of unpredictable shifts and long days.

It sounds contradictory when I write it out, but it really was great for us. It forced us to be creative and independent. I had connections to some profs at the local college, and found freelance work doing copy editing, reference checking, indexing, etc. for professors who needed help with the boring grunt work on their manuscripts. They did almost all of their work in the summertime when classes were out. It looks great on the resume, it paid well, it got my name in a lot of book acknowledgments, and it helped a ton with my writing skills. It also pushed me to do an excellent job, as the only way I'd get another job was as the profs recommended me to each other.

I agree that you have to work hard, but it is good to think outside the box!

Leah blogs at Just Plucking Daisies ( http://justpluckingdaisies.com ) about everything from the humdrum to catastrophes - and if there's nothing good to be said about it, it can at least be humorous, right?

I didn't "work" in the summers during my high-school-teen-years. I didn't have a car (and didn't want one; I was scared of driving), and we lived in a rural area. My only option was babysitting on occasion. And I did so.

I did work the summer after my senior year, which is the summer that I bought a car. I worked full time while going to college full time, including summers.

My husband had a similar job path, not working in his 15th and 16th year, but working after high school. For the rest of his life.

It will depend on their responsibilities/etc when they are of age. I am not going to require them to work, but I won't hand out money all willy-nilly, either. And, really, if they're not responsible enough to have their own car, I don't quite feel like trucking them all around Ohio either. We'll just have to feel our way through it when we get there!

Jenna Hatfield (@FireMom ( http://twitter.com/FireMom )), from Stop, Drop and Blog ( http://stopdropandblog.com ) and The Chronicles of Munchkin Land ( http://thechroniclesofmunchkinland.com ), is a freelance writer and newspaper photographer.

My three oldest children all got jobs at 15 or 16 and have been employed ever since. (well my 20 year old is currently out of a job but she'll be looking again as soon as her vacation here is over.)

The three younger children... I don't think they're going to get jobs. I wish they would but none of them seem inclined to do so - and their father funds virtually everything they want to do...

~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager
Life. Flow. Fluctuate.