Today’s Teens Have Learned To Job Hop!
Has having a good work ethic gone out the window?
I was proud of my son when he got his first job at the age of sixteen. He found it by himself by networking with friends. Suddenly he was a cook at a drive-in restaurant. Unfortunately, this job got off to a bad start. Since he didn’t have a license, I drove him to his interview. I parked some distance away because I didn’t want to be a helicopter mom.
It turned out that it didn’t matter where I parked; the manager didn’t bother to come to work that day. It was a red flag for sure.
Later, my son connected with the manager and began working. He worked too many hours for a high school student, and then one night, he came home with his face was completely burned. The cooking grease had splashed up and burned him, and he told me that his boss laughed. There was no incident report filed.
I wanted to tell him to quit, but I felt he should come to that decision himself. A few weeks later, he walked off the job. I wasn’t happy about that; I wanted him to give two weeks’ notice.
Since that time, he has worked at another fast-food job, at a bar and grill, as a convenience store cook, a Mexican restaurant, and a painter. In addition, he has a friend whose job hops with him. The two of them have had jobs all over town, sometimes together and sometimes separate.
This doesn’t even count the job that the school offered him, and he quit before it started.
None of this makes his father and me happy. We are old school about jobs. You give the job time to work out, and if it doesn’t, you give the employer two weeks’ notice.
No matter how much we lecture, our son’s job-hopping continues.
The bar and grill job was a problem because drugs were being sold out the back door. Then he quit the busboy job at the Mexican restaurant to become a highly paid painter.
The painting job became a big issue because he was paid under the table. This disturbed us because it is illegal. He said, “Oh, my boss used to be a police officer!”
Well hmm. I can see why he’s no longer a police officer!
In addition, my son’s painting job boss refused to sign his school paperwork that gives our son high school credit for working.
Our son was insistent that it would work out. It shouldn’t surprise you that our son made good money for a couple of weeks and then suddenly he didn’t get paid anymore. I pointed out that there was nothing that he could do about it because the whole scheme was illegal.
Now my son is working with his girlfriend cleaning hotel rooms. This is the same young man who never cleaned a toilet in his life.
It’s been two weeks, and he is still there. I could say that his girlfriend is a good influence on him, but she has quit quite a few jobs herself. They are working together, and neither of them has listened to me when I point out that it might not be a good thing for a couple to work together.
My son is just weeks away from being 18 years old. He is still in high school. I can’t physically force him to stay on a job, but this is what I have done.
I have allowed him to become very, very poor.
I give him just enough money to buy gas to drive to school. That’s it! I noticed that the girlfriend’s father was doing the same. Both of these young people have had no spending money.
The punishment is backfiring on me because the two of them are now eating all of their meals here at my house. You can imagine what this is doing to my grocery bill. However, it’s worth it to let them see the consequences of their actions.
I pointed out to my son that if he had taken the job offered by the school and worked consistently, he would have had money regularly. There would have been none of the feast or famine experiences that were happening in his life.
He looked at me and finally said, “Yeah, mom, but you know I have to find things out for myself.”
True that!
He hates it when I’m right!
The only positive spin on his experiences is that he has learned some good lessons.
1. Working is hard.
2. If you don’t have job skills, then the job doesn’t pay very well.
3. Employers don’t always treat you well.
4. Under the table jobs don’t work out in the long run.
My son and his friends have also gained a good bit of knowledge about different jobs and work environments. They’ve learned new skills and have some experience to help them make better decisions in the future.
Hopefully, soon, they will learn the value of work ethics. They have also learned that you don’t get paid when you don’t work and not having money bites!
