Here’s a summer job idea: Hire son
There’s plenty of anxiety right now surrounding the job market. A lot of job openings are going unfilled while at the same time there’s a struggle to get hired. And that’s just in my own home. You didn’t think I was talking about the national economy and the U.S. job market, did you?
No, this week I’m keeping the focus on a topic I really care about: Me.
My son is looking for his first job. Despite seeing help wanted signs everywhere, the experience has been pretty stressful for him because he has yet to get hired. Although he turned 16 last summer, sending him out in the middle of a pandemic to find his first job seemed risky. But after more than a year of nearly everything being virtual, I’d be happy if he got a job apprenticing as a knife juggler if it meant getting him off the sofa and out of the house. I guess they’re right when they say that COVID-19 has changed people’s perspective on things.
It’s not the low wages that’s keeping my son among the ranks of the unemployed. He’d be happy earning minimum wage because he’s never made anything before, including his bed. That lack of work experience, though, has meant that it’s been hard for my son to have realistic expectations of what his first job would be like. I started to worry he was taking the adage “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” to heart and he would, in fact, never work a day in his life.
Doing what you love rarely applies to first jobs. The thing he loves to do most is row, and he will be doing that every weekday morning this summer at 5:30. For free. So the prospects for turning that into a lucrative employment opportunity are slim. The same goes for other activities he enjoys spending his time doing. I don’t think a Youtube video rating service is a thing. And there are few jobs that are done horizontally, my son’s preferred position whether he’s asleep or awake, which is evident from the lack of job postings for mattress testers and sofa models.
I would regularly tell my son about businesses that were hiring, but he rejected them all for being a little too work-y. At last my son announced that he wants a job where he can get free food because he loves to eat. This im
It’s not the low wages that’s keeping my son among the ranks of the unemployed. He’d be happy earning minimum wage because he’s never made anything before, including his bed.
mediately eliminated jobs in landscaping, day camps and retail, including grocery stores because they just sell ingredients.
His focus now was on finding work in a restaurant so he could eat foods he loved. Which then ruled out fish places, restaurants that serve vegetables, and any place that wanted to maintain a profit margin.
Still, it was good to be able to narrow the search process. There was just one problem: He
had to fill out the applications. Here’s a friendly tip for employers struggling to fill entrylevel jobs: It’s not enough to post a job listing online and slap a 20-foot banner announcing that you’re hiring on the side of a building. If a business really wants to get my teenager’s attention, it will deliver an application to our house and wait while my son fills it out (please bring a pen so he doesn’t have to take the time to find one). Better yet, fill out the application for him and then tell him he’s hired in a Tiktok video.
I have to admit that I really
wasn’t that different when I was his age. I filled out a few applications at clothing stores at the mall because I wanted the employee discount and then I waited for the business world to applaud my interest. It didn’t. My parents, perhaps sensing that if it were left to me I’d still be on their family room sofa watching soap operas, found a job for me.
My father knew the owner of the local Howard Johnson’s and that’s how I came to spend my summers working my way through 28 flavors of ice cream.
Unfortunately, I don’t know
any restaurant owners I can ask to hire my son. I don’t even know any knife jugglers looking for an apprentice. I’m not even really sure what he would do at a restaurant since clearing tables and washing dishes aren’t activities he gravitates toward absent a cudgel.
But if you own a taco place or a fried chicken restaurant or a burger joint that struggles every day with what to do with its excess inventory, I have the ideal employee for you.