Have you worked in a restaurant or retail? No one gets more abuse than those workers.
The real reason we want teenagers in low-skilled jobs is to keep wages low. That's it. Not tradition, not social cohesion, not to teach anyone "responsibility" or "empathy" but simply to undercut the labor market, because if more adults worked those jobs, they would be paid more.
Yes, both.
> The real reason we want teenagers in low-skilled jobs is to keep wages low.
Who are you speaking for? Do you own a business that employs low-skilled labor?
The fast food industry wouldn't exist if it was treated as serious work for adults. But it's considered pretend work for teenagers to learn to build character on or whatever, so it's fine that it barely pays a subsistence wage.
I worked a ton of jobs as a teenager, and started a few small businesses. I was highly motivated to prove myself against adults with the attitude you have, so I was working twice as hard and was making half the mistakes of my adult co-workers.
I learned so much working as a teenager, and it was a really enjoyable experience to feel useful, and to have my own disposable income. Without it, my mental health would have been much worse.
If a teenager is working it's in order to support their parents nowadays. They're not building any sort of higher experience flipping burgers or stocking shelves, they're tanking their education in order to survive.
It certainly as hell wasn't aligned with my teenage experience growing up poor. And more importantly think about how far a minimum wage part time job as a teenager is going to get you today vs 30 years ago relative to inflation.
I went to high school 2008-2012. I got my first job at 15, and then two more jobs later on before graduating. I also had a small thing cleaning this retired couples house once a week and getting paid cash. I did not support my parents at all. The money was mine to keep or spend irresponsibly as I’d like.
> they're tanking their education in order to survive.
That’s not necessarily true. I worked in the summers only. I did have a bakery business with a friend selling our home made baked goods to our fellow classmates during the school year, but that did not take much of our time
In the past, fast food jobs were often done by young adults from the local area. They always spoke excellent English and/or French. They also tended to know at least some of the customers from outside of the job, too, from sports and other activities. In some cases, they'd be serving relatives and their own friends.
With them having also often gone to the establishment they were working at as customers while growing up, they were familiar with how customers were expected to be treated and what level of service was to be provided.
I didn't realize it at the time, but the service they offered was actually pretty good. They could take an order correctly, the ones in the back did a decent job of preparing the food, the restaurants were kept clean, and overall it wasn't a bad experience.
Two decades of rather awful immigration policies and other government-imposed economic distortions have changed all of that.
Now it's common to see foreign adults working such jobs. They often have a limited grasp of the local language(s), no ties to the community, and limited understanding of the level of service they should be providing.
Something as fundamental as placing an order in person is often far more difficult than it should be due to communication challenges, and mistakes are too common.
The quality of the food preparation has gone down. The cleanliness of the establishments has gone down. The prices, however, keep rising.
Overall, getting fast food is just not a good experience any longer. The automated kiosks and phone apps at least help avoid some of the ordering challenges that never existed before, but the rest of the experience can be quite bad.
I used to enjoy going to fast food restaurants and did it quite often, back when it was Canadian young adults doing the work at such establishments.
Now, though, it's such an abysmal experience that I rarely go. Whenever I do happen to, usually as a last resort, I'm typically left very disappointed.
Besides, what decade were you 15 in?
Finally, I don't think child labor is the answer to the forced isolation of car-dependent infrastructure.
Society shouldn't promote teenagers doing shit jobs. They shouldn't be done by people with potential.
Beg to differ.
There is an epidemic of delayed adulthood brought on by lack of actual responsibility.
It seems to me the opposite. The world runs on a lot of shit jobs. Young people on some path to important leadership positions in society should with have real experience in these positions.
E.g: I learned a lot about efficiency and working with diverse and problematic people when I worked fast food as a teenager. I learned a lot about automation and prison when I worked in a factory in college. Both shaped a lot of my mental model for the world, and I think both contributed a lot to long term leadership skills.
The only shit high school job I don’t think I learned anything from was fruit picking. Other than maybe just how miserable it is.
I definitely fall prey to the line of thought but when I think again I realize that if they actually have potential, they will strive to meet it.