4-17-20 Get a job...{Necropost}
10Talking about getting the newspaper made me think of early (pre-timeclock type) jobs/ways to make money that were available when I was younger.
Back when I was in about 3rd or 4th grade we used to get a publication at school called Weekly Reader. Along with it was a flyer for Scholastic Book Club that came out monthly I believe. The books were paperbacks, and were typically less than a buck to about a buck fifty tops. They had different flyers for different age levels (Clifford the Big Red Dog to Robinson Crusoe) Since I didn’t get an allowance per se (it was considered my share of keeping the household running) I would scour the building sites in the neighborhood we had moved into (Seven Hills subdivision was just being developed) for empty soft drink bottles and would take them in to get the 2¢ deposit back. That plus the little bit of cash my parents would give me now and then for such purchases would allow me to expand my personal library.
As I got older I did some babysitting, dogsitting, house watching etc. and seem to remember having a lemonade stand (?) once or twice, but never did get into newspaper delivery (see… I eventually came back to that…) or lawn mowing/yard work besides for my parents at our house.
How did you make extra money in your pre-teen/tween years?
Did you get an allowance?
How much, and for what chores?
What kind of things did you use your money to buy?
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Your stories sound like what my dad did as a kid. All of the bottle deposits and such were gone by the time I came along.
I don’t recall doing anything of the like, but then again I lived in a very rural (not to be confused with farming) area.
@jst1ofknd gee… Now you make me feel old.
No, wait… that’s the 6 hours I spent out in the yard yesterday prepping a garden for the okra and trimming back the palms and cutting a bunch of bamboo, brambles and grapevines back…and…
@chienfou @jst1ofknd chienfou, do you guys have an actual farm, or is this gardening for fun?
@jst1ofknd @Kyeh small plot (think “victory garden”) that I will visit here some time next week as a daily topic/distraction/disappointment…
OMG I forgot about the Weekly Reader. I would get so excited when we got a new one every week.
Similar to you, no allowance. Doing chores was just your responsibility as a member of the household. Once in a while my parents would give in and buy a book. If I had my way it would have been everything every week (possible control issues lol)
My side hustles as a kid varied but I would wash cars, shovel snow, rake leaves, clean my uncle’s room/house (lots of uncles or victims). Really anything I could think of to make a buck!
I remember finding a penny on the ground was a legitimate find. Today its probably a 50/50 proposition whether a kid would even bother to pick it up.
@DrWorm You can drill a hole in them for a washer at 1/5 the HW store price.
@macromeh sad but true. But then again, I will always bend over to pick it up if they don’t.
@DrWorm which is a sad commentary on the cost of making pennies vs making washers
@chienfou @DrWorm
The US Treasury will stop making pennies this year.
Household chores were mandatory and unpaid. Except for ironing. Hated it but was paid for it.
Yard work, special projects, babysitting, and helping dad with paperwork or chores at the family biz on weekends were paid.
Did get an allowance. That was real nice to have.
In 6th grade, when the original Troll dolls were popular, I made clothes for them and drew a little catalog and sold them to classmates for 5 cents or a dime or something. It was fun for a while but then some kid’s sniffy parent complained about it and the teacher told me to stop!
Lots of babysitting when I got old enough.
I remember the Weekly Reader too!
And the books you could buy through the school. Funny, I just saw one that I still have on a shelf today.
@Kyeh
Speaking of getting a job… In early March I began interviewing applicants for an entry-level vacancy I’m trying to fill. Last week I called the person I selected and tried to make an offer. She declined before I had the chance, telling me she was making too much money collecting unemployment and stimulus checks to go back to work, but she would contact me when her benefits ran dry. The top 3 candidates all declined the job, all basically telling the same tale.
@ruouttaurmind while it’s likely true they make more on unemployment currently I have to wonder if anyone had any other issues play into their decision such as lack of child care availability, family members who are susceptible because of pre-existing conditions, etc. also if they are kids ie average age undergrads they could also be busy with Animal Crossing or becoming instagram influencers.
@ruouttaurmind And then they will be sorry once the extra benefits end 6/30. That was short sighted of them.
@Kidsandliz @ruouttaurmind unless they use this time to make themselves into an internet celebrity. Then who will be laughing? Hmm? Probably none of us since we don’t need more idiots
@ruouttaurmind On the other end of the spectrum, my college-age kids were looking for summer jobs, and dozens of places were advertising that they were hiring. Of the 27 places on our list:
TL;DR
2 kids, 27 job queries, 2 rejections, 3 job offers.
One is working Braum’s Fresh Market (ice cream/tiny grocery), the other at local Tom Thumb supermarket but it wasn’t as easy as you might think.
@compunaut I concur. It almost seems like some organizations like the idea of hiring staff, but don’t want to clean and gas the boat before the trip to the lake.
@compunaut @ruouttaurmind those job portals are a real PITA. They suck taking vitaes and parsing them over to the duplicate information they want in the online application. And you are right. They take ages to fill out those things. And then they want your resume/vitae uploaded too. Sigh.
They probably got no response when rejected because those portal applications are usually screened by bots. If you don’t use the “right” words you get screened out and HR seems to not think it is worth their time to send even reject emails. Cripes they could have IT write a little subroutine to scrape up all the emails and send a mass, generic reject email. I think it is rude not to let people know.
Not paid for chores. Baby sitting (except as the oldest I had to give up paid jobs for unpaid babysitting younger siblings), animal feeding, yard work, lemonade stand… As a much younger kid I had a small allowance until I could get paid to do yard work or feed animals. Then when I was 14 I could get a work permit so got a job at the library shelving books. I had a regular Saturday night babysitting job for a bunch of years for someone in the orchestra. Was able to save enough to buy a 10 speed bike (parents didn’t buy us bikes once we could earn enough money to buy one ourselves - that taught us how to save for sure).
By the way, scholastic books and weekly readers are still around.
Selling Christmas cards door-to-door then when I turned 11, I inherited my older brother’s paper route when he moved on to become a bagboy at a grocery store. You weren’t supposed to throw papers until 12 years old, but the route manager looked the other way. Had the daily & Sunday route until I turned 15, then got a work permit to work in a local restaurant as a busboy. Worked there for quite awhile and ended up being general manager for that store a few years later. That was “Career I”
I don’t know if that made me a better “manager” though. Looking back, I think because I had so much knowledge of each position in that store I might have been a little too personally invested in everything. Being a burnt out asshole in your early 20’s is no way to go through life son.
I agree 100% with what someone said in a different thread, that everyone should have to have a job in food service or low-level retail at some point in their lives, to learn how to treat people in those jobs decently. It also makes you less afraid to speak up when you DO get treated badly as a customer, but mainly it gives you a much better perspective on how hard it can be.
@Kyeh The great thing (and the not-so-great thing) about those jobs is the interaction with the customers. If you are at all outgoing/engaging you can really make or break a meal or a shopping experience. You also learn to fend off the occasional asshat that gives you shit over things you can’t control.
@chienfou I was pretty uncomfortable around people as a teenager, but waitressing taught me a lot - it’s like you can put on a “public personality” and then interacting with customers is much easier; and then I began to see how I could do that in other parts of my life too! Customers can be so funny - there were a lot of regulars where I worked, some would come in every day, and they’d kind of become like family, in both good and bad ways.
Working in an ER must put all of that on a whole other level - especially right now!
@Kyeh Yeah, unlike when I ran an ice cream shop, most people are NOT in the best of moods when they come to the ER. OTOH, I take it as a personal challenge to make the trip better for them, using humor (snark/smartassery) , compassion (a kind word, or a touch, handshake or hug pre-covid times), or downright bribery (popsicle or stuffed bear for the kids). I have been around enough and lived long enough that I can relate to most ANYONE on some level. I am also the guy that keeps a fully charged battery pack and every charger cable type known to man in my backpack for those folks that need to resurrect their dead cell phone etc. Even the ‘frequent flyers’ and GOMERs know they will get some sympathy and decent treatment from me.
I have now been here long enough that I am seeing the children of kids I used to see for asthma attacks etc when they were young. It’s actually very rewarding.
@chienfou @Kyeh Sounds like you go above and beyond (eg battery pack, etc.) for folks.
@Kidsandliz @Kyeh chalk it up to good parenting I received as a child!
BTW Happy birthday to my MOM today…
@chienfou @Kyeh Yeah good parenting, how parents interact with their kids, etc. really makes a difference in people’s lives and how they act both as kids and as adults; the values they pick up.
I remember my niece, when she went to live with my parents at 13 (my brother had died when she was 3, her mom then lived with a series of jerks - her mom also abused alcohol and prescription drugs), that she never knew, for example, until she saw it with my parents that you could disagree and work things out without screaming, yelling, hitting and threatening people. Makes such a difference.
My parents always emphasized, just as a normal part of parenting, things like help others, social responsibility… I joke sometimes that I come from a long honorable line of boat rockers as somehow, without them being obvious about it, we were all taught to try to fix problems so that we are the last ones to suffer a particular problem.
My niece picked that up along the way as well living with my parents. She was elected to the city counsel recently because she saw things that needed fixed and figured that would be the best way to accomplish that.
Hopefully your kids picked up the same things from you that you picked up from your parents. The odds would be in their favor anyway. I am sure people really appreciate those things you do, like the phone charger, at work.
@chienfou @Kidsandliz So it looks like you both emerged unscathed from the storms of last night, good!!!
@chienfou @Kyeh Yeah I got lucky. Again. Makes me happy.
@Kidsandliz @Kyeh yeah, got a few drowned frogs out of the pool and have some okra underwater but overall not bad. A close friend 40 minutes away had a top blow out of a tree and punch a hole in his barn/shop roof, then landed on his pickup and dented the roof and broke his windshield. Power off, communications down. Rural life in AL can be a challenge
@chienfou @Kidsandliz Yikes! I’m glad it was only objects and not living beings affected at your friend’s place!
@chienfou @Kyeh Glad you personally missed anything bad, but your poor friend. What a pain for him.
@Kidsandliz @Kyeh yeah, he says it will be a while before he is off his generator and back on the power grid. Thankfully no health issues and they have plenty of food and water at home so that’s not an issue either. Generator runs enough power for the fridge freezer and well pump so they are good to go.
Mowing lawns and raking leaves.
No.
N/A.
Dumb kid stuff.
/giphy dumb stuff
My neighbor had the same story, he called an electrician without a license, because it’s cheaper, and in the end, this electrician burned all his wiring.
@virginarno Are you getting ready to post a sketchy website with recommendations on finding a good electrician in Cambodia or something…because it seems like you’re getting ready to post a website with recommendations on finding a good electrician in Cambodia or something.
@virginarno
Excuse me… what story was that?
PS thanks (I think) for reviving this thread from back in my goat days!
@therealjrn
PLUS, it looks like you have to have a license to call an electrician…
@chienfou
:snort: I think they may have already killed his account.
It was a nice trip back to your goathood days!
@chienfou @therealjrn that’s too bad. I was looking forward to the Cambodian electrician recommendation. I have some Cambodian electricity that I need help with.
When I was 13 or so, I started babysitting for a few families. Biggest paydays were new year’s eve and super bowl Sunday. The latter because the couple I sat for would always go to another couple’s house for the game. Two hours in, I would get a call. Can I watch two more sets of kids? They’ll pay me extra… The other couple’s sitters had to go to church choir practice. The church i attended at the time knew berrer than to schedule anything on super bowl Sunday
Once I turned 16, I was able to get into the deca program at school and joined the wonderful world of retail.
Now what is making me feel old. Seeing on Facebook or my hometown newspaper those kids I babysat have kids that are getting married or going to college.