There is a time in every teenager’s life when the desire to get cash and a taste of the responsibilities and freedoms of post-adolescent life arises, and the seemingly perfect candidate for satisfying this yearning comes into consideration: a part-time job.
Part-time jobs have provided youth with cash and invaluable experience in the workforce and serve somewhat as a rite of passage in the lives of those transitioning into adulthood. Despite these benefits, part-time jobs, more often than not, inject a bulk of unnecessary problems into the lives of teens, such as pressures to fulfill unrealistic and often cruel expectations, stress, hostile relationships, and significant hindrance to academic and personal pursuit because their impressionability and lack of autonomy render them easier to exploit and mistreat.
As a former cashier, I can attest to the mistreatments I faced while working and the general issues that arise while attempting to maintain a personal and academic life on top of work.
As teens are agile, often reliable, and have an eagerness to work that is easy to exploit, employers are infamous for subjecting their underage employees to long work weeks, often in violation of child labor laws. For example, I was scheduled to work eight and a half hours when my employers knew it wasn’t allowed for my age.
Teenage employees are also expected to have few personal life interferences and prioritize the successful operation of their employers’ businesses over the enjoyment of pivotal occasions such as holidays and weekends. For instance, my employer would get frustrated at me for having to leave work early to see a sick relative and expected me to work on Thanksgiving, saying I could have dinner with my family any time.
When typical personal and academic obligations would prevent me from working a shift, I would be penalized by losing all work shifts for the next week. Pressure to maintain perfect attendance and availability for work is not only an unnecessary addition to the grand pool of stressors in teens’ lives but conflicts with the pursuit of more meaningful and beneficial personal and academic endeavors, and being penalized for a lackluster attendance record is an unnecessarily cruel and corrupted reality in the workforce that adolescents shouldn’t be subjected to.
Additionally, hostility from employers, either caused by the inability to fulfill their unrealistic expectations or simply because hostility is in their work motto, is commonplace in the working experiences of teenagers. Toxic power dynamics are no rarity in the world of labor, and adolescents are no exception to them as their frustratingly uncorrupted spirit and lack of autonomy make them targets for a lack of warmth and tyrannical interactions with their employers.
I’ve been dealt my fair share of hostility, for example being reprimanded by my manager for my family affairs clashing with my work schedule and taking too many days off to see family, but I think my coworker takes the cake for being told by our employer to not ask for any more favors after being unable to work additional hours.
Toxic authority figures are not only extremely detrimental to emotional health but significantly ruin the experience of working. If you believe you are capable of withstanding the detrimental effects of pressure and hostility from employers (which is quite a challenging feat), you must consider before applying for a job whether or not to sacrifice valuable time from your personal and academic schedule to perform non-meritorious and menial tasks for cash. Time is precious when you’re young, and it is best spent pursuing and exploring passions and advancing yourself in your academic career.
It goes without saying that my advice against joining the workforce doesn’t apply to teens currently under the obligation of working to support their families, in whose case the harsh reality of workplace abuse is even more tragic as they don’t have the luxury of quitting. If simply interested in extra cash, I’d advise you to hold off on getting a part-time job during the school year if emotional abuse and hostility aren’t your agreed compensation.
