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I’m old and perhaps out of touch, I admit it, but it still upsets me when I hear talk of little opportunity, no money to be made, unfairness, inequality even. What’s new? I say there are always opportunities, just look for them even if it occasionally means lower self-esteem. Never give up.
During the years working, like a lot of people, I was subjected to the affects of nepotism, playing favorites, back stabbing and all the baggage that goes with corporate life. I took it and worked around it although embarrassed at times. Never give up.
Counting while in high school, I worked, often two jobs, for 56 years. As long as I can remember I earned money, not much for many of those years, but something. My first real job after high school was at $1.49 an hour. Literally the lowest paid job in a company of 15,000 employees.
Long before that there were money making schemes. I collected deposit soda bottles-often from trash cans in the local park. Each was worth two cents and occasionally a nickel.
I collected the evening garbage in our apartment building, shoveled coal cleaned out the furnace and hauled the ashes for about a $1.00 a week.
Since we lived in an apartment there was no lawn work, but the fall brought leaf raking in the neighborhood and winter snow shoveling.
We shined shoes and sold greeting cards door to door. We also made and sold potholders. The neighborhood kids put on plays and carnivals in the buildings small yard. We lured parents to pay a dime to participate. The highlight was throwing a wet sponge at their child.
I tried my hand at raising tropical fish and selling them.
I worked in a pet shop after school and Saturday for $5.00 a week. Later I worked in the city library running a mimeograph and shelving books at $0.75 and hour rising to $1.10 after two years. I also worked part-time at the base library while in the army.
I may be wrong, but I don’t sense that level of initiative in todays youth, or even in their parents in some cases. It seems there is more complaining about what is done to them as opposed to a can do attitude.
Opportunity sure looks different from the 1950s, but it’s still there. Heck, before I turned off the advertising on my blog, I was making $1.05 a month.
I still pick up every penny I see on the ground. It’s an old person thing who remembers that what we complain about these days, we wish we had back then. I can talk to my new car for Pete’s sake.
Some of this resonates, but I always keep in mind that in science, computing, engineering and many other fields there is just a lot more information to cram in the same number of years of education.
It’s hard not to read it as a “those pesky kids” rant. I think at least the developed world has changed. I’m sure there are kids in poor neighbourhoods hustling both legally and illegally for every $ they can make.
But in a world where parents are more nervous of predators and H&S, food standards, permitting etc it seems to me there are reduced opportunities to legally make a little money. And those that are are increasingly likely to be doing it online whether its selling family & friends junk on eBay or doing online streaming or coaching with gaming (I’ve a friend who is big into motorsport took some lessons from a 17 year old to improve his performance on his home sim rig).
And the biggest variable is incentivisation – either parents provide cushion that makes what can earn at a minimum wage job irrelevant or youngsters despair at ever denting the looming student debt or buying even a modest home with what they can retain from earnings.
Re the Cape Cod example -I’d ask how many real blue collar families are around with the cost of living there. (I’d expect a lot of the housing stock is in the hands of wealthy families ) – where’s the incentive for the privileged offspring to work the retail/service jobs? Other than more far sighted parents kicking kids out to experience a bit of real world grit.
It is an old guys rant…. or maybe it is a trip down memory lane. Either one I’m glad you brought it up. Before retiring this last month I was thinking of working for fifty years and what my first jobs were and how much or how little I earned. The most important thing was not this income, but the work ethic I learned. I’m sorry to say the of our eight grandchildren, none of them are experiencing it. They all have parents who believe education is more important than life lessons and learning to take directions from someone other than parents
I can still smell that mimeograph ink! My first job paid $1.10 an hour and I had to walk nearly a mile to school. I remember those five cent glass bottles! Times were different back then. I was never a high earner but I’m able to make ends meet with a comfortable cushion now. I worked hard but I consider myself to be very lucky.
My niece is a young school teacher by day and a TikTok influencer during her every other waking minute. Her primary tool is her cell phone. With a half million followers, I’m sure her side gig makes her a lot of money. On the surface, it looks like her life is a big party, but that monkey is constantly on her back! I wouldn’t want to switch places with today’s young people. They have stresses that we old folks will never understand.
Life