March 29, 2000

Teens, jobs, video games and the law

After news stories broke recently about some young people in Colorado ski towns violating child labor law by bagging groceries, I realized an ambitious teen who wants to earn a little money these days has to be very creative, not to mention devious and perhaps a bit illegal.

I don't think Pacifica's teenagers today work nearly as much after school, weekends and vacations as did the kids of the forties. It's a shame. They're really being short-changed.

Adults, with the best of intentions, have gone too far. Kids are over-protected and over-distracted. Distractions range from video games to TV to sports. Some protection is justified, most not.

I always had some kind of job. I picked prunes at 12. I hated it then, and would have no reason to change my mind today. My knees are still sore. If the opportunity ever arises to pick prunes or hops, pass it by. (Better yet, run like hell the other way).

The summer I was 13 I spent six hours a day helping deliver glass bottles of milk to the porches of Santa Rosa. OSHA would've had a cow, had OSHA existed. I heard stories of delivery folk falling flat on a slippery spread of milk and broken bottles. Luckily, while I broke a few bottles, I never fell on them.

When I was 14 I became a Press Democrat carrier, delivering 214 papers six days a week from the back of my bike. It wasn't as difficult as it sounds. Wartime papers were small. I put most on porches, something of a lost art these days. Now if my Chronicle gets as far as the sidewalk, the driver/carrier pats himself on the back.

All the PD carriers converged on the newspaper plant before six a m, often in time to view Venus, the morning star. After a few months my route was cut back, but I was hired to return each morning to take any down route in my district. Soon I knew every house in the south part of the Santa Rosa of 1946. After my carrier days, I delivered for a small drug store, then set pins in a new bowling alley. Today OSHA would object to a child delivering glass bottles of milk, but I can't even imagine their response to a teenager setting pins. Automatic pin spotters are not only cheaper and more efficient, they're less litigious.

I spent four hours a day during four years of high school and junior college doing a variety of jobs at the Press Democrat. I went from job to job each day, "flying" the press, inserting newspapers, managing ten year old street salesmen, running the PBX phone system an hour a day, and any other assigned task.

On the one hand it probably hurt my grades and distracted me from homework but it was perhaps the best training I might have received in practical business.

I wouldn't want teens today to haul glass bottles to Pacifica porches or set pins in bowling establishments, and I'm really not sure they should work in fast food restaurants, but lots of jobs are practical experience for future entrepreneurs. My dad ran a dairy at 18, and he'd done plenty of productive work in the years before that. The key to success is a variety of experiences in the workplace at an early age. Any working teen can learn young to be dependable, show up on time, and do what he's asked to do. Not a bad way to start a long and useful life's work.

Some recent Reactor columns may be found at Paul Azevedo's website, http://www.thereactor.net/ Reach him by e-mail at Paul@thereactor.net