At 27, my daughter earns more than I did at 57. But she still can’t properly clean a coffee machine or remove sticky spills from her kitchen countertops.
One of the few regrets I have as a parent is not encouraging her to work a minimum-wage job during her formative years. Rather than scooping ice cream or scrubbing toilets, she spent her early teen summers at sleepaway camp with friends. In high school and college, she landed internships at prestigious financial institutions, including BlackRock and Dow Jones.
Thanks to those internships, she graduated from college with an unpadded résumé, and by her final semester, she had secured a full-time job with a Manhattan consulting firm.
While I’m genuinely impressed with how much my daughter has achieved in her 20s, I can’t shake the idea that she missed out on some important life lessons by not getting some dirt under her fingernails.
Courtesy of Michele Shapiro.
Making the most of the hand I was served
My work experience as a teen couldn’t have been more different than my daughter’s. My father often spent more on the road than he brought in as a wholesale shoe salesman, and my mother’s part-time proofreading job did little to cover the costs of raising three kids in suburban Boston.
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I got my first part-time job at 15 and later worked nights, weekends, and summers as a food server at the local Pewter Pot Muffin House, a slightly more upscale alternative to Dunkin’ Donuts (now known as Dunkin’), with a colonial theme. All but a few of the dollars I earned went toward my college living expenses. I was fortunate to receive a full scholarship to cover tuition.
My uniform was a floral-print dress with puffy sleeves and an itchy, lace-trimmed collar. I tucked my long hair beneath a sheer white, ruffled cap that led to my friends nicknaming me “The Muffin Wench.” By the end of every shift, the cotton-polyester uniform had trapped countless odors, from fryolator grease to the sizzle of fat from our most expensive menu item, microwaved prime rib.
Large families with screaming, squirming kids ordered bottomless cups of coffee and a few muffins to share. They’d sit for hours and leave behind a few coins and a crumb-covered carpet, which I quickly stick-vacuumed before the next party arrived.
While I often returned home with a backache from crouching to reach the corners where much of the debris landed, the job gave me perspective: I knew I had to work my tail off in college because a liberal arts education would give me the chance to leave my family’s financial struggles behind.
The most valuable lessons I learned on the job
The job taught me a lot about teamwork, whether I picked up a table for another server who was slammed or helped others complete their sidework — cleaning the coffee maker or “marrying” half-finished ketchup bottles and salt and pepper shakers — once I had finished my own. Given my poor hand-eye coordination, it was the closest I came to playing a team sport.
Having people bark orders at me as I used a hot cloth to wipe up their spilled pancake syrup made me certain of one thing: I never wanted to go back. Instead, I would hustle to make my dream of working in publishing a reality, even if I didn’t have magazine connections, a trust fund, or parents who could subsidize my New York City rent.
In addition to teaching me resourcefulness, humility, and an appreciation for every dollar I earn to this day, working for tips fueled my grit and determination and gave me skills I still use, even though I now pay someone to clean my apartment.
My daughter can afford to have hers cleaned, too. But she opts to spend most of her discretionary income on designer bags, travel, and expensive restaurant outings. I can’t fault her, but I know on the rare occasion that she vacuums, she’ll likely miss the corners where most of the dust hides.
