Sometime, down the line, we'll end up talking about the possibility of Stanley getting a job. And like many things parenting, there is no one way to approach such a set of choices. Some parents, no doubt, need their kids to work a little, whereas others would rather have them focus on school or play and save the workaday routine until it's absolutely necessary. Because those silly U.S. child labor laws will prevent us from sending him to work anytime soon, this conversation is probably a long ways off for us, but still.My parents' attitudes and ideas about labor tended toward kids-that-work, with the goals of saving for college and teaching us the value of earning. We had paper routes early on, a Dairy Queen job (they didn't care about child labor laws) and babysitting. But the real winner of the family labor was Hardee's, where my sister was hired on to the very first crew 25 years ago this year (!), and where three of us logged a collective twelve years of shifts. Mom praises them for teaching us a good work ethic, and secretly, she's grateful to Hardee's because our savings accounts reduced her part of the college tuition and fees bill!
Depending on your perspective, making biscuits on the weekend shift was a plumb job. Preparing and baking consistent batches involved just enough that it bought the biscuit-maker a little bit of space away from the rest of the madness (like transitioning from breakfast to lunch). It also had some status--it was not a job trusted to just anyone, or at least that's how I remember it. When my friend Troy began working weekend mornings at Pizza Hut down the street, I'd occasionally spend my break with him, exchanging ham, egg and cheese biscuits for Canadian bacon with mushrooms pizza. De-lish. Stan could do worse than a Hardee's job, I suppose.
On the other hand, the shift ran from 4:30-12:30. Ouch! So early (late?) your body doesn't know what to do.
