At 27, my daughter earns more than I did at 57. But she still can’t do that well cleaning a coffee maker or remove sticky liquids from her kitchen countertops.
One of the few regrets I have as a parent is not encouraging her to have a minimum wage job during her formative years. Instead of scoop ice cream or scrubbing toilets, where she spent her early teenage summers sleepaway camp with friends. In high school and college, she interned at prestigious financial institutions, including BlackRock and Dow Jones.
Thanks to those internships, she graduated with an unfinished resume, and by her last semester she had found a full-time job at a Manhattan consulting firm.
While I’m honestly impressed with how much my daughter has accomplished in her twenties, I can’t shake the idea that she missed some important life lessons by not getting some dirt under her fingernails.
The author said she pushed her daughter to pursue high-impact internships instead of an hourly shift in the service when she was younger. Thanks to Michele Shapiro.
I made the most of the hand I was dealt
My work experience as a teenager could not have been more different than that of my daughter. My father often spent more than he brought in as a shoe wholesaler, and my mother’s part-time job as a proofreader did little to cover the costs of raising three children in the Boston suburbs.
I got my first part-time job at 15 and later worked evenings, 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 money I earned went towards living expenses at my university. I was fortunate enough to receive a full scholarship to cover tuition.
My uniform was a floral print dress with puffed sleeves and an itchy collar with lace trim. I tucked my long hair under a sheer white ruffled cap, which led my friends to nickname me “The Muffin Wench.” By the end of each shift, the cotton-polyester uniform had captured countless odors, from frying grease to the sizzling grease of our most expensive menu item, microwaved prime rib.
Big families with shouting, squirming children ordered bottomless cups of coffee and a few muffins to share. They sat for hours, leaving behind a few coins and a crumb-covered carpet, which I quickly vacuumed before the next party arrived.
Although I often returned home with back pain from having to squat to reach the corners where much of the debris landed, the job gave me perspective: I knew I had to do my best in college because a liberal arts education would give me the opportunity to leave my family’s financial problems behind me.
The most valuable lessons I learned on the job
The job taught me a lot about teamwork, whether picking up a table for another waiter who was knocked down or helping others with their side work — cleaning the coffee maker or “marrying” half-finished ketchup bottles and salt and pepper shakers — once I’d finished my own work. Given my poor hand-eye coordination, the closest I came to playing one was team sport.
People barking orders at me while I used a hot cloth to wipe up their spilled pancake syrup made me know one thing for sure: I never wanted to go back. Instead, I would work to make my dream of working in publishing a reality, even though I had no connections to magazines, a trust fund, or parents who could subsidize my rent in New York City.
In addition to teaching me ingenuity, humility, and appreciation for every dollar I earn to this day, working for tips fueled my perseverance and determination and gave me skills that I still use even though I now pay someone to clean my apartment.
My daughter can afford to have hers cleaned too. But she chooses to spend most of her discretionary income on designer bags, travel and expensive restaurant outings. I can’t blame her, but I know that on the rare occasion that she vacuums, she will probably miss the corners where most of the dust hides.
