Dues

I work with a guy who has a couple of kids. One is almost twenty and the other is fifteen.

His twenty year old went to a semester of college right out of high school but then decided it wasn’t for her. Since, she’s sort of floated.

Recently, I was at a fast food joint and ran in to this coworker, his wife and their twenty year old. The ‘child’ was grumpy because the parents were making her wait for the food and carry it back to the table to them.

I gently asked if they’d paid for her lunch. She was gracious enough to acknowledge that they did.

She then asked me if I knew of any place that was hiring. I turned to the sign on the wall beside us and said, “They are here.”

She rolled her eyes.

I wonder…where does this sense of entitlement come from? This young woman doesn’t seem to want to pay her dues. She wants to go directly from a mediocre high school career into a cushy, high paying, low stress job.

That’s not how it works.

Yet, my step daughter, now 25 years old, always seemed to think it worked that way too. She didn’t want to work fast food or in production at a factory.

She wanted to go directly from high school to being a judge. Or at one point, she wanted to be a probation officer.

These kids don’t seem to understand that you have to put in years of education, working less desirable jobs to pay for that education to get to a place where you get to have a job you might actually enjoy.

I want my girls to understand this. I want them to respect the hard working people of this world and be willing to be one of them.

I paid my dues. I waitressed through high school. I was a cashier at a grocery store. I’ve worked production at more factories than I can count. While in college, I worked in the cafeteria, often in the dish room, washing the nasty dishes that my peers, disgusting college students, sent back, perhaps thinking a robot was back there to clean the peanut butter out of the bottom of a glass or the melted marshmallow out of a microwaved dish.

I fully expect 16 year old Alyssa to get a job at the local dairy treat or the Burger King down the road. I expect her to pay for her own gas if she ends up with a car. I expect her to go to college and help pay the tuition by working while in college.

I want her to understand the value of doing good work at a job she might not actually enjoy. I want her to understand that sometimes we do things we don’t necessarily want to do so we can get to a point where we’re doing what we want.

I really think that she’ll appreciate the nicer things in life if she has to earn them. I think she’ll be a kinder and yet stronger person if she has to pay her dues as well.

I want all these things for Olivia too but I also know that some lessons are harder for her to process and so we’ll take each lesson as it comes with that one.