12mo ago

A literal child taking orders in a fast food restaurant in the US

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328 comments

In pretty much every state you can legally work limited hours at 14. Considering this is a Culver's, I highly doubt they illegally hired this kid.
There's nothing wrong with a part time job at a place like this at 14. I'd argue it's better than having no work experience at all as a minor.
- Is that kid 14 or 10?
  
  Hard to tell from all 16 pixels. I've seen some pretty young looking 14 year olds though.
  Additionally, I looked it up and in some states you can work at a family business at 12.
  
  work at a family business at 12.
  I'm assuming that store is a franchise, that's the only way I can think of it being technically a "family business"?
  
  Yeah, I'm pretty sure all Culver's are franchises. I don't know why a franchise owned by one's parents wouldn't be considered a family business.
  
  Can confirm at least some of them are franchises, for sure (if not all of them).
  
  Nope, that's little Billy Culver in that picture
  
  Loopholes, baby!
  
  I work in the Media Center of a High School. Some 9th and even a few 10th graders definitely look like they still belong in middle school, some kids mature late. I’d totally believe that there’s a possibility this person is actually at least 14.
  
  I worked as a waiter at a retirement home at 14, and definitely looked younger at the time, so I think there's a good chance this is the case.
  
  NO ONE HERE ACTUALLY KNOWS.
- I'd argue that kids are not fit for the stress put on people in service positions with customer contact. It's fine if they have a holiday job cutting grass or delivering newspapers or something like that but standing behind a counter taking orders from people that often don't even acknowledge that you're human, too? That's hard enough on adults already - I definitely don't think it's the kind of job for kids.
  Also which business is hiring kids to work a couple of weeks during school holidays and then is fine having one less worker again? The time spent on teaching the child what to do and how to handle different situations as well as the paperwork probably takes more time and money than not having the help for a couple of weeks - even less so as you probably have to have another person nearby in case of customers overstepping so I'm not sure this is just some holiday job for the kid to earn pocket money or get job experience
  
  Judging by the comments here, everyone is going to be thrown off sufficiently to watch their behavior.
  
  You'd think so, but people can be downright cruel to those they think are 'under' them, and guess what every person working a job that can't get them fired (so no business-to-business contacts) is to them?
  I remember working in a customer facing role when I was a teen, and occasionally had to tell people the place was closed due to weather. They would accuse me of being everything under the sun and personally on a vendetta to make their lives miserable... and there was nothing I could do about it aside from calling the police if they actually started making threats.
- I've always been about kids getting out there early and getting a taste of working, but these days feel different. I wouldn't want to go back into customer service now and I've got experience and age to back be up in dealing with customers.
  I do think that people who cause the disruptive behavior that I'm referring to should be required to serve time doing those jobs, as I think part of their entitlement is ignorance of what's it's like behind the counter.
  
  I mean service jobs are never great, but most of my jobs from 14 through early adulthood were all service and they weren't that bad.
  You encounter plenty of rude and unpleasant people, but you just get on with it. It's not traumatic for the vast majority of people. Learning to handle people like that is a good skill to have.
  I totally agree that people would be better to each other if everyone had so service job experience.
  
  Waiting tables at the tail end of high school and throughout college really boosted my intrapersonal skills. I have no problem interacting with most anyone and can usually pick up on cues that go beyond what the person is saying. I work in engineering at a fortune 500 now it's really amusing how bad a decent swath of employees are at getting their point across, understanding what someone else is trying to tell them, and reading the room.
  That said, I had a stint in retail. Waiting tables was more stress, but the people were generally quite a bit nicer.
- I got my first real job at 15. I might have looked like this kid. Lol

328 comments