A literal child taking orders in a fast food restaurant in the US
A literal child taking orders in a fast food restaurant in the US
328 comments
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This is Culver’s. They’re a burger fast food joint located throughout the Midwest and have things called “Scoopy Night” where a percentage of the proceeds go toward a specific cause. Schools, dance groups, etc can partake and the kids who attend that school/dance group/etc help take orders and deliver food to tables. Not quite as dystopian as OP has made it seem.
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Honestly... the idea that they do this work, and the money goes to a school instead of them, makes it even worse to me?
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"Child labor is ok if the money goes to a school!"
- the user who wrote this comment
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Yea it makes it worse tbh. We won't fund fun things at the schools so instead we make them work fast food to earn that funding.
It is indeed even more dystopian when you put it like that. It's got the same energy as people giving their coworker PTO so they can deliver a baby or whatever.
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Are the kids required to work in order to get the money? Because that sounds like a job with good PR.
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My thoughts exactly. If it's optional, cool, the kids get some experience and maybe takehome money. If it's required, fuck that shit.
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The one near me that does fundraisers doesn't have any students working. Usually the teachers go to say hi to families that come.
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when we needed to do fundraisers THE PARENTS IN THE PTA DID IT FOR THE MIDDLE SCHOOLERS.
We had plenty of 'kids' working at fast food and grocery stores but not until 15 minimum. this kid looks like he's 9. that's too young to be fucking around near fryers and hot grills.
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Children do work at McDonald’s though
Just they would keep them in the back so they can’t be seen
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yup. 10 year olds running deep fryers.
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It’s indicative of a larger effort by republicans to force children back to work, this is part of that dystopia even if it’s on the “light dystopia” side of the spectrum.
Fuck off whiteknight, keep enabling corporate’s ability to normalize and capitalize off of child labor. This ain’t no goddamn bake sale or car wash.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2023/04/18/child-labor-returns/
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immigration-hyundai/
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/25/us/unaccompanied-migrant-child-workers-exploitation.html
Keep downvoting, bootlickers
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Indeed, florida's plan to make up for the migrants they shit on and terrorized out of the state is child labor. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/1/11/2216798/-Florida-has-a-solution-to-education-issues-It-s-called-child-labor
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How does that boot taste?
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No, that's still idiotic. It doesn't matter what the context is of why a child is working at a fast food restaurant. There's a child working at a fast food restaurant. This isn't selling chocolates to raise money for a class hamster.
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Selling chocolates is so much worse though. That always creeped me out because it’s either A) kids learning how to hawk wares on the street outside of stores, B) kids learning how to be door-to-door cold call solicitors or C) run a MLM pyramid scheme by convincing their parents to push their product at work.
Maybe even D) a combination of all of those for the ultimate street hustler training.
This is just kids “playing house” for a few hours. Most probably love that shit. I would have killed to see what the buttons on the register do and how the fries are made.
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Honestly, I would err on the side of caution anyway. The worst that can happen is minor embarrassment that came from good intentions.
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"no, no, its not bad! The child worker is working for charity!"
Oh nice, so its worse
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scoopie night The abuse has to stop. Look at those abused kids. The horror.
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I remember doing something similar in HS 20+ years ago.
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So many Americans in here defending this, get a clue you idiots.
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I'm Australian and this reminds me of working at the local fish and.chip store when I was 12. I asked the local general store, but they'd only pay me to do odd jobs, the local bakery said no,.and the local fish and.chip shop said I could help take orders and.package meals during their busy hours each evening.
My Lego collection grew, I got real good at Time Crisis 3, and I went to see a movie each Saturday. It was awesome. I didn't see it any different to scoring cash for mowing lawns or washing cars, just stable and they appreciated my help so I felt good too.
If you'd told me I wasn't allowed, I'd have done it behind your back and said I was going to friend's houses.
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That’s all well and good, but the necessity of child labor laws are not for the few who are doing it voluntarily.
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Amen.
Got money, bought a PC my parents couldn’t afford, learned to code, got a desk job.
Taught me life skills too, like dealing with dickhead managers and customers, time keeping, and just general responsibility.
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Honestly it’s the uniform for me. It implies so much like maybe that kids gotta punch in with a time card of has their pay docked.
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Yeah this is just going to make them soft. Send the little shits to the miners, like in the good old days!
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I'm American and I totally agree. It feels like there are two different countries here, with the red one generally mooching off of the blue one while simultaneously claiming they're the "real America". I'm so tired.
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You’d be aghast at the ages of kids I had pull pints for me when I lived in Europe, bro.
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There's hardly anything to defend because there's nothing here other than a photo with zero confirmed information about what appears in the photo. People are just making baseless assumptions.
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No, only people from the USA.
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No way to downvote your stupid ass enough.
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Haha okay dumbarse.
Go love child labour some more, maybe enough kids b working low wage jobs and you’ll be a successful nation instead of the failure you are now.
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Name and shame which Culver's it is.
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I think many states allow children as young as 12 to work in specific non-dangerous jobs with permission from the parents. A company recently got in trouble when they had like 20 12-15 year olds working in a meat processing plant which definitely did not qualify for the "not dangerous" qualifier.
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Shame them for what? You don't know what's going on in that picture.
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They do this often at the Culver's near me. It's a fundraiser for school / extracurricular activities. The group works for a few hours and Culver's donates the receipts for that time.
It's better than having them go door to door selling wreaths and shit.
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Somehow that made it even more dystopian. The school system is in on it
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I remember having school assemblies in middle school with some third party fundraising company trying to get us to sell...I don't even remember what as a fundraiser for the entire school. At the time it felt weird and as an adult looking back I find it far more concerning that that's how they made up the budget shortfalls instead of raising property taxes by fraction of a percent
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This made it worse for me
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They got mad at her when an item was missing out of a 4-bag $80 order (they unbagged and checked everything there on the counter).
That one seems valid. That person got burned before with the staff not bothering to do their job and were NOT going to short their friend whatever item(s) the staff kept for themselves. Sure, you can say the counter girl didn't do the bagging, but she's the one that the customer is supposed to tell, and it is hard not to be angry when you've paid for stuff and you're getting shorted -- AND there's almost surely another person relying on you to get it right this time. It shouldn't take so much effort to just get the stuff you paid for.
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This kid is way too young to be taking verbal abuse from customers. I remember being 19-but-looked-15 and grown-ass adult customers calling me stupid and useless, and generally speaking to and looking at me like I was a piece of dung stuck to the bottom of their shoe. People who thought I was a literal child behaved this way. Not to mention all the perverts. Kids shouldn’t be working customer service, not in a world where adults have such disgusting behavior.
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I'm sorry that this all happened to you. I know this happened in the past, but you deserve a little hug. I hope things are better for you on a day to day basis. ♥
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Thanks, that's sweet of you. <3 Things are much better for me now that I'm out of that line of work, so I do my best to stand up to trashy customers on behalf of the people who can't.
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Fuckin same. Honestly no age is old enough to take shit working at fuckin Office Depot.
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Nah, you got the wrong end of the stick, this is an uplifting story - it's a kid working hard to provide for his mum's cancer treatment that in any other developed nation would be covered by taxes. Uplifting. Right? So Uplifting. He doesn't need to be with his mum in her time of need, he should be suckin that capitalist dick.
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“We made this shitty thing legal, so you can’t disagree with it. Checkmate athieists”
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ps5 wont buy itself keep hustlin
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Rise and grind and watch spongebob
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gotta work hard to play hard fr fr
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When I was 13 I was 'encouraged' by my family to get a job. I had no interest. They pulled some strings and I began illegally working (14 was the legal age) for a small family diner. At this time I just wanted to fiddle on my tech as I was very nerdy, but my family didn't want me to "stay in my room all the time," so pointless labour it was.
I did appreciate the liberation I gained from my family, even if I didn't have the knowledge of what to do with it; How to expand upon it. Probably for the best imo. I spent my whole first paycheck on some games that me and my homies would play in the garage and made great memories. If there was a life lesson to be learned during this whole experience, I never understood it at the time. Eventually I was let go from work since no-one taught me how to perform my job duties well enough. That's life, though!
By luck, one of my caring high-school teachers managed to slip-in his own curriculum. He taught a class of ~15 students some important financial skills... how mortgages work... how to create and manage savings... credit building... Bunch of important life stuff that I would consider essential knowledge in our society was an optional course I learned through word-of-mouth/happenstance.
???
why
Meanwhile and my ultimate gripe with this thread and tying this back into a dystopian - I see some people mention they learned valuable life lessons and a bunch of other copium. Witness me and your kin around you. Is the knowledge you gained - the wisdom acquired through action and experience - is it gained through labour? No. I didn't and others didn't either. Can it be taught safely without forcing children with a young developing brain into dangerous work environments? Yes. I gained such wisdom later from the safety and comfort of my school. And we rest on the final point with a question:
How many opportunities in the common layman eye are there for children to receive education on the matter?
If your experience had 1 or more, I'd love for you to share such experiences here as it's eye-opening to those who received and did not receive such privilege. I'm certainly interested! :)
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As someone who was pulled out of school at 14 and sent to work rebuilding old houses and breaking my back for $100 a week, education is where it’s at.
Appalachia is a whole different world (especially 25-30 years ago, the internet is changing it though).
The dude I worked for was molesting little girls and using the boys to stand up for him in court later to talk about how great he was. Unfortunately (for him that is) he made some mistakes and didn’t get our support, but boy he tried.
I remember one time he took us to the lake. He said, “I’m psychic, you know. I know things that no one else knows.” I replied, “there’s no such thing. Prove it.” He said, “Ok, when you and Regina sat on the train tracks and you ate her pussy and she sucked your dick. I just seen that in my mind.” He blew my mind in that moment.
I grew up and realized, Regina put my penis in her mouth because someone was teaching her that shit. I put my mouth on her vagina because she instructed me to do it. She did so because someone taught her this stuff. We were 11 and 9.
I know that’s disturbing and I’m sorry.
Kids shouldn’t be handed over to strange adults to work. If I’m not proof of that I don’t know what is.
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As someone who was pulled out of school at 14 and sent to work rebuilding old houses and breaking my back for $100 a week, education is where it’s at.
I'm just gonna say if they got me building houses for a day or two each week, I would've loved that shit and might've stayed in school.
The rest of the story is beyond me.
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How old are you now?
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She pressed the little pictogram squares on her till. (Literacy was no longer a requirement for employment in these restaurants. Smiling was.)
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The children yearn for the fast food jobs, Overcooked and Roblox games have proven that.
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Legal working age of 15 1/2 (in my state) plus a kid who looks young for their age - may not be the most appealing situation, bit this probably completely above board.
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No age restrictions if family owned business, that's a federal law no state can bypass, but I doubt the owner of Culver's needs their kids to work to support the family.
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That's a federal law aimed at farm families from back in the day. And farm kids are still helping and working along side Grandpa and Dad. And where I live, in the middle of a forest, they also help and work along side in logging families also.
Growing up on a farm, my earliest memory in life is walking behind a tractor pulling a 'stoneboat' and picking up rocks in the fields along side my father and grandfather. I was driving a tractor pulling wagons and hay trailers by 8 years old and by 12 I was driving trucks hauling grain from the field to storage bins and unloading them. Plus getting up a 5AM to help milk cows every morning and again at 5PM. It was absolutely crucial when my Grandfather got sick with "Farmer's Lung" and couldn't work much anymore. I pretty much started running his farm at 14.
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So they should just make the legal working age 12 and the problem is solved
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This photo was taken years and years ago, look how young Neil Gaiman is in it.
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I was at a tim Hortons in Canada. Had this experience seeing a youngin' working, except it literally seemed like the whole staff was this age. It was enough kids to prompt us to ask what the working age was in Canada. The young lady informed us it was 13 or so
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"This is a systemic problem. Children should have their needs met without the need for work, and this child working is an obvious symptom of the problem at hand."
"Have you ever considered that I, an individual, worked at a mcdonalds at the age of 15? I used the money to buy a video game. Therefore your argument is invalid."
This comment section is fuckin weird.
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Your comment was on top when I came here and made me look through the rest of the thread, and holy shit lmao
I remember having to do stuff like this when I was a kid. It was dystopian then, and it's dystopian now.
The fact that it's so normalized here in the US that people scramble to defend this is really tragic and illustrates how hard it is for people to step back and see the true nature of a situation and ask ourselves if this is something a healthy functional society would produce. "I enjoyed it, therefore it's good" is one of the worst defenses for anything, ever.
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I saw this on Reddit a while back. This isn't an actual employee, it's the kid of a manager who brought them to work for the day (school was closed or something). The dumbass manager thought it would be cute to dress her kid up and put them on the register, but patrons were rightly weirded out. Culver's corp found out and were pissed - I'm not sure if the manager got fired or not, but this definitely wasn't something Culver's was cool with.
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Don’t be silly, sense isn’t what people do. They do outrage.
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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.
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Is that kid 14 or 10?
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NO ONE HERE ACTUALLY KNOWS.
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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
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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.
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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.
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I got my first real job at 15. I might have looked like this kid. Lol
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no reason to ever make someone labor at such a shitty customer facing job when you could simply set up a kiosk system like everywhere else is, finally
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Sounds like Quebec
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Fuck yeah and I'm all in for it.
Automate the repetitve jobs, invest in higher education, and provide a minimum living quality for everyone.
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Could this just be a 14/15yr old who looks young for their age?
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Or a short person or someone with a growth delay?
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I've seen some very small statured people working in big chains here. I don't think Maccas and their ilk would be taking the risk of illegally employing children, at least not in countries like Australia.
Also, if this is a young child, is it not a bit wrong to be sharing their image around like this?..
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This is a culvers and they hire at 15y/o. They also start at $15 so i dont see what OP is crying about.
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Ooo, post it again!
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I too can copy and paste the same comment on every subthread.
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If they start working young, how are they gonna learn to play guitar so they can play at the subway terminals when the socialism takes over and we all get our ubi?
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That's because it's Culvers. Jokes on ya'll, their recruiting literature make it clear that workers are family. As long as they're not employees it's all good!
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Red raspberry is a pretty weak flavor of the day. Midnight toffee or caramel cashew ftw!
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Land of the free my ass
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In the land of the "they were really better off as slaves!".
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is that in Oshkosh WI?
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the average geogessr player
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Oh my gosh.
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They could have adrenal hypoplasia such that they never started puberty. Like that one guy who looks like a 6-year-old but is actually 30.
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I remember reading about that. There's actually a woman who looks perpetually 8, but is in her 20's and she was talking about how hard it is for her to find dates because any man she tried to go out with was either actually a pedo, or afraid of being seen as a pedo. I actually kinda feel bad for her, but I also understand how it would be hard for other guys, myself included, to see her as a fully functioning adult.
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And this photo could be from an alternate timeline where everyone has benjamin-button disease and that guy is actually 57.
OR it's the child labor.
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Thirteen year olds working in the Netherlands don't qualify for minimum wage- "13: (The minimum age of employment under the supervision and with no guarantee of a minimum wage.)". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_working_age
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I worked at an Arcade/Restaurant when I was 13 for 25-30 hours a week. It was absolutely a positive experience for me and it's a shame to see so many people here crucify the idea of any child working at that age. Y'all haven't the slightest idea whats the motivation and just assume they are being forced into it or something. Having a job so young built character and showed me that I was able to get the things I wanted in life if I put in the 'hard' work. Nobody forced me to work those hours, I wanted to! Props to Culver's for providing the opportunity to kids.
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Yup. I was picking up lawn mowing accounts when I was 12-13, and it was the best feeling in the world buying myself the jeep that I wanted two weeks before I turned 16.
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I was delivering papers at 11 or 12. First real job at 14.
My daughter just turned 14 and she has her first job working one day a week at an after school program.
This should not be such a big deal. You learn important life skills and have your own money to spend.
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I agree 100% but working fast food is very different than an after school work opportunity, come on now.
I never got an allowance and worked after school jobs alt the elementary/hs/uni but that is a far cry from what some of the child laborers are starting to do here in the US.
Normalizing this sort of thing is problematic, it’s not about the kid working for money it’s about the setting and expectations of both the employees and the customers. They should be focused on education and being a kid, but they can’t do that when they spend their afternoons at the factory
https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2023/04/18/child-labor-returns/
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immigration-hyundai/
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/25/us/unaccompanied-migrant-child-workers-exploitation.html
Oh, but they can learn about money so it’s okay!!! Give me a fuckin break.
Yeah Culver’s isn’t nearly as bad but it’s on the same spectrum when it comes to young children like this
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The kid in the picture looks under 13. We all thought he's not high school, lol.
I'm not American but i saw a South Park episode poking fun of children working, as those older refuse to work under bad pay and toxic working condition as the result of pandemic. Is there any truth to this despite the satire?
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Wtf.
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14 is when we could get work permits. I was a little league umpire, and I agree that it was a very positive experience.
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Kid in old age, probably: "Yeah, I was working in the Salt Mines at 11. Then they petered out, so I got me a job at the Pepper Mill. By the time I retired, I was first shift at the Olive Garden, doling out shredded cheese like a fiend. Yessir! Them was the days!"
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This is a culvers and they hire at 15y/o. They also start at $15 so i dont see what OP is crying about.
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Maybe because the child looks 10 and not a 15?
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Probably just a rounding error.
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Child looks like 8.
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"Looks 10“ and “is 10“ are not the same. We don't actually know how old the kid is, nor do we know the context of why they are there.
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At 15, can you drive? Have "concesual" sex with someone 10years older? drink alcohol? Gamble?
Then why should.you be allowed to work?
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15 year old kids are probably capable of cashier work so long as they aren't overworked and it doesn't get in the way of school. It is not particularly dangerous like certain factory jobs could be, and is legal in most cases if the child has a parent's permission.
The child in the photo does not look like he is 15 years old though, probably closer to 10-11 which generally is too young to be working.
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Ive been working since I was 15 to support my family. This is a problem with a late stage capitalist society. Your complaining about something that alleviates this problem. Obviously its not a good thing for a child to need to work to support their household, but the solution is sure as hell not to stop them from being able to eat at all.
(Also you can drive at 15)
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Why shouldn't a 15yo be allowed to work? Connect that dot with sex, drinking, and gambling please.
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No way this shit is real. It's like something I would expect to see in 1920 or something like that.
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If you zoom in they look younger, but in a gigantic uniform. In fact it's hard to gauge their age. The could be a little person.
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No one is attacking the child, but the fact that children have to work. If children have to do anything, that's to learn and to have fun. I'm sorry about what you had to go through, but saying that such a situation is wrong is actually attacking the system, not criticizing the people choosing the lesser evils available to them.
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You can attack the system and while you do that, there are people under 18 years old who are just trying to provide for themselves or their dependents and need a job now.
They have adult responsibilities before the age of 18. A lot of the commenters outright refuse to believe that these legal minors could have possibly matured earlier than the law expects, but that really does happen and it really is socially irresponsible to ignore their struggle.
Most commenters are essentially holding this series of positions based on a photo that is out of context: Why does this kid have a job? The system is bad. Why is the system bad? Some kids have jobs. How can we stop kids from working? We should outlaw jobs for kids.
But that series of positions critically fails to account for exceptions where kids become competent before the age of 18, need jobs and want to work.
It ignores that, in reality, many minors have kids of their own or other dependents that they are struggling to support and it does not provide any plan for them, it makes their situation worse while you fight the system.
That is inhumane public policy. Like many areas of law, this is a complicated issue, and we are going to harm people in our communities if we jump to strict authoritarian control for an answer.
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100%
This comment deserves an award. Mods should pin it to the top of the thread, because the majority of comments are totally divorced from their neighbors' struggle to survive in our imperfect economy.
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When I was that age I was mowing lawns to pay for my video arcade habit. This is probably safer
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I started working at McDonald's at age 13. Was the worst job I ever had and that remains true to this day even in my 30s.
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I don't get why you're downvoted. The French would have brought out the guilotines by now. The threshold for warranting violence has LONG been crossed by European standards
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Idk my comment got deleted. Guess child labor is okay. Whoever is saying this kid is 14 owns the restaurant
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Not sure where you're getting your info, but 14 year olds can legally work (with some restrictions) in France. Some EU countries have a minimum age of 13. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_working_age
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I would just walk out.
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Lol Republicans with their shenanigans. All red states have made child labour legal and kids aged 16 can work at a bar. #MAGA
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Great. Now I'm craving a butter burger
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Probably a family business that own's a franchise.
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Next, companies are going to start recruiting at Day Care centers lmfao
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Babies serving babies
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I was stoked to have a job when I was 14 making smoothies. Legally I could only do 7 hours a week and I enjoyed it. It helped me learn about scheduling and being on time, and I saved up enough money to buy my own Xbox. People in this thread are idiots.
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If there's reasonable legal maximum hours and legal minimum age then sure, otherwise it's just opening the door to child labour and that's a real problem that exists even in first world countries.
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Yeah, minimum age in the US (most states) is 14 yrs old. I wanted a job so bad when I was a kid. I grew up super poor so I never had an allowance. I got a job as soon as a could and I could buy my own things.
My own kid also got a job early, I told them they didn't have to but they wanted to earn their own money (I was super proud of the reason). They worked for a few years, took a year or so off, then after graduating high school, bought their own car. I'm actually so proud of my kid. Kind of a smart ass sometimes but like... That's because they're me too. So like.. 🤙
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I started working at 15. The owner/manager of my first job would give the 15-17 year-old girls he hired drugs in exchange for sexual favors. Also had us work past legal hours and all the other normal exploitative shit people should expect.
Second job I had also had pedo managers. Asking us questions like, "what was the craziest places you had sex at?" during group orientation. I also had to dispute the hours I was paid for on nearly every paycheck I got.
I'm guessing experiences like this aren't universal, but the fact that my first 2 jobs as a child were very exploitative, it's probably not uncommon.
I think scheduling and being on time could be picked up quickly by adults.
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I was stoked to have a job at 14 too!
I was not stoked to find out they had no intention of paying me.
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i wish i had a job as a kid. i wouldnt have done anything smart like save it though i would have just bought dlc for rock band 😂
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I started at 15. First thing I purchased was a PS1 and Chrono Cross. I felt like I had everything. After that it became a steady stream of gas money and tossing in $10-$20 bucks with other friends to get some weed. I miss the easy days...
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Oooh! Look at that! A bunch of people opining on a picture with zero context given! What a special surprise! We never see this happen nowadays.
Obligatory /s.
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- Blur the Faces
- When was this taken? If it's a Holiday/weekend/afterschool Job, i don't see any problem with that. Also did a lot of them to scrounge up the Money for my PC
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Also did a lot of them to scrounge up the Money for my PC
Were you fuckin eight years old when you worked for all that PC money?
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Also weird as fuck to be sneaking photos of children like this.
EDIT: I am ABSOLUTELY not defending child labor like this. It's all kinds of messed up. But it's also not an excuse to photograph children, and put their image online without their consent.
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Nobody s documenting anything with that photo. It's an out-of-context snapshot. Could be anything. Part of a make a wish with a cancer patient. A school thing to experience five minutes of adulthood. A prank. Staged. You name it. What exactly is documented here?
So yeah, just posting some picture is weird as fuck.
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If this was a playground or doing normal childhood activities, then yeah, but this is a fucking Culver's (I think)... This is not normal.
Are we supposed to take OP at their word or something? "Guys there's a kid working fast food! I would have taken a picture but it would have been weird. My Canadian girlfriend who was in town that you all have never met urged me not to!"
You take photos of extraordinary sights. I'm sure the shitheads who have allowed this to happen would agree with you since they want to normalize it.
I'm hoping there's a legitimate, innocent reason for this.
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There was an innocent reason apparently, from the now top comment:
"This is Culver’s. They’re a burger fast food joint located throughout the Midwest and have things called “Scoopy Night” where a percentage of the proceeds go toward a specific cause. Schools, dance groups, etc can partake and the kids who attend that school/dance group/etc help take orders and deliver food to tables. Not quite as dystopian as OP has made it seem."
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Oh my fucking god it's a kid working behind a register in full work clothes, in broad daylight, surrounded by people. There is absolutely nothing about this that suggests predatory behavior except possibly some Capitalist tossing on a shiny wrapper for a reason this happens at all. Which, btw, this image circulates periodically. You can find explanations even in this comment thread.
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Yep, exactly what happened. This cotton candy land: communist Poland.
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Yeah this is so much worse than 5yo kids working in coal mines a hundred years ago.
Sure its not exactly ideal, but if this is a kid whose parents own the franchise and he is legally working and being paid at the family business its better than him being left at home on the xbox.
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I don’t disagree.
My grandpa brought my brothers and I to work at the family business when we were pretty young. Mostly it was stuff like sweeping and cleaning tasks, nothing really cruel or stressful or that we could screw up.
A bit different than customer service but convenience stores often have the kids helping out too.
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This is a pretty funny image because the kid looks like they're 8 and in full uniform, but there's no way to know their age from this picture. They could be like 14, and a part time job at that age (or a bit younger) isn't weird.
What's weird and, frankly, extremely fucked up is some internet weirdo taking creepshots of a minor and posting it on Lemmy. What the fuck is wrong with you, OP? How would you feel if someone was posting pics like this of your kid on the internet?
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Hmm. Maybe minors shouldn’t be working in that type of role if they can’t be photographed at work then? It’s a job in a business that serves the public, photography has to be assumed.
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I am getting downvoted in another thread for pointing out that in Canada it's illegal to identify minors taking part in, or convicted of a crime. So I am not pro-nazi, just that we view those children as victims as well. People get weird about this stuff.
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There's no way you're serious, right?... Right?
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Sheesh, have you seen a 14 year old kid before?
This kid is at oldest 10-12.
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People offended just by looking at this picture out of context should really try explaining their preferred authoritarian social policy to a teenager who wants a part-time job but for whom some people would forbid them by penalty of the law.
Spoiler: They won't understand why you should have any authority over their body and time.
I don't understand why you should have that authority either. I mean, where does it end?
What are your criteria for exceptions? Shouldn't it be between the kid and their parents, and not you?
Are you imagining there is a parental figure with a bull whip for this kid in the back office and you want to outlaw physical abuse? There are already separate laws for that!
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Children should not be working. We have piles of dead children that died in the past for the profits of capitalists, and it took millions of maimed children marching to DC led by Mother Jones for anything to be done about child labor. I highly doubt that there's anyone, let alone children, that want to be in the coercive environment we call work. If you want to say protecting children from the dangers of a capitalist workplace is authoritarian, then so be it. I don't want to see children in a workplace where they will be exploited by everyone above them.
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I started working at age 13 back in 1980 because I wanted money to buy GI Joes, and comic books. So I started going to construction jobs with my shithead father on Saturdays and helped him put up sheetrock. My first legitimate job was the summer I turned 15, I was big for my age so I started doing deliveries for a furniture store, worked there for two summers until I was fired after a workplace injury. The guy I worked with was a racist Italian from Whitestone New York, and I was a smart slightly autistic black kid. His delivery truck only had one seat so I stood in the open door on the right side holding on for dear life. One day we were moving a heavy office desk upstairs and I was bringing up the rear, he lost control which resulted in the desk sliding downstairs and slamming me into a wall. My ribs were badly bruised so after I got home the store panicked and fired me, they probably thought we were going to sue. Anyway I went into a deep depression and couldn't leave my room for a month. One of my therapists later told me that it was the first appearance of my bipolar disorder.
I was legally employable, and of age but still got hurt on the job. I just had shithead employers.
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If the business commits a crime like killing a kid, there are laws for that - just like there are laws for when businesses kill adults.
You are not providing a reason to bar the kid from working, you are providing a reason to outlaw murder(which is already illegal).
You doubt there are people under 18 who want to work? Should everyone just take your doubt for evidence of the absence of those people? I think not.
I do agree, if you stand by your beliefs on this issue, you are officially a self-proclaimed authoritarian on this issue.
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Why tf should a kid want to work? Why would you want a society to normalize a 14-year-old hustling and working after school? It's not authoritarian to protect children from parasitic businesses. Child-labor is illegal because at that stage a person has less emotional intelligence and rationality, they can more easily be taken advantage of and overworked, and won't understand their rights as a worker as well. You can't even sign a contract at 14 without a parent or guardian and you want them to be able to act at the whim of fast food managers?
Your argument is hardly one step away from the argument I see people trot out when defending child marriage.
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It's already normal and kids want to buy things as much as anyone else. This is incredibly easy to understand.
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I don't presume to know why anyone else wants anything for themselves, why do you?
To make it clear that I am answering your question: I do not know.
Can you answer my question? Why do you presume to know what the kid wants?
Like I said, there are separate laws for child abuse. Physical abuse, mental/emotional abuse too. The bases are covered.
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You're right. How can we claim to live in a free society if our children don't even have the right to be exploited?
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Are all jobs bad because someone else skims part of the profit? Or is it just bad to you because it's a person under 18?
Just trying to sort out whether you are for eliminating all work or just work for minors?
If it's just work for minors, would you support any exceptions?
Like, for example, for an emancipated 17 year old with a baby of their own to support?
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Yeah, we tried to let people have the permission to do that, kids died.
Enough kids died that even America decided we needed to make laws against it, and we love exploiting the under class people
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As others have pointed out, those laws have important exceptions to account for kids who want to work, and that is the question I am asking all of the knee-jerk authoritarians:
What is the actual policy position they support? What are the exceptions they support or are they completely authoritarian about this issue? (I think a strict rule prohibiting all people under 18 from ever earning a living is a pretty embarrassing position to defend.)
What are emancipated teenagers supposed to do? Should they live 100% at the mercy of state programs and not improve their living standards beyond the meager social welfare they are afforded until they turn exactly 18 years old? Really? Not even a day sooner, even if they are ready and qualified to work?
That would be completely inhumane. Certainly it's depriving them of their bodily freedom and natural ability to extract capital value from their own labor.
So where is the line? 13? 14? I think somewhere in there is reasonable. Perhaps a test could determine their capacity to participate in their own economic fate? Or an evaluation by a social worker? I could go for something like that.
What if they are NOT emancipated and their parent is supervising them? Should the age minimum be higher then? 17? 18? I do not think so.
I think it's only logical that the age minimum should actually be lower if a parent is directly supervising - their physical and economic risk is lower if the parent is looking out for their best interests. This of course presumes that the parent is not physically or mentally/emotionally abusing the kid(again, separate laws exist for the abuse component and most parents don't abuse their kids).
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This is like...yuck.
What if a teen really really wanted to date an adult. They're a child, no one cares what they "understand" because their capacity to understand is literally crippled. Their brains aren't developed yet.
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It sounds like you are equating any job to getting sexually abused or raped.
That is "like... Yuck".
It's an irrelevant comparison because the work itself is not abuse. There are other laws that protect kids from being abused, if they are being abused to force them to work(or for any other purpose).
If you don't care what people under 18 think, you should reflect on how selfish and closed-minded that sounds to me and especially to the real human people you are proposing to lose their ability to work.
Do you really think there is a major difference between the brain of a 17 year old the day before their 18th birthday and the day after? There is no significant difference at all.
So, my question is, where do you draw the line for a person under 18 whose quality of life might depend on working? Should they just have that freedom stripped because you don't care what they think?
Even if they are on their own? Or supporting a dependent, like their own baby? Really? If you are that authoritarian about this, I hope you forget to vote on it.
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