It's where I learned to like salad -- it was a good place for me.

[flexagon]

Out at lunch with the new intern, a few of us ended up trading stories of first jobs. I said I worked at Burger King, and this elicited "REALLY?" and quite a lot of laughter from one of my newer co-workers. Sure, when I was a teenager I did, and it was a good first job in a lot of ways. People nodded, and this coworker was shocked to find that most of us around the table had had some kind of food-service or blue-collar job when we were teenagers. "So you guys... you weren't working these jobs because you needed the money, did you, it's more like a cultural thing?"

Well, we got some allowance, but for real spending money to buy our own stuff we needed the jobs, sure. Why, what was your first job, we asked?

It's a totally different culture, he said. Yeah, I didn't say, it's called being rich.

Someone said something about feeling sorry for kids who have too much handed to them. I might have nodded, but I didn't mean it. I know a few people who have grown up with money, and it really hasn't messed them up. Hello, bitter jealousy... ugh... it's the offhanded assumption that everyone has money that tends to get to me.

Comments

[figmint.livejournal.com]

At 14 I started working in a restaurant making salads and washing dishes. Used to work until the wee hours on weekends. I needed the money to buy things like clothes, coats, eyeglasses. Yes, except for housing, I've been on my own since 14. Sucked.

I don't think getting things handed to you necessarily spoils someone. They might just be less bitter. AND they were able to take interesting, educational summer internships while I was working in restaurants all through undergrad, learning nothing.

It didn't develop my character. I'm still bad with money. And I'm bitter, too.

I had a discussion once with someone, and we agreed that some of the nicest people we knew were wealthy. The lack of financial worries had made them happy.

People are wrong--money does buy happiness.

[flexagon]

So true. Happiness research shows that there's a point past which it doesn't, but the flip side is that, up to that point, it does! (I wrote a whole zine basically about this once.)

I don't think people understand the sheer misery of poverty, never mind the insecurity and meanness it instills. Having money generally means not thinking about it, which isn't necessarily positive, but not having it is just dreadful.

Honestly, I sometimes think all kids should be taken away from their birth parents and raised in big Heinleinesque "creche" arrangements where at least they are all on equal economic footing. I'm sure this isn't really a good idea, but it would keep young kids from being scarred by inequality the way I was.

[figmint.livejournal.com]

You were scarred by inequality too? You were another po' white child? Do tell?!!

I think the creche is a great idea. Most people are bad at raising kids. Lets the few who are good at it do it en masse. They should get paid outrageously well for it, too.