hire a teen!

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It's summer, and you have lots of odd jobs to get done. Or you want to have a nice dinner out with your spouse, and plan to get a babysitter. So hire a teen!

News: Teens in snoburbia will not work for you. They have better things to do. They are mountain biking in Montana. Or they are at the beach with that friend whose mom and dad have the amazing beach house that comes with scooters and Jet Skis.

Oh, and they don't really need your piddling $15/hour. Are you f**ing kidding me? If you are lucky enough to find a teenager still around who is desperate enough to work, you had better come up with a serious cash offer. If he can't earn at least $50-75 for a couple of hours' work,* he won't even text you back. If you want to ensure he will actually show up, make it $100.

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* If you do hire a teen, and want to entertain him, please use the following phrase, "I used to babysit for $1 an hour."

Comments

[will shetterly]

$15 an hour! Hire some poor bastard working at Target or WalMart.

[Maxinef]

Well, "in my day..."

No beach houses in my snoburbia, it's Maine, summer camp, or helping poor kids in Fiji.

These kids are going to have enough problems when they grow up, it's good they have wonderful things now.

[Vicky]

And I thought my $2-3/hr babysitting fee was high.

[Doris]

A school trip to France & Spain, the SAT prep course (4 weeks), a trip to Italy with her family, and getting her driver's license when she comes home. And she lives in Outer Snoburbia!

[Charlene]

My teen was annoyed that I set her up with a $10/hour, 4-hour babysitting gig because $40 was "a waste of time" and "not worth being away from my friends."

[Queen of the Weezils]

Yanno, I bet $50-$75 (!) would be worth it if Mommy and Daddy didn't buy everything they wanted. I started babysitting back in the day because I wanted to be with my friends. Being with friends - getting a bite to eat at McDonald's, going to the movie, pooling to put gas in someone's car, shopping, dates, etc - cost money and there was no way my parents were going to pony up for that. So if I wanted to go out, I needed to work.

I'd bet some of that old babysitting money that overscheduling has less to do with it than a lack of need for money.

[Jim Breiling]

New neighbors (from Kentucky) have their teens mowing the lawn around their new McMansion, and the other weekend the father was a model by spending real time tending to plants. Bravo. A welcome return to children doing chores and rejection of the Snoburbia norm that Hispanics tend yards.

[Bubberella]

I've been paying the kid mowing my lawn $50 and he uses my lawnmower. No weedwacking, just mow.

He's away at Boy Scout camp, so I was going to mow it myself. I just came in from the shed where I found that my lawnmower has only three wheels.

I'm headed to Lowes for a self-propelled model.

[Kim]

My Dad made me mow the lawn one summer. I did such a terrible job the first time (unintentionally), he wouldn't let me do it anymore. (He had me stain the deck instead.) This is why I have mulch in the front yard and brick in the back. Problem solved!

[Kelly]

I saw a teen mowing his lawn in my neighborhood recently. I almost ran into another car, I was so shocked.

[ex-snoburb from Olney]

Yup, still so glad to have moved away. I can hire baby-sitters who are shocked when I offer then $10 an hour for one kid. And these sitters are college-aged.

Seriously, my kids will be so much more down-to-earth than had I continued to raise them Snoburbia. Of course, when they decide to try out the East Coast, they'll be in for the same shock I had. Like meeting girls at college who run up their college bills by buying Clinique products at the campus bookstore. Daddy isn't very happy when he gets the bill every month.

[Alice]

$15 an hour?! I'm a teen in the suburbs in CA (admittedly, not quite snoburbia, but still) and that's almost double what I make (or what any of my friends make.) The only person I know who makes more than $9 an hour is a kid who managed to get a real job with a tech startup.