Adjusting to First Jobs

For those keeping up with Cootiestuff, CootieGirl has now been employed for a month and is doing reasonably well.  She went through training with no problems, and worked her first shift a couple weeks ago.  Then she had a break because she decided she only wanted to work 1-2 days a week this summer, and kept turning in her assigned shifts for others to take.  I explained that in order to earn money one has to actually WORK, and she got upset with me.

Teenagers.  Pffft.

She admitted that she just didn’t care about working but that she understands that she needs to earn money in order to pay insurance on her car.  I told her that if she changed her mind about working and having a car, we could sell it and put the money back in her account.  But that meant that this summer she’d have NO money, NO car, and NO autonomy.  She got upset with me.

Then a few weeks passed after training and she didn’t get a paycheck, which made her upset with her company.  When she did her onboarding paperwork, she supposedly signed up for direct deposit, but her account still sat at zero three weeks after her paid training.  FINALLY a real check arrived in the mail last week.  And it was at this time she finally found out how much she was earning per hour (more than we anticipated) and how much taxes were coming out (less than I anticipated).  The result was a higher paycheck than I had told her to expect.  She was NOT upset about that.

This week she works four days, for a total of about 31 hours.  She is scheduled to work 4-5 days next week but may turn in a couple shifts.  If she works another 2 days next week, she’s going to end up with a very nice paycheck in a couple weeks.  Maybe nice enough to make her realize that working more than 8 days a month would be a good thing.

Not only that, but she’s going to have a killer farmer’s tan by the end of the summer.