Teen aged responsibility is coming fast in the Cootie household, folks. Seemingly overnight my daughter is becoming a young adult.
In the past 6-7 weeks she has turned sixteen, gotten her driver’s license, purchased a car, landed her first job and opened a checking account for the direct deposit. It’s mind-boggling and I don’t think it happened that quickly for me when I was her age. Surely it didn’t.
Last week she applied to 5-6 jobs in the area. I had hoped she’d apply to a couple specific jobs, but she was adamant about not working in a grocery store (even though they offer tuition assistance towards college ), or in food (discounted Monday night pizzas would have been a nice perk from one locally-owned NYC-style pizza joint that we love). I definitely had my preference for which ones might call her, but in the end the one that was a guaranteed job contacted her, interviewed her, and offered her the job on the spot (I wasn’t surprised). She goes back later today for her orientation and to turn in her paperwork.
I suspect they will have her start working this weekend since this is the last full week of school. And then she’s off to the races.
As soon as she told me she accepted the job, I called Navy Federal and opened up a checking account for her to do direct deposit. Because she’s under 18 it’s a co-owned account with my name on it. She’ll have her own debit card and since her account is tied with my overall account she can arrange for some of her money to come directly to me through an automatic transfer each paycheck, which I’ll then forward on to USAA to pay our lovely new insurance payment.
My first job was working the women’s department at JC Penney at the local mall when I was in high school in 1986. I remember being trained on all the cash register codes for cash payments, credit payments, refunds – and that first night when I went to sleep my dreams consisted of me standing at that register doing transaction after transaction, over and over again. The job was mostly a good one, and I certainly liked having some money in my wallet (we didn’t have direct deposit back then and certainly no debit cards).
I hope she likes her first job – it’ll have some variety since there are several areas where they may have her work on any given day. That’s a good thing and will keep her from getting bored. There was another job for which she applied that I thought she might like better – and it pays more – and she said she’d probably interview if they end up calling her. It’s possible if the first job doesn’t have her work enough hours this summer that she’ll be able to supplement with the other job if they want her too. And then come summer’s end when school starts back up she’d have to decide which job to keep and which to give up. But that’s only if the other job even calls her.
She even mentioned to me yesterday that she wants to learn how to cook so that she’s not eating all her meals out of cans once she’s on her own. I told her to talk to her father about that one.
For now, I’m grateful that she has done so much over the past few weeks towards getting her life going, even if I do sometimes miss the days when she was tiny enough to fit in my arms for naps and cuddles.
