If My Kid Works for You

If my kid works for you, I hope you won’t be too easy on them. Not because I am a cruel mom, to the contrary. I am a mom that wants her kids to know how to work well enough to be WORTH hiring.

When you are hiring my kid to work for you, you are not just being nice to a kid and paying them so they’ll have some money. You are training a worker. If you do not expect them to get the job right, then they won’t learn to get it right. I’d like you to be firm with them, and expect high, but reasonable performance from them.

I do not appreciate people who take advantage of my kids, like the woman who had them shovel the snow off a very large deck and driveway, and paid them $2. But I don’t want you to pay them when they didn’t do the job correctly either. I want them to understand that I am not the only person who expects them to do their best.

I want you to help me teach them the concept of value given for value received. I want you to help me encourage them to feel good about hard work done well. I want them to understand that an employer expects certain things of them, and that the employer has every right to expect it!

If you are too easy on them, you won’t want to have them come back and work again. So letting them go, and paying them, when the job isn’t done, is not kind to them at all. Instead, it guarantees that you won’t want to hire them again, and that they won’t have the chance to earn from you again.

If you teach them what you expect, and encourage them to get it right, and pay them fairly when it is done, then you’ll want to invite them back again. And they’ll want to come. It will help you both.

I teach them as well as I can. But unless other people reinforce what I am teaching them, they won’t listen to me for very long! If my kid works for you, I hope you’ll help me teach them to work well, and to be a good employee.