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Deena Crawley: A case for teenagers getting a job

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Deena Crawley: A case for teenagers getting a job

By Deena Crawley
 |  Special for the Avalanche-Journal

When I was sophomore in high school my mom went out of town and left me unsupervised for the weekend. I took the opportunity to throw a party. I vividly remember walking through the house after everyone had gone home and realizing that my socks were wet from all the beer that had been spilled on our brown shag carpet. I did not clean up well, and my mom discovered what I had done. My punishment was to get a job, and specifically get a job at Dion’s. It was a decision that had a profound impact on the trajectory of my life.

As we approach summer, I thought it was worth sharing my journey with parents that may be wondering what to do with their own children who are good kids having a difficult time.

Dr. Lisa Damour, author of The Emotional Lives of Teenagers stated in a recent interview, “There’s value in an outward focus. I have never seen anything do more for a teenager than a job, job. Not a cushy internship. Rather, a job taking care of customers, dealing with challenges, and doing work that is sometimes tedious. The amount of growth it fosters, the sense of capacity, the skillsets that are developed. A therapeutic option [for teenagers] is a job, job.”

Dr. Damour’s sentiment beautifully captures what happened to me when I started working at Dion’s 25 years ago. Within weeks of beginning my role at Dion’s, I gained a new sense of responsibility, I worked as part of a team for the first time (I was never in team sports), and I understood the value of my contributions. I learned what it meant to be in-service to customers and other crew members, and it brought me great joy to brighten the day of others. I built relationships with regular customers, and learned how to make things right when things went wrong. Furthermore, I had cash in my pocket that gave me independence to (mostly) buy whatever I wanted.

Without me being cognizant of it, Dion’s gave me a “sparkle” that I’m not sure I would have otherwise obtained. Customers noticed and one recruited me to work for his firm, where I learned my craft in marketing. Eventually, I came back to work for Dion’s in a different capacity and I am now Chief of Staff. All these years later, I have the good fortune of seeing what a “job, job” can do for other young people. I see them gain confidence, grow their abilities to communicate, and organize priorities. I feel a deep sense of responsibility to help them shine while they are with Dion’s. This means as a company we put enormous resources into training and development at all levels. We know most employees will not make a career out of Dion’s, and that is okay because we know they will take the skills they learn to lift up the community.

In exit questionnaires when asked how Dion’s helped to prepare them for the future, one former employee wrote “Dion’s helped me be more vocal and speak up. Answering phones and working at the register helped me to be less shy and helped with my communication skills. Being a trainer also helped me be more vocal and develop my leadership skills.” A parent of another former employee recently wrote to share that his son graduated from the Air Force Academy and how his child had “learned first-hand the value of work, being a team member, taking responsibility, being held accountable, and learning how to interface with co-workers” during his job at Dion’s.

In asking my husband, a public high school teacher, about how jobs impact his students he replied with a quote from Benjamin Franklin noting “Idle hands are the devil’s playthings.” He went on to share that, anecdotally, many of his students who work are better at completing their classwork because they procrastinate less. They understand there is limited time for school tasks, and therefore carve out specific time to complete assignments.

The most extensive study to date on youth employment was done by Dr. Jeylan Mortimer and published in her book Working and Growing Up in America. As with any study, is it difficult to make a sweeping generalization, and factors such as socioeconomic background, number of hours worked per week, and type of work impact the outcome for teenagers. Stated differently, like everything else, circumstances matter. On the positive side, her study concludes, “Youth themselves think that employment helps them to develop a wide range of beneficial attributes, such as the capacity to take responsibility, develop time-management skills, overcome shyness with adults, and handle money. Furthermore, at least while they are in the work setting, employment makes them feel more like an adult. Employed teens have high rates of job satisfaction.” 

Dr. Becky Bone, a Clinical Psychologist, uses the term “leaning into their adolescence” to describe the often confusing, and sometimes frustrating behaviors of teenagers. Experience shows me that having a job can help to right these behaviors by simply giving them a chance to focus on something other than themselves. As the school year comes to an end, summer is a perfect time to introduce the idea of employment. It might be at Dion’s, where we have 46 years of experience working with first time job holders, or another restaurant, grocery store, movie theater, or retail shop. At first, a “job, job” offers a healthy distraction from unsavory behavior. Eventually, it leads to a collection of skills that serve one well throughout a lifetime.

Deena Crawley is chief of staff at Dion’s and Tula’s

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