u/CruiseLifeNE

My younger daughter has started a summer job at a boutique chocolate shop in a very busy touristy area. She is often the only one on the floor, with a manager sometimes in a back office. She is expected to restock the product while there are long queues of customers. The product is often custom gift-wrapped as well, which leads to longer lines. She is often reprimanded for not restocking quickly enough, but she is indignant that she prioritize customers (she is also 18 and indignant about everything).

I do agree with her that restocking while customers browse does not correlate with the boutique shopping experience the shop is going for. I think the manager wants a bit of obsequious service but only wants to pay for one girl on the floor. I also think the restocking while busy looks tacky, but they also have a lot of product turnover.

Would love some perspective here and some advice I can give my daughter. She is the type who would talk back to a manager and insist that the customer's experience is the most important thing, and she'd risk getting fired speaking her mind like that!

I'm wondering how common this was. I guess it kind of goes along with the 11 year old who was babysitting several infants, making bottles, doing all the dishes, and vacuuming for $2 an hour.

When I was a young teenager (ie too young for a mall job), my mother "voluntold" my services all over the neighborhood to any woman who needed a hand. Random things, like going to their backyard bbqs and topping up ice and drinks, or watching a whole group of small children during an adult's birthday party, even going into a teacher's classroom to help them take down bulletin boards. All for a few bucks. Did I want to do this? No. Did I have a choice? No.

Lately though I've been thinking about how nice it would be to have some young kids in the neighborhood willing to come over and help with party set up, or decluttering projects. My hunch is that young kids have no interest in doing that sort of thing anymore at all.