u/Niceotropic

Your 16 year old is not a kid. They are almost an adult. Many of their peers are studying for their EMT exam so they can ride ambulances at 17.

Some of them are in prep academies to join the military at 17.

Some of them have started their own successful businesses. Have had children of their own.

Where I’m at a quarter of them have jobs. Many are a major breadwinner of the household.

Yes, you were wrong to infantilize your teen during middle school, and now they are going to be NEETs between 18-25 because you kept delaying the age where they had to learn to be responsible.

“But why didn’t school teach me financial literacy?!!!!!!11”

I simply allow all of the students to turn in their work late until the end of the quarter.

What is incredible, is that at first a few colleagues thought that was too lenient, but then saw what I was really doing - making them realize that they are failing entirely because of their own apathy. They don’t want to even do that, I still get roughly the same fraction of kids at the end of the year looking for an easy no-work pass as my colleagues.

Difference is, I get to say to their counselor or tutor or admin: “I am the most permissive teacher in my department about turning in late work. Even I cannot accept work from another quarter. If they actually wanted to pass, it would have been easy. Better luck to them next year”.

You won’t hear a peep.

Real quotes:

"Let's be honest, kids today don't deserve parties".

"All admin is the enemy"

"Kids today are stupid - let's just be honest"

I feel like it's OK to have burnout, but when you display your mental illness openly, it kind of gets cringe.

I know most people think “oh, they are still figuring it out” - but studies show that the sooner a person feels they know what they want to do with their lives, the better they perform.

It’s clear a defined sense of purpose makes us happier and more effective. So why not nudge them towards it?

Life is a branching tree of events and decisions and keeping all of the options open into early twenties can cause I think anxiety and stress in people rather than the intended purpose.

Have them focus in engineering or business or culinary or healthcare or the arts or science research or writing or law/history etc.

The amount of vitriol spewed against working people who - despite working a full time job - cannot make their ends meet - is insane.

It always seems like half the comments on any post trying to fix the problem are something like: “unskilled labor makes minimum wage, shocker”, or “if you wanted to afford healthcare and retirement, you should have worked harder and then companies would pay you more”.

While they whine and complain that their bonus isn’t high enough or taxes on their $150K salary is too high. “I worked hard for that”, as if low income earners don’t work even harder for less.

It’s so sick, and it’s clear that people just want a underclass of poor workers who will work their bodies into dust for the and then disappear once they need anything for themselves.

I always cringe when I hear things like “this is like less than a dollar of potatoes and they want $7!”

“These cost them nothing to make, the fries should be free with the meal”

The cost of the potato has almost zero to do with the expense of making French fries.

The potatoes could be free and it basically wouldn’t change the price.

You have to have purchase and maintain a commercial fryer. You need to purchase and change the cooking oil. The whole thing takes electricity. It needs to be operated and cleaned by a cook!

IDGAF that potatoes are a buck a pound or less, that’s not a major cost center of fries.

The only people who consistently “don’t want to work” and are lazy freeloaders are people who want to make money solely through interest, investment returns or land ownership.

I am in no way stating that loans, investments, or being a landlord are inherently bad - but having these things be your sole source of income and not actually working means in the end that other people actually have to do the work to create your return.

For example: a landlord who is a handyman/contractor who fixes up broken down houses and then sells/rents them and does his own maintenance is valuable and positive for society

VS

A landlord who merely owns a bunch of crappy apartments and hires other people to repair and manage the property or even just cuts corners and neglects the property while chiseling excessive rents to cover the whole wasteful expenditure

This drives down wages and drives up inflation, all to support lazy people who won’t contribute to society.

When I was a kid in the early 00s, I worked for an older couple who owned a small business, doing computer stuff (installing printers, ZIP drive, basic IT, updating software, converting paper accounting into digital spreadsheets, etc).

They were very grateful since they were getting ripped off by Geek Squad type predatory IT ppl and they decided to give me the man’s older bike(s) as a bonus.

There were two, I forgot which one I eventually kept (he taught me to really ride road so I borrowed sometimes?):

Early 1970s Peugeot road bike with drop bars and super skinny wheels, no thicker than my thumb, and a late 1960s Fuji that I think was lugged steel. I definitely looked strange with my teen friends on the bike trail in comparison lol, nobody else even knew drop bars were a thing.

It’s incredible to me, but the only reason I even got rid of it was that I went to college very far away. Those bikes lasted 40-50 years easy, and I hope we are still building them that good.

Whether you like it or not is one thing, but it’s just the way it is.

When you are violent, rude, or aggressive to customers whom you haven’t provided the appropriate level of service to receive a tip, you’re disrespecting tip culture.

Given that tipping is entirely optional, if you didn’t get one, that’s entirely on you.