Want Fries With That? Adults Taking Teens' Jobs
Posted on May 19, 2009 by Rachel Geizhals in Business & Economics, News Features
Working the counter at the neighborhood ice cream shop is not the most sophisticated or glamorous of jobs, and it’s one teenagers usually take. But early this year – for the first time in his five years as the manager of a Carvel’s ice cream shop – William Betancourt was fielding calls from grownups begging for a job that pays $7.15 an hour.
In the past, adults called from employment centers looking to place high school kids in Betancourt’s store. Now, they’re calling for themselves – and they’re desperate for income. “They were like, ‘Do you have anything?’” said Betancourt, who manages a Carvel’s in Forest Hills, a neighborhood in Queens in New York City. “They just wanted to work.”
