You're thinking of a nephew job. A job that doesn't actually need to be done, like mowing your lawn when you're totally fine mowing it yourself... or is actually part of another job, like bagging groceries when that's actually part of the cashier's job, for which they are fairly compensated. It's not really a necessary service. But you have your nephew (who lives in a financially stable home) come in and do it sometimes.
Nephew jobs are great bc they get pocket money and experience, and you get the chance to teach and reward. But they aren't real jobs. On the days he isn't there, everything runs smoothly. If he messes up, it's fine. If he has to quit for a while bc he has a really hard class, he can totally do that with no issues for anyone involved, and come back once he takes his finals. He's not going hungry and you're not in a bind. Nobody is actually depending on anybody.
If your employee depends on the income, regardless of age (some of y'all have never met a teen working to pay bills and it shows), or you depend on their work to make things run smoothly, it's not a nephew job. It's a job. You don't get to skate by on "it's not real work" while expecting and needing real work.
And I love that everybody still thinks minimum wage is for fast food. Friends and neighbors, minimum wage jobs are everywhere. There's a good chance you're being helped by a minimum wage (or just above, at a non-livable wage still tethered to the minimum) worker when you talk to anyone but a manager in a store or restaurant, call in to a customer service line, go through a teller line at a bank, get loan paperwork processed, have your pictures taken at a small studio, have a drug test sample delivered to a lab, order pretty much anything, schedule appointments, have any interaction at a hotel, get a phone call from a business, pay a bill, buy custom merchandise, get your phone looked at, ad nauseum.
Even if you truly think that fast food restaurants should only be open for 4 hrs in the evening on weekdays, and weekends, and run entirely by minors... and you don't, let's be real, you want an adult to cook your food safely and run your card properly and handle issues, stop lying... Do you really want that to also be the case when you need to call in to get your cable fixed? Do you want to give your payment information and SSN to 16-yr-olds? Do you want someone who can't buy cigarettes yet handling your medical data for about the price of a pack per hour? Bc that's what minimum wage really is.
If a job is necessary and in demand, you have to pay for it. My grandfathers each supported a family of 6 on "unskilled" labor, back when the minimum was coupled to productivity and inflation. That's what the intent was when minimum wage was implemented. Every honest job had to give you enough buying power to provide for your family. Now we provide far more value in a shorter period of time, and have less and less buying power.
If it's more important for you to rationalize your own suffering by treating other ppl like shit, than to acknowledge the dysfunction and try to make it so your kids and peers don't suffer, you are the one with the problem. They don't need a different job. You need therapy.
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