English Paper on Part Time Employment

Everything in life is a big learning experience. Though some of Etzioni's claims hold merit, most of them are exaggerated there really is nothing in life that holds no learning value. Although working at a fast food joint not be the greatest of starting points for a career, it still has many potential skills to be learned. Etzioni assumes that learning a trade is the most important aspect of a job, but there are many more things to learn from a job than just a specific skill. Time management, managing priorities, people skill, teamwork, independence, and discipline are all important skills, and just about any job will help enrich and improve them.

There are only so many things that can be done in a day, making time management and prioritizing two of the most important skills that an individual can possess. With school and homework already on a high school student's mind, grasping the skills of time management and prioritizing will be important if he want to acquire a part time job on top of everything else. An important problem of having teenagers work part time jobs is that some mistake earning a low wage, to be more important than going to school and working for the future. A part time job is a part time activity for a reason, it should not be your first priority in life, but when high schoolers spend more time on working at a part time job than investing in their futures, then he have failed at managing their time and priorities. However, assuming that a high schooler does successfully get his priorities straight, he will have learned a good lesson on managing his time wisely. Since there will be less time in the day for whatever it is that he needs to do because of a few hours at work, teenagers will be forced to eliminate bad procrastinating habits and adopt good time management skills. As long as high school students can properly prioritize their work, there is much to learn about time management that will help in the future.

Though time management and prioritization may not be specific skills affecting a career choice such as learning a useless trade like working a cash register, an important skill that Etzioni obviously overlooks are teamwork and people skills. If you are not good with people, you will not get very far in life. Just about any job will improve your important people skills, and there are many jobs that are less beneficial for improving people skills than working at a fast food joint. With so many different team positions working together, such as taking orders, making food, and getting it out to the consumer, working at a fast food joint requires being able to work as a team to most efficiently accomplish the tasks at hand. In addition to teamwork, depending on what specific job you work at the fast food joint, you may be exposed to a lot of customers. Employees that work the cash registers can end up learning a lot of valuable people skills on how to deal with angry customers or how to best satisfy a customer.

High school does not last forever, and once teenagers are out of high school, he will have to venture out into the real world where life is not as simple as high school. Fresh high school graduates need discipline and independence to properly transition to adult life, and one of the best ways to gain discipline and independence is to work a part time job while you are still in school. Working at a part time job while it is not an essential part of surviving, therefore not taking up all of your time, should give a lot of experience to compare how your life is as a teenager, and how it will be when you're in the workforce. Etzioni does touch on the fact that a part time job at a fast food joint does instill discipline into an individual; however, he underrates this and almost seems to brush it aside, saying "True, you still have to have the gumption to get yourself over to the hamburger stand, but once you don the prescribed uniform, your task is spelled out in minute detail" (284). You need more than just "The gumption to get yourself over to the hamburger stand" (284) to work at a job that drags on; to top it off, teenagers most likely do not enjoy working at such a job.

In addition to discipline, independence is an important trait needed to transition into adult life; after all, your day will not be planned for you, and your parent's money will not always be around. Etzioni claims that making money is useless if teenagers end up spending it on materialistic items, but either way, this teaches teenagers to become more independent. Once a teenager has income, he will no longer need to ask his parents for allowances, unless for something big. This will create immense independence in the youngster, since his views towards asking for money will change and he will instead be thinking of how instead to save and make money. Working at any job helps an individual feel as if he can rely on himself instead of having to live off someone else, which is a big confidence booster and leads to less confusion when high school ends and the graduate actually goes into the real world.

Time management, priorities, people skill, teamwork, independence, and discipline are all important skills in life, and just about any job will help enrich and improve a person's skill in those areas of life. Although Etzioni has a point that working at a fast food joint is not the best starting point, he should not go as far as saying that such an opportunity is completely useless and even harmful. Just because no formal craft or apprenticeship can be learned at a job such as McDonalds, does not mean there are no other important life skills to be learned, and these will make the transition into adult life much easier. The only problem with part-time working while in school is already addressed by Etzioni, in that if work is prioritized over education, then it can be hazardous, but that's why everyone needs to learn proper time management and prioritization skills. Without proper time management and priorities, accomplishing any task will be hard. No matter what line of work you go into after high school, social skills and teamwork will likely play a big role in your daily life. After high school, you will need to be independent and disciplined to live apart from a supporter like your parents. Though eventually most people should be able to transition from high school to the real life, a part time job, no matter what job it happens to be, is a great stepping stone into the real world. Either way, part time working keeps teenagers busy and off the streets doing illegal things.

The St. Martin's Guide to Writing. 7th ed. Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007.