Argumentative Essay

Lockett 1 Amara Lockett Mr. Phillips English 3 28 February 2019 My First Work Experience Being a working teenager can be a amazing experience or also a terrible experience. It is also very hard balancing being a student and being an employee. You have to learn how to be able to handle long work hours and ridiculous homework assignments.Most of my life my mother been looking forward to me getting a job. Roughly after my 16th birthday I gotten a job at frankie's fun park. I originally thought the job was going to be a fun job but little did I know it is not. When I got the job I was never told of everything that comes with the job. At frankies we have terrible hours, no breaks, it's not safe, and we have rude customers. Normally we close at midnight but we never leave until close to 1am. ​ A double shift is opening to closing (9:45am-12am). If you are 16 and older there is no laws that protects you from a double and you have no say when you get a double. My first double was in the summertime, I worked friday the double saturday, I opened sunday. After that long weekend I instantly felt dead inside. I was so tired i couldn't function. From a parents standpoint, my mom hates when I get a double. My mom hates it so much that she emailed managers to stop giving me doubles. On top of that, we have to deal with rude customers and zero safety. Customers expect us to know everything and will get mad if you do one thing wrong meanwhile we are only teenagers. Also kids can easily walk out of the park alone or their parents can walk away from them. If we have a lost child we usually have to babysit them until we find their parents.

Lockett 2 If you were to ask a manager how they feel towards over working teenagers they would just say “it teaches them independence ” or “you signed up for this when you signed the contract”. Now a first job does teach you independence but, working 12 hours at once can mentally drain a teen. Teens need rest and on the weekends we should be able to do that and not worry about homework and work. Managers also say that standing up for hours will prepare you for your future career. Which I think it does prepare you for hard work in the future because some jobs involve standing up all day. Also when you are at work you only have a 15 min break even if you have a double. When I am at work I feel like a 15 min break is not enough, I feel like a zombie afterwards. Today I still work at Frankies, I would like them to come up ways to be more flexible with our needs as a teenager. If I could come up with a solution to this job I would allow double shifts to be a choice. And also have a better break and safety system. Our break should at least be a half in hour. If we had shorter shifts and schoolwork we can be able to balance everything and the first job experience will be much better.

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