In today’s day and age, it has become more common for teenagers to get a job around the age of 16. Walking into the local grocery store, the teenagers are the ones bagging groceries and bringing carts inside just for the customers to complain about them being “lazy” and having an “inadequate work effort.” The managers being the ones to deal with it bring it up to their employees and end up jumping their case as if their cashier isn’t on their phone ignoring the customers right in front of them. All this because their cashiers are adults and the baggers are teens. 

Taking a look around at various jobs and how they treat their employees has often become a deciding factor on if someone gets a job somewhere. No one wants to be treated badly at work. That changes the tone of a worker for the rest of their shift. Whether that be four hours or eight. Teens don’t go into their place of work and expect to be treated like adults, but they also don’t expect their employers to treat them like they are gum stuck on the bottom of their shoe. There is not a good balance on how teenage employees should be treated.

More often than not, the employees who are coming to work, doing their job, getting compliments and going the extra mile are the teens. But, the ones who get employee of the month are the adults who sit on their phones in the back or take 30 minute breaks instead of 15. And still, the teenagers get one complaint and that’s a write up. Where is the equality? 

There are some cases when a teenager needs to be treated like such because there are battles that they can’t fight due to the fact that they are minors. If a place of employment decides they don’t want to follow child labor laws, that is out of the minors control and that’s a battle they cannot fight alone. Other than that, every single person in the workplace should be treated equally. With the same amount of respect, with the same amount of work enforcement and with the same opportunities in the future. 

Teens shouldn’t be treated as if they are below adults in their workplace just because they are younger. A job is a job no matter how old the worker is. If they are doing their job, they deserve the same respect as others. Employee of the month shouldn’t come down to whether or not the employee is an adult or not. It should come down to who comes into work and does their job. Teenager or not.