What do teens expect? (quotes, business, person, children)
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I think it's important for people to not get hung up on payment based on time and an hourly pay system. He wasn't being paid by the hour, he was being paid by the job. He wasn't doing a $60 per hour job. He was only doing a $20 job, regardless of time. $20 is not a lot of money, it's only what the OP figured the job was worth to the OP.
If the boy completed it in 5 minutes or if he dragged his heels and it took him an hour or two to do it he'd still be getting only $20 for doing a $20 job, he wouldn't be getting paid more or less based on however long it took him.
$20 today is not the equivalent value of what $20 was valued at twenty or thirty years ago.
I think it's important for people to not get hung up on payment based on time and an hourly pay system. He wasn't being paid by the hour, he was being paid by the job. He wasn't doing a $60 per hour job. He was only doing a $20 job, regardless of time. $20 is not a lot of money, it's only what the OP figured the job was worth to the OP.
If the boy completed it in 5 minutes or if he dragged his heels and it took him an hour or two to do it he'd still be getting only $20 for doing a $20 job, he wouldn't be getting paid more or less based on however long it took him.
$20 today is not the equivalent value of what $20 was valued at twenty or thirty years ago.
What are you talking about?? I was just commenting about someone who posted about the $60/hr notion. Mowing a lawn for $20 once a week is not really making $60/hr.
I think it's important for people to not get hung up on payment based on time and an hourly pay system. He wasn't being paid by the hour, he was being paid by the job. He wasn't doing a $60 per hour job. He was only doing a $20 job, regardless of time. $20 is not a lot of money, it's only what the OP figured the job was worth to the OP.
If the boy completed it in 5 minutes or if he dragged his heels and it took him an hour or two to do it he'd still be getting only $20 for doing a $20 job, he wouldn't be getting paid more or less based on however long it took him.
$20 today is not the equivalent value of what $20 was valued at twenty or thirty years ago.
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This is what I was going to say. For this type of work, you pay by the job, not by the hour.
1. I pay my lawn guy $60 to cut my lawn, takes him just under an hour. Seems like a reasonable, or should I say customary, amount here.
2. When my son was a teen he did private tutoring for $14 an hour, and this was back almost twenty years ago. Twenty dollars to cut a lawn isn't much in todays economy. That's enough he could maybe buy a pizza, with one topping.
My neighbor friend was having his teen son (15) cut my cut my grass - not a lot, takes a total of maybe 20 mins? I also gave him water, bug spray, and either ice pops or ice cream pops - $20 - he doesn't want to do it any more, gave many reasons but then said if he wants to make money, he'll do it from his job.
I never had a a job at that age that paid that much - entitled???
He's not the one who sounds entitled. What's the going rate for getting a yard mowed there? Even here in the hinterlands it's around $50.
There has been a bit of inflation since you were that age, has there not? My kids earned somewhere around $15-$20 an hour while in high school. Of course, it was only part time, but still, they could earn a hundred bucks for a Saturday morning.
Quote:
Originally Posted by E-Twist
If I were your neighbor I would do it for free. 20 minutes is nothing. Maybe you should have asked him if he had a friend that wanted the work.
Why would you do it for free? We had a neighbor who we helped out by doing her lawn a few times when she couldn't. Which she then expected us to continue to do. It went from "Thank you for helping me" to "why haven't you mowed the lawn this week" quickly.
I think it's important for people to not get hung up on payment based on time and an hourly pay system. He wasn't being paid by the hour, he was being paid by the job. He wasn't doing a $60 per hour job. He was only doing a $20 job, regardless of time. $20 is not a lot of money, it's only what the OP figured the job was worth to the OP.
If the boy completed it in 5 minutes or if he dragged his heels and it took him an hour or two to do it he'd still be getting only $20 for doing a $20 job, he wouldn't be getting paid more or less based on however long it took him.
$20 today is not the equivalent value of what $20 was valued at twenty or thirty years ago.
.
None of this really matters either. Nor is it is not about inflation. It is about supply and demand. My daughter was able to charge many times over what I was paid for babysitting since many teens her age would not babysit and she was in demand. She was never expected to babysit based on what the parent felt her time was worth. The parents could accept her rate or try to find someone else.
The OP should have asked the teen what he would charge to mow the lawn before he even started. If it was too much, she was free to try to find someone else. If she cannot find anyone, that is what is needs to pay or do it himself/herself.
Last edited by Maddie104; 09-22-2023 at 08:09 AM..
Well, having to spend 20-30 minutes mowing someone's lawn, and get paid decently for it, isn't exactly "suffering". Helping out a neighbor used to be an important value; one does it to be a good neighbor. Back in the not-so-long-ago "old days", neighbors did it for free, or had their kids do small chores for free, for an elderly neighbor, or whoever.
I think the teen in this case just wasn't motivated, because he already had a significant source of income. He wasn't a teen looking to make pocket money. He already had that. And if the parents were trying to make a point about helping a neighbor for the sake of neighborliness, it was lost on him.
So that poster suggesting the OP look around for a teen who does need pocket money was on the right track, IMO.
To me the big issue is that this wasn't presented as a "help out a neighbor in need" situation. Teens are plenty ready to volunteer their time to help out others. I see it all the time. Watched many high schoolers clean up homes, pull weeds, organize fund raisers, do all sorts of volunteer work. Don't need adults to tell them to do it. They love to volunteer. But they don't like to be voluntold.
Instead, this was a "voluntold" job to get paid half price for mowing a lawn. Honestly I think most teens would have rather done the lawn for free to help out an older neighbor whose health was bad with no complaint. But not take on a half pay job for a neighbor who considers them entitled for not wanting to do the job for half price.
My understanding there were goals of the tutoring.
1) Explain what to expect out of the testing
2) Understand the different sections and focused areas of the SATs.
3) Test-taking techniques
4) Access to drills and practice tests.
The actual content, I have not really taken a look. According to his mother, they have changed significantly since the time I took them. College entrance also has changed and there is a focus on more of a rounded individual rather than just pure scores and aptitude tests.
He took several practice tests and worked his way up to about low 1400s. So that was what his expectations were. He ended up getting just under 1300. When he took the test, we had a difficult time scheduling. The available slot was more than 2 hours away and started very early morning. So his mother and he went the day before and spent the night at a hotel nearby. So I figure that has a factor in it. He is a good kid but sometimes attention is a problem; so maybe the night in the hotel threw him off.
He simply wanted to try again since that was his first official time. The tutor did mention it is not unusual for students to make more than a single attempt. He already has the material so he will just do a few more drills/practice tests between now and the scheduled test.
No matter how he does already, I think he has already done well in my book. Heck, as much as he wasn't happy with his first scoring, it still beat mine... LOL. (I was never good a test taking)
Thank you, and thx to springfieldva for responding to my query.
What this is, is coaching, not studying. Coaching and practicing. My school didn't have an SAT-prep class per se. But in junior year, we had a session, where test-taking strategy was explained, and then we were given a dry run on the SAT. We were told, we'd be given the test again at the beginning of senior year, and that we could pick which score we would submit with our college applications.
That was all there was to it, but we'd had standardized tests before, when some kind of state-mandated benchmark testing was required. So we were familiar with filling in the bubbles on the answer sheet, and the different types of sections on such tests.
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