Do you remember your very first job?

0:00The kids really love that playhouse, huh? Yeah, it's not just a child's playhouse. It's a rental property. Kids, off-carries roof! Someone lives in there? Lives, works, and thrives. Your wife, I reaches all the way to the playhouse? We're good ghillie nairs. It reaches everywhere. Can I check it out? Sorry. Booked solid, but the treehouse just opened up. Live without limits. Get home internet from AT&T and cover your whole house. Even your playhouse turned rental property. AT&T Extended Wifi Coverage Service Required. Limited availability. Visit AT&T.com-forwardslash-internet to learn more. News talk breakfast with Anton Savage. In association with air. And let's talk about early jobs and what you should be doing. And if you have a young fella or a young one at home, send them out to face the public is the most important thing that you can do. I started by pumping petrol and that used to be a thing a couple of decades ago. And I have to say this weekend, my young fella is starting in a hotel as a wager.

1:00I apologize in advance to anyone who gets soup poured over them or her drinks are spilled. He's only new. Isabel Brooks is a freelance journalist. She's been looking at this in various different ways because there's a whole load of young people nowadays who are effectively too good for this kind of thing. Isabel, is that it? Well, maybe, or maybe they can't get the jobs, especially in the countryside. I feel like it's different. I mean, it was difficult when I was growing up and it might be even more now. But it also could be a combination of, yeah, as you say, like feeling like the jobs aren't worthwhile. I don't know. Maybe because they don't pay enough to make it worth it with the cost of living. One of the challenges that is out there at the moment is that a lot of hospitality jobs, a lot of retail jobs, they only want 18 year olds because of the very strict rules around the sale of alcohol and working hours. Under 18s are just a little harder to employ.

2:02And I think that that means there's an entire generation who are missing out. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I got my first job when I was 14 because I messed up on a school trip and left my passport on a bus. So my mom had to pay for me and a teacher to go last minute on a flight. And I had to pay that money back. So I learned financial independence. I also then, therefore, when I was 14, I had to work with people who are older than me and people who are different from me. And that was really good experience. Like I formed bonds with, you know, people who I would never have met and never have formed bonds with at the age of 14 otherwise. And you get to work with older people and learn from them as well. Look, the other thing you get to learn is that some members of the public are jerks. And I say this from experience because when I graduated from the petrol pumping to work in the shop and one of the things you had to do you had to clean the meat slicer, right? So there was a thing in the deli and you had to clean it every evening because it was filthy

3:03and it took ages and it was horrible and I hated it. And there was a one woman who was coming at five to 11, five minutes to close in time and asked for two slices of ham. And I still bear a grudge against that woman to this day. You get to learn about humanity in all its forms, don't you? Yeah, and also like failing, like having those moments of conflict and kind of in a small way, realizing that things can go wrong and things can, you know, you can get shouted out, you can do the wrong order, but it's okay. It's like that's part of life, that's part of work. And I think that that's something that maybe is kept, is becoming weirdly more kept from people until an older age. Be I relate to the experience of being shouted out or being asked to do, especially by, you know, like not just customers, but by your team, but it just is all out. It's really all happening.

4:03It's a learning experience though. It is important to have, sometimes it's important to be shouted out when you're a teenager. It's tough and the best. Isabelle Brooks, journalists, thank you very much for joining. News talk breakfast with Anton Savage in association with air. Weekday mornings at seven. News talk, conversation that counts.