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Mostly clear this evening then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low 81F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph..
Mostly clear this evening then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low 81F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.
A member of the Tehachapi High School golf team, Michelle Corson picked up golf balls during the summer at the Oak Tree Golf Course in Bear Valley Springs.
Bakersfield human relations consultant Robin Paggi began her working life in Bob’s Bait Bucket on south Chester Avenue. The family-owned business is celebrating its 45th anniversary.
Catherine Merlo’s early experience as a sports writer led to a decades-long career writing about agriculture. She traveled in 2014 to Scotland with International Federation of Agricultural Journalists.
From hotdog stand worker to Bakersfield dentist, Robert Smith said his early jobs taught him he wanted to be his own boss. Now retired, he is an avid cyclist.
The manager of Visit Bakersfield spent evenings in college as a telephone solicitor. He credits the experience to helping develop the communications skills he uses today.
Sharon Borradori, a local asthma and COPD educator, remembers her early experience working in a potato shed.
A member of the Tehachapi High School golf team, Michelle Corson picked up golf balls during the summer at the Oak Tree Golf Course in Bear Valley Springs.
Bakersfield human relations consultant Robin Paggi began her working life in Bob’s Bait Bucket on south Chester Avenue. The family-owned business is celebrating its 45th anniversary.
Catherine Merlo’s early experience as a sports writer led to a decades-long career writing about agriculture. She traveled in 2014 to Scotland with International Federation of Agricultural Journalists.
From hotdog stand worker to Bakersfield dentist, Robert Smith said his early jobs taught him he wanted to be his own boss. Now retired, he is an avid cyclist.
The manager of Visit Bakersfield spent evenings in college as a telephone solicitor. He credits the experience to helping develop the communications skills he uses today.
Sharon Borradori, a local asthma and COPD educator, remembers her early experience working in a potato shed.
Among the winners as the COVID-19 pandemic moves us to a “new normal” and the nation’s jobs market heats up are teenagers. Shuttered companies are scrambling to rehire and looking at teens to fill entry-level and part-time jobs.
Since the turn of this century, the teen employment rate has been dropping. The bottom fell out during the 2008 recession, when displaced adult workers competed with teens for low-level jobs. But as the economy emerged from the recession and higher-paying jobs returned, teen employment began creeping up.
That was until 2020, when the pandemic hit. Many businesses closed, or allowed employees to work remotely.
With businesses now open, many in-person jobs are begging for applicants. You find “help wanted” signs in many storefronts. Beginning in summer 2021, the U.S. saw a spike in teens seeking work. That trend continues.
Nationwide, more than 6 million U.S. teens, or 36.6 percent, had a paying job for part of the summer, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The bureau counts only wage-paying jobs — not volunteer or non-paid internships.
Even with the spike, today’s rate lags behind the second half of the the last century, when a summer and part-time job was considered a rite of passage into adulthood. As recently as 2000, the average teen summer employment rate was 51.7 percent.
Encouraging your teen to work, while going to high school or college, is a tricky balancing act. Economists and management consultants note many benefits. Working teens gain experience, enhance their resumes, achieve confidence, learn financial management and earn money to cover expenses and help pay for college. Statistics suggest teens who work enhance their future earning capabilities.
But too much work — more than 15 hours a week during the school year — may be too stressful and distract students from important academic and extra-curricular pursuits.
Bakersfield Life magazine asked readers how they handled their teen jobs — back in the day, before they pursued their varied careers.
MICHELLE CORSON’s first job was picking up range balls at Oak Tree Golf Course in Bear Valley Springs. Corson is the public relations officer for the Kern County Public Health Services Department.
“At a young age I fell in love with the game and was on the Tehachapi High School boys golf team,” said Corson, explaining few girls golfed at her high school. “So, getting my first job at my home golf course was a thrill.”
She soon discovered “picking up golf balls on a country golf course, where the landscape is mostly dirt, weeds and rocks, is tough! I remember trying to look at it like going on an Easter egg hunt and seeing my job as an adventure.”
“I learned the importance of ‘blooming where you are planted’ — something my mom would always say — and doing your best at a lower-level job, so that you can prove yourself worthy of being considered for the job you really want!”
Soon transferred to the pro shop, Corson said she had her eyes set on greeting golfers, working the cash register, helping plan tournaments and announcing — “Next up on the tee is the Smith foursome.”
“I remember my boss telling me that he was impressed, because I was a hard worker and didn’t complain,” said Corson, whose golf course job lasted through high school. “This experience served me well, as I have navigated my career. I have always strived to appreciate the jobs I have had, learning what I could from each experience, so I could grow and further my career.”
ROBIN PAGGI worked in her family’s business, Bob’s Bait Bucket. The iconic Bakersfield shop at 2131 Chester Ave. is celebrating its 45th year in business.
“I spent just about all day, every day the summer I was 15 working at my dad’s bait and tackle store,” she said. “It seemed like every customer who came into the store (mostly men) commented that they couldn’t believe that a girl would work in a bait shop.
“This was in 1978 and I was annoyed by the frequent comments. Now I see how the events of that time (the biggest-ever march for the Equal Rights Amendment took place that summer) influenced me to believe that a person’s sex shouldn’t be a factor in the job they choose to do,” said Paggi, who now is a Bakersfield human resources consultant.
“A couple of things happened that summer that influenced who I am today,” she said. “Every night after work, I sat on our living room floor and counted the money that we made that day. I loved counting that money. And I learned that you must work to get it. That’s why I love to work.
“I often worked in the shop by myself and I waited on people (mostly men) much older than me. Some tried to trick me into giving them more change than was warranted; some tried to persuade me to sell them beer, when they were underage; some tried to get me to give them free merchandise; and some just messed with me because I was a 15-year-old girl.
“I learned to stand my ground. I gained a confidence that is probably apparent to most people who meet me.”
CATHERINE MERLO recalls her early job as a Bakersfield Californian sports writer. It was in 1979 and she had just earned a degree in English from Cal State Bakersfield. Title IX had gone into effect and focused attention on women’s sports. Editor Larry Press saw the wisdom of adding a woman to his all-male sports reporting staff.
The job lasted 10 months, before the summer lull in high school sports hit. Taking a break to visit family in Italy, Merlo returned to Bakersfield and was offered a communications job with cotton marketing giant Calcot Ltd. From there, she launched an agriculture-focused writing career that included serving as the Western editor of Farm Journal Media.
“The job (with The Californian) confirmed that writing was the career for me. I learned how much I loved interviewing people, writing under deadline pressure and seeing my stories in the paper the next day,” she said. “I also learned that readers won’t always love everything you write and will feel compelled to tell you so.”
She was the only woman in the sports department and “some of its reporters just couldn’t resist baiting me every chance they got,” she said. “I didn’t like it and probably didn’t handle it well. But the love of the work overrode all that.
“I never again encountered that kind of hassling and immaturity from others in my career. But if I had, I would have handled it with more grace, humor and confidence. Maybe it was that sports-writing job that helped me realize no one could keep me from going after my goals.”
ROBERT SMITH, a retired Bakersfield dentist, recalled that he held early jobs as a hot dog stand worker, shoe store stock boy, assistant in a biology lab and furniture fabrication shop, electronics store salesman and night manager at a coffee shop.
“The most I can say is that they affirmed my desire to be self-employed; to be my own boss,” he said.
DAVID LYMAN, manager of Visit Bakersfield, was a telephone solicitor in college. He spent evenings pitching memberships in Stallion Springs, a Tehachapi-area resort. The lure was a free dinner at Maison Jaussaud, once a prestigious Bakersfield restaurant.
“From this job early in life, I learned how to deal with practically anyone on the telephone. Because of that experience, I can easily make cold calls, get my point across quickly, overcome objections, and close the sale, all while making sure I speak clearly,” said Lyman.
BETH BROOKHART PANDOL, the former executive director of the Water Association of Kern County and local writer worked a high school summer job in Denver helping sell cemetery plots.
“The only job I could find for the summer was at a mortuary,’” she recalled. “They hired me to do phone surveys. I would call people, ask them if they were homeowners, a veteran and if they owned any burial property. Which was always a shocker to ask someone! If they didn't own any burial property, I would pass their name on to the sales people who would then contact them.”
She said her high school friends thought it was funny and the job gave her “pretty good experience learning to be unafraid of asking questions, which paid off when I went to college for a journalism degree, then spent 20 years as a reporter. But my reporting job was mostly in ag journalism where, fortunately, I did not have to ask anyone about owning burial property!”
JONATHAN REID spent the summer of 1967 as an 18-year-old “guinea chaser” on a road construction job at the 8,000-foot elevation, outside of Alpine, Ariz. A guinea chaser ran in front of a motor grader uncovering stakes that designated the road grade.
“The grader does not stop or slow down for the chaser. When I got good at it (i.e., fast) I would hitch a ride by jumping onto the moving mow-board on the grader to catch my breath a bit. OSHA would be apoplectic about that little trick these days,” Reid joked.
SUSAN LAVERTY, a registered nurse, recalled working for a film processing lab in San Fernando. She worked in the dark splicing reels — and some of the reels were quite racy.
“The three older women would have great fun explaining what I was seeing,” Laverty recalled. “The chemist was a woman — a complete shock, as I was told in high school that I should take typing and shorthand, as girls didn’t take extra math and science. She was the first female role model, who told me to do whatever I wanted and not listen to what others said.”
STEVE KYSOR’s first job was as a 16-year-old dishwasher. Next, he worked as a fry cook in a hot dog stand, before joining the Marines, and ending up as a mess sergeant in Vietnam and baker at Camp Pendleton. After his military discharge, he began a decades-long culinary career.
I ended “my 45-year career as the general manager of the Iron Skillet at Wheeler Ridge,” Kysor said, adding that in retirement he does all the cooking at his home.
It’s not surprising that in this agricultural county, many readers recalled working in the hot summer packing sheds as teens.
SHARON BORRADORI, a local asthma and COPD educator, recalled:
“Over 40 years ago, as a single mother, I worked in the office for a produce broker. During potato harvesting time, we worked in a shed in Shafter. One day, I was invited to try my hand at potato sorting. Two women who were long-time sorters gave me instructions and stood on each side of me at the sorting belt.
”Think of Lucy at the conveyor belt making chocolates. I was terrible! Wrong sizes of potatoes and culls in bags — to say nothing of all the potatoes I missed. The belt was so fast I couldn’t even see half of the potatoes. I begged them to turn off the belt after five minutes.
“These women stood at that sorting station for eight hours every day, six days a week. They never took their eyes off the belt and managed to sort out culls and multiple potato sizes, while visiting and laughing with each other. They were excited to get a bag of potatoes and a paltry paycheck every Saturday. I realized then how hard these women worked, but somehow found friends and laughter in that hardship.
“Since then, I have had great respect for those women and others like them. I also learned I was much better off than I thought and to quit whining and make the best of it.”
A teen part-time and summer job is not just a way of making money. It can be an on-ramp to a fulfilling life’s journey.
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