A few weeks ago our 16 year old ventured out on his own and got his first job in a pizza shop. We have told him we’re not buying him a car or paying for his license, insurance, or gas. We’ll help him some with the car, and of course help him navigate getting his license, but the majority of the costs he will need to cover, and there are plenty of near by employment opportunities. He applied at a couple of pizza shops and a grocery store that are within a 15 minute walk, and within a week had secured a job at one of the pizza shops, a franchise of a national chain.
The fact that this is a franchised location quickly stood out. I still 3 weeks after he’s started working have no idea if he has a legitimate work permit as a minor. They asked me to sign a piece of paper that they quickly hand wrote, and I kid you not, “I give my child permission to work at (pizza shop name.)” It didn’t have his name on it, there was no place to print my name, and being his step dad, we don’t even have the same last name, so even if they could read my signature, it wouldn’t really match up to his information. I also haven’t legally adopted him, so my signature is just as good as if the high school senior managing that day that wrote the thing had signed it himself!
That said, he’s been very good about getting himself up, ready, and out the door for work. He’s been very good, with a few reminders, about his hygiene, which working with food may not be essential, but is definitely a plus. And being a teenager, isn’t always the case! He’s had a few growing pains going from rarely doing chores to close to full time work hours, but he seems to be learning the job and hasn’t come home telling us about any reprimands. We’re very proud of him, and we’ve told him on several occasions.
He recently brought home his first paycheck. Hooray! What a day! Your first W2 income. I remember specifically buying concert tickets with my first paycheck as a bagger at a grocery store. We’ve been slowly telling him piece by piece how to be better with his money than blowing it all on a concert as I did. Step one, once he had been paid, was to get his own bank account. We have savings accounts for all of our kids at our bank (credit union,) but they’re child accounts, and our bank isn’t that close by, all the branches are in the city, and we moved a ways away.
This is where our title comes in, pandemic banking. Having a bank account already, it never occurred to me how different it would be to try to start your financial journey over the last year and half.
So the boy brings home his first paycheck, and we go to get him a new bank account with it. First bank only drive through is open, and only option to create a new account is online. Try online. Won’t allow it because he doesn’t have a government issued ID yet. Try the next bank down the street. No office hours yet, no drive through yet, ATM only. Same with the next bank. Turned out we had to leave our town and drive 20 minutes to a branch of a bank that we also have in our town but that the office was open, to open him an account, so that when they reopen in town he’ll have one close by. Unfortunately this franchised pizza shop he’s working for does not offer direct deposit, so we had to find one that will eventually be open around us again.
What an adventure!
What banking shenanigans have you run into since the pandemic upended every industry? Leave a message in the comments!
Photo by Ono Kosuki from Pexels