Waffle's First Job

Newsletter 2025-06-02

Saturday marked multiple firsts for my nine-year-old, Waffle. She had her first job, her first customer service experience, and her first irate customer. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen—or, in this case, the bounce house.

Technically, it was a volunteer position and not a job. Even in Indiana, fourth graders aren’t allowed to hold W2 gigs. At least not yet. It wouldn’t surprise me if, tomorrow, I saw a headline that Hoosier children can now work sixty-hour weeks as long as their bosses give them one fifteen minute break each day for homework. Well, you might see that headline. I won't see it because I can’t handle reading or watching the news anymore. Now I only engage in low stress activities like watching sports. Don’t ask me what my blood pressure was during the Pacers game Saturday. My kids’ BSA troop and Cub Scout pack volunteered to help with our suburbs’ summer festival. The children would provide labor in exchange for a donation from the non-profit group running the festival to help pay for summer camp and other scout activities. It’s the ultimate workaround for existing child labor laws. Kids can’t work for pay, but it’s okay to make them volunteer and then pay someone else on their behalf. If I had known that earlier, my parenting experience might not have been such a money losing endeavor. My greatest regret is failing to exploit my children to their fullest economic potential.

Not many scouts were eager to sign up for shifts. The three girls I supplied were a large portion of the total labor force. Mae and Lucy went for BSA, and Waffle went for her Cub Scout pack. Only Mae had worked the festival before. She told her two younger sisters that, last year, she had been tasked with emptying trash cans for three hours. That failed to dampen Lucy and Waffle’s enthusiasm. They were mostly excited about running around the festival unsupervised. Garbage disposal duty was a small price to pay for freedom. The festival was within walking distance of our house. When it was time for their shift, they didn’t even wait for Lola and me to take them over. We went a short while later to verify that they made it safely on their own. The festival was a ghost town at that point. The event would feature live music later in the evening, but at 3:30 p.m., everybody was still setting up. In a few hours, there would be an avalanche of people and garbage. The scouts would be all that stood in the way of humanity being buried alive in its own filth. It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it. That “somebody” was a small group of small girls.

My kids were especially excited about their waste management duties because of the main job perk: a food voucher that came with their shift. They could take a coupon to any vendor at the festival to receive a meal free of charge. If they wanted an elephant ear to be their dinner, there was no power on earth that could stop them. They could try unique food pairings like giant tenderloins with snow cones or deep fried Snicker bars with cheeseburgers. That sort of culinary latitude was worth dealing with any amount of trash.

Meanwhile, Lola and I were at home eating steak. We could thank the only non-scout in the family for that. In addition to the Triple Birthday Party, each kid gets to pick a meal as part of the extended celebration for their special day. The girls almost always choose to go out to eat somewhere, or for me to go out and pick something up. The latter is my preferred scenario. It lets me chug six liters of soda in the privacy of my own home rather than asking a waitress to repeatedly bring me free refills. I can’t afford the tip warranted by that level of labor. This year, Betsy made me extremely proud with her choice for a birthday meal. She wanted my board game friend, Peter, to make steaks. His grilled New York strips are far superior to any cut of meat that I’ve ever had in a restaurant. I was able to buy six pounds of high-end beef from the grocery store for what I would have paid for a single entree at a top tier steakhouse. It was perfect timing that we did it on a night when the younger three girls were eating something else. Fine cuts of meat would have been wasted on them. Had they been home, I would have made them grilled cheese sandwiches or reheated leftovers. Instead, they were sampling the finest cuisine food trucks had to offer. It tricked them into thinking that trading unpaid labor for food was actually a good idea. The customer service meltdown that would define the evening was yet to come.

After an immensely satisfying steak dinner that was all the better because I got to finish everybody’s leftovers plus the extra steak, we walked over to the festival to check on the kids. Mae and Lucy were deep in the garbage mines. We caught Mae in action emptying a can. She had a technique for pulling out the bag while jumping backwards to avoid what she called “trash juice.” She had been on the job long enough to develop technical jargon. She asked us if she could do a second shift, which would keep her there until 10 p.m.. Apparently dodging trash juice was fun. We told her that she could. I didn’t want to risk the karmic fallout of stopping her the one time she actually wanted to clean. Lucy, meanwhile, was ready to go home. She had seen enough trash juice for one lifetime. She had already secured her prize: a walking taco in exchange for her meal voucher. That didn’t satisfy her lust for junk food. She asked me if I could get her cotton candy on the way out. I paid five dollars for twenty-five cents worth of melted, strung-out sugar. I was okay with that trade since I got the dad tax. Remnants of that cotton candy will be stuck in my beard for the rest of my life. It was a small price to pay for the optimal food pairing. Cotton candy really is the perfect chaser for the world’s best steak.

After a little more walking, we found Waffle at the end of a side street. She was running a bounce house. Yes, running it. It was her first day on the job and she had already worked her way into a position of authority. I’ve repeatedly called the structure a bounce house, but it was really more of an inflatable obstacle course. Waffle was inside of it directing children. She was like the lifeguard at the top of a water slide. It was her duty to prevent a multi-kid pileup. Putting Waffle in charge of safety is like putting an arsonist in charge of the fire department. Somehow, no one had died yet. Despite the high stakes, her job was literally a cushy one. She was bouncing up and down on an inflatable floor while Mae and Lucy handled liquid refuse. The only downside was that Waffle dealt with people. She was about to learn why her sisters preferred the garbage.

Photo by Skylar Zilka on Unsplash

Waffle also wanted to stay for another shift. I let her. I generally say yes to anything that keeps the kids out of the house. We left Mae and Waffle at the festival and walked home. The critical confrontation happened after we were gone. I pieced it together from eyewitness testimony. As with all my stories, nearly all the facts will be wrong, but the vibes will be on-point. Waffle was still in the inflatable obstacle course, diligently doing her job of directing traffic. A line was forming in front of the attraction. Waffle pointed to let in kid after kid. A pair of siblings approached. Waffle let in one sibling but told the other one to wait. Their dad got mad. He confronted Waffle. Other kids were cutting his second kid, he said. Waffle wasn’t being fair. She had to let his child in. His volume went up.

Waffle was still inside the obstacle course. She’s nine. She’s very small. She wasn’t rattled. Perhaps she’s used to a lot of yelling from home. For her and her sisters, inside voices are full-throated screams. Then again, maybe she felt safe because she was protected by inflatable walls. It’s not like the guy could run in there and get her. She was a rabbit in her own warren. Your move, Mr. Fox.

Thankfully, the girl troop’s BSA scoutmaster was standing within earshot. She stepped in immediately. I assume she used her mom voice. It’s exactly as powerful as “the voice” used by the Bene Gesserit in Dune. Those movies were basically documentaries. She told the man to stop yelling. He rebutted that he wasn’t yelling, which is how you instantly lose any argument. If you ever have to say, “I’m not yelling,” you’re yelling, full stop. Confronted by superior authority, the man backed down. Waffle let the guy’s second kid go through the course, and the man slinked away.

Waffle is too young to grasp how wildly inappropriate and potentially dangerous that situation was. There should never be a time where a grown man raises his voice to argue with a nine-year-old volunteering at a free event, or with a nine-year-old at all. I say this as someone who argues with a nine-year-old literally every day. The difference is that she’s my nine-year-old. I would never argue with somebody else’s nine-year-old, regardless of their position of authority. I would simply take the L and move on. The incident gave Waffle an extremely accurate preview of what it’s like to deal with the public. The inflatable obstacle course was free. It’s not like the guy and his kids were being deprived of a service for which they had paid and were entitled. It was something fun and silly for the youth at a public festival, yet the dude was still mad enough about it to yell at a child. Now would be a very good time for that guy to re-examine everything about his life. Unfortunately, behavior like that is more the rule than the exception. If Waffle’s future job requires her to deal with human beings in any setting, she will see many versions of that person. May she always have an inflatable obstacle course to escape into if things get dicey.

I walked back to the festival to pick up Mae and Waffle at the end of the second shift. They were in high spirits. They had worked hard, raised money for their troop and pack, and eaten free food of questionable nutritional value. Those were all the ingredients of a perfect Saturday night. One angry dad couldn’t ruin that for them. As we walked home, they discussed their experiences. Both agreed that running the inflatable obstacle course was the hardest job at the festival. Dealing with trash was far easier than dealing with people. Perhaps I have some future sanitation engineers on my hands. As someone who’s had to deal with more than a few humans in my time, I fully support that career path. Hears to the future garbage men and women of America. I hope no one ever yells at any of them again.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.

James