Last February, Joe started his own little Garbage Can Curbside Service. For details, go HERE. In short, he asked our neighbors if he could roll out, and then back in, their garbage cans on trash day. In return, they would pay him 25¢ each week.
This job has taught him a lot of about money, responsibility and life in general. Although it does take a little of our time each week, my husband and I have had to do nothing more than help haul in trash cans to teach these lessons to our kids. This trash can job has been the best accidental parenting we've ever done.
This week we accidentally taught Joe about expanding his business, in a controlled fashion, and proving his value to potential customers.
Joe now works for 6 families on the street. His weekly job takes about 15 minutes to pull out cans and 15 minutes to pull back in cans. We don't want to commit him to too much more work, because after a big day at school, our 15 minutes job can seem to take forever.
Still, there is one house on the street that has a short drive way and is right next to another job. Joe and I discussed that this might be an easy addition to his weekly routine. We also discussed that since the job was so easy, our potential customer may not want to hire him to do the job.
After some more discussion, we decided that he should pull out, and then back in, her trash cans for free this week. It would give us an idea on how much time it would add to our routine and it would give our neighbor an idea of how helpful Joe's trash service can be. Joe did this as discussed and left his flyer at her door.
Adding this job to Joe's routine turned out to be very easy and well worth the 1 extra quarter per week. Lucky for him, the neighbor also saw how nice it was to have her trash can job outsourced and hired on Joe for full time.
So now Joe knows about expanding his business and winning new customers. It's hard to say what lesson he'll learn next week.
What first jobs have your kids had?
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