My parents did things differently. My dad had worked from the time he could deliver papers and my mother tells of picking beans as a kid. For that reason, they let me be a total slacker every summer while I was still in school (and actually even the summer after I graduated!). They even gave me my school lunch money ($20 a week) as an allowance. Their idea was that I had the rest of my life to work. My idea was to live it up! None of my friends worked either. Just to be clear though, none of us had any money or cars or anything extravagant. We were pleasantly middle class.

It seems like today, most teens are working, if not all through the school year, then definitely in the summer. Unfortunately, many teens are working in dangerous jobs. I’m talking about fast food. After reading the book, Fast Food Nation I stopped eating at fast food places almost entirely. I am a vegetarian, so I didn’t really frequent them anyway, but on road trips, I’d been known to stop in for French fries or onion rings. My main reason for skipping fast food now is teen safety.

Studying data from a national sample of hospitals over a two-year period, NIOSH estimated that approximately 44,800 occupational injuries to teen restaurant industry workers (age 14 to 17) were treated in hospital emergency departments across the U.S. during that time. Of these injuries, an estimated 28,000 or 63 percent occurred in hamburger, pizza, and other fast food establishments.

What sort of job did you have as a teen? Or if you’re a teen, what are you doing this summer?