The summer of TikTok is giving way to the summer of punching the clock.
High school students, who saw their summer job plans evaporate last year as they were confined at home and businesses idled during the COVID-19 pandemic, are now finding a bonanza of summer job opportunities. And many of them say they are excited to get to work.
“The plan last summer was I was going to get my electrician’s license early,” said Teah Vazquez, a junior at Stevens High School in Claremont, while she was taking a break from lacrosse practice at Monadnock Park in Claremont. But COVID-19 upset that plan, and she spent last summer “hanging out, swimming, playing lacrosse,” acknowledging she “didn’t have a lot of responsibilities.”
This summer is very different, however. Vazquez, who began working part time at the McDonald’s on Washington Street in Claremont last fall, will go full time this summer — she just received a raise to $12.75 per hour — because “I just finished driver’s ed and need to buy a car. That’s where most of money is going now.”
Many Upper Valley businesses, especially restaurants, retail stores and social services, are desperate for summer help and report that a current scarcity in applicants for seasonal positions is forcing them to cut back hours of operation.
“Normally I have 10 people returning from college to my staff. This year I have two,” said Kristine Flythe, recreation director with the city of Lebanon’s summer camp program.
Flythe said when she reached out to former staff members — the camp program was suspended last summer — many of them said their plans were still in too much flux to make a commitment for this summer. So Flythe turned to high school guidance counselors to help find students age 16 and older to help fill camp counselor jobs.
“We’re having to train a green staff,” Flythe said.
At Stella’s Italian Kitchen & Market in Lyme, chef and owner Morgan Lory said he currently has 12 high school students in addition to his son on break after his sophomore year in college working one to three days a week at the restaurant, which has had a robust takeout business since the onset of the pandemic, with nearly 100 pizzas ordered to go on some nights.
The high school students do everything from wash dishes, work the service counter, make espresso drinks, do prep work in the kitchen and — a critical task if they demonstrate ability — make pizzas.
“They are all great. We have these kids all year long and we couldn’t do it without them,” said Lory, who also employs six people full time. “We’ll probably bring on a few more as we get busier in the summer.”
One of those high schoolers, Louis Dybvig, 17, currently a junior at Thetford Academy, works a total of 30 hours a week, with five days at Stella’s and one day at the ice cream window at Dan & Whit’s, where he has worked since he was 14. Between the two jobs, he takes home about $300 a week.
Dybvig said he told his parents after Christmas that he wanted to work more because “I like to buy things,” explaining “growing up is expensive” — he’s had a 10-inch growth spurt over the past couple years and outgrew all his snowboarding and skateboarding clothes and equipment.
“I asked them if I could get a second job,” Dybvig said from behind the ice cream door at Dan & Whit’s on a warm afternoon last week, noting his family is “more sad I am working so much because I am never at home … they’re proud.”
This summer Dybvig plans to increase his hours at Stella’s and Dan & Whit’s to 45 hours per week, which will be a big leap from last summer when he spent a lot of his time with “with friends, skateboarding and getting my driver’s license” since Dan & Whit’s was only able to offer limited hours.
“It will only be 15 hours a week more, but it will be much different because I won’t be juggling school,” said Dybvig, who wants to study automotive mechanics after high school and who in addition to paying for his own gas, car insurance and skateboard and snowboard gear wants to save up money for tech school and to replace his well-worn 2005 VW Golf because “I want a car that doesn’t break all the time.”
After being dormant last year because of the pandemic, local employers are now ramping up again and looking for high school-age workers, with some offering $15 to $18 an hour to get them, said Richard Hoffman, cooperative education coordinator at the Hartford Area Regional Career and Technical Center.
“I’m receiving probably 10 to 15 calls and emails a week from businesses looking for either recent graduates as well as students graduating this spring, or even juniors who will be returning to the Career Center in the fall,” he said. “Pretty much any student that has the instructor’s recommendation and has reliable transportation are finding multiple job offers.”
The summer of 2021 is going to be different for Eric Peaslee, too. Peaslee, a junior at Stevens High School, said last week that his routine last summer was “wake up, go on the computer” and occasionally get outside for summer league baseball, where he plays catcher.
In December, Peaslee, 18, began working at $11.70 an hour as a cashier at Hannaford and is “just saving up” for “maybe a car, maybe college,” he said as he was shooting hoops with his twin sister Emily at Barnes Park in Claremont. He plans to stick with the grocery store this summer (and now that he has his driver’s license, his mom wants him to help out with insurance payments).
Cooped up at home with little to do is how Ashley Michaud, a sophomore at Stevens High School, said she spent last summer.
“Not much. TikTok,” Michaud, 16, responded when asked how she spent her time. Michaud said she’s been “wanting to get a job since I was 6” and hopes to work at Hannaford, Home Depot or Walmart this summer so “I can save up to buy my own car” for when she gets her driver’s license.
After high school, Michaud wants to enter the military — “Fort Benning, Ga., the infantry,” she specifies.
“I have my whole life planned out to a T,” she said.
Plans are the key for the summer of 2021, agrees Vazquez, Michaud’s lacrosse teammate.
Vazquez said in addition to money for a car, she will need money for trade school after graduating next year, where she is weighing becoming an electrician or EMT technician, or perhaps working in the culinary arts.
She knows she spent a lot of time idling last summer.
“I want to make this summer count,” Vazquez said.
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
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