Workplaces that employ teenagers should know that for the vast majority of kids with after-school jobs, school comes first. There are kids who are willing to sacrifice their education for work because they need the money to support their families. However, even these kids shouldn’t be asked to work during school hours. Involved parents will never let their kid miss class because their 33-year-old manager at Sonic Drive-In is upset about them missing work for Geometry class. If workplaces really don’t want to compete with mandatory education for their employees’ time and attention, they should refrain from hiring high school students altogether. Instead, they should employ full-time adult employees who can fully commit to work as their priority. Of course, these kinds of workplaces will never do that because then they’d actually have to give benefits to their employees, and that would be sacrilege. 

Employers of teenagers might not schedule them during school hours, but they probably shouldn’t schedule them in the hours immediately before or after school either. Kids need time to get from school to work, and if you’ve ever been in a high school parking lot at 3 PM, you know that might take them a minute.