"My clients don't care about my age": Teens about where they work

In Russia, working or earning a student - this is not a news at all and not something out of the ordinary. Nevertheless, the law imposes restrictions. According to Article 63 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, the applicant cannot be younger than fourteen years old, and in this case the employment contract with him can be concluded only with the written permission of the parents and only if he decided to do light labor, and the work itself does not interfere with his studies. Only sixteen-year-olds can enter into an employment contract without restrictions. In addition, minors cannot work eight hours a day, which are familiar to other workers.

In practice, of course, happens in different ways. Schoolchildren work and earn: someone in the service sector, someone freelancing, and someone opens up his own business altogether. We talked to several teenagers who had already started working, and found out how and why they were doing it.

Interview: Margarita Kokovikhina

Matthew Clark

16 years old, photographer

It all started with the fact that in the fifth or sixth grade I went to the gym. The classes I had led the trainer, who already had a girlfriend who was taking pictures of newborns. She sometimes talked about work, showed a photo, and I realized that I also want to do it. It was interesting to me. Everything happened by chance, but now I am pleased with it.

I studied photos online a couple of years ago and did practical work, but I don’t remember exactly where, to be honest. Somewhere there is even a certificate, but it has never been useful to me. It is impossible to teach a person to see the frame - it is either there or not. So for the whole course I received about the same amount of knowledge as from the manual that came with the camera.

At first, I was shooting only friends and in general almost didn’t tell anyone what I was doing. At fourteen, I began to look older than my age, so there were usually no questions about how old I was. But if asked, I usually answered, they say, and how much will you give? They always gave eighteen-nineteen, and everything was fine, it did not bother anyone. Once they gave twenty-five - I was embarrassed to a fifteen-year-old. But it’s not about age, but about the quality of work.

My age does not affect the rate: we always immediately negotiate the price with the client in advance so that there is no conflict. I work the same way as other photographers. But I have a fad: I always “get acquainted” with the model before the shooting - I watch posts on social networks, the music that she listens to ... Everything so that both of us are as comfortable as possible on the set. Photos so get better and more heartily.

Now I work for myself, I take only what is interesting. For a year now I haven't taken pictures without some interesting idea. Previously, he collaborated with the Kirov modeling agency, but now his manager has retired, so I am no longer listed there. Yes, this is not very interesting to me now, I want something of my own.

The question of money is very ambiguous for me. I make money depending on how much I shoot. Filming depends on the training schedule and the season. For example, I prefer to shoot in studios with a minimalist interior and natural light. People in the summer, for example, love to shoot on the street - but I do not take orders that I do not like. I just recently realized that I was shooting for fun, and not because of money. Photography for me is not a business, but an outlet, a breath of fresh air, which helps to diversify the routine and survive in it. But I do not plan to connect life with her. I’m interested in this as a hobby, although who knows, maybe sometime I’ll decide to devote myself to photography. Now there are so many “photographers” who just click without seeing the frame - but even they have customers. So if I suddenly abandon this occupation, and then after a couple of years I decide to start again, there will definitely be a demand.

Alina

15 years old, manicurist

I am in the ninth grade and for the last two years I have been doing manicure at home quite a lot. It was not my dream or goal, just after the birth of my younger sister, my mother decided to earn some money. She bought a lamp, several bottles of gel polish and tools, but somehow she didn’t ask - her friends came to us a couple of times, enthusiastically moaned over new nails, but they never returned. Mom says, the fact is that she never painted, so she has no vision of the picture, no idea about the colors and how they should be combined. It was always easy for me to do this; I draw almost from infancy. So when my mother suggested that I take a manicure, "so that the varnishes should not be lost in vain," I took this job with pleasure. She told me what to do and how, and I just started.

It was not easy: the city is small, and there are many masters. At first, I took classmates and girlfriends to me, made them a manicure almost for free, and sometimes for nothing. But I did, of course, not like in the salons, I did not know how many chips. I took two hundred rubles symbolically, but I can’t even imagine if the material costs paid for it - I think not. Now I take four hundred or five hundred, depending on the complexity of the work. Adult women did not go to me and do not go, except with rare exceptions, although it is much easier to draw on a formed nail plate than on a nursery - it turns out more beautiful and faster. But even when female students come to me only slightly older than me, I feel their disbelief, and this is very uncomfortable. I don’t know what to talk with them about and whether they want to contact me at all. But with peers common language, I find it easy.

I have no fixed income. I can earn nothing, I can a thousand or two, the maximum was five minus materials. Yes, a little, but I do not work every day, but also study, preparing for exams. I definitely don’t want to become a manicure master, but as a hobby I plan to continue - it helps to unload, this is creativity. And so I, most likely, will enroll in some technical specialty, or an economist.

Alena Rusakova

14 years old, promoter, summer camp worker

School and additional education take a lot of time, so finding a stable job or a part-time job that will take several hours a day is not an option for me. But everyone needs money, so you have to spin. I first started earning money when I was eleven years old: I put up ads and advertisements, distributed leaflets and brochures. Then, I remember, it was estimated better than now: I could get five hundred rubles at a time, and even a thousand. Now it's worse: for one putting up (and usually you need to put up even in bad weather, and at inconvenient times) I get two or three hundred rubles. But money is never superfluous. My parents do not earn much, so we sometimes cannot buy some things like sweets and cookies. So I buy all sorts of goodies, when there is an opportunity.

This year I was still working in a city camp for children, but not as a counselor, but as an auxiliary worker. We did all the dirty work: do the cleaning, paint something somewhere, weed the flower beds. It sounds easy, but very exhausting. Everything was official, with all the papers and documents. I had to pay, if I remember correctly, about five thousand, but because of the few days of the hospital, a very decent amount was deducted - it seems that they gave about three to it later. It was a shame: I worked, I tried, even with the temperature I still came every morning. By the way, for sick leave, they gave me a pretty penny amount - with a sore throat, I would not buy any medicine for it.

I thought a lot about my future profession, but have not yet made a final decision. There were thoughts to study as a physician, as a pharmacist, as a chemistry teacher, but there is still time to think and decide - I am only in the eighth grade.

Ksenia Beresneva

16 years old, fashion designer

I have my own little Sunrise clothing brand. Except me, no one else works on this, so all concerns are on me. What I do? Basically I sew clothes and paint on it with special paints. I never repeat prints, except when clients ask for this.

It all started with the camp, quite by accident. There I met a girl who professionally draws on jeans. She led us with something like an elective: she explained the basics, gave the most basic material. Then I started doing it myself. I studied sewing at a technical college in the evening classes, and I have been drawing almost my whole life for eight years. Neither my parents, nor my teachers, nor my friends supported me in particular, but this did not bother me. I even bought paints with my own money, they gave them to me for my birthday.

My clients do not care about my education, age, and in general to some numbers - they only look at the quality of work, and everything else is secondary. Usually I didn’t have conflicts with clients, I always prefer to agree on everything right away so that it doesn’t happen that I like everything, and the customer is not happy. My earnings are unstable, it all depends on the number of orders, on the complexity of the work, on the mood. I can earn nothing, I can two or three thousand, somehow it turned out ten. In the run-up to holidays, demand is usually growing: everyone buys gifts for loved ones, especially manual work in fashion.

I am serious, I plan to learn from the designer and develop my brand. I think the prospects are quite good: manual labor is very much appreciated now, many people prefer custom-made things to the standard mass market. Moreover, my prices are affordable.

Ivan Rodichev

19 years old, worked as a courier promoter

It was summer, I was going to go to the camp and decided to earn it before that. Through friends I found out about working as a courier: I worked in Moscow, not far from the Paveletskaya metro station, there was a burger station there. I was told that there is seasonality there: most of all people order food in the winter, since they do not want to leave the house in the cold. I was about sixteen years old, then I already looked like some at twenty, so no one asked anything about age, all the more talked about education. There was almost no conflict. The rate was fixed: delivery within Moscow - three hundred rubles, behind the Moscow Ring Road - three hundred and fifty.

In the same summer I worked as a promoter - I distributed leaflets. The schedule there was 5/2, you had to stand ten hours a day in the sun. They paid a thousand rubles a day. I had a conflict with these employers: they wanted me to simply force customers to go to their store, but I didn’t do it (especially for a thousand rubles a day!). At this work, no one was worried about education, age, or nationality. But no prospects - only the scorching sun and tired legs.

Photo:pixelrobot - stock.adobe.com, canbedone - stock.adobe.com