Dad forces daughter to get job after she's mean to service worker, mom says he's harsh.

Being able to pinpoint a toxic trait and working to redirect it is one of the hardest and most crucial parts of parenting. While no one should expect perfection from their kids, it's healthy to shut down attitudes and patterns that hurt others, even if your kid resents you in the process.

In a popular post on the AITA subreddit, a dad asked if he was wrong for making his daughter get a job to prove a point. He wrote:

"AITA for forcing my kid to get a job even though it hurts her social life at school?"

So, my daughter (Sophia) is 16 and she goes to a private school that a lot of the richer families send their kids. My wife works there so we get a huge discount on the price. I would prefer to send the kids to public school but our school district sucks a lot, so private it is. I truly don’t like how the kids act at that school, the best way is that they are snobby.

My breaking point for this was my son sent a video of my daughter being extremely rude to a fast food worker. My wife and I discussed it and we agreed she needed to get a job so she will understand that those people deserve respect and how awful it feels for a customer to be a jerk. So she has been working at Target and dealing with all the customers. She hates it and it got out in school she has a job.

This resulted in people not inviting her out like they used to since she is lame for having a job. My wife wants to let her quit her job and we got in an argument about it. I think it’s better she learns they were never her friends in the first place and she should keep her job. My wife thinks I am an unfair jerk and Sophia hates me at the moment. AITA for this?

This situation inspired a lot of comments.

C_Majuscula wrote:

NTA, but as a former food service worker in high school, I believe that everyone should have to work 1 full year (so you hit all the holidays once) as a food service or front-line store worker so they are likely to think twice before abusing staff after that. Maybe do something similar? She has to work for one full year, including full-time over the summer.

And OP responded:

I agree with that. I remember getting yelled at a the movie theater when I was a teenager. I have never been mean to employees since. I know those job sucks I don’t want it to be harder Walking in the service worker shoes is a great way to learn empathy and how your actions affect others that are working

JimmyCricket95 wrote:

NTA. Bias here. I have been employed in some form or fashion from 7th grade to now late 30s. Having worked as a kid and sometimes with multiple jobs, yes, it may have negatively affected my social life at times. Also, I think that my various jobs have helped with my personal development. I learned to keep track of uniform, scheduling, and maintaining my ability to get to work.

Seeing people struggling with those concepts in their 20s was wild. Furthermore, it taught me to deal with a greater variety of people. You don't really choose your coworkers so you can see a greater variety of people. For example, where I grew up was very sheltered and ignored the existence of LGBTQ. The first out-of-the-closet person I knew was from one of my jobs.

It really helped me see them as just people than my upbringing without the jobs and exposure would have done. IDK how I would have turned out without the jobs, but I am happy with how I am now.

Aggressive_Earth_322 wrote:

NTA. When I was a teen target was considered the more comfortable option. It sounds like working hasn’t taught her the lesson. This is not hurting her education just her social life with people she should not be socializing with anyways. Your wife needs to realize the harm she is doing by enabling this behavior.

JESUSSAYSNO wrote:

Thrifted clothes, volunteering especially at places like soup kitchens, monitored budgets, donations like buying gifts for others during the holidays or making bags to give out to homeless people, etc. There’s a lot more that can be done because the world doesn’t need anymore entitlement.

Hard to say, but I think YTA if you want her to be successful long term. It pays more to network and develop long-term bonds with rich kids than it does to service workers. Provides a better safety net, and access to the friends' parents (who are going to be successful if they're sending their kids to private school) as potential career contacts.

You think you're instilling some sense of being humble, but you're also denying her far, far superior networking opportunities. You don't go to private school for the education, you go to private school for the network. If you're denying her the ability to network, you may as well send her to public school. You need to ask this question to a group of people who have similar means to you.

Talk to parents at the school, maybe a school counselor. If you can afford private school, you objectively have more means than the majority of people, and this is a really, really low entry point board, and you'll be seeing posts by and upvoted by people who don't understand generational wealth, and raising kids in the context of resource surplus.

Generic Reddit subs are the wrong place to ask for meaningful parenting advice, and the fact that you're genuinely doing that actually does cement you firmly as TAH.

_A-Q wrote:

NTA. Jesus, how rich are these kids where having a job at s considered lame? Your daughter needs to be reminded that she’s not like those children and she’s only at that school because of her mother working there. She’s in for a rude awakening when she graduates high school and she’s just another regular Joe.

Clearly, the internet is split on this. But they can agree that OP's daughter needs to treat service workers better.