A story on Page 1 of The Day recently reported that thousands of teenagers are filling jobs this summer that other, older Americans either can’t or won’t accept. Good for those ambitious high schoolers and college students; too bad for the others, who either fear returning to work because of COVID or would rather accept government pandemic payments instead of actual paychecks.

Balancing a job — either part-time or, in rarer cases, full-time — is difficult for high school and college students when school is in session. They must find time for their studies, and some also manage to find time to devote to interscholastic or intramural sports or school club activity. Earning good grades is a commendable achievement by itself. Managing to do it while working a part-time job and/or extra-curricular activity such as sports and/or club involvement requires dedication, discipline and great organizational skill — not to mention parental support and oversight.

With the arrival of summer this year in the post-pandemic period, large numbers of students are filling jobs waiting and busing restaurant tables, staffing beach and pool lifeguard stands, working in tourism and retail, or even municipal jobs such as parks and recreation and public works.

If teenagers can’t find jobs this summer, when employers are desperate to fill post-pandemic vacancies, it’s not for lack of availability. There have been lots of job openings at the outset of summer, with some teens commanding pay upward of $15 per hour!

Good for these teens who are ambitious and enterprising enough to secure that kind of hourly pay or even close to it. Once they get a feel for showing up for work every day and having money in their pockets and savings accounts, they will develop a work ethic that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

At the other end of the spectrum, however, are employers who are seeing steady increases in minimum wages nationwide, and, in some cases, unable to afford as much help as they’d like to hire. It is, as the saying goes, what the market will bear.

Until retiring last October, I had always had a job, dating back to my early teens, when I mowed a few neighborhood lawns, shoveled snow, cleaned pools, washed cars, and had an after-school paper route delivering the now-defunct Hartford Times on my bicycle throughout Norwich’s Cherry Hill neighborhood, accompanied by my beloved dog, Taffy.

My first “real” job at age 16 was at the Finast/First National grocery story on West Main Street here in Norwich. Starting pay way back in 1970 was $1.65 per hour to stock and bag groceries, load bundles into cars, sweep floors, and work the cash register.

I was hired by a kind, hard-working man, Sotero Daniska, the manager of the store, who wouldn’t ask his employees to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. If all his employees were busy, Sot would go outside in all kinds of weather and load groceries into customers’ cars. He wouldn’t hesitate to help stock shelves, bag groceries or even clean up a spill if everyone else was busy.

I liked and respected Sot as a boss, even when he yelled at me. An excitable guy, he yelled at all of us at one time or another. He was very proud of his business, and wanted all of us to focus on customer service. No one took it personally, and Sot would often take us aside later to explain why he’d been upset and to help us learn from our mistakes. There were many good lessons to be had.

It was a close-knit group that included Assistant Manager Joe Drag, Meat Department Manager Joe Blazejak, Deb Lilly, Jim Plante, Barbara Kiertianis, Bob Tellier, Paula Angelopoulos, Ruth Justice, Jim Mullen, Art Sartori, Maureen Huta, Office Manager Peggy Kumpitsch, and others.

Our store was in what was then called the West Gate Shopping Center. Among the other businesses in that mall were the S&H Green Stamps store (we gave Green Stamps to our customers), a pharmacy, and Friendly’s, where we’d go for meal breaks.

On Friday nights, which were among the busiest times at our store, Friendly’s parking lot was a popular gathering spot for teens, including many of my friends from Norwich Free Academy. It was challenging not to listen to the good-natured razzing I’d hear from them when I was outside loading groceries into cars. The next day, though, was better when paychecks were issued.

Wednesday nights at Finast were slow. I worked from 5 to 9 p.m. with Assistant Manager Drag the only other employee in the store during those four hours. If a dozen customers came through the door during those four long hours, that was a lot, so the time passed slowly as I was stuck at my assigned cash register for most of the evening.

Between customers, I’d pass the time tidying up my work area and reading any available magazine at the checkout stand. One evening, I thought I’d try some of the chewing tobacco that was for sale at the register, along with gum, mints, candy and the magazines. Drag stopped by the register before he went to stock shelves, and smelled the tobacco.

“Are you chewing tobacco?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied. “I’ll get rid of it if any customers come to the register.”

“What are you using for a spittoon?” he inquired.

“What’s a spittoon?” I asked.

“For the juice,” he said. “When you chew, it produces juice that you spit out. Where are you spitting?”

Never having chewed tobacco before that evening, I was repulsed by the idea of spitting anywhere around the cash register. “I don’t spit it; I swallow it,” I replied.

He laughed out loud. “OK, you let me know when you’re ready to take a break.”

I reminded him that I’d already taken my 15-minute break.

Laughing again, he said: “Yeah, well, you’re going to need another one very soon, mister.”

Ten minutes later, I realized what Drag had been talking about. I’d never been so sick to my stomach. He showed mercy on his unknowing subordinate and sent me home more than an hour early, as I would not have been any use to the store that evening.

Among other jobs I held as a teenager were pumping gas on weekends at the East Great Plains Mobil station with my good friend, Cass Jones. That was back in the day of full-service gas stations at which we’d check customers’ oil and radiators, and even put air in the tires if asked after we’d pumped their gas.

It wasn’t a bad job, except in extreme weather.

Another job was with the Norwich Housing Authority as a summer painter. I’d bring a radio to work to listen to music or news to help the time pass more quickly. This team was also close-knit, divided into two groups — the summer help, which included Peter Ververis, Peter Pawlowski (Pete and Repeat, they were called by the older guys), Joe Shannon, Cleve Wilson, Don O’Connell and me. There were several older men who worked there year-round, my favorite being a happy, outgoing fellow named Nate Rizzuto, whose favorite word was actually not a word at all. It was “shasha,” and it was hilariously interchangeable and all-purpose when the appropriate word didn’t come to mind immediately.

Nate might motion toward a tool and say: “Hand me the shasha there, would you please?” Describing a recipe, he would recite the ingredients and add “then you throw in a little shasha for flavor.” When our supervisor, a very serious man named Aubrey Brown, needed to discipline an employee, Nate reported to us that “Brownie called him in just now to give him the old shasha.”

We would clock in at 8 a.m. for the Housing Authority job, Mondays through Fridays, but the first half-hour was spent sitting together, discussing various matters, most of which had nothing to do with work. Rather, issues ranging from family to current events to sports would be discussed before “Brownie” would growl, “OK, that’s enough, let’s get going.”

And off we would go to our assigned areas at 8:30 to begin painting. We’d break for lunch from noon to 1, then ride in a pickup truck back to the garage at 4 p.m., when we would spend the final 30 minutes of the workday finishing our discussions from that morning.

It was a pretty easy job that paid well for summer work in those days — $3.50 per hour.

While attending Eastern Connecticut State College in Willimantic, I had a variety of jobs. One was as a correspondent for The Hartford Courant’s Willimantic bureau. It was good training in case I decided to forego a teaching career (which I eventually did) and opted for newspaper work.

I also worked at Nassiff’s Sports, a Main Street sporting goods store that was owned by a great man, Dick Nassiff, who worked tirelessly to provide his loyal customers with the best merchandise, service and prices.

Dick, a former Willimantic Common Council member and semi-professional football player, was a very patient man. His wife, Eleanor, and son, Rick, also worked there, along with a couple of other great fellows, Jim Robinson and Lance Magnuson.

I always tried to look busy, even if I wasn’t. If Dick caught you standing around he’d send you to the dreaded “back room” to clean and organize. While the store itself was always immaculate and orderly, the back room was a dusty, jumbled mess of over-stocked items and merchandise that no one wanted, like snow shoes, outdated tennis rackets and brightly colored sweat suits. I could have spent the rest of my days working in that back room, but it would never look neat and orderly.

We had fun in the store. On Christmas Eve, the employees at Nassiff’s and other retailers would “open the back rooms,” where we would enjoy spiked egg nog and other holiday spirits before the store closed at 5:30.

Despite the stress of running a small business, I never saw Dick get angry, not even when one of the guys was showing off his golf swing and accidentally shattered the gumball machine with a driver just before we opened for the day.

My final job as a college student was working at the Plainfield Greyhound Park. Its opening was big news for that quiet little town in northeastern Connecticut, where it immediately became a major attraction. My first job was selling tickets, then working with 15 or so other people in the money room, where we could count hundreds of thousands of dollars during each session.

It was precise work, and if a single dollar was unaccounted for — if our “count” was either a dollar short or over — the money was returned to our tables to be counted again ... and again and again, if necessary, until the race balanced. For some of us, it was part-time work; for others, it was a full-time job.

Thousand of people from throughout the region would come to the facility just off Interstate 395 for six evening and two matinee sessions each week that would feature a dozen races each, most of which included eight sleek, fast greyhounds that would chase a stuffed rabbit named “Ikey.” Some people won, but most lost.

Those who controlled their wagering usually went home happy to have had a fun night of entertainment. However, it wasn’t hard to pick out patrons who had lost large amounts of money during a session.

This was also a good job, especially for a college student, but watching those who lost lots of money would ultimately discourage me from gambling later in life, whether on the golf course, on sports, and even in the two local casinos, which eventually led to the dog track’s demise.

So, if you’re still in school and have an opportunity to pick up a summer job or even part-time work while school is in session, go for it! Few of the jobs are glamorous or exciting, but at around $15 per hour, who can complain? You’ll look back on it all as a most worthwhile experience that put some money in your pocket and introduced you to some great people.

Bill Stanley, a former vice president at L+M Hospital, grew up in Norwich.