Your company
Your kids already know what a job is. Most of them have never had one.
This is your household run as a company, where a child applies for an opening, gets interviewed, gets hired, and gets paid for work with their name and their job title on it. It starts with the company having a name and the two of you having titles.
The name on the door
Most families use their own surname. Yours can be anything you like.
Any title you type is the one that goes on the letterhead. The suggestions in those boxes are the easy ones, not the limits.
What the work earns
Some families hand over money. Some hand over tokens that add up to something worth having. The whole app follows whichever you pick.
How it looks
Six identities to pick from, or hand it your own logo and it builds one from the colors already in it.
The picture never leaves this machine. It is read in the browser, the colors come out of it, and a small copy is kept for the masthead.
What the company is for
Your 1998 kit left these as blanks so each family could fill them in themselves. They have stayed blanks.
“A life centered around ______ values and ______ principles.” — your own words, 1998.
Build a role
A chore is something a kid gets told to do. A role is something a kid holds.
Every opening here is really a self-management position with a title that says so. You pick the title, tick what the job covers, set the hours, and build the pay out of money you already spend.
The title
A title that names the responsibility rather than the task. Yours can be anything — these are a starting point.
What the job covers
Tick what belongs to this role. Four blanks at the bottom hold anything that isn’t here.
Yours
What each task pays
Every task carries its own price, so finishing it earns that amount however long it took. The total tells you how it sits against the wage you are offering.
- A full week, priced
- $0.00
The description on the listing
This rewrites itself from whatever is ticked above, so the posting always describes the job you actually built. The moment you type in it, it’s yours and it stops changing.
The hours
Whatever you enter is the starting offer. Plenty of families let the applicant negotiate it at the interview, which was in the 1998 kit too.
The pay
Your 1998 page asked the parent what they already spend on allowance, eating out, movies, friends’ birthday gifts and club dues. Tick what you already pay for this child, and that money changes hands instead of going up.
- What this role pays
- $0.00 a week
Roles you have built
The opening
Nobody gets handed a job. Somebody posts it, and somebody applies.
This is the listing that goes up on the refrigerator, and the same words the child reads at the link you send them. You choose which role is open, and the posting writes itself.
Application for employment
The same questions a grown-up gets asked, in words that fit the person answering.
This is the form the applicant fills in before anyone talks about an interview. Your answers here are what the company reads first.
Section 1 · Personal information
A real application asks for an address and a phone number. Yours asks the same thing in the language of your house.
Section 2 · The position
Grown-up applications ask this, and most people leave it blank out of nerves. A number here is allowed, and the interview is where it gets discussed.
Section 3 · Education
Section 4 · Work history
Every job you have held, here or anywhere else. Unpaid ones count — they count on grown-up applications too.
Section 5 · Skills and service
What are you good at?
Things you can already do that somebody might need doing.
Where have you volunteered?
Anywhere you have helped out without being paid — church, a neighbor, a younger cousin, a team.
What have you led?
Student council, a club, a team, a group project, a game in the yard. Any role where other people were following you counts.
Why do you want this job?
Whatever the real reason is. Money is a real reason.
Section 6 · Availability to work
Is anything going on right now that would make it hard to start?
A restriction, a grounding, a busy season at school. An honest yes here costs you nothing — it just tells us when to start you.
Section 7 · References
Between three and five grown-ups who know you. For each one, say what they are able to speak about — the kind of person you are, the way you work, or both.
Section 8 · Applicant’s statement
Everything written on this application is true as far as I know. If I am hired I will do the work described, and if something stops me doing it I will say so rather than let somebody find out.
This is the part grown-ups sign without reading. Reading it is the lesson.
The interview
A time gets offered, and the applicant has to answer it. That exchange is most of the lesson.
Your 1998 kit sent a letter for this, and it still does. You propose a time, they accept or ask for another, you confirm — and the letter goes out carrying the advice on how to get ready.
The offer and the agreement
Being hired is a thing two people agree to, out loud, in writing.
Your own handbook ends with an agreement and two signature lines — the employee’s, and the President and Vice President’s. You make an offer, they take it or come back with a number, and nobody starts until both names are on it.
My week
Being told when to do a thing and deciding when to do it are two different skills. Only one of them is any use later.
This week belongs to whoever holds the job — nobody else puts anything on it. You block out the time you want, drop your own tasks into it, and each block carries what that task pays.
The clock
A grown-up’s pay is invisible until it lands. A child’s does not have to be.
This is the half your employee holds. They tap in when they start, tap out when they stop, and watch the money climb in between.
Asking your references
Putting somebody down as a reference is the easy half. Asking them is the half that teaches you something.
This walks you through one letter at a time, and each piece gets explained before you write it. You write every line in your own words — the app only checks that you asked for the thing you meant to ask for.
The timesheet
Hours somebody checked are worth more than hours nobody looked at.
Your handbook already wrote this one: “take it to your Supervisor so he or she can check your work… you and your Supervisor have to sign your sheet so you can get paid.” Every line gets checked off, then both of you sign, and that is payday.
The budget
Earning without spending is half a loop. This is the half where it becomes theirs.
Your 1998 kit put the budget before payday, so this works on the period still open. It suggests a split, every line of it can be changed, and whatever is decided here is what payday pays out.
What tokens are for
A token is only worth what it buys. This is where you say what it buys.
You pick what is on the shelf and what each one costs. They watch the number climb toward the one thing they are actually after.
The team
Doing the job before anybody asks is the hardest thing on the list, and the one nobody ever notices.
This is where the people on the team can see each other. Everybody’s job, everybody’s rank, and the run of shifts nobody had to be reminded about — with somewhere to say so.
The record
What was written down at the time is worth more than what anybody remembers later.
The rules themselves live in the handbook, where they get handed over. This is where what actually happened gets kept — notes, the other side of them, and anything somebody says was not right.
Work history
Every payday has been kept since the first one. Until now the app was holding them and showing one.
This is the part they walk out of the house with. Jobs held, ranks reached, every payday, and the grown-ups who vouched for them — on one page, printable, with the company’s name at the bottom.
The employee handbook
Eighteen questions a child actually has. You wrote the questions in 1998; the answers were never written.
Every one of them is answered here already, and the answers fill themselves in from what you have set up. Four places are left open, because only your family can answer those — and a handbook with nothing of yours in it is somebody else’s.
The ladder
A chore chart can pay a child. It cannot promote one.
Your five ranks from 1998 are here, and what each one means is written. What earns the next one is the blank — and it is the one thing in this whole app that nobody but you can fill in.
Cards and badges
A child with a card in their pocket answers “what do you do?” differently.
Your 1998 kit printed eight business cards and two ID badges for every person on the team. Everybody here gets the same — on paper for the pocket, and on the screen for the phone.
What’s next
Act one is the opening and the application. Here is the rest of it, in the order it gets built.