BY MATT HERSH

After eight years of owning Pizza Mia in Bedford, Jay Knoettner has seen his share of teenage workers in his business.

Some worked well, like the 15-year-olds who gradually worked their way up from cashier to prep cook. Others didn’t, like the ones who opted out of the night shift because they had been drinking.

“A good work ethic is hard to find these days,” Knoettner said. “We look for someone who is dedicated and enjoys the job.”

Eleanor Strang, director of Kelley Library in Salem, said she sees this dedication often in the teens she hires as pages.

As the summer job season gears up, she and other employers expressed mixed opinions about the preparedness of teenagers entering the workplace.

A matter of factors

Most area businesses said teenage workers are often easy to find, and most employers have at least a few on staff year-round.

But there are several issues facing employers who want to hire teens, including reliability, motivation, skill level, maturity and turnover.

Strang, who has been the director of Kelley Library in Salem for 30 years, has hired dozens of teens who work as pages. A page’s basic duties include returning books to their proper places and occasionally, assisting patrons. Because the library only hires about five pages to work at a given time, Strang said she’s been able to select the best applicants and she couldn’t recall any negative experiences with past pages.

“It’s been a very positive experience,” she said. “We get truly amazing people who apply for the job. You have to be dedicated to do it well. A misshelved book may as well be thrown out the window.”

Food service businesses like Goffstown’s Pizza Market, which has 45 teenagers on its 56-person roster, often rely on teenagers to make up a large part of its workforce.

Owner Sharon Galatas said she’s had a largely positive experience with her team of employees, most of whom fall in the 15- to 18-year-old age range.

“We’ve been really happy with the kids,” she said. “They’re honest, hardworking and good with people.”

Many of the Goffstown High School students Galatas and her husband hire stay with the job for several years. Some even come back to work summers while they’re in college, she said.

Galatas starts new employees working as cashiers, training them on how to use the register and interact with people. Gradually, they work their way to other tasks like scooping ice cream and basic food preparation. A majority of the teens need little guidance as they perform their duties, she said.

The positive bond she has formed with many of her employees was shown when the restaurant closed for a period of time and then reopened. Business was busier than ever and Galatas said her staff met the challenge.

“They all came back with a great attitude and they were there for us,” she said. “They’re good kids. We can’t complain.”

Though she’s had a good track record with her employees, Galatas, like Knoettner, said not everyone fits the bill. Occasionally, she’ll hire someone who shows up for their first day of work, doesn’t like it, and never comes back again.

“Some people just come and go,” she said. “They’re usually the ones that really can’t work in this type of environment.”

Knoettner said he’s seen plenty of this kind of behavior at his Bedford business. Currently, he employs six teens but since January, he’s had many others. As a business that teens often apply to, he’s gotten more than a few sub-par workers who need training on nearly every aspect of the job.

“I’ve had some people that are so useless that I can only put them on one night per week,” he said. “They’ll lose us money.”

Often, he said, new workers might not know what they’re getting themselves into or aren’t cut out to work in the food service industry. Dealing with this constant ebb and flow of workers is just part of his job, he said.

Rosanne Cote, the owner of Hooksett’s Brick House Drive-In, said the teens she has hired over the years have been dedicated workers, citing upbringing as the main factor that determines their performance.

“I think a lot of it has to do with family work ethic,” she said. “If they’ve grown up doing dishes and chores, their work ethics are usually good.”

Like the other business owners, Cote has had a few workers who were either underperforming or irresponsible.

“We’ve had a few smart-aleck boys who thought they were going to get a paycheck for doing nothing,” she said. “Sometimes it’s a rude awakening for them.”

While Galatas and Knoettner have had their ups and downs with employees and have hired a large number of teens, other places where teens seek employment have the luxury of being more selective.

Dollars and opportunities

Teens do all types of tasks, including scooping ice cream, delivering pizzas,  scrubbing pans and alphabetizing books. The pay scale for performing these duties ranges from just above minimum wage up to about $11 per hour.

Business owners in most towns said there are a handful of locations where teens flock to for jobs. Large corporations like Wal-Mart and supermarket chains employ dozens, while locally owned stores have fewer positions to offer. Managers from the larger chains were unwilling to comment, but owners like Galatas said they try hard to offer competitive wages.

“Most of our kids start at about $6 per hour, and they can go up from there,” she said. “We don’t want to start them too high, or we can’t afford to give them raises.”

Cote said she starts her employees at the bottom, giving them tasks like taking out garbage and cleaning some areas of the property. Doing this, they make about $6 per hour, but as they gain years of experience, they can make about $11 per hour as a prep cook.

Teens’ rights

Despite their attempts to treat all employees fairly, some employers in the state have been cited for age discrimination, according to Addie Hutchison, an investigator with the New Hampshire Commission on Human Rights who has organized a series of presentations at high schools to inform students about their rights. The talks kicked off on May 23 at Bow High School.

“More and more young people are entering the workplace earlier because they want to buy that iPod or help pay for college,” she said. “There are all kinds of problems that teens are facing.”

The complaints received by Hutchison’s organization include getting paid less to do the same job as older employees, being hired for a certain position, and then being made to do menial tasks instead, and getting the least desired shifts.

Still, the business owners who were surveyed maintained that every employee is given an equal opportunity to advance in rank and most said they were very flexible regarding shifts.

With the school year coming to a close, the employers said they are looking forward to more worker availability and new potential hires.

“You never know what it is going to be like,” Strang said. “We might get flooded with applicants.”