As soon as Winter Break begins, families leave Patmos. For most – or at least a large percentage of Patmians – Winter Break is an opportunity to take their vacations, see family who may now live elsewhere and even do shopping and have doctor and dentist appointments in Athens where they can get better, more comprehensive care.
It's also because Patmos lives an inverse existence. When you're a destination for people's summer vacations, you can't take one yourself.
For Patmians, there are a number of challenges with this inversion. For example, what to do with the kids for three months when you're likely working – sometimes really long days?
Surprisingly, America is much more advanced with this issue with summer camps of all kinds ranging from day camps and special-interest programs to sleep-away camps that can have sessions that fill almost the whole summer. Even if you can't afford an expensive program, it's likely the YMCA, Boys and Girls Clubs or some other nonprofit near you runs an affordable program. In an age of two-income and single-parent households, childcare is critical to the US economy.
The Patmian economy has developed a preschool – just in the past few years. It's actually down the "street" from my house and throughout the morning, the sound of playing children fills the block – not something I mind at all. I've heard multiple Patmians say how grateful they are for the preschool - both for what it does for the kids and them.
However, there are far more varied approaches when it comes to the K-12 crowd. Teenagers often work – part or full-time – especially when their families have a business. Some families are also smart and decide their teens might do better working for someone else. Dimitris and Christina from whom I rent cars and who are delightful neighbors down the street sent their kids to wait tables at nearby restaurants. They wanted their kids to have some independence and at least one is interested to work in hospitality.
In a place whose busiest months are July and August, teenagers make a great supplemental workforce. Plus, if there's ever a problem, the teenage workforce knows the boss knows where they live – and their parents. Built-in accountability.
I recently learned minimum wage in Greece is 39 euros per day for blue-collar workers and and 880 euros per MONTH for white collar. This was astonishingly low to me. It also helped clarify something someone told me the other day – that he used to have a good-paying middle-management job in Thessaloniki where he was making 1500 euros per month. I thought either he misspoke or I misunderstood. No, it seems we communicated just fine.
All of that to say, hiring some teenage help is also a pretty affordable option.
From what I've seen, Patmians are not averse to child labor either. I'm not sure exactly how it works – it may be only kids of families who own businesses – but there are some kids I would estimate are as young as ten working in a few places – most notably the cafe at Agriolivadi where a team of boys runs food and drink from the bar and kitchen to customers lounging on the beach. Since this year, the Skipper Cafe at Agrio has become a favorite work spot, I've had plenty of opportunity to become impressed with those kids' stamina. They have great attitudes and work hard all day long. There seems to be a large enough pool of child labor to have a full complement all seven days of the week from 9 am to 7:30pm.
The kids who seem to have the least organized activity are the K-5 crowd. That's probably why there are sometimes kid-gangs in the town square. Sometimes five, ten even fifteen elementary school-aged kids gather in the town square, play for awhile and then run off in one direction or another. Sometimes they have an adult so seems to be directing them a "Hey guys, why don't you head to the playground?" sort of way. For the most part, kid-gangs seem allowed to be and from various remarks I've heard over time, it sounds like there are houses they can go in and out of at-will.
Plenty of tweens to teens spend their afternoons on the beaches – particularly the one in the front of town that gets fewer tourists. But some hang-out at Kampos and Agriolivadi – which both have cafes where kids with a little money can hang-out for the day. From what I can tell 15 is about the age when people are okay with coffee-drinking, so among some of these groups you see iced cappuccinos and such – that they notably don't drink quickly.
Of course there are parents who hybrid their kids' summers. I've seen plenty of teens who work the family business for part of the day or evening and have the afternoon to hang out with friends – especially at the beach. Manolis' oldest son covers their organic store at night, but spends his afternoons with buddies on the beach. Similar for the son of the of Tzivaeri Taverna family – only given his natural bilingualism thanks to his British mom, he makes a fantastic server.
And then there are kids who - not unlike so many at home – spend their summers glued to devices and television.
"He's always inside, playing his video games!" the owner of Ta Kardasia pie bakery and coffee shop ("the good pie bakery" as the kids and I refer to it) said to me last year about her 16-year-old nephew. He comes from Athens each summer, hadn't learned to drive yet and spent most of his waking time inside playing video games with friends. Sounds like a story I've heard plenty of times back in Westlake – a common suburban phenomenon.
Of course, the boy's aunt hadn't taken away the devices or forced him out the door. She seemed in shock that a kid would WANT to sit inside on a screen when a Patmos summer day was outside the front door. He had free, unlimited access to beaches people pay a lot of money to come enjoy.
I suppose there are no bounds to the power and pathologies brought to us by screens. An American kid is no more or less susceptible to the influence of a screen than a Patmian one – even if you think the allure of the Aegean might be enough to pull someone away. Not always.
Still, as various locations and societies go, I really like the rate of teen employment. It feels healthy and harkens back to a time in the US when having a summer job was the norm. Not only does it impart a work ethic and teach many life skills, but it puts money in a kid's picket which empowers them, teaches them the value of money and makes it so they can begin making their own beginner-level adult decisions. There is so much less of that now at home.
Being part of the family business adds an entire extra layer to the summer work experience because – among other things – it helps a kid appreciate what their parents and maybe even grandparents do to support their family. Maybe a teenager will want to be the next link in a generational chain when they get older, maybe they won't. Either way – they'll learn more about their family and its history. On Patmos in particular, inheriting the family business is one of the best ways to be able to live an adult life on a small island with a limited economy. I've seen several examples of adult kids who return to take over the family business when they come to conclude they miss Patmos - and life in Athens or wherever they went wasn't what they imagined or didn't satisfy them long-term.
As for my kids, they both have their Patmos summer jobs lined-up. Eirini who owns Nektar - a shop selling traditional Greek and Patmian natural foods like high-quality olive oil, honey and nuts – right by our house told me she wants to put BOTH kids to work this year. Sennen has been stamping paper bags for two years now and began helping a little bit inside the store. Frequently, he would end a two-hour "shift" covered in green ink despite Eirini's best efforts to get him to slow down and be more precise. Nonetheless, she enjoys him and helped him along in his work. I doubt she'll have the same ink-mess with Ailyn.
At the same time, Sennen has his sights set on working for Tassos the Butcher. This seems unlikely, but I haven't been able to convince Sennen to give up on the idea. Sennen loves watching cooking videos on YouTube kids and likes making steak and brisket. He knows a surprising amount about cuts and quality of meat. So the idea of working in a butcher shop where you can see Tassos and his team cutting apart a side of beef or using a giant meat grinder to make ground chuck upon request feels like a dream job.
I told Sennen it's not reasonable for a twelve-year old boy with no experience to walk up to Tassos and ask for a job – especially given a kid in a butcher shop is a giant liability waiting to happen. I did feel comfortable asking Tassos if he would be willing to give Sennen a tour of the facilities and show him what he does. At first the request didn't make complete sense to Tassos. Why would a kid want to see him carve sirloin? I explained that in America, we have no butcher shops – Sennen only ever sees meat already packaged in the grocery store. This made to always kind and smiling Tassos who said in his most extensive English, "Ah! This is traditional butcher shop!" Yes, he's happy to show Sennen around.
Will Sennen be able to wheedle his way into a job with Tassos? I think it's both unlikely and that he's safer under Eirini's tutelage learning to stamp bags without staining himself green. All the same, maybe this is Sennen's first step toward future summers of carving out Porterhouses in the morning and sipping iced-cappuccinos on the beach in the afternoon…. Who knows?
