No More Favors

There is a teen that's a regular in my library that's chosen to do his community service hours at the library. His crime? Breaking into a church. It was done on a lark with his friends. I overheard our cop on duty tell him "Now, if any of your friends say 'I have a great idea', it's usually not a great idea." Good advice.

This week has been a struggle with him to get him to do his community service hours. Monday went fine, except I had to drag the girls away from him while he worked. One girl whined to me, "Why can't I talk to him why he works?" I explained that it's not really community service hours if you get to talk to your friends.

The rest of the days have been more difficult. Tues-Thurs he's claimed he doesn't have his sheet so he can't do the work. I told him that he can still do the work and I'll just sign off for the work when he brings his sheet in. This solution doesn't work too well for him because it interrupts his internet time and although I repeatedly told him I had work for him to do, I PLANNED work for him to do, he said he couldnt' do it.

This teen doesn't seem to understand that I'M doing him a favor by LETTING him work at the library. He thinks he's doing ME a favor by working at the library. It's not easy to come up with 20 hours of work for a 13 year old to do unsupervised. That is work in itself. I'm drawing the line tomorrow, he works for me tomorrow or he doesn't work at the library at all. No more favors.