I was part of a job training class put on the city one time that ended up teaching an unintended lesson in commerce. That lesson was related to prostitution. Prostitution could get you docked a paycheck. I suppose I should elaborate.
This was a class for low-income kids that was supposed to teach you job skills. Sometimes we learned things like how to interview and sometimes we went out to see different jobs. Regardless, all these kids were around thirteen or fourteen and all were lower-income (my parents were both on disability at that time).
Anyway, one thing they did not intend to teach us about was prostitution related commerce. However, we got this lesson anyway.
You see, we got our paychecks on Friday. Well, I suppose they weren’t really paychecks. The city gave us $50 a week for taking the class. Either way, the checks were handed out on Friday. I got mine and went home. On Monday, though, we got yelled at instead of class starting again.
Apparently, not everyone had gone home after getting their checks. The class was mostly guys, but there were a few girls. One or two of them were bussed in from a nearby girl’s home (read: youth semi-detention facility). One of the girls had decided to run away. Since she decided that, she decided to go ahead and just run away from class after getting paid instead of getting bussed back to the girl’s home and trying to run from there. So, she did.
However, her check wasn’t apparently going to cut it for her on run. She grabbed a bunch of guys from the class (I was not invited) and went into an abandoned building next door. There (as we were told) she had sex with each of them in exchange for them signing over their checks.
The city people were pissed. The guys who’d been involved lost their checks for the next week as well (we never heard from the girl again, but they said she wouldn’t be allowed back). Still, as bad as it was that this fourteen or so year old girl turned to prostitution, I did have to note that the situation was at least commerce related. She’d apparently learned something, even if it wasn’t what the class wanted her to learn.
