The politics of getting paid and the politics of hard work aren’t always the same thing, which a lot of us learned the hard way as we got older.

That paradox is playing out in Denver right now, where the city is considering giving employers the right to go 15% below the minimum wage, if they provide something of value to a young person in return.

They have to teach a kid how to do something that might help them down the road, which the government calls skills training.

I get what they’re getting at, a hand-up to the workforce and all, but every job a young person holds is a thing of value to help figure out the world.

Figuring out a way to get more kids a job would do the world – and the kids – a ton of good.

An interview trick I have is to ask strangers about their first job and what they learned from it. That greases the wheels, because almost everybody has a story to tell, from amusement park mascots to bathroom cleaners at a truck stop. Where we started is the door we all like to pass through in our minds.

Regular readers of Insights can tell when there’s a stemwinder coming, so here it is.

Where I grew up there were no cool jobs. None. There were two ways for teenage boys to make a buck: farm work with plants or farm work with animals. I was multiskilled in crops and livestock and never seemed to lack opportunities to earn a dollar. If you could grow it, I could handle it. That’s how I learned it pays to be flexible at work.

The biggest lesson I learned is I didn’t want to do that the rest of my life. It was sweaty, itching, exhausting labor in the Deep South sun, where gnats and mosquitoes arrived like a fog as the heat let up late in the afternoon.

I did some of my best work in potatoes, rising up the ranks at the tater shed every late July to late August, when the spuds were dug up and shipped out. The open-air sheds sat on a 6-foot platform. The lumber seemed older than Alabama and creaked and knocked as the machinery churned and popped all day and all night long. Sweat and dust turned to mud on your skin.

As potatoes passed by on rollers, dirt clods and small or rotted potatoes were plucked out by men, women, boys and girls. Strong boys filled 50-pound burlap bags and handed them off to boys and women who wielded needles the size of ballpoints to bind them well enough.

Another group of brawny teenage boys shuttled the bags immediately into trailers parked on the edge of the platform. The bags were stacked so there’s ventilation touching every one and so the pile won’t tumble when it’s pulled away by rigs to parts unknown.

The work was hard, but it was evened out by the camaraderie with kids I knew from other schools and the migrant workers. Even if you were terrible at sports, poor in the classroom and not very good-looking to boot, being a good worker was a thing of respect at the tater shed. When a truck is rolling out at 5 in the morning, you know which guys you want loading it with you.

The value of that has never left me.

I made $3 an hour, which was 35 cents below the minimum wage. A 60-hour week was $150 after taxes, and that felt like real money back then. I bought my first truck with tater shed money. It was $400, which wasn’t much even back then.

I expect Denver will be a good bit more sophisticated than stacking bags at the tater shed. A city job and a farm job have one thing in common: They both offer the opportunity for a young person to stick out their hand, look an employer in the eye and tell them they will do a good job for them.

The Denver Economic Development and Opportunity Office worked with employers, as well as the city attorney and the city auditor, to draft the program.

In the short term, there’s also the question of older folks who need jobs that the kids are taking, so let’s pretend it’s all pay stubs and popsicles.

The 15% discount off the minimum wage could be softened by the city’s increase in base pay to $14.77 on Jan. 1.

The employers have to be accredited, and that’s reviewed every 12 months to make sure they’re doing right by their workplace ward.

Then employees are expected to retain good workers when the program ends at a higher pay level. The kid has to earn it, though.

The Certified Youth Employment Program – they’ve got to get a catchier name – can work with two kinds of “learners,” those who are in a recognized school-based training program they can apply on their job, or minors working toward a professional certification that’s helped along by the work.

The public comment period is open through Dec. 30 at 5 p.m. followed by a virtual meeting on the comments on Jan. 7.  You can learn more by clicking here.