Until a few weeks ago, she would forgo her pocket money so she wouldn't have to do any chores. She gladly gave up any economic bonus just so she could watch a TV program or spend an extra half hour on the computer.

Now she's decided she needs to be cashed up if she's going to last through the long weeks of summer holidays and has been asking to do everything from washing-up to mowing the lawn - for a price.

Unfortunately she's still too young to get a real job, but like everything she does, she has already mapped out her employment path.

She's never been the kind who does what everyone else is doing. So for her, weekend work won't be at the fish and chip shop or even the supermarket. She'll be working at the trendy skateboard and clothes shop - the one outside of which she regularly stands looking longingly inside.

Our conversation turned to my own working history while we were doing the drive-thru bit at Maccas. "I suppose I could always get a job here like everyone else," she conceded. It was only when she asked me if I'd ever worked at McDonalds that I realised how old I was getting.

Back in the olden days when I was 14, there was no such thing as Maccas. There was only two fast-food places in town - one owned by the Greek family and the other by the Italian family. And you had to be family to work in them.

My first job, much to my husband's amusement, was in a hardware store. I got $4.11 an hour for a four-hour shift on a Saturday morning, which seemed like a fortune. Not that there was much to spend it on in downtown Wagga Wagga in the dark ages of the early 1980s.

My husband reckons I know nothing about hardware. He once sent me into town to get a bit for his drill - a specific type of bit, mind you. The hardware man had to call hubby on the mobile to find out what I was asking for because he had no idea what a "fast" bit was.