On Monday, a TikTok video went viral on Twitter, apparently showing a 13-year-old working at Chick-fil-A. Notably, the video doesn’t appear to show any child labor violations. The teenager says that his father owns the store, and children are generally legally allowed to work at businesses owned by their parents. While most of the replies to the video were positive, the pro-union nonprofit that posted it insisted on framing a teenager working for his parents as a bad thing: “The National Restaurant Association—a lobby group funded by big food corporations—is a key driver behind new bills letting kids work dangerous jobs.”

Yep, taking drive-thru orders and slinging waffle fries sounds like the definition of danger.

But by portraying teenage workers as being helplessly exploited, critics miss both the economic benefits of working as a teenager, as well as the pride most teenagers feel about their after-school or summer jobs.

[For cryin’ out loud. I started working when I was 15 years old (fibbed about my age), and worked 28 hours a week in a pizza joint for a loud, profane, and pretty good-hearted guy. Want some real-world training to deal with Internet trolls? Have Sam yelling in your ear for hours on end telling you to shape up and get to work. I only did that long enough to earn money for driving lessons and an NFL game for my dad and me — a couple of months — but my next job a few months later was at Jack in the Box working the grill and fryer. You can’t learn hard work and responsibility sitting on your a** playing video games. Sheesh. — Ed]