“Do you have a cool job and a big heart?,” read a sign taped to a New York City lightpole. “Let me shadow you. I’m 16 pls.”
The flyer is from high-school junior Avi Lichtenstein, who is so worried about his future that he’s asking strangers if he can follow them to work.
“Every night I’m like, ‘What am I going to do with my life?,’” the curly-haired teen says. “I just couldn’t put my mind to rest.”
He came up with the plan last month. Using about $500 of his savings, he paid two guys he found on Craigslist to plaster the city with more than 300 flyers. His goal for the school year: follow one person a week to get a better idea of what he wants to do before he applies to colleges next year.
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It’s working. He’s shadowed a dog groomer, a radio show host and a ramen shop owner, and is reviewing requests from an airline captain and a tattoo artist. One went so well, he was offered a part-time job.
His mom thinks the project is a good idea, but safety was a concern. “We have to make sure it’s real people and a real office and a real job and not to go with any crazy who-knows-who,” Tatiana Lichtenstein says.
To do that, anyone who scans the QR code on the poster has to fill out a questionnaire, upload a photo and include a link to their LinkedIn profile. Then there’s a video call. “If they’re a creep on Zoom , then I’m not meeting with them in person,” Avi says. His parents also review applications.
The first response came a day after the signs went up. “I was freaking out,” says Avi. He spent three hours with a pet groomer, who shampooed a dog while Avi peppered her with questions about her schedule, her training and whether she likes her job.
He had a 90-minute video call with a school psychologist who discussed her work, but didn’t allow him to shadow her. “HIPAA or whatever,” Avi explains.
His mom dropped him off at the midtown studios of a satellite radio company, where he watched a morning show get made.
At Midnight Noodle Mart in the Bronx, Avi spent a few hours with the co-owner as she made noodle bowls. Then she asked him if he wanted a job. “He said, ‘Yeah sure,’” says Jacqueline Rojas, who owns the store with husband, Adrian Lopez.
Rojas saw one of Avi’s posters while running an errand. “I felt exactly the way he did at 16,” she says. She wasn’t sure if it was a scam until they spoke on the phone. “He was like ‘Heyyyy,’ I was like ‘Hiii,’” says Rojas. “At that point I was like ‘Yeah, this is a kid.’”
Avi shows up to work with unsolicited business advice. One day he walked in with a flyer he designed to advertise an $18 lunchtime deal for teachers and students. Rojas printed them. He suggested buying a tent with the store’s logo to stand out at food festivals. She did that, too. When he told her the store’s TikTok videos should be funnier, she let him direct one that said “Sorry about the delay, we’re short staffed today,” while Rojas struggles to reach a bowl on a shelf. “I don’t know what his future has, but I know it’s bright,” Rojas says.
Born and raised in New York City, Avi is the youngest of four. His three siblings all waited until college to figure out what they wanted to do. “Avi is different,” says his mom. “He’s so independent.”
Avi says he’s been thinking about careers for as long as he can remember and he keeps a list of interesting jobs on his phone’s Notes app. The list includes flight attendant, nurse and therapist. He has ruled out what his parents do—commercial real estate. And he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want a “stereotypical 9-to-5 desk job.” That didn’t keep him from hanging signs on Wall Street.
“Who knows, maybe I will fall in love with a desk job,” Avi says.
He created 17 different poster designs. All but one include a selfie. He used emojis and fonts he thinks will attract his target audience: people in their 20s and 30s who have cool jobs he might want. “I couldn’t picture someone who’s like 50 seeing that on the street and scanning the QR code,” he says.
His posters are getting attention at school. “Four people were like, ‘I saw your face in the Lower East Side,’” he says. Others have made TikTok videos about the signs.
Avi says he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want a standard desk job. Lucía Vázquez for WSJ
Avi made his own TikTok, which got 300,000 views and more than two dozen requests that he’s trying to schedule between school, work and hanging out with friends.
He’s considering reaching out to an airline captain who says Avi can join a morning flight from Newark to Washington, D.C., and be home by the afternoon. He may give the tattoo artist a shot, too. He’ll soon shadow a marketing executive.
He’s keeping a spreadsheet to track who he shadows and what he learned.
“I still don’t know what I want to do with my life,” he says.