I overpaid the neighborhood kids to shovel my snow. I highly recommend it

Abigail Covington, The Philadelphia Inquirer on Feb 25, 2026

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PHILADELPHIA — When my neighbor told me during last month’s snowstorm that I had to shovel the sidewalk around my house, I thought she was joking. It’s my first winter in the city. It didn’t snow much where I grew up, so the whole idea of shoveling snow was foreign to me. Call me naive, but I assumed the city would do it. Or my landlord. But no. Evidently, it was my responsibility. I guess that’s why there was a shovel in the shed. I remember seeing it when I moved in and wondering when, if ever, I had shoveled before.

Well, I was about to make up for lost time. My house sat on a corner lot, which meant I paid for the great light it got with extra sidewalk that now had to be shoveled. I tried to convince myself and my partner, whom I forced to help me, that it would be a fun family adventure. A little bit of exercise in the fresh air. Honestly, how long could it take? 15 minutes, max, I thought to myself as I strapped my four-month-old baby, who is basically an 18-pound kettlebell, to my chest and got to work.

Within minutes, my baby was asleep, the steady digging and chucking motion of shoveling lulling him even as it shredded back muscles I never knew I had. At least one of us was at peace. An hour into the job, with the end still nowhere in sight, my 11-year-old neighbor waddled over and asked if she could do my stairs for me. Was she acting out of goodwill, or had she heard me hacking up a lung through her double-pane bedroom window? I wasn’t sure. I didn’t care. “You sure can,” I said.

She knocked on my door to let me know she was done. She didn’t ask for any money, but I gave her $10 anyway. I probably would’ve given her $100 if she’d asked. That’s how desperate I was not to have to shovel anymore. This is what economists call demand.

And it was clear this past Monday, when it snowed again, that word had gotten out about me, because not one, not two, but three kids offered to shovel for me yesterday. Except this time, they wanted to be paid. And they already had a price in mind: $30 to do the remainder of my sidewalk.

But I had already spent two hours doing the majority of it. Between the three of them, it would probably take about six minutes to do the rest. That’s an hourly rate of $300. Were they shoveling my sidewalk or representing my company in court?

Obviously, that was an absurd amount of money for a very small amount of work. I should’ve refused to pay, if only to teach these kids a lesson about hard work and economic fairness. On the other hand, I was very sleepy. I’m a new parent. I didn’t want to shovel anymore.

So, yes, I paid them $30, and I would do it again. Was it highway robbery? Definitely. But the richest I ever felt in my life was the moment I tossed that stupid shovel back into the shed and locked the door.