The UAE play zones giving teenagers their first taste of working life

For many teenagers in the UAE, getting a first job while still at school or university isn’t exactly a rite of passage. But at Air Maniax and Street Maniax, it’s becoming part of the experience.

The UAE play zones are actively hiring eligible high-school and university students for part-time jobs, giving young people something many don’t get until much later: real work experience, their own pay cheque and a chance to learn how to deal with customers, colleagues and responsibility.

At Air Maniax and Street Maniax, that can mean checking families in, hosting birthday parties and helping children navigate a busy weekend. And according to View Emirates owner Riyaz Sutterwalla, hiring students isn’t simply about filling shifts. It works for both sides.

The parks are busiest when students are most likely to be available: weekends, school holidays and public holidays. But Sutterwalla says the bigger benefit is what young employees learn once they step out of the classroom.

“You’re making the transition from education, which is theory, to the real world,” he says.

That transition comes with lessons that are difficult to teach in school: communication, adaptability, resilience and simply turning up when you say you will.

That last one matters.

Sutterwalla says punctuality and consistency can be among the biggest challenges when employing younger workers. If a student is assigned to host a birthday party and doesn’t arrive, the rest of the team has to scramble.

It’s an immediate lesson in something teenagers may not encounter at school: other people are relying on you.

Youth career counsellor Maria Vitoratos puts it another way. She says getting a first job is not necessarily about learning an entirely new set of skills, but about finally having to use the ones young people have already developed at school, without someone constantly telling them how.

Few stories illustrate the value of a student job in the UAE better than Roshan, who joined Air Maniax while at university.

She started part-time as a party host, dealing with children one minute and their parents the next. That meant learning how to communicate differently with different people, manage difficult conversations and stay calm when someone wanted an answer she could not give them.

She later moved into a full-time reception role.

Sutterwalla says that when Roshan first joined, she was quiet and lacked confidence speaking to customers. Today, she is one of the team’s strongest performers when it comes to selling and hosting parties.

“She has transformed,” he says. “From my perspective as an owner of a company, I’m extremely proud.”

There is, of course, pocket money involved too.

Roshan remembers feeling like she could “conquer the world” when she received her first pay cheque. She used part of it towards her university tuition and, following a family tradition, took everyone out for dinner.

Maybe that is the underrated value of a teenage job.

It is not simply something to put on a future CV. It is learning that customers can be difficult. That eight-hour shifts are long. That earning your own money feels very different from being handed it.

And that confidence often arrives because someone gave you the chance to practise it in the first place.