Newspaper run boy

The middle kid now has a paper run. It is just delivering the local free newspaper. We live in a mixed neighbourhood of industrial, housing and also a ton of apartments. It wasn't really until I did two of these runs with the kid, that i realised just how many apartments there were and how many people live in apartments. And also how many grotty places there really are in a neighbourhood with the average price approaching one million dollars. And how much litter there is. The kid stood at one multi- apartment lot, in front of their letter boxes, and looked at all the rubbish lying around and the piles of junk mail tipping out of people's letterboxes, and said " do i honestly have to put more rubbish into their letterbox for them not to collect? For more stuff to get ignored and blown about the hood?". Quite right really.
Now i always thought that a paper run would be a piece of cake. Not so. Your have to follow the route map religiously and not put a paper in letterboxes with signs such as "addressed mail only". And then a "stop". Don't put a newspaper in this letterbox. Find out where the letterboxes for businesses are. Where to post 20 newspapers for an apartment block when it tells you to out them in the foyer, but the door is locked?? All these things make it RATHER time consuming...
He is on his first run by himself tonight - usually we have taken turns to go with him, to help him get to know the route, watch his cycling skills (on a major Auckland road at one stage and crossing said road) - NO - you DO NOT cycle across this road in front of cars. (cyclists in New Zealand, on the whole, are treated like dirt... especially in this city. Little respect for any cylist in my opinion, no matter what age you are...). It has taken two of us, a side of a road each, around one hour 15 minutes.

ALL for $5.27 - yes you read that right! Slave labour or what??!!! Apparrently these paper girls and boys do not last long in the job - there are around 2500 of them working their little hearts out for this pitiful pay... AND this is TAXED! Children are taxed - i think that is possbly more outrageous than the pay really....
The kid is now riding his bike, which is a lot faster than us walking the route, as we did the day these photos were taken.
Anyone do a paper run as a kid? Have children doing one? I worked at Foodtown for $2.98 from form 4. I actually thought that was a lot of money back then and we used to get handed cash - working all through December/January was fab with cash like that! I never spent any money though back then...