I am significantly behind my peers in one thing: work experience.

This is for various reasons. 

1) I put off driving and now I'm 17 years old and only have my permit--I get my license on February.

 2) I have no time and honestly, no need.  My neighborhood pet sitting job and tutoring job pays well.  But a little actual work experience would be nice.

3) This summer instead of getting a job I squandered my time running 50+ miles a week for cross country, cross training, and sleeping.  I didn't even work on college applications

Suddenly, however, once the end of summer rolled about, I was finally hit with, "Oh crap, I need to get a job!" My thought process going something like, "What will colleges say if I've never had an actual job?!" (Not to say that self-employed pet sitting isn't an actual job.  I've learned several values scooping up mounds of poop in the house and have had to cut many an event short to go home and check up on the dogs because I didn't want to clean up a puddle of urine.)

So, I e-mailed a local women's running store in the area with a few statistics on me, etc: "Hi, I'm Lauren, I've been running for 4 years, I've been captain of my cross country team for 2 years, we hope to make it to State this year, I also do well in school and have a 5.0 GPA, and  I have retail experience from volunteering in a gift shop at a hospital etc"

I didn't really expect a reply to come so a week or two went by when someone finally emailed me back saying, "Hi, Lauren, the district manager forwarded me this and I'd love to schedule an interview.." we went back and forth for a while and finally settled on a date.

Then, two days before my interview, the manager of the store e-mailed me again.  "Sorry, we're going to have to cancel your interview... the store owner is very against hiring high schoolers."

What?!  Needless to say I was disappointed.  Is that even legal?  Is that right?  If you're an owner or manager of a retail store, are you really against hiring high schoolers?  What about them are you against?  It's not like I'm automatically going to change when I graduate from high school, and I'm probably going to e-mail them again for a job and this time they will probably follow through with an interview.  I personally think, egotistically of course, that I could have been fine working there and broadened their customer base as I have a ton of female runner friends that are looking for a good running store.

So, my question for all of you, is why did this happen?