"He wasn't too impressed but he got on with it and the owner of the café couldn't have been happier with him."
The mother said her son "polite and hard-working" but that he had been put on a "restricted timetable" at school and added education "doesn't agree with him".
But she said she could not allow him to stay at home "unsupervised" and "sat on his Playstation or Xbox" while she and her partner were at work.
She told the paper Nick has since been offered a two-week joinery apprenticeship.
Her innovative idea received much praise on Facebook.
One person said: "Great idea! Teaching your son that if he isn't going to be at school then he has to use his time productively then he might just decide that school isn't so bad after all. Hats off to you."
Another woman wrote: "This young lad picked me up and took me home. I had had a horrific fall and if it hadn't been for Nick I probably would have died so thank you. A lovely young man."
Ms Cooper added: "Some kids expect jobs to fall on their laps. Nick complained about the café work at first but he went on to do a brilliant job. He now has a great reference to be able to find other work.
"I wanted to teach him that you need to put yourself out there. I got the number of the apprenticeship company for him but I left him to it after that.
"He managed to organise an interview for himself while we were at work, and now he has a trial doing a job he has always wanted to do."