First job!

Mine was cleaning at a private club, it was the early seventies I was 13 years old and it paid 1.55 an hour. With free lunch and got paid while we ate. Two ladies cleaned during the week, then I worked Saturday with one and Sunday with the other. All I did was vacuum and move chairs. And I have never not had a job since, forty + years no wonder I'm tired.

 

I just heard two radio people talking about their first jobs ( yesterday )
So....I got to thinking about mine ..........what a current subject !
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PAPERBOY !
I don't know how I fell into it ?
I must have known somebody who did it, first ?
But.......I remember it being a pretty physical job.
I had one of the largest routes.......and it was hilly.
During the summer........man it was rough.
I think i walked most of it..........I didn't have a very good bike ?
That sack of papers was HEAVY !
I used to stop at a natural spring ( in the woods ) and drink from it.
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I know I bought cymbals (for my slowly increasing drum set ) - w/ the money I earned.
I remember one day I was sick as a dog + my Mom helped me by driving me around,. THANKS MOM !

 

Tennis coach at an elite (read snobbish) summer tennis camp. Kids turned 16 got brand new sports cars. Parents visited the kids via helicopter on occasion.

Considering how unbelievably spoiled these kids were they were generally very nice. Some even worked hard although I wasn't exactly the most demanding coach.
(Looking back I was a fairly terrible coach, but the kids had way more fun with me - I was only 18 myself at the time.)

To this day I'm amused when I see a few of them on TV. Just odd when I remember them as 12-17 year old kids.

 

Bending rebar, by hand, over a bench table corner at a pre-cast concrete plant for $1.40 an hour. These were for various structures, like steps and septic tanks. For the latter once they came out of the form I had to crawl inside the hot tank (the concrete was still curing) and knock out holes with a hammer). Soaking wet I was maybe 110 lbs. That was 45 years ago. I've had a raise since then.

 

Jack-in-the-box 16 years old - hated it and quit after 3 months of summer. Worst boss he didn't want to let me quit either. I think I made a whole $1.35 cents. Back then kids did it part time. I don't think anyone wanted to make a career of flipping burgers.

 

16 years old. Worked at a Hardware/Houseware store (OSH type store) doing everything except handling cash.

Drove a fork lift, stocked shelves, sold Lawnmowers, carried 100 pounds of HTH to cars, cleaned bathrooms, you name it. Worked 4 hours a day after school and 8 hours on Saturday. Paycheck was about $50 a week and was I rich!

 

delivering papers, shoveling driveways then the big time - Golden Arches!

 

Herded cattle and horses at a livestock sale place at 17. Never walked in so much shit. LOL. Then I hit the big time. Built walls at mobile home plant. This sucked too. LOL

 

Busboy at a banquet hall, weddings and sunday brunch. Got fired for taking some peppermint schnapps from the bar.... I threw up that night and had an upset stomach but they would not let me leave. For some dumb teenage reason I thought it would make my stomach feel better like mints do.

 

1967, 15 years old. I was the pot scrubber for a local buffet joint. Not the dishwasher, my job was to scrub all the pots. The ~16 inch high pots were the biggest PIA and the cooks burned everything. Dishwasher was a 10 cent step up on the pay scale. I made $1.25 hr and dinner included, so they could skirt the minimum wage issue.

No car so I had to walk ~3 miles (uphill both ways :evillaugh) from home to the job.

I was never without a job from 1967 until I retired in 2008, but not as a pot scrubber.

 

Grocery Store

I technically had some jobs before it, but they were basically little temp sort of things, helping parents out. This is the first one that REALLY felt like a job.

 

my first job was cleaning cars for a car dealership, paid 8 bucks an hour. this was when i was 17 (5 years ago)
I loved being around cars, got to drive a few nice ones and learned way to much about the car industry!

 

I mowed a few yards to make money. But the first job with an actual paycheck was bagging groceries at Krogers. To this day I get annoyed at baggers with poor sorting technique. Sorry but my laundry detergent and bleach shouldn't be in the same bag as my raw meat. Min wage was $5.15 I think.

 

first job was a car wash at a gas station at 16 for $4.25 an hour. Used to bake in the summer heat as the average heat was 102-105 daily. Best feeling was cashing that first paycheck.

 

My first real job was at a Supermarket. Courtesy Clerk (fancy, technical name for bagboy, lol!) I just turned 16 yrs. old.

It paid $1.55 hr. part-time. I made 50 something dollars on my first paycheck. I was so happy and excited seeing my paycheck my hands shook and I was thinking, "What do I do with all this money?"

Well, it's 43 years later, different job, way bigger paycheck. But when I look down at my 40 dollar weekly allowance I'm not so happy and excited anymore. And my hands don't shake....

 

My first job was as a paper boy as well, Two weeks after my 16th bday my dad walked me to a local plywood mill to meet uncle Johnny. We did not have a car. I started as a weekender doing cleanup. Learned enough to know to get a trade and worked as machinist millwright for 15 yrs before I got really smart a became a firefighter.

 

junior high school worked at an apple orchard.. picking drops... got paid 25 cents per bushel....on saturdays the owner would pile us in the back of his beat up old Dodge pickup and bring us to a local greasy spoon/bar and buy us all hot dogs and beans on a plate with white bread on the side and a Coke.
think of the campfire scene from Blazing Saddles later that day

imagine my surprise when the wife and I stopped at a diner down east in Maine and on the menu was 2 hot dogs and beans on a plate with white bread on the side...
of course i had to order it.

next job was pumping gas. got paid 2 cents a gallon when gas was only 28 cents. on a good day i'd pump 1500 to 2000 gallons. not back back then.

 

Wow, talk about memories. My first job was working with one of my dad's friends. He had a delivery/beverage/stocking company so I had to help load up the van and we delivered and stock paper products (like paper plates, napkins, etc.) and also beverages like malolo syrup and orange juices that came in glass bottles in those days. This was in the early 70's and I started at 13 years old. It was great, during the summers we would drive all over Maui each day delivering the products. It would take up most of the day but we would drive up to Paia, Makawao, Pukalani and Kula once a week, out to Lahaina another day, Kihei another day. We would also go out to Hana once a month to stock the stores and restaurants out there. It was great because I could sleep along the way and get paid for riding along. Pay wasn't great, only something like $1.30 an hour but it kept me out of trouble. I also had fun because I could check out the girls in each area working at the stores and restaurants and along the way we stopped off and had lunch or a break on the beaches at Kaanapali, kihei, hookipa park and in Hana. We would bust our butt twice a month when we would get 2 or 3 matson container loads of stuff. Later when I turned 15 I got my license and they taught me how to drive the van (standard shift). It was terrifying at first the way I had to learn how to back the van up quickly in narrow alleys by only using my rear view mirrors but I got used to it and now have no problems zipping in and out and backing into tight areas. When I was in high school I worked the regular school year week days and on sunday mornings, probably put in about 15 hours a week for extra spending money. It was funny because I would go out drinking with my friends and have to get up sunday morning all bleary (and sometimes stoned) and stock our stuff in the grocery stores in town. Alas, all good things come to an end and I graduated and left Maui and went to Honolulu but I still remember those good old days.

After high school I would work during the summer time at our pineapple cannery. I had various jobs, worked in the area which squeezes the juices out of the pineapple husks, worked in the area which makes the concentrated syrups and juices and also in the area which creates the syrup that gets put into the fruit cans. I had to use a hydrometer to test the sugar level, add 100 lb bags of sugar to the mixture to make sure it was sweet enough. To pay for my college I was working about 70 hours a week for those 3 months. After a while I got sick of the pineapples and pineapple juices and syrups so even after 40 years I still don't eat much pineapple or drink pineapple juice.

 

My first job, was when I was 15 (had to get a work permit from HighSchool), worked at Wendy's for a whole 2-weeks. The bosses were straight up mentally retarded, as I was only 15, I could only work very limited hours...but they worked me 4pm-10pm mon-fri, with an 8 hour shift on Saturday...only reason I worked there was to pay for my Driver's Ed (Mandatory for state of CA; cost like $400). I made 5.25 an hour (minimum wage at the time)
After, that, (considering that wasn't my REAL first job) I worked at OfficeMax, from the time I was 16, till graduating high school two years later...very kickback job, making $6.50 per hour (min wage was $5.75, thought I was shittin in tall cotton)

 

14 years old at a Swenson's Hamburger Drive-In in Akron, Ohio and I earned whatever the minimum wage was in 1972 (I think $1.60/hr?). I was too young to touch the fryers or the grills and the cool job of being a car-hop was reserved for the guys 18+, so my job was to run up and down the basement stairs restocking stuff and general clean-up around the place. I was a "grunt", but after a few weeks of seeing how hard I worked, the staff there included me on their tip-splitting. This was a VERY busy place and I made good money for a young guy and had a BLAST!