Your Very First Job

[Janice]

What was your very first job where you earned money?

Mine was babysitting for 25 cent an hour and 35 cents after midnight.

[stormie_skies]

25 cents an hour??? Ack.....

I had a paper route when I was 12. I woke up every morning (Christmas was our only day off) at 5 and folded and delivered a ton of newspapers. When it was mind-bendingly cold (below zero), one of my parents would wake up with me and pick me up at the end of one block and drive me to the next, so I could warm up a little and not get frostbitten or something.

How much I made was pretty variable... I had to collect all the fees for the newspaper subscriptions, the newspaper company would bill me a certain ammount, and I would get to keep whatever was left over. Of course, there were always nasty people who would hide when they saw me coming with my collection book, so I never made as much as I was supposed to. But there were sweet people who would leave me tips, too....

[CajunMama]

I babysat but my first real job was slinging burgers at Bonus Burger! Ahhh, those fun days! I don't remember how much I made...I'm sure it was whatever min. wage was back in 1975-76. Then I moved up the burger ladder to the bigtime...Burger King where I must have made a decent wage cuz I was able to use all the money I saved for senior trip and a couple of semesters in college.

[Janice]

I remember one summer in high school, I worked in the dress department for Sears and made $1.25 an hour.

[streetsoldier]

Dishwasher at a pancake house...hated it ($1.10 an hour, Sat-Sun, from 3 pm-2 am).

[alicia-w]

my first job was working for my dad's attorney, transcribing taped depositions. I was a junior in high school (mid to late 1970's) and made $100 a week (three hours,three days a week after school.) I babysat too but that was only $1 an hour per kid and doubled that after midnight.

[cajungal]

Besides Baby-sitting, I worked for 2 days as a hostess for a chinese restarant in Houma. I hated it! I quit after 2 days and luckily already had another job lined up! I never want to work in food again. And I hated the double shifts. I lived a 20 minute drive from the restarant and would have to be there from 10:30-2. And then back again for the dinner shift from 4:30-9. I did not even have a car back then. Meaning my mom would have to take me back and forth to Houma twice a day.

[Windsong]

Stringing tabacco for $1.65 an hour at age 14 under hot nets in the fields of CT. Burnt to a crisp and had orange fingers for 6 months. Traded that job for one in a ballon factory for $1.76 an hour while I was in high school. Did so well, got moved to the "rubber" room as an inspector. Yes folks, those little birth control devices are made the same was ballons are LOL. You would be horrified LOL!
Windsong

[george_r_1961]

My first "real job" was age 16 when I worked as a busboy at an upscale restaraunt. The pay was horrible and the owner treated us like dirt. If you stood still for one second you got screamed at and we werent allowed to take breaks. After 2 weeks of this BS I went back to doing odd jobs such as yard work.

[azsnowman]

Worked at gas station from the age of 13 till I left for the Navy at 16 yrs. old, after school and on the weekends. Pumped GAS for an amazing price of .29 CENTS a GALLON I washed windows, checked the oil, tranny fluid ALL for the wage of .50 AN HOUR!!!

Dennis

[breeze]

LOL, Windsong, I see that you have the tobacco field
experience, too! I got a bit more, though - whopping
$3.00/hr for planting it, hoeing it, (I managed to miss
bringing it in from the fields, conveniently... ), and,
then stripping it, in the winter. Those barns were COLD,
and we always had only one kerosene heater that worked,
out of three! Our "strawboss" was a comedian - she kept us
laughing so we didn't focus on the cold, while we were
working!

[weathermom]

I had a paper route when I was 12. I woke up every morning (Christmas was our only day off) at 5 and folded and delivered a ton of newspapers. When it was mind-bendingly cold (below zero), one of my parents would wake up with me and pick me up at the end of one block and drive me to the next, so I could warm up a little and not get frostbitten or something.

How much I made was pretty variable... I had to collect all the fees for the newspaper subscriptions, the newspaper company would bill me a certain ammount, and I would get to keep whatever was left over. Of course, there were always nasty people who would hide when they saw me coming with my collection book, so I never made as much as I was supposed to. But there were sweet people who would leave me tips, too....

Me too. I had an afternoon route during the week and morning on weekends. I can probably count on one hand how many times one of my parents drove me. I can remember getting stuck in snow drifts and having to rock back and forth to get out of them. I had this one guy that was never happy with where I put his paper and he started to insist that I put it inside his screen door , so I would open the door, throw the paper up in the air and shut the door as the paper would fall apart as it fell. Well, when I reached high school I ended up dating his son for more than a year!

[bfez1]

I worked for Coca Cola (part time) passing out samples of Diet Coke in supermarkets. Great, fun job with decent pay.

[rainstorm]

other than babysitting and odd jobs i sold icees for a friend of my mom's when i was 14. i got paid cash under the table, so i dont think it came out to much an hour

[HurryKane]

Babysitting was the first, but in high school I got to do my first 'real' cool job during a summer internship: knocking out aphids that were crawling around in a petri dish with carbon monoxide. Then I'd glue their little bitty butts to a gold wire with silver paint. Said wire was glued on the other end with silver paint to a copper lead suspended over a plant and connected to a meter. The other lead was jammed in the plant's soil.

I'd lay the unconscious aphid on a leaf and let it wake up. Whenever they bit the plant it would complete the circuit which would be recorded by the meter. You could tell by the strength of the circuit how far down into the xylem they were chewing. Then I got to do statistical analysis of the results by measuring them off the graph paper and writing a small program to calculate means and standard deviations.

It was pretty cool. Sometimes I'd come in the next day to find little baby aphids all over the plant while Ma was still stuck to the wire. Other times they'd break away from the wire. But when you had to go collect new ones for the day's work...phew. Those things STINK in large numbers.

[Windsong]

LOL, Windsong, I see that you have the tobacco field
experience, too! I got a bit more, though - whopping
$3.00/hr for planting it, hoeing it, (I managed to miss
bringing it in from the fields, conveniently... ), and,
then stripping it, in the winter. Those barns were COLD,
and we always had only one kerosene heater that worked,
out of three! Our "strawboss" was a comedian - she kept us
laughing so we didn't focus on the cold, while we were
working!

LOL! Good for you Breeze! I never made it to the barns...they left me in the fields to burn up. I was only 14, and they wouldn't let you sew the leaves unless you were 16. I didn't last to the big harvest. Too burnt, sore and over it LOL!

Seabreeze

[coriolis]

Paper Route

[Miss Mary]

I first paid job was also babysitting. For 50 cents an hour too!!! Now the going rate is $5 an hour.

I also sold handmade potholders, for 25 cents each. I probably made about 100 of them. My friends and I were really into that craft, back in the mid 60s. Most mothers did not work outside the home and all we had to do was a ring, stand there with a smile on our faces and ask - would you like to buy a new potholder? Bingo, we sold so many of those things.....LOL

Mary

[Skywatch_NC]

Worked a week at a Brown Derby Restaurant in Fairfield, OH on the second shift (and then quit!)...I told my folks it was "He!!'s Kitchen!"

Eric

[bevgo]

I worked at a data processing place. We balanced bank runs at the end of the day. I worked there a couple of months and got laid off. That was a long time ago--LOL. That job convinced me to go to nursing school.