Do you remember your first job?

[bull]

I thought it might be kind of fun (and/or funny) to hear about people's first jobs.

At the age of about 10 or 11 I got hired as a helper at the small municipal airport next to our house in Eastern Oregon. My first task there was to sweep out the hangar and right after I was assigned that task the boss left to run some errans. After wandering around scratching my head for about 15 minutes I called my mom on the pay phone to ask her what a hangar was. Another 20 minutes later the boss came back and wondered why I had only managed to sweep about 40 square feet and at that point we both pretty much decided that I was too young for the job. I never told him I didn't know what a hangar was because I was too embarrassed but to his credit he gave me a $20 bill for my efforts.

http://www.josephoregon.com/airport.htm

[Neal_J]

Oh yeaaaa.  I had several introductory "careers"

Age 10-12:
Paperboy (paid a penny per paper)  Remember when they had paperboys?
Mowing lawns for neighbors
Painting fences

Age 13-14:
Interior/exterior painting (including the Sensuous Woman strip club in Hayward, CA)
Warehouse clerk @ a stereo wholesaler (met Deborah Harry of Blondie at a tradeshow)

Age 14-16:

Cratebuilder (shot myself in the foot with a neumatic nailgun)

Foodmaker Corporation AKA Jack In the Box (I lasted exactly two days as a fry cook before tendering my resignation...via the drive-though window.  Two important things I learned:  (1) you should gently SET the fries in the scaling hot oil instead of PLOPPING them in & (2) skin grafts hurt.  A lot.)

Courier driver (took the job because I thought I'd drive to/from Oakland airport about 5 minutes away; instead, the job entailed daily trips instead to Saudi Arabian counsulate in downtown SF & the SF airport from the East Bay.  Hindsight question:  who hires someone age 16 for this job???)

Forklift operator (two-wheeled it many times; drove off the side of the deckplate once before getting canned)

Then I wised up and went to college, graduated and got a real job.

Neal

[68X426]

I grew up in Cleveland Ohio. (No need for further comments). After all the "intro" jobs of newspapering, babysitting, shoveling, and raking, my first real job was selling peanuts for the Cleveland Indians at age 13 and 14.  It was a blast. It's been downhill ever since.

[tan top]

first job !! at 16 after leaving school trainee mechanic

[PocketThunder]

Age 12 I put an add up on the wall at the mom and pop grocery store in our tiny town of Maiden Rock, WI offering to mow lawns,  I thought I was going to get 10 lawns a summer and I would be rich.  I got one call, a lady that lived a mile away on another farm.  The price was $20 to mow the lawn and it was a huge country farm lawn, not a small city lot or suburban lot.  Then my mom and step-dad decided they would help me out and they would do the rider portion and I would get to push mow the steep ditch and around all the tree's, etc.  They kept $13 and I got a whole $7.    I learned something about gov't that summer.

Teenage years I was a hired man on some farms to milk cows, mow hay, etc..  Then I worked in the local feed mill bagging feed.  Then at night on weekends I would wash dishes at the restaurant in town.  I made a whopping $3 an hour, this was all back in the early '90s.  Oh and I also worked for my Dad in the shop, but that job somehow didn't come with a paycheck.    But I got a learning about cars that has stayed with me all these years so that's a benefit in itself.
 

[elacruze]

Ugh...I had chores more than jobs, before age 16...Dairy farm, mostly painting farm equipment...baling bean hay in Alabama summer heat...

First employment was at a Texaco gas station, running gas and learning how not to put ANOTHER ring shaped dent in the 15' roof tin with a split-ring...it was on the corner to the entrance to a big state park though so lots of girls in light clothes/bathing suits! 

[Manfred318]

I started working at my high school when I was 15. I would start after school cleaning the dining rooms. I got 3 hours a day and was paid somewhere around $10/hr. It was a good job. I could go at my own pace as long as I got my shit done. The cheerleaders would also practice out there which was an added bonus. Im still there actually and just finished my 8th year.

[Brock Samson]

 There used to be a J.C. Penny on the corner of Market and Fifth Streets,.. I used to hang out and "help" in the Toy Dept. on the 3rd floor, there was a nice young lady who let me help out and "paid" me in broken and returned toys and model kits kids' folks had returned, I was about 11, and of course I mowed lawns in the hood, cause folks back then actually had lawns, they've all been paved over now so folks can park their and their tenants' cars on them,.. I used to get 20 cents to mow a lawn back in the '60s...
My first real job was at the Fox Warfield Theater I was 15 but lied and said I was 16, I was the door man and worked the candy counter and sometimes usher... I saw alot of old '70s movies dozens of times... like Magnum Force which I remember quite well.. I made $3.17 and hour, no benefits but sometimes I worked the seedy theater right next door the Crest - where they showed Black Exploitation films and Bruce Lee movies,.. there was a little room behind the screen there where you could bring a "Date" and make out on a really funky old couch and you could see the audience but they couldn't see you through the screen... they were only about 15 feet away... Pretty hard to forget that...  
  these are the two theaters as they exist today...

[Old Moparz]

Had a paper route back in the 70's that only took me 30 minutes to do by bicycle Monday through Friday. There was no paper on Saturday, but Sunday's paper was 5 times bigger, so I had to drag a cart behind me & it took about an hour & a half. A friend of a friend in high school bragged about how he was making way more than minimum wage at $6 part time doing some kind of grunt work. He also said I should get a real job. I told him that after tips & what the paper paid me, I averaged about $7 to $8 an hour, got about $125 in tips at Christmas, had the whole afternoon to play baseball or whatever else I wanted to do, & didn't have to take orders all day long. He didn't say another word. 

My first "real job" was at an upscale mall (full of snobs) where a friend worked when I was 16 in my senior year of high school. We were "Retail Facility Maintenance Operation Engineers". I pushed a broom while my friend changed trash bags.    It paid half of what my paper route did, & I got to take crap from an a-hole manager that acted like he owned the mall. It was nice when he got caught by security humping someone in his car in the parking garage & got fired the next day. 

[Tilar]

I grew up on a farm so that would have to be my first job I guess, it just went from sun up to sun down.

I was on the receiving end of a John Deere 14T bailer when I was old enough to pull the bails out of the bailer and drag them back to Dad who stacked them on the wagon.  

By the time I was 10 or 11 I was raking hay on a John Deere MT and at 13, grandpa figured I was old enough to haul oats to town. He was riding along to be sure I did ok. I think it was a 63 Chevy that he had.

My first paying job was working at the local John Deere dealer in the lawn and garden department. Went to work there about 2 months before I turned 16.

[derailed]

Ahhh the good old days, I think around age 12 I got my first paper route. At one point in high school I had 2 of them, one in the am and one pm. Summer of my junior year in HS I got a job working at a tree nursery/landscaper doing lumper work unloading tractor trailers. Back breaking work but that is where I learned to use a skid steer and backhoe. Also got to go out on some deliveries and driving the non cdl dumptruck. Thought I was king of the world at that point. One time a guy came in with this big fancy Pete and we unloaded the truck. He asked where there was a McDs or something to go get lunch and I told him and even said he could use my car to run up there. He must have seen me drooling over the truck the whole time and then said nah hop in and left the trailer and we bob tailed up. That was the day CDL school came into my future plans a few years later when I got the money and a few failed attempts at community college. If only I could turn back the clock 

[TruckDriver]

My first job was at 16, at the bakery my Dad worked at for $5.00 a day 7 days a week. My job was cleaning all the doughnut, bread, bun pans off, and most of the doughnut pans had sticky frosting runoff on them. I had a scraper to scrap the stuff off the pans, and clean rags to then wipe them off. Once I got them clean, I then stacked them on the "clean" stacks to be reused. I did this directly behind the huge bread oven where it got very hot. I put a thermometer near where I was working once, and it pegged out, and cracked at 120 degrees. There was no airconditioning in the downstairs part where we all worked. Only the store had airconditioning. And with the bread proofing area (where they put the bread and such to rise before putting in the oven), it was always super humid too all year round. In the summer, all you had to do, was walk in the door to come to work, and in less then 3 minutes, you were dripping with sweat. So, cleaning the pans was never really fun. After cleaning the pans on Saturday mornings, I had to slice and bag buns that were ordered special. Sometimes, that got to be like 60 dozen or more. Most of the days I could be done and go home in about 2 to 4 hours. Fridays I could be done in less then a hour, and go home. But the holidays were horrible. I sometimes put in around 6 hours or more on some days. I rarely ever got anymore money for staying longer at work. Instead I'd get a choice of day old doughnuts. I held this job for 6 years.

Durring that time, I also did the paperboy thing for a few years. I had around 50 papers on the weekdays, but I had 110 on Sundays. And they were thick too. I HATED this job.

[bull]

Oh and I also worked for my Dad in the shop, but that job somehow didn't come with a paycheck.    But I got a learning about cars that has stayed with me all these years so that's a benefit in itself.

I guess I should have mentioned that in the thread title, ie., "Do you remember your first job for pay." I also busted my hump working on logging trucks, balers, swathers, etc., etc. for my dad and the only payment I got from him was high decibel verbal motivation and repetitious behavioral admonition.

[dodgecharger-fan]

First ever paid job was when I was 5 or 6. I went to the local convenience store and swept the pavement in front of the store. I was doing it because I thought the girl that was working there was cute. She paid me a dollar for the work. I took that as a sign that she didn't like me all that much.  A buck to a 5 year old in 1972 was good for a week-long sugar high.

I had a paper route when I was a teenager. That lasted a few years.

At 14, I got my first real show-up-to-work job with a pay cheque and tax deductions as a dish washer at a restaurant located far too far away from home for that kind of job - 18 kms - no bike, all country roads and really nothing useful in sight for the bulk of the journey. (It's built up a bit now, but not much.)
But with help from my brother who also worked there at first and co-workers, I always managed a way to get to and from work with only a few exceptions.
The walks home at 2 AM were the freakiest. Ya never knew what was in the bushes.

The next year I got the same kind of job closer to home. Walking and biking were easy and if worse came to worse, I could even take the city bus.

[PocketThunder]

Oh and I also worked for my Dad in the shop, but that job somehow didn't come with a paycheck.    But I got a learning about cars that has stayed with me all these years so that's a benefit in itself.

I guess I should have mentioned that in the thread title, ie., "Do you remember your first job for pay." I also busted my hump working on logging trucks, balers, swathers, etc., etc. for my dad and the only payment I got from him was high decibel verbal motivation and repetitious behavioral admonition.

Ya i was wondering wether to include any jobs worked before the first official tax paying job where you get told you are being paid $3/hour and you get your check and 25% of it goes to the gov't.  I ask my Dad, what are all these taxes for?  Why did i only end up with $2.25/hr?         

[adauto]

My first actual job, not counting things for nieghbors or grandma was being a caddie. There was a counrty club next to the mall. I rode my bike a ways to get there too. I think I was around 14 then. Some of these guys had bags bigger than I was (weight wise that is!). And most were just jerk-offs... I have NO intrest in golf to this day, go figure......

[Finn]

When I was 14 I worked under the table at a private Airpark as air traffic control and office manager. Was only paid 5 bucks an hour but I got to eat for free and could drive all over the property in the old 1970 GMC pickup that no one else could start except for me.  Good times.

[PocketThunder]

When I was 14 I worked under the table at a private Airpark as air traffic control and office manager. Was only paid 5 bucks an hour but I got to eat for free and could drive all over the property in the old 1970 GMC pickup that no one else could start except for me.  Good times.

Wait a minute, you were 14 and you were the air traffic controller?...??   

[bull]

When I was 14 I worked under the table at a private Airpark as air traffic control and office manager. Was only paid 5 bucks an hour but I got to eat for free and could drive all over the property in the old 1970 GMC pickup that no one else could start except for me.  Good times.

Wait a minute, you were 14 and you were the air traffic controller?...??   

That's what shocked me too but then I got to thinking it's probably one of these places where they get one plane every three days...

[chargerboy69]

I was 15 and worked at a video rental store.  Just another type of business going the way of the buggy whip.

[Brock Samson]

 Yeah I bought a whole buncha' my Favorite movies from a Blockbuster, Hollywood and little mom and pop that went belly up, lucky for me my taste in movies isn't very mainstream, funny how fols will buy up the ones that they play on TV all the time, but the best movies are left to languish... 

[General_01]

I inherited my sisters paper route when I was about 13-14. I got a job at the local BK when I was 15. That lasted a whole week before I said that wasn't for me. I then went to work at the local Bonanza as busboy/dishwasher and worked there until I graduated. Still remember going to Perkins after work at 1AM with my co-workers and watching the bar crowd roll in. 

[Bob T]

I grew up on a dairy farm and helped alot on that , didnt do too  much milking tho , more like feeding out to the stock , firewood, feed the cows, pigs, chickens , seem to remember it didnt pay that much but there was usually some pocket money for going out to the movies in the nearest town about 8 miles away.
The 1st paying job I  remember was doing lawns for my Father who was a building contractor and looked after maintenance on a lot of houses and doing "fleeco" work for the neighbours on their large sheep farm. Fleeco at age 13-14 was hard work keeping up with the shearers and grading and pressing the huge wool bales. 1 shearer could do maybe 300 sheep in a day and it was a 6 stand shed. Also worked on a pumpkin farm down the road in season.
Started an elelectrical apprenticeship at age 16 , my 1st take home pay was $130 for 40 hours , $3.25hr after tax  Ha , I thought I was made then    . still at it , Contracting some 25 years later

[Finn]

When I was 14 I worked under the table at a private Airpark as air traffic control and office manager. Was only paid 5 bucks an hour but I got to eat for free and could drive all over the property in the old 1970 GMC pickup that no one else could start except for me.  Good times.

Wait a minute, you were 14 and you were the air traffic controller?...??   

That's what shocked me too but then I got to thinking it's probably one of these places where they get one plane every three days...

Yeah it was lol, the key-word being "private". We did fly-in BBQs on weekends though and that got pretty busy. 

[chargergirl]

First real job was at the Maui Beach Hotel at 15 years old. I started in the buffet and banquet rooms and graduated to the formal dining room. Made $1.45 an hour as waitress...plus tips. Not bad money for a 16 year old...now this hotel is the equivalent to a Ramada compared to the high end hotels that are there now. But it was the best in the area in her day. I quit the day we all put in for graduation...I had put my request for the night off first and asked if my friends had put theirs in. They all got off and the Bxxxh of a dining room manager said if I didn't work I was fired..OK! Left for Oahu that week and had pick of job...had to fudge my age since I was 17 when I graduated!