First Paid Job

[brett]

First job was stocking shelves in a drug store during high school.

In university....salesperson in mens wear of a dept store, working in a railway yard as a car checker, short order cook.

Railway was the best. Union rates, lots of time and a half overtime.

 

[mountainox]

Age 13: Picked cotton on the family farm. Zero pay
Age 15: Worked for my father in his construction business. $.50 per hour.
Age 16: Worked in a drug store stocking shelves and cleaning the store. $.85 per hour
Age 17: Worked in the local cotton mills pushing the "dope wagon". $1.10 per hour.
Life was tough.

 

[Walt34]

As I advised my friend when she said her twin girls were afraid to go in the finished basement because there might be spiders -- "Just tell them the snakes ate all the spiders." She responded that it was indeed a good thing that I had no children.

 

[youbet]

My granddaughter's first W2 job is costing me money! I told her (after a few egg nogs one Xmas) I'd match her earnings (up to the max contribution allowed) in a Roth IRA . Cost me $6k last year and $6.5k this year! She's a college student and works part time.

 

[skyking1]

That sweet right there!
I grew up on a farm and had a social security card when I was 14.
That card was my first venture into being an audiophile.
A new audio equipment store was opening up in the nearby city, and they were having a giveaway.
I got all excited about it and wrote down the last six numbers of everybody's social security card in the family. They were giving away various items with lesser values having to match the last two. I walk through the store, and found nothing of greater value than a blank cassette tape for one of my brothers. Then I realized I wasn't even thinking about my social security number. There it was. I matched four on a pioneer belt driven turntable!
They ask for some form of alternate ID so my mother brought down my library card
I took my earnings from the summer and purchased the needle, a marantz amplifier, and a pair of speakers.

 

[Ronstar]

My granddaughter's first W2 job is costing me money! I told her (after a few egg nogs one Xmas) I'd match her earnings (up to the max contribution allowed) in a Roth IRA . Cost me $6k last year and $6.5k this year! She's a college student and works part time.

Great idea and a very nice gesture on your part!

 

[lem1955]

Age 12 - Babysitting $.50/hr, sometimes tips
Age 14 1970 - Retail store, sales - $1.60/hr
Age 19 Arby's - On a semester break, I lasted 2 weeks on the job. It was horrible. I knew then why it was important I stay in college.
Age 22 - Apple picker, $35/bin. I was too short, had to move the ladder too often. I was invited inside (out of the cold) to learn to do the payroll. My first big break!

 

[Humbooster]

First job was helping an elderly neighbor with the hay on his farm. This was back in 1973/74. I was being paid 1$ per day and because of the lousy weather the job lasted almost two months.

 

[W2R]

Like others, I had the usual babysitting/gardening/helping-dad-at-the-office type jobs when I was too young to take a "real job" (W-2 job). And then I took some temporary W-2 jobs that lasted just a few weeks, like working over Christmas vacation gift wrapping books at Honolulu Book Shop.

My first permanent full time W-2 job was as a rent-a-car girl in Waikiki. This was at the International Market Place, which is now gone; back then it was a collection of dozens of grass huts containing tourist shops and Hawaiian entertainment, with tropical vegetation and paths winding between them, right there on Kalakaua in the exact center of Waikiki.

Anyway, I had my own little open air grass hut and I was the only one working there! Every few hours somebody from work would come check on me and pass the time of day. They brought me beautiful leis to wear, and flowers for my hair, plus they encouraged me to dress in a muu-muu, work on my tan, and go barefoot. In other words I was supposed to look as Polynesian as I could.

They also encouraged me to smilingly converse with potential customers walking by and lure them over to talk about maybe renting a car, particularly any military that happened to wander by. Then if they rented a car, I'd arrange it on the phone, take their credit card info or other payments, and then walk them a short distance to where they could get a ride to the parking lot where the cars were.

What a perfect first job! Getting paid to flirt with handsome guys sure seemed like it to a teenager like me at the time. A job like that would be scandalous these days, I suppose, but hey, it was fun. None of the guys were inappropriate or scary, and they were having as much fun flirting while they rented a car, as I was. The good old days.

 

[shafer9]

it was early 60s. I was about 15 maybe.

I got a job for him with a local landscaping company who always needed day laborers raking rocks on new construction sites.

It was a dollar an hour! Twice as much as I could make anywhere else. All day in the hot sun, lots of blisters on my hands from the rake, riding in the back of the truck with the other guys, half of whom didn’t speak English.

It was awesome.

 

[Martlet]

First proper job that I recall was after my second year in college, I got a summer job in the QC lab of a brewery in my hometown. June to September 1979, when I was 19. I can't remember the pay -- I'd guess it was around $2/hour -- but I do remember that overall compensation included a case of Harp Lager per fortnight.
That brewery eventually closed and the site is now a distillery.

 

[davidfin]

Eighth grade, around 1968, sweeping, mopping floors and cleaning. Mirrors at a hair salon. Inherited the job from my brother. 3 times a week for $12 dollars a week.

 

[Joggernot]

OK, first job was in the early 60s (probably 63) washing out metal garbage cans (no plastic liners in them thar days) in the second basement of a mental hospital. Promoted the next year to janitor/cook in the maximum security ward of the same hospital with a raise to $1.25/hr.

 

[d]

grave digger -- by hand .... 50 cents / hour ... mowing the grounds when not digging.

 

[meleana]

A civil service file clerk for the Department of Social Services. I was 16.

 

[Glide77rocks]

1975, I was 16. Weeded onions in the Tulelake California area. Summer work, six days a week. $2 per hour.

Worked alongside several school friends. Some fun memories, and have forgotten the not fun parts like crawling thru the fields.

 

[orbops]

I had a paper route, and made about $100 per month when I was 14. Spent a lot of that money on Atari 2600 cartridges.

 

[harley]

Age 11 (1967), had a paper route in the morning (pre-dawn). Worked on a farm on the weekends, doing whatever the farmer told me to do (slopping the hogs, stringing fence wire, shoveling manure, etc.) for $5/weekend. Also mowed lawns, raked leaves, shoveled snow. Anything for a buck.

First W-2 job was McDonalds at age 14 (lied about my age). Raked in $1.65/hr.

It's no wonder I retired at 50. I'd put my time in.

 

[TB1960]

Ok, so, not counting using my lunch money, which my mother gave me at age 9, to secretly by candy bars and then resell them at twice the price to my school chums.
And then at age 12 - 14, I had a paper route.
At age 15 I started my own business making metal trinkets, like plant holders, toys, and such. I used my welding skill learned in high school shop class and purchased an old oxy-acetylene set up from a family friend.
At age 17 I invested $1000 in IBM, sold at $1500

But, my first W-2 job was working in a rod iron shop for $2.10 an hour back in 1977.
Next, worked as cook while going to college full time, achieved a pay grade of $7.10 an hour.
In 1981 I joined the Navy and took a pay cut, but, the training was worth it. And, is the reason why I where I am today.

 

[indiajust]

All summer as a YMCA counselor at a camp in Pell City. 3 hots and a cot included. $270 for the entire summer.

 

[Tessie]

1975 worked at a Taco Tico fast food taco joint in Marietta, GA. After selling tacos for my shift, I had to clean the dining room and mop the floor. I remember my first week, mopping that floor thinking I was going to die from the hard work.
I made $1.70 an hour and I think when we got a raise it was like 10 cents an hour. Woohoo! The worst part was smelling like tacos after work.

 

[azxracer]

My 1st job (outside of our family farm work) was at 14, $1 an hour, working on a neighbor's egg farm. My job was to clean the concrete troughs that the chicken cages hung over. Yes, that's right -- my first job was shoveling chickens***!!

 

[CRLLS]

My first paying job, not including having a paper delivery route, was at age 15 on Friday or Saturday nights. I was a short order chief cook and bottle washer at a small family run pizza joint. Being under the legal age, it was a cash job. at the end of the night, around 1AM + or -, the wife drove me home. I left it at age 16 when I worked for a franchised fried chicken joint with my 1st W2 job. I left there for a stock clerk job at Montgomery Wards. I'd hate to go back and count the number of places I've worked at that don't exist anymore.

 

[68bucks]

At about 12 years old I chipped morter off used bricks for a neighbor who got a zillion free bricks and wanted to build a house with them. Penny a brick. Cleared brush for him too for $0.50/hr. First W2 job was washing dishes and mopping floors at a restaurant for $1.95/hr. That was 1975 and was where I met my future wife. Been married 41 years.

 

[Milkman]

First job at 14 years old was as a golf caddy. I was paid $4 per bag for 18 holes. I usually carried doubles which doubled the money per round. I did this on and off through college for extra beer money. I also mowed my share of lawns.

First paid job was at 16 years old. I was a clerk in a grocery store for which I was paid $1.40 an hour. Once again, I did this on and off until after I graduated from college. The last year was full time while I finished in night school. (It just dawned on me that night school is a term no one uses any more.)