First Paid Job

[Idnar7]

What was your first paying job, time frame, pay and task? I started in a fast food joint when I was 15 in the mid 1960's, flipping burgers for $0.65/hour. The owner was a friend of my family and I worked there through college. Now it is a Firestone tire store.

 

[pjm-7]

My first paid (W-2) job was working for a concession contractor at Cincinnati's Eden Park. It was toward the end of the summer season 1975 and my brother worked there, and they needed some weekend help. My dad was a Cincy street kid and was always freaked that we would work in that part of town. The last I knew that stone building is still there. The first year of the show WKRP in Cincinnati has a quick screen shot of the building.

 

[freedomatlast]

At age 9, trash picked lawnmowers people were throwing out, got them running and solicited lawn cutting jobs from over 25 people in my neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods. Got to the jobsites by riding my bike, steering with one hand and pulling the mower along with the other. This was in 1969. Pay ranged from $3 to $10 per lawn depending on size. Shoveled snow for many of the same customers in the winter, and raked and burned leaves for many in the fall. Also picked up painting jobs from those same customers. I also delivered the free papers where every home got one. I think I got $2.50 for rolling, rubber banding and delivering about 60 papers once a week, Wednesdays if I remember correctly. I always seemed to have more pocket change than my less ambitious friends.

 

[MichaelB]

From 9 to 13 I was a paper boy. I made $0.01 for a delivery, $0.03 if I collected weekly, and $0.05 for the sunday paper. My route was 40 customers and during the summer I usually picked up routes of boys going on vacation. I made much more from tips.

I also did babysitting. At age 14 I mowed grass during the summer and shoveled homes during the winter. At age 15 I was a summer camp counselor.

 

[COcheesehead]

Age 12, golf caddy. The club paid us $8 a round. The golfer usually tipped and bought us a candy bar and soda at the turn.

 

[chicamuxen]

I worked at Ginos, they were a burger place, but also sold Kentucky Fried Chicken before they had stand alone restaurants. I cooked the chicken. Fun times,lol.

 

[Gumby]

I mowed lawns, shoveled snow, bagged groceries for tips, caddied at a country club, babysat and had a paper route. My first W-2 job was flipping burgers at McDonald's for $2.00/hour in 1975.

My first paycheck was quite a learning experience. I knew how many hours I had worked and, multiplying by $2, assumed I would have enough to buy that cool pair of blue suede Adidas sneakers I had my eye on. Lo and behold, my paycheck was less than that. Looking at the paystub, I remember asking one of the adult women who worked there, "who are FICA and FITW and why do they get part of my paycheck?"

 

[kobedog]

I started as a Christmas tree shearer at age 14 and made $2 an hour in 1974. Job involved trimming the outside branches of a tree with a machete and swinging it quite hard from as high up as I could reach to my feet while walking around the tree to make a conical shape. Did this for three years at a largish tree farm, then branched out on my own at smaller tree farms. This job and savings put me through college.

 

[Taco]

Lawn mowing around the hood - $5 a yard.
That would have been late 70s / early 80s.
Used dad's trusty 21 inch Lawn-Boy push mower.

 

[njhowie]

There were two of them - while at home on summer break from college. This was mid-1980s. I just walked in to a local temp agency and said give me whatever you have.

Job #1: Graveyard shift at a swimming pool supply store. Unloading deliveries, cleaning up the store. Manager was a bozo - the one thing that sticks in my mind - he would have us sweeping the carpets. It's the cheap indoor/outdoor carpeting. Why don't we simply vacuum? Why should I care, they're paying.

Job #2: Graveyard shift at an injection molding plant. You see old black and white photos of folks working with these big machines in a cavernous sweatshop - that's what it was like. It was 8 hours straight of monotonous work. Summer nights at 75-85 degrees no AC just some fans - so it's above 100 in the factory. Same routine over and over for 8 hours...Close the door on the machine, hit a button, wait a certain amount of time, pull the stuff out, clean up the burrs the machine would leave, wait about a minute for the plastic to harden sufficiently, stack them, then repeat the process. I turned it in to a game of sorts, trying to do it as efficiently as possible and as many as I could in a single shift. I know the floor manager took notice as nobody came close to what I would do in a shift. I was usually working on the machine that made bread trays and another for the canister that would go in home ice cream machines (metal canister with plastic piece in the bottom that lets the machine spin it).

Best I can remember, these each paid about $4.50/hour.

 

[Jeffman52]

I mowed grass, bailed hay, stocked shelves at a small convenience store, and ran a bush hog in pastures from 12 years old - 15.

What I consider my first "real" job was working in the Cotton Mills in Georgia From 16 to 18 years old. I worked a full time 2nd shift job while going to High School. HS until 3:20PM then head over to the mill and work 4PM - 12PM.

Wasn't so many years later that with the advent of NAFTA all those mills closed and the jobs were moved to Mexico. Those mill towns were beyond devastated by the loss of those jobs.

 

[c998877]

1980, 17 years old, insurance company file clerk in Oakland CA, $550.00 per month (about $3.17 per hour), 40-hour week

 

[Ronstar]

First gig was mowing lawns maybe 10 or 12 years old. Then worked in a bait shop and I was the janitor at the city library for $2.00 an hour in 1972. Did these 2 jobs a year or 2 until I went to jr college.

 

[Franklin]

My first paid (W-2) job was working for a concession contractor at Cincinnati's Eden Park. It was toward the end of the summer season 1975 and my brother worked there, and they needed some weekend help. My dad was a Cincy street kid and was always freaked that we would work in that part of town. The last I knew that stone building is still there. The first year of the show WKRP in Cincinnati has a quick screen shot of the building.

First W2 job as a bus boy at the local Holiday Inn. Could not believe taxes taken out then! Made me focus on that ever sense.

 

[Mr. Tightwad]

1977, busboy(then waiter), I believe it was $2.65 an hour, at age 15.

Spent 8 years there, dated a dozen waitresses or so, a few customers, and ate like a king, sometimes 3x a day. Great job.

 

[Jerry1]

15 into 16 years old around 1976 I got my first job - a bus boy at a nice restaurant. We got 10% of our waitresses tips. I forget the hourly rate but probably around $3/hour. It was nice getting tips - if you worked, you had money that day. It was a good night if I got $10 to $15 per waitress. Usually had to cover two waitresses, sometimes three.

My first full time job was working at the airport for Host International. They did food service to the airlines. I was 17 and worked afternoons. Mostly janitorial work but move into being a store room clerk just before I turned 18. That would have been 1978/1979 and I’m pretty sure I made $3.75/hr.

 

[BruinBones]

My first job for cash was a bagger for tips at the Navy commissary at age 14, following in my older brothers' footsteps. My first W2 job was at the local Jack-in-the-Box because my high school friends were working there. Making the deep fried tacos made me ill. I worked there for about a month, then went on a leave-of-absence to concentrate on school - and never went back.

 

[RetiredAndLovingIt]

Paper girl in the UK at 9 or 10. My mum opened the shop in the morning and if someone did not show up I was called in to do their route. In the summers I picked all kinds of berries and potatoes(back breaking work but paid well). I also worked in the growers greenhouses picking tomatoes and cutting daffodils. I was on call for anyone that needed help and I was not afraid of hard work. Don't remember how much I was paid but it was a lot to me at the time. My dad died when I was 9 and my mom was left with 4 kids and very little money so she had to get a job. I was the oldest so times were tough and I did what I could to help although my mum always told me any money I made was mine. That early experience set me up to be a saver for the rest of my life and even now it's hard to blow that dough.

 

[MTB4me]

Started mowing a neighbor’s lawn and snow blowing driveways while still in grade school. As a freshman in high school I got my first real gig: working for a tiny electronics company, building cables, assembling power supplies, and doing some light soldering. Literally worked in the basement of the owner’s home on his ping pong table. Great experience and beat flipping burgers. Ended up going to college for electrical engineering and a successful career in both that and IT.

 

[MRG]

I started logging and sawmills when I was 16. I was supposed to be contract labor and never had regular pay. I quickly realized that having a paycheck every week would be good. I took a job delivering auto parts that paid $2.65 hourly in 1977 and had insurance.

 

[4legsgood]

Sold shoes in high school at Sears age 16-18 in the mid-70s. $2.10 hourly plus commission. Typically, I'd average $5.00 an hour which was quite good for those days. I was oblivious to the fact that my coworkers who made the same wage were single mom, out of work teacher, and dad with 6 kids and living on that wage.

 

[Alan]

9 to 18 worked for my uncle chopping sticks (kindling) and selling sacks of sticks and logs from the back of his truck around the streets. Added a proper job at age 16 working for the local education authority as a lab assistant in the school chemistry lab, working after school hours.

 

[Sanstar]

Baby sitting, then house cleaning, then US Army at 18.

 

[braumeister]

The usual kinds of jobs for kids, babysitting, lawn mowing, snow shoveling. One summer I had a lifeguard job at a beach where I was paid 35 cents an hour but got free ice water.

First job with a W-2 was working the counter at a beachfront Howard Johnson's, mainly selling hot dogs and sodas. At first it was mainly to be in the company of my friends who also worked there, but when I reached the age of 18 they had to increase my salary to the minimum wage, $1.50 an hour. That was sweet.

 

[Montecfo]

First jobs
Mowed lawns late 1960s. $2-5
Paper boy early 1970s
Pet shop, fed dogs and cleaned cages
Picked vegetables for harvest, tomatoes and cucumbers
Local movie theatre-only time I was ever fired