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Your Take: Your First Job?
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You never forget your first job, right? At the age of 15, you can’t legally work in New York yet unless you jumped through all these hoops to get a work permit. It was this stupid little green card that said you would only work during certain hours of the day, the total number of hours per week couldn’t exceed some number, and was a really big pain in the butt to get.
I wanted the card because I needed one to work the cushiest job I knew about, the library. I heard librarians were making ridiculous money putting books away in a nice, air conditioned building. 
After getting the card, I soon learned that everyone else had the same bright idea and some crazy people were doing it for free! The wait-list for a summer job at the library was months.
So we went to option two and my first job ended being at a Chinese takeout restaurant. I answered phones, prepared people’s take out orders, and banked a lovely $5 an hour tax free. Turns out the stupid card was completely unnecessary if they just handed me cash at the end of the day. I think I worked there for a year or so, getting a couple raises in the process (I think I ended at like $6.50 an hour), and getting a good lesson in life. All in all, I think it was a great first job experience.
What was your first job?
(Photo: rhoran)
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My first job was delivering newspaper route near our house. I do not recall needing a permit to work in Washington state, so did not had one.
Most time, I hauled newspaper in carrier and sometime when I got up late, my mom drove me to deliver newspapers.
That was nice.
I did babysitting on side too. Somehow as an Asian kid, I gave all money to my mom for daily expenses for the house.
great topic
Paper route aside, my first job was during the summer of my 14th year of life. I had a friend whose mother worked a desk job at a plant that sold and packaged small batteries. So she got my friend and I a position, packaging watch batteries for 7-8hr each day in the warehouse for $4.27/hr! It was incredibly tedious and boring. I think that was when I decided I would definitely pursue further education after high school. I knew what I did NOT want to do for the rest of my life.
I delivered flyers at age 14. It’s piecework, so once I got good at it, the compensation wasn’t too bad for the amount of time put in. Effort was another thing – delivering flyers when it’s -30º out isn’t exactly a picnic. In the end, I stuck with it for about a year – earning enough to go on my school’s annual trip to France – and then quit the next summer.
Next up was minimum wage dishwashing a couple years later. That lasted a couple months, then I had a weekend commitment one week, and they didn’t schedule me in again for a month. I told them to stuff it at that point.
Neither of these offered any particularly good life lessons. Summer jobs that followed were of much more value.
When I was 14, I got a job at a used car lot washing cars and splitting firewood for the owner who also lived at his business.
I did that off and on for 2 years before getting strong enough to do day work for local farmers.
I definitely grew up with blue collar work. I think it built my character, but I wish I had been a bit more entrepreneurial back then.
I was too lazy to use my brain, but had plenty of energy to tire out my body!
My first job was working for an internet service provider. the VP was my neighbor and he cut me lots of breaks when he needed a babysitter (adorable kids) or if I wanted to take trips. I worked on the tedious stuff that no one else wanted to do (preparing for audits, inventory, organizing stuff). I loved it. I sat next to a really weird programmer who was always talking code language that I didn’t understand. This is what eventually brought me to where I am now, and I actually understand those crazy code languages!
I grew up in working in chinese restaurants; my parents owned one. I also helped out in other friends’ restaurants when needed.
That was my motivation for studying hard to get a cushy office job.
I was a “painter.” Any by “painter” I mean I didn’t touch any wet paint for 2 months. All grunt prep work, but for a decent wage of 7/hr. My boss was my neighbor, so I think that helped.
I learned valuable lesssons of hard work leading to better jobs–I eventually actually got to paint! I also learned that I never, ever wanted to do manual labor for a living, so that certainly motivated me in school.
Finally, it is now still valuable to me as I have the knowledge and skills to do home improvement projects for the cost of materials (and time) only–tremendous savings.
My first job was working retail…I started when I was 16 and ended up working there during my last two years of high school and my first two years of college. It was a good experience, I just wish I would have saved more of the money.
My first job was when I moved to the US for college. My first job was the day after I arrived, and I was a cashier! It was TOUGH, since I came from Kuwait, where 1000 fils make a dinar, to a 100 cents makes a dollar. It also was hard when people used terms like “pennies”, “nickels”, dimes and quarters! I surely gave out more money than I should have! I am now an Accountant! lol.
When I was 16 I started teaching tennis as a camp counselor at my tennis club. It paid $10/hr and I would work during the summers. It was nice since I was able to play tennis with the other counselors after camp, but 8 hours a day spent with kids who had too much sugar and refused to listen to you didn’t provide for a great time. Still, who can complain about $10/hr as a teenager.
Working on my parents dairy farm.
Detasseling corn.
Working in a factory.
I really like my office job.
I and some other girls sold photographs to guys just finishing Army basic training. The photos were of themselves in uniform, to send back home. We were the first teenage girls they had seen since they started basic, so we sold a whole lot of pictures. I’ve never had a better job.
I worked for cash at a pizza place in NY that family friends owned. I started at $8/hour or so when I was 15 and worked there summers after I went off to College in FL. I ended making about $10/hour… not bad since it was cash (i.e. tax free). Best first job I could have ever asked for.
I worked at a camera store in Portland, Maine, for $2-something an hour in 1981. It was better than fast food, and I learned by counterexample how to run a business. The owner would verbally harass people to the point of tears when they wanted to return something, and then he’d give them their money back anyway. The camera store was not profitable, but his wife owned a bakery that made the world’s best rye bread. Now he’s dead and the store is no more, and neither is the bakery. I moved to California two years later and now work in IT making a significant salary.
My first job was an assistant of the university webmaster.
My very first experience with working for money was bailing hay for the farmer down the street. Want to instill a good work ethic in your children? Send them to a work for a local farmer… they’ll teach ‘em to work!
My first “real job” (meaning the gov’t could tax me) was as a projectionist at my local movie theater. To this day I think that is my favorite of all other jobs that followed. I started and stopped 5 reel projectors a few times a night, then ate free popcorn and flirted with the concession girls the rest of the night! Good stuff.
My husband baled hay for his neighbor/landlord once. He came back with his wrists and forearms (rolled up his sleeves) covered in inflamed cuts–turns out he’s allergic to hay, and when the hay cut him…..it was really bad. I cried because it looked so bad. So I respect that as a job because it certainly worked him over. Fortunately this was a one-day end-of-season push, not a career for him. And it made him happy he was a philosopher, not a farmer. Hay allergies not good in that business.
In high school, at a time my mother (my father had died about 3 years earlier) and I weren’t getting along well, I got my first paying job, at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Hated the job. Came home covered in grease after every shift.
Automatically gave my mother 1/4 of my take home pay (I don’t know how I decided to give her that percentage). Saved most of my pay. Didn’t have to rely on my mother to pay for college – usually worked as administrative assistant for department heads in community college, then used savings for finishing at 4 year college. Graduated with no student loans.
My first job was working at a grocery store pushing carts around the parking lot, and at times bagging groceries. I made a whopping $4.25/hr I believe – or whatever the minimum wage was at that time. That job taught me that I never again wanted to be doing a job that involved manual labor. Pushing carts in a snow covered parking lot in -10 degree weather is not fun. Trust me.
My first real job was as the janitor at a restaurant. I worked 3 hours a day, 7 days a week for minimum wage which i think was about $4 at the time. The work was OK actually but the owner was a jerk. I quit after a few weeks after getting a better job.
my 1st job was at a mcdonald’s when i was old enough to drive myself at 16. i worked the front counter-taking orders. no one knew about my job except my parents because i was so embarrassed to be wearing the ugly brown/tan uniforms. one day, my boyfriend found out & i was so mortified i broke up with him & quit my job. i was there for about 2 months.
My first job was at a local hardware store, less then a mile from home so I could walk most days. Pay was minimum wage and the work was dirty. Schedule was about 20 hrs/week, including all day Sat since that was the big day.
The work wasn’t easy. I can’t remember how many 50lb bags of grass seed, fertizer or concrete I moved from the back of a truck down to the basement for storage, then back upstairs for sale. Once a week I worked with the bosses wife, cutting their lawn and doing various yard work. That was a relief because I didn’t have to haul anything.
But it was during the height of an ugly recession and I was glad to have a job doing anything. I remember that so many of my classmates were genuinely jealous that I had a job. It lasted all of nine months, then I quit to get a job at the local A&P. It had air conditioning, so it was a step in the right direction from the start.
I started working (for pay) when I was 14 also. I live in Nebraska so there’s no real work permit or anything to obtain. I worked for the Bureau of Land Management at a Wild Horse and Burro Facility feeding horses on weekends year round. The normal employees were of course government employees and got weekends and holidays off, but I was a farm kid who just lived half a mile away and wanted the money. I worked or minimum wage, and I probably spend between 4 and 6 hours feeding horses each day. (Depending on how many horses there were to feed)
Since I grew up on a farm, I had lots of odd jobs before that for money and worked for my Dad at different times, but the Horse Ranch was my first regular paycheck.
I got a job at a grocery store as a cashier when I was 16. I made $5.75 an hour. It wasn’t the amazing book store job that I wanted, but it turned out to be okay.
My IRS Tax paying job was working at a call center supporting Adobe Acrobat. I worked 40 hours a week, 5 days a week, and I started that when I was 16 almost 17.
My first job was at 16 (I know, kinda late). I worked as a roofer for a summer – 40 hr week in the hot sun, very hard physical labor.
My folks were on vacation that summer, took my younger sister with them. But I wanted to work and wanted to prove a point. My folks were laughing and saying I would never last in construction, too much of a softie and book worm. So I got stubborn and did it anyway to prove them wrong.
It was miserable. Absolutely awful. I was so exhausted after every day of work, all I could do is take a shower and sleep. I hated every minute of it. But I perservered and made about three times minimum wage.
But during the summer I was supposed keep an eye on the family dog – which I neglected given my exhaustion, so it kept pooping all around the house to punish me. Fun. And then the freaking basement flooded and my dad had to come home early from vacation to help me pump out the basement and salvage furniture.
This really taught me a lesson and reinforced my desire to go to college. My GPA made a major jump the following year based on my new-found dedication for academics.
I nominate you for having the most REAL first job!
Seriously though, I’ve heard from different sources that roofing is close to the hardest job there is. There’s a strong element of danger in it too.
Talk about baptism by fire!
Thx!
I have a couple vivid memories – now 20 years past:
* Being assigned the a-hole job of cleaning out the debris from the old roof from the yard, i.e. me walking around a pile of broken wood and tiles, picking bits and pieces to chuck in the dumpster while my dear colleagues were ripping off the old roof above me, with major pieces of junk landing all around me.
* In the process of picking up said junk, stepping on a 3″ rusty nail that went right through my work boot into the arch of my foot. I walked with a limp for the rest of the summer.
* Building the lattice for the new slanted roof, by jamming my legs around a post, holding the pieces of wood I was cutting to length in mid-air with one hand, and cutting it WITH A CHAIN SAW with the other – just like my dear boss taught me how to do it…
Lets just say that it was not a union controlled work site and I am glad that I still have all my fingers.
Retail–nuff said. :/
I was fourteen. I worked in an auto body shop as a file clerk. I had piles and piles of paper, invoices, memos, orders, all to alphabetize and put away. It was boring, but all the guys were really nice to me. I made $1.50 an hour and thought I was rich. The guys would take me out for ice cream after lunch most days. This, of course does not include my babysitting jobs which started at age 10.
Besides babysitting & paper routes through jr. high and high school, my first real job (taxable) was working for some nuns, approximately 20 of them working at a catholic H.S. and living in a large house. I worked Monday – Friday three hours a day in the afternoon cooking their dinner so that they could do after school classes, coach sports, etc. I think I made something like $2.00 or $2.250 an hour.
You couldn’t work at our local library until you were 16 and able to work evenings. So when I was 14, I got a job stuffing bags (think like stuffing envelopes) for conferences. It was run by a friend’s dad out of his extra-large garage. Sort-of a small warehouse.
Except on the hot days of the summer (no a/c) it wasn’t bad. We worked spring, summer, & fall, and it was a workplace where you could talk to each other and listen to the radio/CDs if you wanted to (and could agree on one). No customer service, just get the work done.
I wouldn’t have wanted to do it forever, but it was much better than fast food or a lot of other jobs. Once I was 16, I started at the library and just never gave that up.
That first library job was perhaps my favorite because it was so easy and I got to handle so many books.
When I was 10, I walked along roads and picked up aluminum cans (my dad covered the other side of the road, I suppose mostly to keep an eye on me!) I made probably $50 a month. Also, I grabbed broken lawn mowers from neighbors who put them on the curb to throw them away. I would get $30 or $40 for a lawnmower that just needed a spark plug and some cleanup! I felt like an 11 year old millionaire.
Basically, you can find your own job when the law won’t let you work legally.
I had my first job at age 12. I couldn’t legally work but I went to every business in town and asked for anything. After being told no by about 30 different stores I finally found a yes. A local restaurant owner had me hand out menus in the local neighborhoods and gave me $3/hr and a free meal at the end of every shift (My mom made $12,000 a year and we NEVER ate out) so I loved the food as much as the money. A few months later I went door to door and asked if people would pay me to mow their lawn with their equipment (we didn’t have a lawn). I charged $10-$15 a week and had 5 regular jobs within a year. Since then I have worked up to three jobs at a time until recently. I put myself through college and med school and now I make more in a month then I did in a year. Hard work builds character.
First real legal job was at McDonald’s. Got paid $3.12 an hour. Even back then, that SUCKED!
It helps keep things real for me now though.
My first job was working at a day care center when I was age 14-15. I made $4.25/hour and first and got a $.75 raise after my first year. I also used to make hospital scrubs for my mother’s co-workers at the hospital she works for for $25 each. This is in the early to mid ’90s.
My grandfather was a vegetable farmer. At age 12 or 13 (I forget which), he lent me the use of one of his fields, and gave me some seed money (literally) and I planted a crop of pumpkins which were officially mine. I netted about $110 the first year, and about $800 the next year — enough to buy my first computer. The year after that, I took a more formal job with him at $3.80/hr (this would have been in the mid-80′s).
Interesting reading. My first job other than babysitting was working in the tobacco fields in Massachusetts at age 15.
The employees were either young kids like me or adult migrant workers. This was very hard work and really made my appreciate my suburban life. I also understood the value of education to ensure hard physical work wasn’t in my future.
Paperboy. My Mother, God rest her soul, made me save every penny that I made on that route. She helped me deliver on Sundays because I was really too young to do the work. It taught me to save, and it made me understand that you have to work to have money.
I considered my first job at 15 to be the dream job, but I love golf, so working at the golf course was the greatest thing in the world for me. Free golf all the time plus some tips every now and then for helping golfers unload their bags.
I even remember that they just raised the minimum wage to $5.15 before I started and I was so happy to get that. I save all that money from the summer to purchase a beautiful new set of Ping irons and driver. Greatest summer ever!
My first money making venture was selling toys in the 3rd grade. I ended up in the principal’s office with my parents and nearly got suspended!
So much for capitalism and free markets! Scarred me for life!
Interesting topic and interesting comments.
My first job at 12 was picking strawberries and raspberries as piece work – so much for each box. Cannot recall $$.
We moved and I continued doing the same at a different farm in 1967, I eventually worked up the ranks to become a farm hand on this 200 acre farm, working all year – all summer, after school, weekends, etc. When I was paid by the hour I got .$90 and when I left in 1972 I was getting $2.00/hr. It was hard work, but my best friend worked right beside me.
We would start at 6am and usually did not see any of our bosses until after lunch. We worked then to 8pm and also Saturday.
I was able to save enough money, so that in the Fall of my Senior year, I was able to buy a new car with cash and still have money in the bank.
I learned a great deal there and have carried those experiences with me today.
My first job was at KFC. I was 16. I spent the entire summer looking for a job, and no one would hire me. My brother who just quit his job at KFC got his manager to have me replace him. It was great. I received my first paycheck ever on September 11, 2001! Didn’t save a penny, spent it all dumb stuff. Well, I did get my first pair of contacts. Wish I had saved more money from back in those days. I’d be rich now
My first job- other than babysitting and paper routes- was being a maid at a local motel. I cleaned the motel rooms the summer between my JR and SR years and the summer after graduation. I made about $5 per hour. And I learned that people are slobs when someone else is cleaning up after them.
Also walked in on a few things my young eyes probably shouldn’t have seen. 
I also learned to clean a bathroom in 6 minutes! A skill that I have kept to this day!
I was 16 when I had my first job where I clocked in and clocked out and collected an official paycheck. I taught soccer and tennis at the local tennis club. It was probably one of the most fun jobs I’ve ever had.
At 8 or 9, my best friend and I picked strawberries and flowers and sold them in front of her house.
At 11, I got my first babysitting job: 75 cents an hour.
At 13, I picked tomatoes for $1.35 an hour. I felt rich!
“Real” jobs were hard to come by because I lived in a rural area and didn’t have a car. But at 17 I got a weekend job in a bakery, working from 11 p.m. Friday to 7 a.m. Saturday, and then from 11 p.m. Saturday to 6 a.m. Sunday. Yawn.
At 18, I got a summer job in the glass factory. Shift work, lots of overtime, little sleep.
Since then: Housecleaner, typesetter, secretary, clerk, newspaper reporter, freelance writer, mystery shopper, handyma’am, subject of medical experiments, apartment house manager, personal finance columnist. Still doing child care off and on, but now I earn $10 to $12 an hour. Times change.
I actually worked at a blockbuster at 16
It was OK for a while, but it sucked to only get paid under $6 an hour and we were not allowed to sit, even when the store was empty. What made it worse is that the manager did nothing but sit in the back of the store and talk on the phone. I learned that I didn’t want to have a retail position for my full-time job in life.
My first job was pulling weeds at a resort. My training consisted of: find weed, pull weed. I was hoping to make my way up to flower waterer, but the mosquitoes and sunburn foiled my plans!
Thanks for the opportunity to reminisce!
My first job was at a New Orleans’ department store, Maison Blanche, slightly before the age of 16 (they never asked me to prove my age) working as a hostess in the restaurant. The place was so small that when it was busy, we put small groups together at larger tables. Some people said, “We won’t share.” OK, back to the line. I eventually worked in sales in various departments but don’t remember how much I made. I was offered a permanent job but my mother said to the woman, “She’s going to college.”
My first job was using a pressure washer to clean out a pig barn. I would come home literally covered in pig crap. I did this for a few months until I started milking cows for a different neighbor. I would then come home covered in cow crap which -believe it or not- was 100 times better! I milked cows for 6 years.
My first job was a business– cutting lawns. I then diversified to cutting lawns and delivering newspapers.
Ok, dont laugh at me, but I didn’t actually get my first job (not counting babysitting once a month in high school) until I was in college. But hey, give me a break, I spent every summer starting my sophomore year in high school taking college classes at the local junior college.
An older lady from church payed me $10-11/hour cash to clean her house (it was only about 6-10 hours a week) when I was a freshman. But my first real job and interview was for a job as a mentor to first generation college students when I was a junior in college. It payed $10/hour and I got to work 10-15 hours a week. Wasn’t too bad when I added it to scholarship refunds…
Ok, I will eventually learn to proof before I post…I just realized that i misspelled paid. Twice. Yikes.