I worked summer jobs at IBM in NY’s Hudson Valley in 1982, 1983 and 1984. In terms of money the best one was the middle year, I packed boxes in a warehouse and there was a lot of overtime. Your base hourly rate is about what I remember as well. (In terms of my personal life the best year was the last year, where I met the young woman who became my first mutually serious girlfriend.)
My first full time job was as a lab technician at a fairly famous research hospital in Boston in the late 1980s, I started at 16,000 a year, there was no overtime available.
I made $1.90 as a “carry out girl” at the local pizza place. I took phone orders and rang up customers. This was 1977.
Before that, I made $1/hour for babysitting. If the parents allowed you to drink pop while “on duty” that was a huge benefit (most often they would leave one glass bottle of it out for my consumption once the baby was asleep or whatever).
When I in turn had to hire sitters (teens), their mothers told me what type of pop their daughters preferred. :eek: And they wanted $3-5/hr for one kid. :rolleyes:
$25 per night every Friday and Saturday playing in a band. On weekdays I taught guitar lessons for $5 per half hour, of which I kept $3 for myself. I made about $80 per week with that. Being that it was 1979 and I lived with my parents, that wasn’t bad. It kept me in pot and guitar strings.
Not counting summer jobs, my first job back in 1974 paid $2.80 an hour. I got more than the minimum at the time ($2.00) because they were thinking of making me a manager.
First job was planting white pine trees in clearcut or burned areas with a group of juvinile delinquents for the Forestry Department, I think I got $30 or $40 a day.
First regular job was stocking shelves and cleaning up at a small local grocery store in 1986 or so, I was getting $3.35 an hour. Worst part is the owner would keep me talking after work and I couldn’t get home to watch TV… :rolleyes: And I had to clean the meat department sometimes.
My senior year of high school, which would have been 1972-73, I made 90 cents an hour waitressing before school and on Saturday mornings at a coffee shop a few blocks from my home.
The week before the two brothers who ran it declared bankruptcy, they gave me a raise to $1 an hour.
$13 a round caddying at a local country club, which usually worked out to $18 with tip. Double bagging it cost double, I’m no simp. I could usually manage two rounds a day on the weekends and usually managed about $60 for 12 hours of work or so.
First hourly wage was hanging pizza flyers door to door around the neighborhoods for $4 an hour and all you could eat when you were done . The owner was the coolest guy on Earth, but if he caught you dumping flyers in a dumpster like some of my friends did you’d get your ass kicked.
My first paycheck job was Micky D’s for $4.25 an hour which was the minimum wage in like 1993.
Stacking 25-30 lb. boxes of fresh fruit ten hours a day for $3.35 an hour in the summer of 1984 - I was 13. I thought I was the richest dude in America.
Not a bad way for a kid to learn what hard work really was. Of course it took me six more summers to figure that out.
$.75 an hour at the lunch counter of a bowling alley, but that only lasted about a week then the state’s mandated minimum wage went up to $1.25. But that was OK. I made my real money playing pool in the attached pool room.
My first ever job was 11/hr last year, give or take, for the university semielectronics research center. Mostly, I worked in the cleanroom. After 2 semesters, I got about 14/hr. Now I work for almost exactly half that as the Promotions Director for the greatest college radio station ever, and it’s equally worth it.
The summer after my sophomore year of high school, my school paid me $500 for the summer to work as a PC tech. Seemed like real money at the time (2000), and I loved the work. Good times.
Let’s see… First two jobs would have been in the summers of 1993-1994 and 1995-1998, when (I think) minimum wage was $5.25 per hour. Both paid over that, though, I think about $5.50. The first job was as an electrician’s assistant, and the second was ride operator at a kiddie amusement park (the sort with a 20-foot-tall Ferris wheel).
. The owner was the coolest guy on Earth, but if he caught you dumping flyers in a dumpster like some of my friends did you’d get your ass kicked.