Actually, it’s more fun watching my son with his first job than remembering mine. He had his first interview the day he turned 15, got hired, is still working there two years later (Michigan State University Concessions Dept. - he works concessions at games, shows at the agricultural paviollion etc, plus in the summer works damned near fulltime helping clean the football stadium for the fall season)
The “bad supervisor” stories, the “lazy, irresponsible coworker” stories, the “rude customer” stories etc, I’ve enjoyed them all.
He bought his first car with earnings from this job. one day he had to report in to work at the Breslin Center at 4 pm on a football Saturday. Let me 'splain. at 4 pm on a football Saturday all of the football fans in the world are exiting the stadium (located next to the Breslin) and the main artery out of the area is closed to any but exiting football traffic. I had to drop him off half an hour early a half mile away and drop him off to walk (against the sea of traffic) to get there on time.
Best of all- when he complains at school, he can state “I’m a tax payer, and…”
I was able to avoid all food-related jobs as a teenager and in college. My first job at age 16 was at the local library. My second job was at a small gift shop at the local mall, my third job was at a bookstore.
My first paying job was as a gift wrapper during the Christmas season at a local department store. I was fourteen, and really wasn’t supposed to work at all legally, but my granddaddy knew the head honcho there and fixed things so I could work about two days a week to earn some Christmas cash.
Gee, thanks Granddaddy. I worked my tail off for about twenty hours a week for three weeks and it was the single most tiring, backbreaking and stressful job I’ve ever had.
'Course, I did get an employees discount at the store, so it was worth it just for that reason.
My honest to God real first full time job was at the Credit Bureau. If you’re nosy and like finding stuff out about people, get a job there. You might not can tell anybody anything you read, but you sure can find out if your boyfriend has been arrested or if your co-workers really can afford that new car payment.
It was also so fulfilling to know that some snotty friend’s father was in bankruptcy, after you’d been listening to her brag for eons about how rich her dad was.
I miss MDonalds terribly. It was a hassle job. I worked every position ove my time there (maintenence, manager, assistant manager, opener, closer, blah blah blah), and god though I hated 98% of the customers, and jeez though I hated the corporation itself, and my-oh-my though the owners got on my nerves, I still miss that place terribly.
If I ever win the lottery I’m going to work at McDonalds again.
When I was 16, I got a job working at a bakery. I probably gained about 20 pounds in the four months I worked there (we were allowed to occasionally take a snack for lunch). My boss was a very cranky and mean old man who ended up firing everyone who had been hired that summer. (I never did find out why, although there were a few interesting rumors). He fired us the week after Christmas, using his general manager as the messenger of the bad news, since he was in the Bahamas at the time. He was all heart :rolleyes: My family still orders birthday cakes there. The owner may have been a jerk, but that bakery makes a damn good cake.
Oh, and I made $4.20/hour there.
Congrats to the Cat! I know a few people who started at McD’s, including my husband and brother-in-law. I have heard really positive things about what it’s like to work there. Tell her I said good luck!
My first job was delivering a weekly neighborhood paper; I started it when I was 10 and continued until I was 18- I only stopped when I left the state for college.
My first ‘real’ job was at Burger King when I was 16. It was surprisingly un-sucky, and I spent a summer there. Amusingly, I worked there the last summer after high school as well, solely because they wanted someone experienced and were willing to pay me more than I’d get elsewhere, plus I didn’t really mind working there.
Eeeek! I lasted all of 3 months at McDonald’s. Very hard job. I worked at McDonald’s between working for Pizza Hut and becoming a topless dancer. Actually, I gave 2 weeks notice at McDonald’s and then started as a dancer… so for a little while I was a dancer in the evenings and worked at McDonald’s in the afternoons. That sucked. There sure was a difference in glamour there… heh.
First job - summer of 1968 (between Soph/Jr. years at HS) at a non-chain movie theater as an usher, making … 50 cents/hour. As an independent, minimum wage didn’t apply. This was a grand old movie house, with a balcony, curved screen, and a fancy stuff all over. This theater had numbered seats, and we ushers would take the customers to their seats for the outrageous price of $2.00 - no general admission here. Oh, the only movie that played that summer was 2001: A Space Odyssey (hence, my sig). For the first couple months, 2 shows a day, 7 days a week. We had to clean between shows. When the concession crew started marking the syrup level to see if we were snitching cokes while we cleaned, we just rubbed off their marks, and put in new ones. Toward the end of summer, matinees were just on Wednesday, Sat. and Sun.
At intermission, we sold souvinier books to confused customers who thought it would explain the plot. It explained making the movie.
Biggest goof-up - in this theater, the middle section seat numbers were 101-114 in each row. The left side, from the back (I think) were odd (1-3-5 …), and the right were even. Seated one row - both sides - of the balcony on the wrong side, til some smart ass complained, and I had to shift everyone to the correct side. I sure hope Mr. Smart Ass felt good exercising his power.
Had to quit when school started, conflict with band (marching). Anyway, we probably would have lost our jobs anyway, the next feature was “Theres and Isabell” a French lesbian flick. Owner hired all girl ushers.
Oh, Cranky, what does a “caddy at a bridge tournament” do? Carry their Clubs?
My first paying job was at Einstein’s Bagels, where I think I made $5.25. Or maybe less.
The summer before that I’d worked as the assisstant to the assistant to the director of Public Support at the National Capitol Chapter of the American Red Cross. That was not a paying job. Fun, though. Beaucoup fun.
I did the usual babysitting, including an all summer contract. I don’t usually count that as my first job, though, because I wasn’t hired by a business.
When I was 16, I got hired at a small computer factory. I sorted all sorts of computer parts (for the next 3 years, I could still identify resistors based on the colour codes), counted the parts to make sure the assembly line had enough to do the job, did inventory, etc. I worked from 7-12, and then went to high school from 12:30-5. My high school scheduled all morning or all afternoon classes, so you could work the other half of the day. I think I made $4.25 an hour.
I did not know how lucky I was until I started in the food service industry! But that’s another story…
First job in 1975 was copy carrier at the charlotte observer, just when they were moving from hot type (an old-fashioned way to print newspapers) to computers.
I was a news freak, so that first step felt like I was entering the temple of journalism. I know better now.
Now, if she were my daughter, I would encourage her to bank that first couple thousand in a long-term savings account where the interest is re-invested. Now at 41, I read recently how, if you bank that amount at 21, the magic of compound interest would turn it into a significant amount of moola. Much more than I could ever hope to bank now, unless I win the $24 mil in the lottery.
But would she listen to me? Pah! Kids these days . . . don’t know what’s good for 'em [exits stage-right, grumblng]
Anyway, congratulations to Cat. She’s taken another step to moving out of the house!
First job was telephone surveying. That is to say, calling people up and asking who they were going to vote for, whether they were satisfied with their electric service, etc… Very annoying job, I left for KMart after about two months.
My first job was when I was 15. I worked as a busboy for Winsteads, a local burger place. I learned all about the poor man’s float (coke and vanilla cream), and got to wear a white shirt that had turned a lovely shade of reddish yellow by the end of the night.
One day I dropped a plate and my manager freaked screaming “those plates cost $20 a piece!” I about had a heart attack before she started laughing and said “I’m just messing with you. Don’t worry about it.”
It was a fun place, but I was pretty damn slow and lasted exactly two weeks. I just couldn’t keep up with the lunch crowd. One of my bosses pulled me into the office and said they were letting me go. I got a puzzled look on my face and my first question was “so…I don’t have to work my schedule this week?”
My first job was cutting grass for a friend’s family. When my friend saw me making good money off his folks he wanted in on the deal, so I subcontracted to him and kept half plus expenses, which confused the heck out of his parents, who had not been able to get him to push the mower for love or money.
I used the cash to pick up another mower and some tools, and went knocking on the doors of real estate companies looking for contracts to maintain the exterior of properties from which the owners had aready moved. There were quite a few due to there being a recession combined with rapidly increasing mortgage interest rates. The real estate companies were happy because they needed the homes kept in top shape if they were to have a hope at selling them.
This went quite nicely for me in my own neighbourhood, and when I found a contract in another neighbourhood, I would then find a kid in that neighbourhood to do the work, and again take half plus expenses, with my parents delivering and picking up the mowers.
Come sixteen, I picked up a car, more mowers and more tools, and started taking contracts from real estate companies in a couple of neighbouring towns. I spent my time driving kids and mowers about, and visiting real estat offices, all thanks to people having to walk away from their homes. Very bad times were very good to me.
Well, the first actual “work” I had was when I was 13 and did a two day inventory for a local hardware store (lived in a small town at the time).
But my first regular part-time job was for Denis The Magician’s Magic Supplies, starting when I was 14. In fact, I just worked there for the last time a couple of months ago (they just moved).
A really great job that was a lot of fun (especially for an amateur magician). Got to learn all of the tricks so as to demonstrate them for customers, and the people that came in were pretty dang friendly. Also, there were a lot of regular customers, so I got to make friends with many of them. Plus, my boss was cool.
I had a job as a paperboy, when i was about 12. It was a good job for starters, but that was in the summer… then winter hit. It sucked ass. It sucked more ass than an addict in prison. minus 30 celcius (about minus 20F) in 9 inches of snow 3 times a week was not fun. but i stuck it out, over the first year, but at the end of the next summer i quit. Now, i’m 17 and work at chili’s restaurant. It’s fun, but only because of the people i work with. I guess it’s my first real job. i get 7.25/hr.
My first job was canvassing for SANE, an anti-nuclear group (this was 1986). It only lasted a month or so because I couldn’t make any money, which considering I lived in San Francisco, probably means I was crap at it.
My first job was at Blockbuster, right after the start of second semester Junior year of high school (January 2000). I liked it at first, but grew to hate it. I worked there only two months. To spare people of the millions of things that were wrong with Blockbuster (in my eye), I’ll just say, that in my opinion, it was just like everything Randal, in Clerks, says it is–and more!
First real job, other than on pick up crews for hay bailing, was at McDonalds. One kind of hamburger at 15 cents. It was a while ago. Like all newfers, I was put on the French fry machine, 50 lbs of boiling beef tallow, a pair of tongs and a whole bunch of little paper bags. Having shown my incompetence with hot liquids they shifted me to milk shakes and then to the grill. That job, more than any lectures from my parents, convinced me that I had to go on to college if I was going to maintain my tenuous hold on personal dignity.
Another avoider-of-the-food-industry checking in. My first non-babysitting job was at age 16 - my dad hired me to pick up and sort the mail plus run the switchboard (PBX, no less) on Saturdays - there was a skeleton crew on duty. I was paid $2/hr, when min wage was $1.75 and when I started working there in the summer (filing, typing, running errands for the real employees) I got a raise to $2.25. It was pretty boring work, and being the boss’ daughter was a pain - I had to be very careful what I said in the lunchroom and what I said at home. But it paid well and I got to work in air conditioning all summer. I learned tons about geography (dad worked for a foreign freight forwarder, and I helped type bills of lading) and I got to run the mimeograph!! It was an excellent first job.
My own Perfect Child[sup]TM[/sup] is supposed to start as a cashier or waitress at a local Italian restaurant, tho she really wanted to work with a dog groomer. In any event, if she wishes to drive when she attains the magical 16 in Sept, she’s got to raise gas and insurance money.
