Nobody believes me when I tell them what my first job was. At 11 I worked for this old guy that ran a small Convenience store. I dusted and stocked shelves, and swept floors. In return he payed me a little money and gave me all the magazines and paperbacks he was supposed to throw out. He was sort of eccentric and didn’t like dirty money so he had me run socks full of coins through the old conventional washer that he had. He also had me iron the bills. Yes indeed folks my first job was Money Launderer.
The summer I was 13 They filmed a movie in the town where I lived. I babysat, made rocks and other props, and directed traffic while they were filming. Mostly I mooned over Peter Fonda (Easy Rider era) and Keith Carradine. Unfortunately when the movie came out it was so bad Mystery Science Theater 3000 wouldn’t have touched it.
Steeplejack. After I got out of high school a friend and I worked as painters at the State Mental Health Institute in my home town.
The main building was three stories high with slate roof having all kinds of fancy metal work and cupolas. We painted all the metal work on those roofs. It is a wonder that we weren’t killed because we knew nothing about safety procedures for high work.
After the roof was done, my friend moved on and I stayed with the paint crew on a swinging scaffold painting the window frames, and bars.
Our pay was 35 cents/hr for a 44 hour week. The boss of the paint crew was an outpatient at the hospital and made 50 cents/hr.
I had a paper route for two years, from 11 to 13. Good stuff. Rode my bicycle with a milk crate strapped to the handlebars, chucking the evening editon of Newsday on front porches. Every Friday afternoon, I had to collect…the week I got the people who hadn’t paid for five weeks was truly a triumph. I got like a five dollar tip. It was awesome. Except for the getting up at 5:30 am on Sunday.
It built character, though.
Der Wienerschnitzel (fast food hot dog chain type place.) 16 years old, earning minimum wage ($4.25/hr), working about 25 hrs/week. It was, ummm, well, a shithole. I somehow managed to last 10 months though.
My first job was at Burger King, where I started in 1988. I made $3.35 an hour then. I managed to stay with it for six years and was a manager by the time I left.
15/16, worked in the concession stand at a swimming pool. Made $.60 for each and every hour. Had to hitchhike to work and back. But the girls were cool.
12: Delivered a weekly local newspaper.
15: Shelf reader in public library.
16: Watched kids after school with G/T activities.
17: Painted cars with a friend who had an air compressor. Worked for 5 weeks as an accounting clerk’s assistant. Departed for college with relief. College: Xeroxer, Alumni Office assistant, life drawing model, tutor, dishline.
Summers 17-19: Proofreader at weekly local newspaper’s publishing group (believe me, I tried to get them to stop capitalizing every word printed on the cow and chicken silhouettes in the display classifieds), McDonald’s, counselor for residential T/G middle and high school programs.
First job after doctorate: Hickory Farms (“Want a little beefstick, sir?”).
Cotton Mill. I was a “doffer”. That means I took full spools of yarn off the machines (rows of about 40 on a side), and replaced them with empty ones. I had my own system whereby I would use my feet to break the yarn, thrown the full spool into a rolling bin and place the new one on in almost one fluid motion.
Folks used to say I looked like a contortionist moving through the machinery. I was responsible for three of those suckers, and inbetween times I had to watch for a break which had to be repaired while the machine was running splicing the two halves of yarn with spit and watching out that I didn’t burn my hand on the running yarn.
Hot and humid in there. I was a mess when I’d finish at 11 at night, go home, shower, do my homework and go to bed. I was 14.
Thankfully I joined a little rock band soon thereafter and playing drums made me as much (and sometimes a little more) than the mill job, so I was able to quit it.
Day camp assistant counselor, much cheated and monetarily exploited. When I took the job I was 16, the rule was to be a head counselor you had to be 17. I turned 17 mid summer, yet they never promoted me.
Assistant counselors made $250 for the ENTIRE SUMMER. They didn’t even take my working papers because then I could have sued or something. Working with the kids was nice (first I had 6 year old girls, later 3-4 year old boys & girls) but the head counselor kept disappearing, leaving me to do her job on my salary. Lots of awful goings-on happened and later me and my friend who worked there also found out the entire camp was operated illegally.
The summer ended and then it was on to my first REAL job, Pizza Hut.
Burger King when I was 17. The pay was rubbish but everyone who worked there was really nice and we had a laugh. The asistant manager was a psycho though and in the end I’d had enough and quit.
Mike’s Express Carwash there in Indy. Horrible job. Loading was the worst, having the fan blowing 150 degree heat on your back and direct sunlight in your face. Paid extremely well for a first job. 6.50 an hour plus bonus everymonth that was dependant on the volume of cars and special services sold. Some months I would get more in bonus than I made in regular hours. Sounds better than what I’m doing now. . .
A cashier at Taco Bell when I was 15, made $5.75/hour (minimum wage at the time). Worked there over the summer after freshman year of high school, quit when school started up again.
Something called “Summerhire” at RAF Mildenhall. All us AF brat kids had the option of working on base for $2.95 an hour.
I was 14 and got a job at the NCO club. I mainly picked gum off the bottoms of tables and cleaned out the walk-in fridge from the night before, dirty jobs like that.
I used to sneak off to hide under the stage and read “Flowers in the Attic”. Yup, that was the summer I discovered the weird, wonderful world of VC Andrews.
I had two paper routes, first the weekly paper “The Canoga Park Chronicle” and then the daily (Los Angeles) Herald Examiner. I seem to be dating myself here.
Then, since I was such a math whiz, I got a very parttime and very under-the-table job with my mom’s tax preparer checking math on the tax returns he’d prepared. Small wonder I turned out to be a tax consultant for 12 years.
My first real ‘paycheck’-type job was at 7-11. I started on my 16th birthday at $2.90 per hour (minimum wage at the time – 1979). I was a “bottle boy” – did shitwork like sweeping, mopping, restocking. I lasted like three years and wound up running the store before I left.
Hmm… McDonald’s at 14. 5.50 an hour, and now up to 7.20. (Yes, I still work there, almost 3 years later.
I can sum it up in two words: It sucks. However, when I try to get another job, no one else wants to hire me. Contrary to what the job flyers say, McDonald’s experience/skills don’t transfer to other places.
Aged 14 I sold programmes for the local football club, about an hour and a half’s work for 50p and free entry to the game. I wasn’t interested in football and hit the record shops as soon as I had my 50p, it was worth summat in those days!
My Mum’s first job was as office junior at 14. Apart from her there were two partners and a snooty secretary. She made tea and took an endless series of brown paper parcels to the post office. It turned out there was something dodgy in said parcels, the first thing Mum knew about it was when she arrived one morning to find the police turning the place over. All the others were in on it. Mum felt a bit foolish when she realised they’d employed her for her inexperience and, dare I say it, gullibility.
If it’s okay, I wanted to add in my above thread, that I was the fastest “doffer” in the place because of the method I used, but I took a lot of abuse from the older guys and the guys who just weren’t as motivated as I was.
One of my fondest memories of my late father is when he beat the living shit out of a guy who accused me of making him “look bad” and had my 14 year old, quivering body backed into a corner with a knife. Dad had come to pick me up after my shift was over and was outta that Chevy Nova in a “New York Minute!” Never a problem after that, short-lived that the job was.
Summer of 1968, age 16,
Usher in a movie theater for $0.50/hour - even then it was less than minimum wage, but the owner claimed that since he was independent, and not part of a chain, it didn’t apply to him, and did we want to get back to work or what? -
The movie: “2001: A Space Odessey” all summer. With reserved seating - at the outrageous price of $2.00! For the first 8 - 10 weeks or so, it was 2 shows a day, then they dropped to 10/wk (mantinees on Sat/Sun/Weds). We showed customers to their seats (yes sir even tho’ you and your date have seats 3 and 5, you are together, see these seats are odd numbers, the ones over there are even); cleaned the place after the show; cleaned the rest rooms during the show, including changing out those ‘endless roll’ towel things that you don’t see anymore; and sold souvenier books during intermission. This was cool because folks, baffled by the movie would buy them hoping to gain a clue - but no clues in the book, just pretty pix on the making-of.
The next movie, in Sept. was going to be “Terese and Isabell” a soft-core lesbian flick (we did get to watch the preview - which they didn’t show before “2001” - different audience). I had to quit for school, but the owner hired girls to be ushers for this one.
After that, began a series of jobs at a series of libraries.
Lessons/Memories
If you don’t see the popcorn being popped - don’t buy it.
When helping yourself to Cokes from the soda fountain during clean-up, be sure to replace the mark the counter person put in the syrup reservoir with one that accurately reflects the new syrup level.
People who smoke in theaters are sneaky.
Hippies (remember them?) would buy Row-A seats and disregard the No Smoking Rule toward the end of the movie.