1973, working at a Chemist as a shop-assistant on Friday nights and Saturday mornings when I was 13, and I earned the grand sum of $12.00 (AUD) for the privilege. That was around $1.70 per hour, but back then I thought it was terrific.
Mind you, that was when record albums were $3.99 and a pair of Levis would set you back a whole $10.00 (for cords) and $15.00 for the 501’s.
Ahhhhh. THOSE were the days. 
Bar work when I was 17 (I lied) a whole £3.09 and hour (in 1996). These were the days before minimum wage. If you passed the Banks’s bar staff exam with 80%+ you got a whole 3p an hour pay rise. I didn’t bother…
Well, when I was about 13-14, the elementary schools were just getting Apple II’s in them (new at the time), but they didn’t have much software. (A combination of “not very much out there” and “no budget”.) I was entranced with these “new” computers at the time, and (with the help of parental connections) got a job writing some educational software. I worked for the “Educational Service Center”, who then provided these as resources for the local schools.
It paid $5 an hour - which I thought was a phenomenal rate at the time - and they trusted me to tell them how many hours I had worked. It was kind of cool - I’d get a vague request from teachers, through my employer, that would read like “Write a game to give third graders practice in ordering fractions”, or “I need a program that runs drills in adding decimals, with scoring”. Then I had to write it - and fit it into about 7K of memory, since all I could count on the computers having was 16K, and 8K was the graphics area, and almost 1K was a system area. It was a fun job.
Minimum wage flippin’ burgers at the ol’ BK Steakhouse (Burger King to the rest of you).
$3.25 an hour. After a year of working there, I got a nickle and hour raise.
Yep - livin’ well on that.
Camp counselor, summer of 1970, $30/week for six weeks. Take-home for the summer was $156 and change, I remember.
My first real job (besides babysitting for 5 bucks an hour and such), was working at a woman’s clothing store. I was paid 7 dollars an hour when minimum wage was 6.75 or something like that. (Canadian btw).
Hmmmm, I babysat a long time ago…$1 an hour, sometimes 75 cents…
My first job other than that though was one of the higher paying gigs I’ve ever had. An acting job that made me $100 an hour. 'Course it was only about five hours of work. I think I was about thirteen. I have made $100 an hour since - freelance consulting in IT - the work at that rate was only a little more regular than acting.
My first real job was retail at the 1984 minimum wage of $3.35 an hour.
My first real job was as a janitor/busboy at a Chili’s in Houston, starting June 4, 1989. I remember it distinctly, because my first day on the job I remember seeing the Houston Chronicle front page describing the Tiananmen Square massacre in China.
I got $4 for being a janitor from 8-11 A.M. and 2.01 + tips for being a busboy from 11 A.M. - 3 P.M. or whenever the managers would make me go home (usually pre 3 o’clock).
First day on the job I had to go dumpster diving to find some check that a waitress lost. I should have known right then that the job was going to suck bigtime, but I was only 16 and didn’t know any better.
When i was 15 i started Ace Hardware making $4.75. Then the minumum wage was increased to $5.15. I’ve been there for over 6 years and i only work Sundays now as manager making $11 an hour.
Lessee: did the lawnmower thing (I remember killing myself mowing this HUGE lawn and having the homeowner give me a fucking 7-UP as payment); then had probably the only paper route to ever actually lose money; then worked for a carpet cleaner who stiffed me for the $19 he owed me until my mother had him subpoenaed. The first actual steady job was in a car wash for $1.75 an hour (minimum wage at that time). Tips were non-existant and the work was brutal.
Most of the posted experiences in this thread are the jobs that teach you what you probably don’t want to do for the rest of your life. Good motivators for education and training.
The summer I turned 14 I worked in a greenhouse moving dirt with a long handled spade and a wheelbarrow for $5.00 a day. The next summer and all through high school I was part of an independent contractor hay making team. We charged two cents a bale stacked in the barn. With an efficient crew you could make pretty good money (by 1956 standards) and the farmer usually fed you dinner at noon. Dinner was inevitably pot roast and mashed potatoes and three different vegies and fruit pie with raw milk right out of the bulk tank.
The first paying job was collecting snails from the flower beds. The pay was 1 cent per dozen, and I had to squash them. I think I might have been 6 or 7.
My first real job paid $1.10 per hour, which was minimum wage. The job was as a nursery worker, which meant I watered plants, and helped customers.
Other jobs were harvesting potatoes and walnuts, and roofing. The only job I ever quit was as a punch press operator, which consisted of a 6 hour shift 5 days a week…imagine making the caps for smug pot stacks for six hours everyday. Hey…whatever to pay for college. I walked off that job after 6 weeks, which was the minimum time I would allow myself before I quit. I went from that to selling men’s suits at Penny’s.
Soda jerk in the local drug store in 1951 (drug stores all had soda fountains in those days) for 20c an hour (minimum wage was 50c, but I was underage at 14 1/2). Lost it when someone (not me!) swiped the little box in which he kept the sales tax, since his register was not equipped for it. It was out in the open and anyone could have stolen it and he decided it was me.
Next job a year later as stock boy in an auto supply store at 50c an hour. Third job in a university lab. Salaried full time at $1750 per year plus half tuition on all the courses I took. Learned a lot in the lab and finished college in 4 1/2 years too. Started that in 1954.
Good point. Also, it’s interesting to note how many of our early “real” job seekers report earlier experience with the baby-sitter and lawn mowing market.
I was 14 and worked as a part time, evening and weekend receptionist at a Real Estate office. I was paid $3.10 an hour to start and woohoo, worked my way up to $3.50 an hour before I left.
In fifth grade I played trumpet in a brass quartet at a wedding for $50 in the early 90s. Since then, everything from The Funny Factory Marching Clown Band to the Cambridge University Musical Society last month. Hopefully next summer I’ll have an actual job title with the word ‘faculty’ in it, if only for two weeks…
My first job was working in Colonial Williamsburg in a children’s play. The play advertised the “historic dolls” sold there. Some of the cast members (including myself) wore big fake dollheads, made of foam and painted cloth; we hads big hands like oven mitts to match. These damned things were never washed, and eventually got all mildewy inside from our sweat, therefore getting really stanky. Not just stinky, STANKY. Lots of times my fellow cast members and myself got sick from the heat and stench of these monstrosities. The play still goes on every Christmas, but I’m not longer in it.
I was 14 and worked as a busboy/dishwasher at a dinner club/bowling alley in Dayton, Ohio. I don’t remember how much I was paid. But the low pay was offset by the all the beer I stole.
Hey, the bus staff worked hard, then we drank hard!
I too babysat as a tween and young teen, mainly for the bratty little boys who lived next door. They both got great pleasure in trying to find new and increasingly disgusting ways of attempting to torture me. The only time I screamed was when they dropped a load of garter snakes in the toilet. I hate snakes, and I really had to go, but I was mainly concerned that the snakes were going to drown in there. :rolleyes:
My first serious job was one devised under my own scheme during my junior year of high school and continuing until I left college. I started my own service, doing shopping and errands for people, they’d call it a personal concierge company now. I was completely legal, I did the whole tax thing and all, and I had forms for people to use to let me know what they wanted me to do. In addition to shopping, I picked up prescriptions, went to the cleaners and library for people, took cars into the garage, walked pets, visited houses when people were out of town to get mail, turn on lights and water plants and so forth. To do this now, I’d need a major cash outlay for insurance and bonding and all of that. Back then, that they knew me, my parents and knew where they could find me on Sunday morning (in the church choir) was enough.
You’re all gonna hate me:
Age 15: $30/hour, programming for a small software startup. Full-time in the summer, part-time during the school year. Awesome job - I love it so much I’d do it for free, but don’t tell my boss that.
Hopefully I’ll be able to continue it during college.