Pinsetter at a bowling alley. When you had to jump down in the pit and pick up the pins by hand and load them in the rack and push the bar down to reset them. Five cents a line
I also worked in a smoke shop, selfing, among other things, tobacco products, when I was 16.
Clerk in a shoe store.
“Paper Boy”
Delivered Philadelphia Inquirer door to door in seventh grade at 6 a.m.
(Uphill, both ways, with holes in my shoes… of course)
At 15 years old I was an Assistant Janitor at the elementary school across the street from my high school. Since the school system was not bound by minimum wage law, I made about $2.15 an hour for 20 hours a week and was paid monthly. Even then, stretching that after tax check of ~$120 over the entire next month was painful!
12 years old, picking strawberries and raspberries at berry farms in Puyallup and Sumner. Picked up at 6am by an old bus, would get dropped off at 6 that evening. Made about $20 for a good week. Same job illegals do now.
First hourly job was at an Esso station when I was 14. $1.35 an hour plus the occasional tip.
My first job was about 6 years old. I stood out front of the supermarket selling pot holders and aprons. I later started a business selling frogs and lizards around the neighborhood for peoples gardens. " Would you like to buy a toad for your garden mam?"
My first real job where I was paid hourly was sanding sail boat masts and finishing them. I was about 13 here.
Paper route that covered a fairly large area. It was a real bitch in the winter.
Age 13. Worked at my aunt and uncle’s dairy farm. Was quite an eye opener for a city boy. Still consider it one of the most special times of my life.
That was my dream when I was 13, all of my uncles had left the farms and moved to the city byt the time I was about 6. I always imagined waking up early doing farm chores then heading out into the country to explore. I would still do it today if I had the chance.
Circa: 1973. Lutcher, LA. Did it for a month for 2 summers. Got up at 3AM for the first of the three milkings, helped deliver calves, rode horses to get up the cows. First time I remember getting drunk. My cousins, who were around 20 would give me beer and I’d hear the most colorful language ever. Would hang around with a black kid who was about my age. He was one of 13 kids and my cousins told me that they all had a different father. His name was Putt. That was yet another eye-opener.
Picking dew worms (Yanks call them nightcrawlers) when I was 6 or 7 and selling them to fishermen for 25 cents/dozen.
First way I earned money was either mowing lawns or shoveling driveways at around age 10, not sure exactly which was first that I got paid for. I think it’s the shoveling that came first because the kid up the street got me to help him out, we’d split two bucks for the typical driveway in the neighborhood. He was more street-wise than me, I wanted to the job up the standards my parents set for me to do our driveway, he had no compunction about doing a crummy job and asking for the money. Turns out people who weren’t my parents thought it was worth the money and didn’t berate us for the shoddy work of 10 year olds. Later when I did lawns on my own I did try to do a real good job, and got me some steady work that way.
I had 2 jobs that I picked up at pretty much the same time during my freshman year of high school. ('84)
I was the guy that filmed the football games from atop the press booth. $25/game and a ride to and from if it was an away game. I still don’t understand football, but I did a great job with filming anyway.
I also picked up a job at the high school maintaining the then state of the art Apple IIe computers. Minimum wage, but I did it during study hall and after school. Had the run of the computer room. Shockingly :rolleyes:, it’s what I do for a living now, but with much more expensive stuff (VMware, Citrix, HP servers, etc…)
From there it was assembling the Sunday newspaper on Saturday afternoon (after I did a shift at the local Fish Monger Saturday morning/early afternoon).
My first job was working for my father in his store.
My second job was as a medical assistant. I drew blood, did EKGs, and helped with patients. I was still in college and wasn’t even studying medicine and the doctor was a friend of the family.
12 years old, another paperboy. I was lucky that it was an afternoon paper so I could deliver after school.
I started babysitting at a whopping $1 per hour around age 11. I was probably almost 12.
My first real job – with a paycheck and a uniform and taxes and everything – was at Rax Roast Beef. There, I made $2.85/hour because management claimed that minors do not qualify for minimum wage. I thought that was bullshit, so eventually I got a job at the city library as a page (shelving books) for $4.11 an hour and I was like, wealthy, man.
Busboy, coffee shop, 14. First actual “paycheck”.
Shoveled snow, hauled wood and all kinds of other shit for years before, however.
My kid bitches when I ask him to take the trash out once a fucking week!
Panhandling - absolutely hated it!
Working for my parents in the hardware store which they bought when I was 10. I worked there less formally from age 10 to 14 – occasional Saturdays and days during school breaks, mostly in cleaning, or doing inventory. At that point, we sold that first store, and built a new one, so I spent the summer when I was 14 helping in the construction (lots of painting, assembling fixtures, etc.).
I worked in the new store more often, as I was getting older. Once I hit age 16, and had a driver’s license, I had a formal part-time schedule as a clerk at the store, working a few evenings a week, and some weekends.
Comic books ad from the 1960s: MAKE MONEY! SELL FLOWER SEEDS!
I think it was “American Flower Seed Co” or some such thing. I tromped around the neighborhood as a 10 year old with my catalog of flower seeds, taking orders, and then delivering them when they came in.