Age 12 picking berries. season over.
First job paid by the hour stockman at a Blue Chip Stamp store when I was 19. Left to attend the maritime academy.
Now I work as a Stationary Engineer.
I flipped burgers at McDonalds. I quit when I left for college. Currently I go to school and grade homework.
I believe my first job was working in a retail art supply store in the mall in high school. For about a month, every saturday, I would need my dad to drive me to the mall. My “job” as far as I could tell was to basically just wander the aisles, restock whatever was low and help customers if they needed it. For most of the time I had absolutely nothing to do and eventually I was told I wasn’t needed.
Seems to have been a theme in my career for the next 20 years. Getting hired for a job that no one has any clear idea of what that job should be, hang around trying to stay busy while some imbecile gets on my case whenever I actually try to do something other than just sit there and eventually let go when they figure out they didn’t need to hire someone to do nothing in the first place.
I worked at McDonalds too, but they never trusted me by the grill. I worked the drive through.
I am now an acquisiton contractor working for the DoD.
Busboy in a restaurant, during high school.
My first paying job was a newspaper route, if that counts.
First job with an actual paycheck was at an Arby’s restaurant.
Now, 25 years later, I’m a banquet chef at my city’s convention center.
Another McDonald’s slave-dog here. I got the job over the Summer when I was fifteen, thirty-two years ago. Sheesh, I’m old. I left at sixteen when I went to College. I hated working there. The three things that stick in my mind to this very day are the Indian cashier I had a crush on who I caught making out with the shift manager, who was at least 10 years older, in the break room one day, being stuck monthly with “the count”, and having to close on at least three school nights per week.
Bouncing during bike week.
Got paid under the table in cash and shots on the job. The burnout pit was freakin dirty and it was hotter then hell during the day. But the plethora of fake tits, ass-less chaps, drunken morons, sexually explicit porta-potties, and enough budlight to drown Ogre made it memorable first gig. Plus I got a sweet security T-shirt for memories sake. Damn I miss that job.
My first real job was as a waitress, in a private golf-club when I was 16. It wasn’t too bad, since we were paid better than minimum wage (no tips, so actual mw, not the waitstaff one) and the members of the club were mostly nice and not too demanding but events/dinners could be very long. I’m sure I was doing way more than 40 hours a week most weeks from June to August (the job was seasonal, May to October)! I actually worked there three years - I was pretty good at it. I left to go to university.
I’m now a student (for another degree than the one I left that job for) in mechanical engineering.
Working at my Aunt’s video store when I was 13. Just for a week or so (I think it was Easter break or something).
About 8 years later I had my first real job, part time at the campus computer store for $6.25 an hour.
Today I work in TV news.
Picking apricots at 12. Then, during high school I was a “parts boy”/gofer at the Pontiac dealership.
Family businesses: dog grooming shop and laundromat, from about age 10 to 17. I never really had summers or weekends off. And yes, even though they were family businesses, I did work my ass off.
I’m currently an English teacher desperately trying to find something else to do for a living. Problem is that my degree was in something, ahem, nice and marketable (comparative literature) and there are A) Jack, and B) Squat for foreigners to do besides teaching and translation. Translation not only pays poorly, but I’m not good enough at it to realistically expect to make a living at it anyway.
Newspaper route for a weekly paper. I’m not sure why I left. It seems like maybe the pay wasn’t good enough for the effort. After that, a different paper route. After that, a library job. After that, after school care and tutoring. After that, I was old enough to get a real job with real wages.
At age 16, I spent the summer digging ditches and postholes in the Texas heat for a landscaping contractor. Christ, but that job sucked. After that, I got a retail drone job until I went to college. Boring, but at least it was air conditioned.
Corn detassling at 15 or so. Holy crap, was that miserable. Many people would get off the bus at day’s end and puke in the courthouse lawn. It was brutal! I’ve been unemployed for four months and it’s sounding better and better… 
My first job with a real paycheck was washing dishes at a local cafe in my hometown the summer I was fourteen. It paid the handsome sum of $2.00 an hour and lunch. I left when school began in the fall (I worked the lunch shift and they weren’t open evenings).
My next job was at another restaurant, this time waiting tables. It paid a grand $2.00 an hour plus tips. I quit when I left the area after high school.
Currently, I work in inventory management.
Working at the local pharmacy. Basically, my job was anything that I wasn’t legally prohibited from doing (i.e. filling prescriptions). I manned the cash register and lottery ticket dispenser, stocked shelves, swept floors, drove deliveries, took refill orders over the phone. Started off at $3.75/hour (minimum at the time was $3.65). Did it for three years in high school, then during the summers in college.
I left because it was a job intended for teens, and the only people who stayed longer than that were the ones planning to get pharmacy degrees. It was a nice job and the parting was on good terms.
Now I write advertisements for Japanese auto and electronics makers (and a few others).
I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that my first real job was for General Motors as an engineering co-op student at the age of 18. (Perhaps I led what could be called a blessed life in that respect, but my parents did not want me to have a high school job).
My first job was as a bag boy for an A & P grocery store. I was 14 years old and was paid the princely sum of $0.50 per hour.
I’m retired now; unable to work would be a better description.
My first job was to make sure a local politician didn’t win re-election to the County Council.
She didn’t. 