1974, supermarket bagger, $2.41/hour.
I was thrilled because minimum wage was $2.10/hour.
mmm
1973 - Deck monkey (cleaning and polishing boat fixtures), $1.60/hr
I was 10.
In 1975 I worked for a plumbing company doing new homes in plans. I was supposed to be the helper, running to the truck to get whatever the plumber told me he needed. In reality, he taught me to sweat copper, cut, thread, and install gas lines, and cut and glue PVC waste lines. When an inspector drove into the plan I’d quickly go back to being the helper.
I was paid minimum wage. I was probably seriously underpaid, but I was happy.
1974, I worked at Waldenbooks in High School, evenings and weekends. I made minimum wage, $2/hr.
I stocked books, pulled books, stripped paperbacks, opened the register, worked the register, took customer orders, vacuumed the joint, dropped off the money at the bank at the end of the night, and whatever else needed doing. I enjoyed it, and spent most of my pay on books (with a 33% employee discount).
1976, I was 15 and got a summer job cleaning fish in Ketchikan Alaska. I was supposed to get parental approval, but they were in Maryland and we somehow came up with a work around. The pay was good. I don’t recall the specifics, but we were in the Longshoreman’s union. We got a lot over time and a half, and double time too, when the fish were running.
First job after that was working at a lumber yard for $3.15 or so per hour. Started in 1976, and worked there on and off for about 3 years.
First job ( other than a paper boy in my early teens ) was a gas/diesel station/auto repair shop. Primarily an attendant at the pump islands but also as a mechanic helper. $2.90/hour, then $3.10.
Academic administrator at an online university, December 2010.
$38,000 a year flat salary. I was thrilled. I’d been job-hunting for half a year after graduation, it was a bad economy, I actually went out in the cold weather and ran laps in excitement after getting the news.
At age 14 (summer 1970), I worked with the custodian at the Catholic high school I would be attending in the fall. My wage was a notional $1.50/hour, which was applied to my freshman year tuition.
In1987 I got my first job as a lawyer. $17,500 per year as a public defender.
Technically my first job was at a Subway sandwich shop when I was 16 ca. 1998. $6/hr, Oregon’s minimum wage then. I lasted a bit less than three weeks before they cut my hours down to 3 per week. I told them to get bent and quit. I later learned that I had been hired specifically to provide coverage for spring break. When break was over I was no longer needed.
So I guess the first job where I lasted longer than a month and felt like I was doing something vaguely interesting – and that I actively enjoyed – was Waldenbooks as well. Hired on for the Christmas 1998 season running a calendar kiosk in the mall and kept on afterwards. $6.50 to start. I lasted there for about 2 1/2 years before getting a full-time M-F job.
Heh. My discount was 33% too. I still have several books that I bought with my discount while working there.
That job also taught me that busiest shopping day of the year is not Black Friday (which I worked, and was pretty slow) but rather the weekend before Christmas, where we made $64K in sales and sold out of almost 25% of our stock in two days. That was only time I ever had to deal with Karens and social anxiety triggered by my job. Usually the bookstore was a calming, peaceful environment.
Started in late 1973 or early 1974. Worked as a “lab assistant” at the computer lab at the local junior college where I was dual-enrolled during high school. I had to ride my bike to work; I wasn’t old enough to drive yet. The job paid $2.00 / hour at a time when the minimum wage was $2.10 / hr. State government was immune from the minimum wage regs.
The lab assistant’s job was to monitor the room full of keypunches, a card reader, and a line printer. The reader & printer were attached to an IBM 370 in the adjacent glass-walled raised-floor room. We unclogged keypunches, refilled fresh blank cards and emptied the chad bins, unjammed the card reader & showed newbies how to run their deck through it, and pulled and separated printouts off the line printer, and unjammed that too.
And provided homework help to the other students to the degree our own skills permitted.
Great fun in an air-conditioned environment. Better than slinging hod, but not nearly as body-building.
- Senior year of high school. Flipping burgers and rolling burritos at Barry’s Better Burgers. Made a whopping $1.85/hour. Eventually got a raise to $2.10/hr when I became a shift manager.
That was pretty much my entire official non-family business employment until I was 32 and became a teacher.
Summer of '74, right after I graduated high school. I was a receptionist in a clothing design/manufacture company. It was the same place that designed the Hawaiian shirts that Elvis wore. I answered phones and did some desultory typing and other grunt clerical work. That lasted a few months.
I don’t remember my salary, and am at work so I don’t want to look up my social security history. I want to say I earned $75 a week, but I can’t be sure.
1987, summer after graduating from high school. I worked for a videocassette duplication and distribution company. First two days I stuffed envelopes with promotional material to be sent to rental shops. Second two days, I unstuffed envelopes as the promotion was cancelled. Most of the hires left at lunch and never returned once the unstuffing project was announced. I got promoted to keying in zipcodes after that; it’s where my awesome 10-key skills come from.
Couple weeks later I rotated through all the awful jobs. Putting stickers on video cassettes. Putting the paper inserts in the cases. Loading and unloading the duplicating machines. Breaking down boxes. Taping boxes back together. Real soul crushing stuff for a dude with a new girlfriend who was not working but hanging out by the pool instead.
$3.35/hr. Minimum wage.
The two pluses (besides having a little money). I was given a copy of “A Clockwork Orange” that had been mis-stickered and was unsellable. Second, I worked with a Korean guy who introduced me to the glories of kimchi. I was the only person there that didn’t think he should have to leave the building to eat lunch.
Package boy at grocery, 75 cents an hour, 1960. This was before minimum wage, I think. Started savings acct (Dad was a banker).
1973, orderly in a nursing home. Presumably somewhere around $2 an hour.
1976, waitress at family restaurant. $1.35 per hour plus tips. Prior to that, I was one of the neighborhood babysitters, beginning at age 8 because I was the only girl in the 'hood who had already had chicken pox and measles. My older brother did a bit of sitting too, for the same reason but at age 9, he also had a paper route to contend with so scheduling was tough. I only helped him on his route on Sunday mornings.
1990, the summer after I turned 16, I worked at McDonald’s opening the store. I think I started at minimum wage, which was $3.35. I actually stayed in that store until after I went away to college (coming home and working on breaks). I think I ended with something like $4.10/hr.
Age 17, I worked at a Velvet Freeze in St Louis County MO, made 1.90 an hour, they were unionized, so I would get a raise to over 2.00 after 60 days, free uniforms…Annnd…all the ice cream I could eat. I scooped, made milkshakes, sundaes, banana splits, flavored sodas (phosphates they were called), and root beer and coke floats (these are NOT the same thing as a chocolate or strawberry soda, though both contain ice cream). This was pre microwave era, so I also had to heat up sandwiches and pretzels. They had many flavors, all were good. Old fashioned soda fountain, too; as I said, we made flavored sodas. Might I suggest the vanilla phosphate or the coconut ice cream hot sundae? Try them, both are great. Recipe for vanilla phosphate: vanilla flavored syrup, sparkling water, mix together. We had a spigot that just did the selter, and we had vanilla flavored syrup. Add a scoop of your fave ice cream and you had a vanilla etc ice cream soda.
McDonald’s - 1972 - $1.60/hr. It sucked! I haven’t eaten there many times since, except for the Egg McMuffin which is pretty good.