My first job was in a sweatshop folding flyers. I can’t remember what we were paid, but it was lower than minimum wage. I was 12 or 13. Oh, before that I also sold greeting cards.
In Grade 7 I got a part-time job as a boxboy in a small grocery store for minimum wage. I worked there through Jr. High.
In Grade 9 I got a job running a spotlight at a stadium, hired through our drama teacher’s production company. I’m guessing it was illegal. We got paid well, in cash, after each concert. Something like $75 for the night, which included helping set up/tear down. Back then, that was big money to me. That’s also where I ruined my hearing.
In high school I worked part time at Radio Shack, and in summer I worked day labor, usually swinging a sledge hammer or using a temping rod doing fencing. Worst. Job. Ever.
Other than that, I also worked on my grandparents farm, feeding chickens and pigs and collecting eggs from age 5 or so, then driving trucks and tractor and doing general farm work once I turned 12.
Summer job before college, 1967, cleanup guy for a small drywall company, mostly in new single family homes. I would drive there after the nailers and clean up the scraps and sweep up the dust, and then again after the tapers (much worse) and scrape the goop off the floor. If I was lucky it would still be soft; usually it was hardened. The big gobs were easy, they would pop off, the splatters were a lot more work. $2.50 an hour or $100 a week, out of which I was able to save around $65 a week, or maybe around $800 for the summer. Out of that I had to pay my own round trip airfare to college and back, twice a year (including Christmas holidays), buy my own textbooks, and whatever else I wanted to spend money on. I think I had a few bucks left at the end of the school year.
1969, 12 years old, picking strawberries. Me and a friend would go to the corner of the street we lived on and a bus would pick us up about 7am. We would work till 4 and the bus would bring us home. Made about $150 that summer. My first hourly job was in 1970 shortly after I turned 14. I was with my mom when she stopped to get gas in her car. There was a sign on the window of the gas station that said they were hiring. I went in and asked and got the job. Worked there after school and on Saturdays for about 6 months when the owner sold the gas station and retired. Whoever bought the station never reopened it. I started at $2.05 an hour and after 3 months I got a raise to $2.30. He never withheld taxes from my pay so I never paid any taxes on it.
I grew up working on my dad’s farm, but he gave up farming when I was 16. So, the next summer, 1970, I hired on with a local custom harvesting crew. We started in late May, the day after school let out, cutting wheat in central Oklahoma. We gradually moved northward, ending up in northeastern Montana. We got back the day after school started in the fall.
I started driving a grain truck for $1.50 an hour, plus room and board. By the end of the summer, I was operating a combine for $2.00 an hour. Keep in mind that we worked seven days a week and had absolutely no place to spend any money. When we got back home, I received a check for $1,020.00 (yes, I still remember the exact amount!)
That was HUGE money for a high school senior, considering that most of my friends had been lifeguarding or sacking groceries for a lot less money.
I started working for my parents, at the True Value hardware store which they co-owned with my aunt and uncle, in 1975. I was only 10, and my “working” was initially doing stuff like sweeping the floors, helping to assemble bicycles and lawnmowers, and putting price stickers on new inventory when it arrived. I can’t remember exactly how much I got paid, but I did get paid.
By '81, when I could drive myself back and forth to the store, I was upgraded to being a part-time clerk at the store, which is what I did on evenings (after school) and some weekends. At that point, I was probably getting around $4 an hour.
Not quite a job, but one summer I helped a friend unload an entire freight car full of 75 lb. bags of Bentonite. Think very heavy, VERY DUSTY bags of concrete, inside a train car in the heat of summer. Triple digits Fahrenheit. We were supposed to get it done in one day, but we had to really rush to get it done in two.
For a week after, every time I blew my nose I was staring at a tissue full of dark grey snot. So, if you see Frisco Boxcar 149-10, kick it for me (I’ve been checking every Frisco car that goes by for forty years now, with no luck).
I started babysitting in 1968 at age 11. I earned 50¢ an hour. If that doesn’t count, my first job was at age 14 in 1970, when I worked in my dad’s law office on Saturdays. I answered the phone, filed, ran errands, and photocopied documents. I earned $1 an hour. This was also when I learned to love coffee. I usually stayed up too late on Friday nights.
In 8th grade in the early 70s, I had a summer job at a popcorn stand selling popcorn and snowcones. I had previously had a paper route and other odd jobs, but this was my first hourly wage.
I really don’t remember how much it paid, but it was less than minimum wage which was about $1.60. It was owned by family, not a corrporation, they hired kids through word of mouth and was only one kid working there at a time.
1983, when I was 15 and still in school, I worked for four weeks doing assembly work at the factory where my Dad was employed (they produced gas and water armatures) during the summer holidays. Got 6 Deutschmarks/hour and bought myself a used moped from my first earned money.
1979, I was 14 and worked for a seed mill shoveling and bagging seed at nights during the summer. Pay was I think 2.75 an hour. Other farm related jobs were Milking cows for about 2.00 an hour and hauling hay for a $.05 a bale.
My first real job was as an audio-visual crew member my freshman year at college in 1971. It paid $5.00/hour.
In high school, I was a “gig” worker. My income came from mowing lawns/yard work and baby sitting. Strangely, as a 16 YO male, I was able to charge $3.00/hour for baby sitting in 1970-1971 and turned down as many requests as I accepted. This money made it possible for me to go to college. When I mention this to people nowadays, they seem stunned that (1) a male teenager was in demand for baby sitting, and (2) that it would pay so much.
The summer after I did plumbing for minimum wage (1975), I worked overnight shift at a self serve gas station, which was a “new thing”.
Technically I was supposed to do maintenance overnight (clean bathrooms, paint islands, etc) but the manager found out I was able to do her bookkeeping.
So, for 20 minutes I did her book work, then I relaxed all night. And I made minimum wage just like I had working my ass off doing plumbing.
1968, 15 years old, worked under the table at a Southern States Feed Co-op for a dollar an hour. That and a few other low-paying and labor-intensive jobs** hardened my resolve to get a college degree.
**Landscaping grunt, farm equipment construction, pooper scooper at a dog boarding kennel
1967-70. Working in the family store. I got $1.60-$1.80 an hour, the minimum wage at the time.
Medical technician. Drew blood, did hemoglobin tests and helped out in the office. Don’t recall the pay. This probably couldn’t be done nowadays, due to liability. And no, I had no medical training. My parents thought it might get me interested in becoming a doctor. The doctor was a family friend.
Interesting job. What comes to mind was when I saw a woman’s hemoglobin was dangerously low and called the doctor in. He sent her to the hospital.
There was also the time Jerry Wexler (producer at Atlantic Records where her recorded Aretha Franklin) and family were patients. He asked our nurse, who was Black, if she liked Franklin and brought her one of her albums a few days later.
1974, hot walker at the local racetrack, cooling down high strung, mean ass thoroughbreds. I don’t remember what I made, but it was very little. I was 14 and lied about being 16 so they could hire me.