Sorta neither. In high school I worked at an independent fast-food burger/burrito place, while at the same time running an industrial cleaning service on the weekends. Then I was in business for myself for 10 years or so before going back to school and getting my teaching credential.
Bussed / worked grill / waited tables in restaurants.
Sold encyclopedias door-to-door.
Sold garden supplies and equipment.
Sold women’s shoes in a department store.
And others.
Assuming you don’t count mowing lawns, my first job with a salary was an RA in my senior year of university.
Busing tables / washing dishes - restaurant
Working a deli counter
Grocery store - assorted work
Retail clothing store - tourist trap style
Designing & printing t-shirts for said store - probably my “weirdest” position because we were in a lower half of the store with big glass panes looking into the store - and tourists would line up at the windows to watch us while we worked, and take photos, point, make faces etc. I always thought at the time that it must be a bit like that for zoo animals.
Retail store - hardware/home improvement
Fast food place - hated that too, way too stressful
Farm work - cleaning stables & haying - all done cheerfully for several years in exchange for the sole pay of exercising the horses. Ahh… what teens won’t do 
Forest service work - spent several summers going out in crews with the rangers to plant trees, clean trails and campsites, place fish cribs, stuff like that. LOVED LOVED LOVED it! Almost was going to choose it as a career but life took a different turn.
Cleaning and upkeep in apartment buildings - that was the work that took me through college.
Worked in a vinyl shop making signs and vehicle lettering/graphics - fun stuff.
All in all, not terrible work or terrible jobs - with the exception of the fast food experience. Customers were no worse in the retail situations than anywhere else that I’ve dealt with them. You get oddballs and nice people, mean ones and good repeat customers in every work. I’m glad to be where I am now - but I’m also glad to have had the experience in all the other work places too.
I did not work in any form of retail position until two years before retiring in 2014 at age 60. Just for kicks and a little beer money I got a job at a local casino gas station as a cashier. I asked for the graveyard shift.
Certainly not the best job I ever had but it was a blast interacting with the late night casino crowd. In the two years I never had a jerk customer. A fun, no stress job as long as you are not on a career path.
Both. My first regularly paying job was busboy and dishwasher in a restaurant, later upgraded to “cook” (which consisted largely of slapping the hamburgers together). Immediately following high school, I was the night baker for a year in the local Dunkin’ Donuts. I also spent a few years mainly on the graveyard shift of a convenience store before getting my act together and going to college.
I also worked nine months at a jewelry-supply store in Albuquerque before being accepted to graduate school in Hawaii. That was largely wholesale though, supplying turquoise to and cutting silver for the Indian craftsmen, but there was a brisk retail trade too.
My very first job, as a senior in high school, was working in a hobby and crafts shop, so I put down “retail”.
I worked for Waldenbooks in HS. My dream job. Did it a few summers during college too. Blew my paycheck on books, of course.
I worked one summer at the state fair, selling ice cream bars from a stand, and managed a specialty hamburger restaurant for a couple of months. That’s it for food service.
In between, I worked one month at the counter of a wrecking yard run by hillbillies.
Since these were all short term and/or temporary and added nothing to my career path at all, I guess I come pretty close to never having worked in either field. I started in the financial services industry (= teller) at 18.
Never done retail. I put down restaurant for the 3 years I spent in the student union pizza joint (food prep, stock room, delivery, pizza cook, cashier). Never worked in the field again after graduation.
The poll seems to imply working in retail or a restaurant is not a career, which I find condensing. Many people have real careers in those fields, it’s not just a first job option.
My first ‘job’ was an apprentice for my father in a trade. I then worked in a related field in a similar capacity, they also had a small retail front but I’d hardly consider it a retail job.
After that I worked retail management for a large retailer. I didn’t mind the retail part or it. The bureaucracy and scheduling was what ruined it for me.
After that I was an apprentice cabinet maker, then an apprentice electrician till licensed. Then I went back to my family business and took over when my father passed.
I like what I do now and being my own boss has it’s perks. I expect to be doing what it the rest of my life. If something changed I’d consider retail again, I was good at what I did.
I spent one year working in a retail bridal shop. I tell stories, but it wasn’t the world’s worst job.
My first job, when I was in elementary school, was helping run the family dog kennel business.
I started bussing tables when I was 14. I made $1.40 and hour, and, combined with tips, actually saved enough money to buy my first car, a '65 Plymouth. It cost $325. Then I worked as a grocery store bagger for a few years, then sold ladies fashion footwear (shoes) until I went to respiratory therapy school in my early 20s.
I was not implying that at all, nor do I look down on those who chose such careers. Granted, I don’t want to work in either field, but I wouldn’t want to work in health care or forestry or entertainment either. That doesn’t mean I consider that work to be demeaning - just not what I want to do.
What prompted my question was thinking back to my first non-babysitting job, when most of my friends worked in restaurants or stores. I got to wondering if I was in the minority because I never held such jobs. In my clumsy way, I was asking who held those sorts of first jobs while still in school or immediately after. And if they were actually the first steps on a career path, more power to ya! It took me several false starts before figuring out what I wanted to be when I grew up.
I’m 50 and I still have no idea.
I didn’t have any paycheck jobs in high school, just some lawn mowing and pet sitting in the neighborhood. In college we had required work terms related to our engineering course work, and were encouraged to line up similar jobs for summer, starting with factory (shipyard, actually) work, then engineering office work. That to me is the experience of ‘what you didn’t really want to do which spurred you to finish your schooling and get a career’, rather than fast food or retail counter like many. I don’t look down on any honest work let alone on anyone who does it, not in a million years. I’m just saying I personally knew I didn’t want to stand up all day and do dirty physical, non-creative work, and you don’t really fully know that till you’ve done it. My kids all worked restaurant jobs in HS/college.
My first paycheck was as a US Navy recruit but that didn’t turn into a career. Next pay after that was in my brother’s computer store, so I put down “retail” even though it was under the table.
I did get a paycheck from a grocery store for working in a customer service capacity but that was later.
I have pretty much always worked in libraries. My high-school job was as a page in the local public library, and I now work in a university library. I often say that I took that first library job in high school because I didn’t want to work in fast food!
I have spent time working both the circulation and reference desks in libraries, so I’ve dealt with the public, and been yelled at and mistreated and such. But I wasn’t selling anything, so I didn’t count it as “retail” for purposes of the poll.
I managed a movie theater, so while not technically a restaurant, plenty of food service was involved.
I chose restaurant in the poll, because that’s what I remember best, but reading through reminded me of a bunch of other jobs.
My first job at 14 was in a bookstore, running the candy counter (sort of a retail/restaurant combo). I also worked in a graduate school cafeteria, at McDonald’s, as a courier for a law firm and selling ice cream and hot dogs from a street cart.