Your First Job

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

TheKid finally found a job! She starts at a local Mom and Pop Italian restaurant next week. A friend of hers recommended her to the owner, planned on just dropping off the application, ended up being interviewed and hired. She is excited and terrified at the same time.

We ended up talking about my first “real” job - when I was 17 I started working at the local Tom Thumb Superette. I cashiered, worked in the deli, stocked shelves. I enjoyed it, made a whopping $3.25/hour (it was 25 years ago), made great friends, learned how to deal with many different people.

Before that job, I taught flute to elementary students from my home. The money was great ($10/half hour), the parents sucked. I was happy when the school year ended.

What was your first job, and do you have any advice for TheKid?

2

My first job was picking potatoes.

In northern Maine, school starts early and then takes a three week break for potato picking season. All the school kids, starting from 7th grade, get jobs working for a potato farmer. It is grueling, back-breaking work. Essentially, you get a basket and a section of field. The farmer drives the tractor by digging all the potatoes up to the surface, and you load up your basket and dump what you have in a barrel. It takes maybe ten basket-fulls for a barrel (can’t remember exactly). Then you put your little marker on the barrel. At the end of the day, the farmer counts up your markers and you earn $.40 per marker (again, this was 30 years ago).

In a day, if you picked 50 barrels you’ve worked incredibly hard.

After taxes, I think I made about $175 in three weeks.
My advice – don’t move to northern Maine.

3

My first real job was working fast food (like so many other people.) It was at an independent burger/Mexican joint that was located across the street from a McDonalds and a Naugles (now Del Taco.) Small staff, so three people did everything: ran the counter, ran the drive-thru, manned the grill, manned the taco station, did all the clean-up. I learned to loathe customers with special requests on that job.

4

I had two first real jobs, both at 17. One was teaching guitar, one was playing guitar in a nightclub. Sometimes I miss that.

5

I started as a tray boy at Festival hall. Saw all good acts- I was part of a Bill Cosby performance, saw Jose feliciano, all the wrestling and the boxing- and got paid.

Sometimes I made $5 a week!

6

Technically the first thing I ever got paid for was babysitting, which I did starting at age 12. But as far as an actual job with a timecard and employers, my first one was a part-time job as a page at the local library. After that I worked at McDonald’s, and as a busboy at my aunt’s Mexican restaurant.

My advice for someone starting out waiting tables is to accept that you will make mistakes at first; resolve to correct them as quickly as possible and be friendly and honest about it. Also, there are always going to be some patrons who come in with the attitude that they will find fault with your service, and they likely will. Don’t take it personally. Just keep smiling and remember that the next table will probably be better.

7

Working at a gas station Subway/ ice cream/ pizza place for a couple years through high school with most of my friends from school. Overall, it was a good place to work, but the pay was shit and nobody ever got raises in 3 years of working there.

8

I started working at Hardee’s (an east coast fast food joint) when I was 14. I’d been paid for umpiring little league baseball games and yard work around town before that, but that was the first job where records were kept and taxes withheld.

Advice? Pretty much what MsWhatsit said: nobody expects you to be perfect. You’ll make mistakes, and that’s ok. Fix them and move on. As long as you’re not making the same mistake over and over, you’re doing fine.

9

If you don’t count mowing yards and throwing papers as “real jobs” then my first “being hired” job was sacking groceries for less than $1/hr when I was old enough to get an SSN and I think that was at 14 back then. Anyway I was in high school at the time.

10

My first job was cleaning fish in Ketchikan AK for a summer at age 16. Long days of blood, guts, smell, cold, and wet. I was going to add that “I loved it,” but I have a feeling that view is influenced by the fact that it’s 35 years in the rear view mirror. At the time, I was probably simply cold, wet, and smelly.

11

I didn’t have any real jobs until I graduated from college and got a Real Job, but I had several interesting positions that paid me. They were all jobs, of course, but very non-traditional. The first was at the local very small hospital in the very small town where I grew up. They contracted with an outside electronics/video store to provide television service to patients, who had to pay me, rather than their bill (or at all!) to have TV in their room. Every afternoon after school I went to every room and asked them if they wanted TV and collected the $3 or whatever it was. People who were admitted in the evening were SOL until I showed up the next day, although sometimes the staff would call me at home if someone was particularly vocal about it and I’d drive down and turn it on for them.

The next job was sitting with an elderly lady at night. She was confined to her bed, and my duties consisted of helping her get up in the night to potty if she had to, cleanup, and in the morning, and fixing her breakfast. I did this weeknights (Sunday-Thursday), and another lady sat with her on weekends. She was an interesting, elegant lady who had lots and lots of stories to tell. She was a client of my father’s (a lawyer) and that’s how I got hooked up. She was pretty rich and it paid pretty well ($75/week in 1979).

My next job was only in the summers through college, and that was working for my father in his law office. He was also the county attorney. I learned a lot, decided I wanted to be a lawyer, and then I didn’t.

12

My first non-babysitting job was at my dad’s office. He was a manager (later VP) for a foreign freight forwarder/custom house broker - the company did the necessary documentation and coordination for stuff being imported and exported. I was hired to be the weekend PBX operator/receptionist/mail sorter. I didn’t have my license yet, so I had to take the bus into Baltimore, go to the main post office to pick up the big canvas bag of mail, take it to the office, open and sort it by department, then open the switchboard and answer the phone from (I think) 8 till 1. For this, I was paid a whopping $2/hr (minimum wage was $1.75, so I was doing well.)

When school was out, I went in as needed to do assorted crap jobs. Sometimes, it wasn’t too terrible - like running the mimeograph machine to make copies of bills of lading, or printing out invoices on the flex-o-writer. I was also occasionally permitted to type on the IBM Selectrics, tho I was not trained as a typist. I did filing, too. I’d be called to run the PBX when the regular receptionist when on break, and I’d sometimes have to go to other offices in downtown to pick up or deliver documents. A couple of times, I had to take the bus to DC to go to certain consulates for signatures on documents, and once I FLEW (!!!) to Minneapolis to get something signed.

The worst task by far was working in the basement file storage room. Picture it - downtown Baltimore, in the summer, no air conditioning, with sidewalk level windows opening opposite a fish market. (This was within 2 or 3 blocks of where the National Aquarium now stands.) Good times!! By that time, I’d gotten a raise to $2.25 and I often worked full weeks.

This ran from early 1970 (right after I turned 16) till 1973 (when I joined the Navy.) My typing skills improved a bit, and my knowledge of geography, at least with regards to major ports around the world, was impressive. I even talked to my dad about going to work there full time when I discovered that I hated being in college. He was willing to start me at $95/week, just like any new hire. I felt like my 3 years of part-time experience was worth a $100/week, but he wouldn’t budge, hence the Navy.

I don’t know if I ever thanked my dad for that - if he’d agreed to the $100, my life would have be sooooooooooo different.

13

My first job was at age 13 as a chambermaid in a tiny motel at the Jersey Shore. Hard, hurried work but I was finished work by 1 pm and had the rest of the day to myself.

My advice is:
Always, ALWAYS show up not just on time, but 5 MINUTES EARLY for your shift. Be ready to hit the floor right on time.
Be well groomed.
Always offer to pitch in and help a co-worker if they need it. Then they will help you when YOU need it.
Always smile - they are paying you to be pleasant to the customers and co-workers. If you’re in a bad mood or your feet hurt, never show it on the restaurant floor.
If you don’t know the answer to a question, don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know, let me ask the manager/hostess.” Don’t guess.

This will make you invaluable to your employer but will also increase your tips! Please wish her luck for me!

14

My first job was working for my father and grandfather in their store.

15

My first job was when I was 12. It was babysitting as well, I think at $3-$5 an hour. I don’t remember. It was in the late 80s. I also detassled corn.

My first “real,” above-the-table job was as a receptionist in a museum when I was 17 and as a cashier in a bookstore that same summer. I did the receptionist job full time and the cashier job part time.

16

My first real job was at Kmart, for a few summer months before college. I remember mostly working in the ladies’ changing rooms; you had to give the customer a plastic tag with the number of items she was trying on on it before she went into one of the private cubicles. And once, I did the Blue Light Special announcement on the PA system!

17

My first real job was working in a dining hall for my last two years of college. I don’t remember my exact wage, but I made something between $200 and $250 (after taxes) twice a month for working 16 hours a week. Each student employee was assigned to a specific “shop” in the dining hall, which was set up like a food court. I worked in the shop that did home-style cooking and grilled steaks.

For any given shift, an employee could be assigned any task from working the register to running the grill. Starting out, I was usually put either on register or carving, which was the worst job in the shop. You stood in a single spot, carving three ounce portions of London Broil with knives that went dull way too fast under hot lights and never really got a break once the rush started because London Broil was by far the most popular item we served. By the time I graduated, I was usually working production, which meant making the various sides (steaming veggies, mashing potatoes and so forth) and making sure the serving lines were stocked. I liked that much more because I got to move around the shop and wasn’t stuck standing in one spot all night.

I actually started an Ask the College Dining Hall Employee thread back in 2007, near the start of my second year in the dining hall. It’s interesting to look back on now, even though it wasn’t a very long thread.

18

I was a Sandwich Artist at Subway in high school. Not the best job in the world, I don’t miss being a teenager at all.

19

Yeah, did the babysitting-for-cash thing, too. First “real” job was as a cashier at Target.

20

The first labor I did for pay was raking a teacher’s yard (with 4-5 other students) my freshman year of high school. She lived on a one-acre lot (somewhat unusual in suburban Columbia, SC), and apparently every fall would recruit 5-6 students to rake the yard. I think I made $20-30.

My junior year, I worked during lunch in the school canteen and on weekends at a gas station. It was either that year or the following that I started cleaning the offices where my mother worked. None of these jobs had paychecks (i.e., withholding). While I was paid by check for the janitorial work, it was not from a payroll account.

My first job with withholding and a “real” paycheck was either working as a tutor or working as an engraver’s assistant and bookkeeper my freshman year of college.