A post by Dwight in another thread prompted this question. How old were you when you first had a a job? What was it?
I was 10 when I started working for my uncle in his tavern/liquor store. The first two years, I just cleaned up and sorted beer and soda bottles (returnables - Remember them?) every Saturday and Sunday. By the time I was 12, I worked for 2-3 hours every night, stocking and cleaning the store up. (If you've never cleaned the toilet in a blue collar, all-male tavern, you haven't lived. ) I worked there 7 days a week until I went away to college. (Briefly. I was back home in 6 months.) I stayed there until I opened my own bar when I was 27. I only took 3 vacations the entire time, and only missed days when the wrestling team traveled. I worked before my week-end dates in high school, and either before or after any other matches. Every night after wrestling practice, I'd hurry home for my salad and steamed veggies, and go to work, getting back about 3 hours later. When I turned 21, I started tending bar 7 nights a week. The job gave me enough money to eat in the best restaurants in St. Louis about once a month. I even worked when I held another job in a steel mill.
Posts: 16603 | Location: Lincoln Place, Granite City, IL, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
I didn't start my first job until I was 20 where I worked at a recycling facility one summer where I helped gather the containers, dump them, sort through them, and bail them. $9/ hr. Every day.
Posts: 6410 | Location: Grayson, Georgia, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
My first actual paid employment was at an aircraft factory: Koolhoven Vliegtuigen NV in Rotterdam. I was 16 and it was 1938. I left Rotterdam to return to Canada on a Norwegian freighter on September 1, 1939 - embarking to learn that the Nazis were bombing Warsaw. WWII was starting. Fortunately, Norway remained neutral long enough for me to get back to Montreal - our ship displaying a huge Norwegian Flag. Later, in Canada I was to get a job at 17 as a junior clerk in the Netherlands Consulate in Montreal thanks to a rudimentary grasp of the language acquired during my year long employment in Holland.
From age 14 through high school, I worked as a maintanence man at an industrial park. I did everything from sweeping warehouse floors, to picking up papers with a pointed stick on the grounds, to painting fire hydrants.
My first paying job was at Lance, Inc., a snack foods manufacturer, at age 16. I basically filled in for people who were on vacation and had slightly different jobs every week, which kept things very interesting.
One week I filled in for the guy who made the peanut butter. Though never sold in stores (it went on the crackers), it was a delicious old fashioned combination of peanuts, peanut oil and salt - nothing else. On my first day I didn't grind the peanuts long enough. They immediately started selling "crunchy peanut butter" at the employee store
Posts: 7614 | Location: in the backwoods of North Carolina | Registered: 06-07-02
When I was about 13, my mom worked as Office Manager for a private country club in Waukegan, IL...On the last day of the month was billing, and I would often go in with her to help.
That same summer (I'm sure it was the summer I TURNED 13, so would have been 12 at the start of it), she got me a job at the snack bar. Making burgers and shakes for the rich kids who spent their parents' money at the pool.
I recall I had a wonderful time...and made not half-bad money! Had to put up with the snotty rich kids though
What is probably important in this, is that 10-15 years later, I was coordinating golf tournaments. And to this day, I don't actually PLAY golf LOL
I "worked" with my late father, an electrician, when I was still in grade school, and learned a lot from him. I have worked all my life, sometimes at three jobs to pay my way through college and pay the mortgage along with my sister, on my mom's house. I still managed in 1964 to buy my first car, a Jag XKE Coup, CASH.
It's only in my later years, like now, that having my own company taught me that today's youngsters don't seem to have the same work ethic, and my money does not go as far as it did when I was young; (over generalizing, but when I hear someone is broke on Monday, when they got paid on Friday, and are single with no family responsibilities, I have to wonder.)
Sorry to vent; got THAT out of my system!
Posts: 3586 | Location: Ridgewood, N.J. USA | Registered: 05-30-03
During summer holidays when I was 14 my dad pulled some strings and got me a job as a bellhop in a hotel. I thought this would be easy, just carrying people's luggage to their rooms when summoned.
Although there was that I was expected to do janitorial type things in between which I hadn't bargained for. I had a lousy work ethic then and "hid" a lot. I lasted the summer and it could have continued after the summer on a part time basis but I was not asked back.
Not long after that my band started getting paying jobs which were fairly lucrative.
I didn't have to work a "real" job again for a long time.
Posts: 875 | Location: Edmonton, Alberta Canada | Registered: 06-06-02
I was 16 years old when I started selling magazines on the telephone for Michigan Readers Cooperative. The office was in an upscale area and I had to wear dress clothes. It's not like the people could see me anyway. I was making $3.25 an hour plus commission. Yes, you have been selected! It was such a scam. I wasn't actually selling the magazines. I was giving them away so the advertisers could get more people seeing their ads through circulation. The magazines could charge more for the ads. People could pick 5 magazines for just the shipping and handling. The person could get ALL 5 magazines for just $1.49 a week. This "special offer" was only good for 60 months. ( 5 years!). Some of the magazines came monthly so it was a bigger scam. "Representatives" would go to their house to close the deal with a contract. If the deal closed, I made an extra $10.00. The owner ended up taking all the money, closing shop and leaving town. I didn't realize until later what a scam it was. I believed them. I never even got my last check.
Posts: 5267 | Location: The Motor City | Registered: 06-03-02
Originally posted by clarebear: I was 16 years old when I started selling magazines on the telephone for Michigan Readers Cooperative. The office was in an upscale area and I had to wear dress clothes. It's not like the people could see me anyway. I was making $3.25 an hour plus commission. Yes, you have been selected! It was such a scam. I wasn't actually selling the magazines. I was giving them away so the advertisers could get more people seeing their ads through circulation. The magazines could charge more for the ads. People could pick 5 magazines for just the shipping and handling. The person could get ALL 5 magazines for just $1.49 a week. This "special offer" was only good for 60 months. ( 5 years!). Some of the magazines came monthly so it was a bigger scam. "Representatives" would go to their house to close the deal with a contract. If the deal closed, I made an extra $10.00. The owner ended up taking all the money, closing shop and leaving town. I didn't realize until later what a scam it was. I believed them. I never even got my last check.
That was YOU??!!!
Posts: 3586 | Location: Ridgewood, N.J. USA | Registered: 05-30-03
I'd have been 18, in what is now grandly called a 'gap year' between school and college.We didn't have 'gap years' where we fannied about in some third world country pretending we were doing good in some 'project', we had 'find something to do in the real world 'years Among other things I worked as a lathe operator, turning out endless supplies of the same turned parts in a small factory. The pay was piece rate, a concept with which I was not familiar. I soon found out what it meant !It meant that workers who'd done the job for years could turn out hundreds of parts, all perfect, and earn enough to support a family of six, and then some, whereas initially I would produce enough perfect ones a day to pay the bus fare home (with practice)
By the way, I agree , to a degree, about youngsters and 'work ethic' now. Why, look where it got me ! I'm in the sub-prime of life!
I was self-employed at a young age, living in a rural area with bungalows in a city nearby Montreal. I would, after a snow storm, take my shovel go around my street meet the neighbors and clean up the mess. I would ask between $4- $7 CND to do the job. Each winter I was able to save aside around $400. working mainly on week-ends or school out days.
I worked later with my grand-DAD in summer time after in high school ( my Mom wanted me to stay out of trouble). He was an Electrical Contractor in Montreal and owned about twenty appartment buildings and he thought me all the trends in construction which became very handy for me , especially for remodeling after hurricanes in South Florida. He would give me at the time (late sixties early seventies) $10 canadian dollars a day , five days a week. To make it exciting it was a one $50 "Orange Canadian" bill. Do you remember them?
Posts: 5828 | Location: u.s.a, south Florida | Registered: 06-03-02
) I worked there 7 days a week until I went away to college. (Briefly. I was back home in 6 months.) I stayed there until I opened my own bar when I was 27. I only took 3 vacations the entire time, and only missed days when the wrestling team traveled. I worked before my week-end dates in high school, and either before or after any other matches. Every night after wrestling practice, I'd hurry home for my salad and steamed veggies, and go to work, getting back about 3 hours later. When I turned 21, I started tending bar 7 nights a week. The job gave me enough money to eat in the best restaurants in St. Louis about once a month. I even worked when I held another job in a steel mill.
