What was your first job?

I was around 10 or 11 years old when I started painting vacant apartments and homes for my dad along with my siblings.

Sales associate at Party City. Minimum wage at the time was, I think, $5.25. I was 16.

Lawn mowing was probably the first thing I got paid for. Baby sitting a little later. My first real job was as a farm hand on a dairy farm. I was 17. It was a summer job, and my job was to pitch hay up in the loft. Very hot and dusty work. But very physical and fun, and although I didn’t realize it at the time, I learned a hell of a lot about life from that job.

I started singing for a local opry at the age of 16. I got $500 per show and $16 an hour for practicing.

8 yrs old I delivered papers, shoveled sidewalks, raked leaves….been working ever since!

Damn, @KatetheGreat! I just got my biggest paycheck for a gig and it was $150! Oh yeah. I forgot that. I used to play taps for military funerals in my area. They always seemed to die in the middle of the harshest cold snap of the year. You ever hear about the guy who licks a metal pole when it’s like ten below outside? Well guess what a trumpet is made out of? Guess how much licking is involved in trumpet playing?

When I was 11 I started babysitting for $1 an hour. At 14 years old I worked for a jean store making around $4 an hour. I made a draw that was minimum wage, I think minimum was $3.35 an hour then, but I did better than what my draw required.

I’ve still yet to have a steady job (very embarrassing, that), but I have at various points been paid to house sit, pet sit, and design logos, graphics, or website layouts for several businesses.

I got a milk round at the age of 14 and I have been working ever since. I was paid £1:00 a week at first which was a lot of money to me at that time.

I was a waitress for three days when I was 15. I got really good tips, but I quit because the owner of the place yelled at me. I unassumingly told my dad about it, and he went down there that night. I feel kind of bad for the owner lol…

Straight from school I worked in a fish processing factory.
Didn’t last long though, it’s no fun smelling like a wet haddock when out on a date :¬(

@lucillelucillelucille Working for family businesses is the best work!
@erichw1504 I’ll keep babysitting….
@wundayatta I help my friend on a farm, but I don’t get paid.
@KatetheGreat I think you added an extra 0. Shouldn’t that be $50? please?
@JLeslie I feel fortunate to make as much as I do!
@Mariah It’s alright; the world’s gonna end next year, anyway!
@Facade You could get @wundayatta to play taps!

@wundayatta Yeah, I was quite fortunate. I still hold that job to this day!

@TheIntern55 Nope. $500 for one show.

@TheIntern55 Well, I was 11 a long time ago. I am 43 now. $7 sounds like a very good rate. Is that for just one child?

I worked at McDonalds when I was 16, I forget what I was paid, I was so high.

@flutherother Is that about the equivilant of a dollar in the US?
@ucme Yuck. I hate fish!
@Cruiser I live in the country, so those jobs aren’t nesccarry.
@KatetheGreat You must not be tone deaf like me.
@JLeslie Two, ages 2 and 4. I didn’t account for inflation!
@Simone_De_Beauvoir I hope you didn’t eat too many fries!

@TheIntern55 I’d hope not! You see, these shows didn’t go on all of the time. I only had one or two shows a week and I only got paid at that rate if I was the lead on the show.

@TheIntern55 More like $1:50 with 75 cents in tips and a lot more at Christmas. I have never been so well off since.

Dog walking for an old ladys psycho little dog when I was about 9 and then, onto babysitting.

I once made some little babysitting charges Mac-n-cheese when I was 11 I think. I didn’t know you were supposed to drain the water off the Macaroni, sooo, I just mixed in the milk and butter and cheese powder and Viola!...Mac-n-cheese SOUP! The kids ate it. :-D

I was a day camp counselor. I don’t remember the pay, but I learned that I really enjoyed working with kids.

I was a paper girl with a route at 12. Unfortunately, it was only for a week because I couldn’t deal with getting up at 4:30 every morning. I made $25.

My next job was as a baby sitter, at age 14. I made $3/hr. This was in the mid-80s. Then I got my first brick-and-mortar job as a scooper for Haagen Dazs at the mall at 16, also in the mid-80s. That was $4.50/hr.

I delivered news papers at the age of thirteen, it paid £5.75 UK a week back in 1981, that’s about $9.20 US….
Then when I hit fourteen I delivered milk too, that paid much better at £25.00 UK a week or about $40.00 US….. A lot of money in it’s day :-/
All the early mornings took their toll on my school work though, shame that!…….
A valuable lesson in itself… :-/

Babysitting for my neighbors’ children. I made about $1 an hour, but that was the late 1970’s. I also cat-sat for these same neighbors. (Two different families.) I think I made $1 a day for the cat feeding.

The first unofficial job was putting contact information stickers on Dad’s sales brochures back in the ‘60s. I was probably 7–8 years old and was paid $.25 an hour.

The first official job (meaning there was an actual paycheck) was working at a Christian conference center. It provided food and a place to live. Back then (early ‘80s), we were paid $2–3.00 per shift for waiting tables. The paychecks were paltry, but the atmosphere was sort of like the one from Dirty Dancing. Each summer, the staff would put on a show for one group that came back every year and stayed for two weeks. Good memories.

Sonic at $.80 an hour. They assumed we’d get tips.

I worked in a shoe shop. I seem to recall I took about 4.50 pounds home for a day’s work.

Delivering newspapers at age 13 or so. $1 for a route that took me between 1 and 2 hours, lugging those papers up and down the Oakland hills. I ended up with very strong legs, and a bad back.

Unpaid job: hospital volunteer (candy striper)

paid job: Kool Aid stand, vacation dog care, watering lawn, pulling weeds, babysitting, door to door sales. My sister and I would buy up day old flowers or donuts, then go door to door selling them. We also painted drinking glasses and small plant pots and sold them. We made a lot of money.

One year, we filled a large cooler and pulled it around in our wagon and sold Kool Aid to the workmen who were building houses in a new development. The driver of a lunch/snack truck said if we didn’t stop, he would call the cops.

P.S. Our parents charged us for the Kool Aid and sugar. We were actually learning business skills.

Professional (hired) job: Snack bar in the park. I made cotton candy, and it got in my ears, eyes, nose, and everywhere. It was icky/sticky. I was later “promoted” to ticket sales.

My grandfather paid me $5.00hr to empty wastebaskets and spray down desks, handrails, glass windows in the courthouse where he worked. It was only about 2hrs of work a day but I looked forward to it every summer.

My first F/T job was at 16yrs old working for a caterer. It was hard work and paid only $3.50hr but I made 40hr paychecks while still finishing school and it put me in a position to move out.

At 16, I got my first job at Claire*s Accessories. I loved it.

@Bellatrix How did you lug all that weight home every night??

lol@Dutchess lll I was thinking? What weight?? Rolls eyes at you!! I don’t have a pound sign on my keyboard…and I don’t know how to find it!

My first grown up job was at an insurance company. Mind you, this was before a lot of the technology we have now. My job was to enter transactions into the books. I had the state of Ohio. I sat on a high stool and entered new Policy information into a huge (I’m guessing 18” x 24” x 6 ”) ledger using a pen you had to dip in ink. I’m not kidding. I felt like Bob Cratchit in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. We got to use an adding machine to tally up each day.

Cashier at Long John Silvers. Good thing my boyfriend worked there too, because I smelled awful after working around all that grease and fish.

Lemonade stand, followed by looking after the neighbor’s pets when they went on vacation.
The first job that I ever had where they wanted me to fill out paperwork was at a pizza buffet place. I was there about three days before being told that they had actually hired a handful of people for the same job, picked out the best worker, and were going to fire me. Then they didn’t even want to give me my check, claiming that it had been a training period and so they were not required to disburse compensation. Upon hearing that, the folks proceeded to upbraid them so severely that they changed their minds.

I have studied law but my first job was a french teacher as a second language to five grades and my salary was only 300$. This is the worst job ever…

@Zeena… You never worked as a teen?

Writing computer programs that translate German texts to English and vice versa.

As a teen? Picking grapes in a vineyard.

Mowing lawns. In high school I pumped gas every weekend – back when it was less than 1$/gallon and still had lead in it.

@Dutchess_III…unfortunately I didnt worked when I was a teen because my mom’s rule is to work after having my degree:-(