If you had a paying/paycheck job as a teen, what were your best memories?

Cashing the check.

My best memories were of the co-workers. There were some great personalities where I worked. One thing I remember is tossing little bouncy balls down the aisles and soft toys over to the next aisle when I knew one of them was coming.

Getting out of my depression and loneliness because of the new friends I made who did not drink, smoke, or toke, thank goodness my mom let me go out with them after work and have a curfew as late 1:00am when I was only 14 years old.

The money was fun too.

I worked at a place that my school friends thought was very cool. It was a double edged sword actually, cool because I worked there, and also a few rumors I was having sex with the boss (which completely untrue).

I was good at my job, so it raised my confidence.

The money and meeting people.

My best paying job as a teen was as a YMCA camp counselor. The money was incidental as I lived at the camp, all meals were provided, and there was really nothing much to spend pocket money on anyway except candy/snacks at the snack bar and the occasional new pair of shorts or a t-shirt. I enjoyed the camp so much I would have worked there even if they didn’t pay me at all.

I remember I worked at a department store. There was a gentleman who supervised me, he was an immigrant who had come to the country and then served in Vietnam. I called him El Hefe. He called me little Hefe, and we stocked the heavy stuff.

He could not read English, which he kept from most folks. One day, the boss gave him a list and he had to break down and admit he couldn’t read it. I read it to him. I think he was embarrassed.

After a few minutes he said, “I am glad you are very clever little Hefe, but look:”. He lifted his shirt and showed me a large scar across his abdomen. He said “One guy in my platoon was very smart little Hefe, I was next to him when he stepped on a mine.”

Freedom to afford to do stuff.

I was a valet car parker. In the days of $1.65 minimum wage, we had free valet parking, and pooled the tips. We were paid $3 an hour, cash, no taxes. I was one of the highest paid kids in my high school. I ate good restaurant food for free, I got to stay out late, and I always had money in my pocket.

At 16–17, I was fortunate to land a job as a sous chef/server for a recording studio. It paid very well for the time and I got to meet some amazing artists and befriend a few. A perk was getting to sit in on studio sessions. The downside? I couldn’t tell anybody about it. It was a secrecy/privacy contract so none of my friends ever knew exactly how cool my job was!

How far the money went back then. Either that, laughing ourselves silly up in the hay mow while the farmer beat his haybaler to death with a go devil because it wouldn’t work and he had a terrible temper with equipment or working for the hard drinking priest.

My first job was farmwork. 1962, minimum wage $1.25/hr. Throwing and stacking 70-lb bales of hay, from the ground up to the wagon; then we got to move the bales from the wagon up into the barn loft. Most of the farmers had machinery to lift the bales, but one in particular I remember still used the old hook and pulley system to lift four bales at a time up to the loft.

It was like being in a quirky indie movie. I worked at a cute little coffeehouse, and the coworkers were a very odd, mixed bunch. The place had art on the walls from local artists, and I actually took classes from a few of them. The interior of the place was decorated like an old rail car, and we had local bands on the weekends. It was just such a fun, cozy place, with a real sense of community, and working there really helped me come out of my shell.

I quit my first “real” job working at Burger King, because it was across town, and I used to ride my bike there. The manager wouldn’t let me change in the bathroom and I told her that I wasn’t going to ride my bike across town in a BK Uniform (if anyone remembers Burger King Uniforms from back in the 1980’s you’d totally sympathize with me)

So, instead I got a job at Taco Bell which was just up the road and the manager was OK with my changing in the bathroom. I was turning 17 that summer… and my manager was in his early 20’s and he was HOT… I’m not gonna lie, the best part about working there was that he always used to schedule us closing the store together and we’d have hot makeout sessions in his office and then he’d drive me home.
The other manager was also in his mid to late 20’s and would stash booze in the walk-in and whoever was closing with him would have rum and cokes while cleaning up

Ahhhh good times, good times! (I’m never letting my daughter out of my sight!)

Working at a Dunkin’ Donuts when I was 16, I got to experience for the first time (alongside another girl that needed rides to do these things) bailing someone out of jail and visiting a gentlemen’s club for a job interview. I learned how to say some bad words in Portuguese, and taught a coworker how to curl her eyelashes. There was a crazy girl that lived in the trailer park across the street who came in every night offering to tattoo people for free with her mom’s equipment. I had a MEGA crush on a 30-year-old shift manager who was a shy, sweet vegan guy.

Those were the days :)

I worked on a dairy farm, chucking hay up in the loft. There was a lot to enjoy, even if it was hot and sticky. I learned to drive a tractor. I found 1960’s era Playboy Magazines in the hay lofts. I learned how to be a calf boy. I found a cat and took it home. I drove the old calf truck around. I got hot and sticky with chaff all over me. I burned down 40 acres of hay. I felt like a more independent person, capable of doing things and of earning a paycheck. It was empowering in many ways, although I also felt like an idiot more than once, when I did really, really stupid things.

The solo trip to Europe I took between my junior and senior years of HS. Paid for in full by my part time and summer jobs.

First real job was for a book keeper. The best memories was walking into a bar one eveving after work with my colleagues and having a beer. (The worst memories had been a couple of hours earlier when I had been held up at gun point and someone shot at me point blank.)

Going to the local gunshows with a huge wad of cash and buying the neatest looking antique guns I could find and then learning about their history afterwards.

Oh, and playing hockey at work was fun. And speaking in a British accent to customers.

When no one came into our office, the phones stopped ringing, and there was nothing to do. I was very content to read whatever I wanted… while getting paid for it.

My first job, in high school, was at Little Caesar’s Pizza. I only worked a few short shifts a week, but I had so much fun at that place. Other than the two managers, all the employees were kids from my high school, including my two best friends. We all did a good job there, but we managed to have plenty of fun, too. One of the managers was more relaxed than the other, and when she was alone with us she’d let us make a pizza to share or throw in an extra order of bread sticks. Sometimes when it was slow, we’d take these big rolling metal carts out behind the shop and push each other around or have races. I worked there for about a year and a half before I went off to college. I don’t even remember how much I made, but I’m sure it wasn’t much!

There were two things I learned that were valuable. First, I remember being shocked at the cost of making food vs. the price charged to customers. An order of bread sticks cost less than 20 cents to make, but people paid about three dollars for them. I also remember being really impressed with my boss one night. She was the stricter manager, but when a customer came in angry over a mistake with her order and blamed “all the stupid kids working here,” our manager stuck up for us and refused to cave in to her demands. I’ve never forgotten how great it was that she did that. A year later, that customer ended up being my boss for a summer job at a deli and she was horrible to work with! I always thought it was funny she hired one of the stupid kids who supposedly messed up her pizza order, but I’m sure she didn’t remember me.

I got my first paycheck working at a Chinese fast food restaurant in the mall. I was about 16 years old at the time. Fish keeping was one of my hobbies as a kid, so I went out and bought myself a 20 gallon aquarium right away. It made me feel happy and independent, though it was only a summer job.

Rocking out to Henry Rollins while cleaning the theater between shows. Putting on midnight movies for ourselves with the old reels – we’d invite a few friends apiece, bring weed and 40s and some hammocks to string up between the rows of seats and watch stuff like the Goonies and Natural Born Killers. Being silly with coworkers: the manroot, the sukiyaki cheesesteak song, the Ringu video.

During summer vacation from my freshman year in college, I worked for an insurance company before computers were invented. All policies had to be entered by hand into enormous ledgers. I sat on a high stool dipping my pen into an inkwell and entered the names and numbers into the really big book. My book covered the state of Ohio. I learned the names of all the cities and towns and found the variety of names I ran into fascinating. I felt like a female Bob Cratchit.
It was mindless work. The most fun was the descriptions of very colorful weddings. I even had the honor of going to one Polish wedding. Wonderful! It was a different world from mine, so I didn’t talk about myself much.

I had a really rough time in school. When I started working though I met a large group of people who judged me for me. They became great friends and were a large reason I didn’t go crazy in school.

Just to be able to earn money that didn’t involve cutting grass. For better or worse ,it got me started doing a trade that I’m still involved in. And another that involved chain saws. We saw that one coming.

Buying new back-to-school clothes for my younger brothers & my sister. There were six of us kids & most of our clothes were second-hand. So when I went to work (at 14 passing for 16), I was very happy to be able to actually buy new back-to-school clothes for myself & my siblings!

I went to work at 16 and enjoyed being able to pay our bills at home so we wouldn’t have to ask my stepdad’s father to help us; my stepdad had abandoned my mom with their baby just as I was planning to leave home.

It was the first time I shopped for myself with no guilt and it was a joy to give my mother gifts, to give our family a few wonderful holidays with no bitching about costs to ruin the mood.

What I regret is the security of the money distracted me from bothering with little more than passing grades my last year of school and no longer caring if I went to a regular university or not.