Your first real job - what was it?

[jfb]

I was pretty entrepreneurial even as a kid. If there was someone that paid to have their lawn mowed in my small town of 700 I had the gig. I had flyers, promotions, the works. At school I stuffed cooler style lunch boxes one on top of the other in my locker and sold cold drinks and snacks from them in between classes. The school was shutting me down left and right. They eventually gave up. Apparently the kid who wanted a few bucks to score new music had more heart.

All that kid stuff aside my first real job was waiting tables. Where I am from you drove 40 or so minutes to get anywhere with a stop light so after school I would drive to Cape Girardeau, MO where I waited tables at a Pizza Hut. It was awesome. The tips added up quickly and pretty soon I was rolling in new albums. I was also the only guy that waited tables. So there I was stuck in the middle of an all female wait staff getting the all girl tables. It was a dangerous job, but someone had to do it.

Your first real job - what was it?

 

[]-[@n$0Ma☩!©]

My 1st "taxed" job was working for a land developer operating heavy equipment and maintaining subdivisions in south Louisiana. Operating an Excavator was one of my all-time-favorite gigs. It was a very demanding job - mentally and physically (lots of wrench turning) - but was a nice break from the previous years working for my Dad's oilfield business. THAT was hard and extremely risky work. Until you've been the guy to squeeze under a giant diesel engine (to arrive in a pool of oil and diesel) and then vacuum out the bilge with a pressure washer, you just haven't lived. And dirty jobs? Try scraping water tanks in the humid 100 degree heat (while the ship is on dry dock in the sun) and then coating them with boiling hot Compound H. Ugh...

Anyway... one day I got Poison Sumac in my eyes (and elsewhere). You can't sweat when you get that stuff or it spreads. The Office Manager (Bethany, soooo hot) left about the same time to have a child so the owner told me to come to work in my "Sunday Clothes" and work in the office. Yes.... the glorious air conditioned office. I never looked back.

EDIT: I made $3.45 and hour working for the land company. My rent (with utilities) was $300 a month and my car was dead so I got to work on my bike - until it was stolen. But I was debt free and my live-in girlfriend was horny so life was good.

 

[TGSCAN]

welding shop....
car cleaning at a Pontiac dealer
mechanic
Zellers warehouse

oh my

 

[vchizzle]

Hmmm. Worst experience ever. Living in the midwest, the job you could first get was detasseling corn - you only had to be maybe 13 years old? It paid REALLY good for the time. The work sucks. Had to be awake before it was light out. Everything's wet in the morning, prepare to get cut up walking thru the fields all day or wear long sleeves/pants and sweat your a$$ off when it warmed up. You better not MISS ONE! This was also my first exposure to ALLERGIES. I made it about 3 days. I my eyes were swollen, itchy - I couldn't breath by the last day. Never had allergies prior to this...worse yet, I've had them ever since. I'm fairly miserable for some amount of time every summer.

Wish I never would've done it.

 

[László]

When I was 15 I got a job as the assistant horseback riding instructor at a kids' summer camp in Northern Michigan.. What I didn't realize was that this job meant currying the horses, cleaning their hooves, saddling them, bridling them, being kicked by them whenever they were bitten by bugs or each other, riding at the tail end of the trail in case a kid fell, and finally, shoveling horse pucky into a wheelbarrow from each stall 2 x/day, and dumping it into a pile of more horse pucky.

I lost my passion for horseback riding fairly quickly that summer...

But I had tons of time to go swimming, chase girls, play sports, sail, and whatever other mischief I could find, and it was a lot of fun.

If there's anything cuter when you're a teenage guy than a 15 year old girl who's been out in the sun and playing sports all summer, please tell me what that is! Because I sure had a lot of fun that summer.

And there was an older counselor girl who taught me how to make out. Which, ok, was manna from heaven.

And for the entire 8 week summer (1965) I made the princely sum of $100 (yes, indeed, ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS for all that stinky work!), less what I bought at the camp store. I also got to keep the shovel. They spray painted it gold and gave it to me on the last night. LOL!

 

[Mikegarveyblues]

Making computer patch cables for the grand total of £70 for a 40 hour week. Still, when you're 17 you don't care too much!

 

[captdg]

Hans..What part of S. Louisana?

Mine was selling "Grit" newspapers..Never did get that mini-bike.

 

[]-[@n$0Ma☩!©]

Hans..What part of S. Louisana?

Drive south from Baton Rouge until your car gets stuck in the mud. Then get in your airboat and head south s'mo until the Cypress Knees are as tall as children. Then get out your pirogue and paddle until the gators get too bad to go any further. Say hello to my Pops when you get there.

 

[sergiodeblanc]

Fuddrucker's when I was sixteen, I became a vegetarian shortly thereafter.

 

[Seneca SS]

1970--worked on a dairy farm milking 125 cows---3:45 am to 9:00 pm long days--$75.00 a week----WOW

 

[cjmwrx]

Working as a stable hand in Buffalo Grove, Il. Would care for the horses, exercise them. Bush Hog the pastures, repair fences, etc... Greatest job I ever had. 15 years old.

 

[captdg]

Drive south from Baton Rouge until your car gets stuck in the mud. Then get in your airboat and head south s'mo until the Cypress Knees are as tall as children. Then get out your pirogue and paddle until the gators get too bad to go any further. Say hello to my Pops when you get there.

Sounds like LaPlace.. I worked there laying Seismic cable during a summer..Critters..Lotsa critters.. Currently I work outta Fourchon..Critters...lotsa critters.

 

[captdg]

Hmmm. Worst experience ever. Living in the midwest, the job you could first get was detasseling corn - you only had to be maybe 13 years old? It paid REALLY good for the time. The work sucks. Had to be awake before it was light out. Everything's wet in the morning, prepare to get cut up walking thru the fields all day or wear long sleeves/pants and sweat your a$$ off when it warmed up. You better not MISS ONE! This was also my first exposure to ALLERGIES. I made it about 3 days. I my eyes were swollen, itchy - I couldn't breath by the last day. Never had allergies prior to this...worse yet, I've had them ever since. I'm fairly miserable for some amount of time every summer.

Wish I never would've done it.

We had a deckhand from Indiana that would wear some shirt about dtassling corn.. said "Hard Work..Hard Cash" with a big ear of corn on it.. that was all he talked about..Therefore he was called "CornBoy" or Hey...Children of the Corn come see...

 

[vchizzle]

We had a deckhand from Indiana that would wear some shirt about dtassling corn.. said "Hard Work..Hard Cash" with a big ear of corn on it.. that was all he talked about..Therefore he was called "CornBoy" or Hey...Children of the Corn come see...

Ha! They should make uniform shirts for detasselers under 18 that say "Children Of The Corn" on them...that would be great.

 

[veinbuster]

Grease monkey on big trunks Sat & Sun morning
Short order cook Mon Wed Thurs after class
Bar band Fri Sat night

First fulltime job was as a carny - different town every week. Five days off May-Oct but got a nice cash bonus for lasting the season.

 

[jfb]

Very intrigued by the range of stuff I have read so far. Some seriously interesting people here. Who else wants to share?!

 

[markie]

I went to work in a machine shop for 20 hours a week during the summers @ the age of 12. I had a production job putting fasteners together for steel siding. It really sucked, but I got 75 cents an hour tax free. They let me start running a manual Lathe (making tools for the Forging Industry) when I was 16, plus bumped me up to 30 hours a week. Went full time as soon as I graduated High School & eventually learned how to be a Toolmaker. Been doing the same sh*t my entire life, save for a 20 month stint in the Oil Patch.

 

[WEDGE]

13 years old picking tobacco......nothing sucks as hard as picking tobacco. Bent over in a HOT field under stinky nets, tobacco tar sticking everywhere on you, dragging bins of leaves to the end of the aisles......HATED IT

Odd thing is now I love cigars and CT wrappers are the best in the world.....I didnt respect then that I was dragging such tasty leaves!

 

[AP515]

My Dad owned a mechanics garage in the middle of nowhere Az. I was about 8 years old and was changing tires and fixing flats. Pay was.... well... dinner. As I got older I worked there every day after football and basketball practice until dark. During the high school years I added working as a janitor at the high school. That was the first work I did for money. In summers I would work the garage, though I did a few weeks chopping cotton one summer. Hot, dusty, and $1.65 an hour. It was miserable. My first job in college was mopping up the blood in the operating rooms of a hospital after surgery and emptying the hazardous waste (used needles) from the offices dumping them in the hazardous waste pick up bins (I was very careful). Then I worked my way through college delivering documents for law firms. 200 miles a day on my Toyota Corolla but it paid the bills. 12 years getting through college working days and going to school nights. After that I've been on easy street!

 

[AaeCee]

They were all pretty 'real'

Bicycle mechanic/salesman
Ski shop dude
Tennis Instructor (I was 21, teaching the housewife crowd while their husbands were at work.....that was a most memorable stint)
Investment Wealth Advisor (hey, had to eventually get serious)