What was your first job?

First paying job was cutting grass and feeding pets for people who were out of town in the summers.

First decent money came working for my parents business in Electronics manufacturing during the summers.

First full time job working for an automotive design company in England and I've parlayed that from one position to another and have worked full time in the auto industry since the day I left collage and will probably stay here until the day I retire.

First was a dishwasher at a local restaurant at 14. Then one day bagging groceries. First full time was turning wrenches at a small four bay garage.

johnnie wrote:

Jumper K. Balls wrote: Taco Bell 1988. Back when they still sourced their ground beef and cheese locally. Nothing was pre-made. I had to cut the tortillas into wedges and fry them to make the chips, cook 25lb batches of ground beef and 50lb batches of beans from whole dried pintos. I remember the food being pretty good. Then corporate mandated the freeze dried/boil in bag stuff and everything went to crap. Customers stopped coming in and the store was closed. I wound up as the night cleanup guy at another taco bell across town.

The youngsters at my current job think I'm crazy when I tell them how close-to-homemade Taco Bell used to be. We shredded cheese off the block, diced the tomatoes, and shredded the lettuce, too. My third high school job.

That just gave me a flashback to the wall mounted tomato destroyer

I remember having to use a giant, like 36" long potato masher to cook the beef. I took it when the place closed and had it for years after. I called it the "intergalactic potato masher" in reference to a GWAR song.

I was a valet for the Falmouth to Edgartown ferry on Cape Cod, with occasional shifts on the boat as well. For a first job, it was pretty decent overall.

Man you guys had some good first jobs.

Mine was separating meat that was like a day past the toss date from the bone and dyeing it blue and filling up 55 gallon drums with the waste and the kurf from the butchers band saws. Learned real quick how to sharpen a knife and show vaparub up my nose.

I was 10 when I started working at a golf course. Stocked golf stuff, soda and beer. Clean/washed Golf carts. Did a lot of tire repair for the carts. Some ran on gas so I got to drive it to the other side of the golf course from the clubhouse to pump gas into the carts. Cleaned bathrooms, did a lot of sweeping daily. Vacuumed after course closed. Put all the golf carts away underneath the clubhouse. I drove the actual pick up truck to the dump to throw out the days trash. The amount of beer cans drunk on the golf course by those playing was INSANE. I did that for 4 years before moving out of state.

mtn wrote: Not counting yard/snow work, my first job was a Caddie at 13. Stuck with that until I graduated college, and even went back a few weekends while working my first "real" job. I started making $25 a round, ended the summer with $1,000. Big money for a 13 year old. By the time I finished I was making $120 a round. There was at least one summer I made over $10,000, cash. Great job.

I caddied as well. This was in the mid 80's and I wasn't making that kind of money, but $25 for a round was normal, $100 wasn't unheard of. Not bad for 5 hours work.

Paper boy..

Then I worked in the kitchen of an old folks home.

Started at CarMax at 18, I went on to hold 6 different jobs in 4 different departments and 2 states. After almost 10 years of spending 95% of my day outside I hung up the hat for a cushy desk job for an online car buying service.

i worked at a mini-golf course that had go karts. The best part was telling the customers that we couldnt let them ride the go karts in the rain, then proceeding to go out and get in a go kart and drift it around the track while they watched in disappointment

Started at age 14 at the Baskin-Robbins at Cumberland Mall in Smyrna, GA. Loverboy was on the radio and the Gold Mine arcade was on the second floor. Armour Attack took all of my wages.

Edit: The teen movie I can most identify with is Fast Times at Ridgemont High. The early eighties at Campbell High School and working at the mall might as well have been the basis for that movie. The only thing we were missing was the coast for surfing.

Mowing lawns and shoveling snow. Then caddying.

WildScotsRacing wrote: First real paycheck paying gig? I was 16, February and March, 1986: Braum's Ice Cream shop at 71st and Mingo, Tulsa. It was miserable. After gritting my teeth for two months, I finally ditched it on a Friday night to go to a Dokken/Queensryche concert with my friends That job sucked so much that being bad felt really good.

You made a wise decision in ditching that crappy job to see see Dokken and Queensryche in their prime.

A host at Coco's Restaurant. 22 years ago and I still remember "Thank you for calling coco's bakery and restaurant on the boulevard this is The Hoff speaking. Have you ordered your fresh strawberry pie yet?"

At 15 I worked for Sporty's mail order catalog company packaging orders to ship to customers.

I worked there for about a year before I quit to make $2 more per hour as a janitor/kitchen worker at a nursing home

Pushed carts. Moved to the bakery after two years.

Newspaper delivery boy from 8-16 years old. I had 100+ customers and worked six days a week year round in cold, snow, hurricanes, heat and humidity. (But I didn't walk to school). That was the late fifties through the mid-sixties. Made a ton of tax-free cash doing that.

My first job with deductions taken out of my earnings was as a machine shop go-fer the summer I turned 16. I paid Social Security tax for the next 48 years. Now you youngsters are helping to fund my retirement with your SS contributions. Thank you very much.

Sorry, this is a long one. Hopefully it's entertaining.

My first job was being a paperboy, at around age 10. My neighbor was moving away, and needed someone to take over his route. A few of my friends had routes, and seeing them make money made me want to do the same, so I offered to take over. It was decent, and after the McMansion yuppie neighborhood went up across the street, I had so many houses that they split my route in half! Did that for about 5 years. Learned early how terrible yuppies were after many of them wouldn't pay me for the paper, like it was above them or something.

After that, I worked for a local grocery store that catered to those same yuppies throughout high school and into college. That place was NUTS. A family owned and ran the place and it's sister store. The guy that owned it had three sons: two were responsible enough to run a store, and one would just creep on the teenage girls all day. The owner remarried a younger woman, and she would creep on all the teenage guys (like me) and buy us lunch.

I saw some really, really crazy E36 M3 there!

One of the guys that I knew was dealing pot right out of the deli! They had bagel and bread bins on one side of the counter that fill from the rear. People would come up and ask for the "extra special bagels" and he would drop a baggie off in the bin. Strangely, that didn't get him fired; the giant phallus-shaped meat loaf he made a few months later was what did him in.

Another time, another deli worker who was a recent hire was having a tough day, and he was bickering with a girl that worked at the cheese and gourmet counter all day. As soon as the store closed, he hopped the deli counter and Superman-punched her right in the face over the cheese case! She brawled with him until a bunch of people pulled him off and when the cops came, he started fighting THEM!

I also learned there how terrible and insane the general public can be. People would try and scam us by faking a fall in the store. One time, I saw a woman drop a handful of grapes on the ground, step on them, and "slip" on them. I stood there and watched the whole thing. She tried to sue, and I had to get interviewed by a lawyer.

Then, there was the "crazy milk lady". This woman who looked like Steve Perry from the band Journey on a meth binge insisted that we were keeping the freshest milk out back and away from her weird little hands. She would often storm the back room on her quest to find fresher milk, ripping apart our dairy chest in her insanity. The reality is that we went through so much milk that we barely had any old stock. We also religiously rotated out the old stock, and it was only a few days older than the "new" stock. We had a similar "crazy egg lady", too. Reminded me of the guy testing all the eggs in the movie Clerks, because she would take a bunch of egg cartons and mix and match for the "perfect" dozen.

The best one was when an old woman and an even older woman came in and started complaining about EVERYTHING. They were going through every department like a tornado, picking stuff up, yelling about it, and throwing it. Finally, they get to the registers and began complaining about the line. The younger one (about 70 maybe) started screaming and telling everyone off and DROPPED DEAD ON THE SPOT!!! Then, the older one collapsed too!!! We had to close the store early that day. It was like the Hand of God dope slapped the both of them.

I have so many more stories about that place.

Depends on what you mean as first job.

First income producing activity was cutting grass before I was 12. We got $2-5 per yard.

At 12-14, I worked at my aunt and uncle's country store near Waynesboro, Ga. I was their godson and the kid they never had. I pumped gas, stocked shelves, refilled the drink boxes, picked up the empty drink bottles, and drove my aunt and uncle around on Sunday when they were drunk (the only day the store didn't open). I made $20/week and all the snacks I wanted. I would have a nice stash by the end of the summer.
At 15 I started working the concessions stand at one of the local theaters. Made $100/hr and got free soda and popcorn.

First full time real job after college, I was a research entomologist for an agricultural chemical company, knocking down a whopping $15,228/yr in 1977. House payment was $352.55/mo.

Farm kid, so I was on a tractor by the time I was 8 or 9. I didn't get steady pay, but I'd get ~$20 when we went to town about once a month. That probably doesn't count as a job though.

I had a lawn mowing business from age 14-18, $20 a yard, local family friends, and, church members were my clients. Also picked and hauled table grapes to cold storage during the summers, got $1 a box, and boxes were about 20 lbs of grapes. When I wasn't mowing yards or picking grapes, I was either mowing hay, working cattle, or doing something for Grandpa in his machine shop. Machine shop duties were usually remedial tasks, like deburring parts, clean out chips, emptying the chip spinner, and general gopher duties.

I don't think I had a "real job" that I had to fill out a W4 for until I was a staff councilor at the Arkansas 4-H Center between sophomore and Jr. year of college. That was a fun summer, coordinating and facilitating summer camps, ropes course, climbing walls, canoeing, etc. The pay was crap, but I got a free place to live, a food allowance, and 24/7 access to the cafeteria.

Starting at age 12 I tossed hay bales for local farmers.

First full time gig was as a courtesy clerk at a locally owned supermarket right out of High School. Spent the first few months showing them my amazing work ethic in an attempt to not push carts in the dry southern Oregon summers. That didn't work, so I made a game out of seeing how much I could dick off and not get fired. It's the only place I've ever worked where the whole work gang would show up to party after working the late shift.

Pretty much exactly how the year after HS is supposed to be done, I think. I don't even remember what all I was supposed to do at that place, I just remember all of the gorgeous girls that came through my life for that year or two.

I think I only stuck around there for 10-12 months. I managed to weasel my way into a position at the guitar shop across the street doing sales and electronic's repair. Way less work for way more money and, since my roommate was still working at "Sherm's", I still partied with the old crew.

Horrible job, but good god-damn memories.

I changed oil and hated it. Occasionally I got to mount & balance tyres, which was ok. Most of the people I worked with were ingrates who would literally drive any women who ventured into our shop away with catcalls or offensive remarks, I was covered in a sheen of oil every day, and it paid jack squat. I have no "good memories" from that job. It wasn't a "learning experience" or "character building." I hope that place burns to the ground if it hasn't already.

Second "day job" type job (aside from doing summer fieldwork & research assistant positions as I was in uni by then) was driving full-size school buses around. I loved that one. Nothing teaches you more about people than interacting with their kids, 72-at-a-time. Plus you could totally drift the buses around corners & roundabouts if there was just a little bit of snow on the ground. Unfortunately it also paid jack squat.

First job was a part-time deal working at the concession stand at the neighborhood pool. The next summer myself and across the street friend worked taking care of the grounds of the swim and racquet club. Lots and lots of mowing and learning how to maintain and keep crappy mowers running. If I never drive a Power King tractor again I won't be unhappy. Spent a lot of hours mowing, weed whacking and picking up trash. That was a good job for a 15 year old and we really had no adult supervision, we just turned in our time sheets and gas receipts. We sold all the cans and bottles we collected to the recycler for extra cash. The next year I worked at a TCBY store during the school year. I got some money each week for an allowance that worked out to $2/day for lunch. I had to work for gas money and whatever else I wanted to buy other than clothes. I had a summer job the next two summers at a bicycle rental shop at a swanky resort area far from home. Spent two summers living with 2-4 other workers. I pulled in $4.00/hr at that one. Thankfully rent was cheap and some of the room mates were over 21. Good times were had. Following that there was a string of sucky jobs that aren't worth mentioning.

My first real full-time no E36 M3 job was the Navy which I joined when I was 19.

12 years old and playing Pee-wee football in garage sale pads. The coach stopped my mom after practice and told her that the old helmet I had was borderline dangerous to play in. When we got home my parents discussed it and decided that if I wanted a new one I'd have to pay for half of it. I got a job picking green peppers. Paid by the bushel. I worked the whole rest of the picking season after school and made about $15 more than my half of the helmet.
I probably still have some latent anger about this.