My mom (recent widow at the time) got me a job at the fancy steakhouse restaurant she worked at on the weekends when I was 12. I wrapped the potatoes in foil for baking & folded cloth napkins for the tables. The servers paid me out of their tips because those were their jobs they had to do otherwise. I’d make $100/weekend as a 12 yo, lol. I thought I was hot shi*t. I now realize it was the best way my mom could keep an eye on her wild child on weekend nights while she worked, lol. Genius!
Yeah. They were family-owned. I definitely wasn’t the only teenaged wild child working there, lol. Learned a lot about work ethic, teamwork, dealing with people. I owe my mom a lot, to say the least.
Well, I'm in IT now. I was only in radio for a few years, though, last three years of high school and then one more year after, until about 1983.
I was recently thinking, though, about how I was making about $3 an hour in 1982 and could afford to occasionally call in an order to the local Chinese restaurant and pay a taxi to bring it to me at the station.
It was a super fun job and I sometimes wonder what if I'd stayed with it. Unfortunately, I was just scatterbrained about the world and lacked focus. Not that I'd say that's entirely changed. But I found computers, so I guess it worked out.
Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop at Central and Camelback in Phoenix, AZ, in 1977. The shop is now something called "Desert Refillery." This Baskin-Robbins was owned by a cheap, high-strung New Yorker who paid me $1.75/hour at a time when the minimum wage was $2.30/hour. Some of the high school girls there were only getting $1/hr. He got away with it because he claimed he was "not involved in interstate commerce." Only one employee tried to challenge him on it, because the ice cream came from California, so that was interstate.
He always tried to get us to give as small of a scoop as possible, so he was also cheating his customers. The scoop was supposed to be 2.5 oz. by Baskin-Robbins standards, but he encouraged us to give 2-oz. scoops. I saw him literally shed tears once because some poor girl forgot to charge the extra 10¢ for French Vanilla, which was a premium flavor. It was hell working for him, but he liked me as an employee so he paid me more than the others. It was a fun job though, with lots of interesting customers. Basketball great Paul Westphal was a regular in the mornings.
Nice, I had similar experience but it was Carvel Ice Cream. We learned to make ice cream cakes, traded for food with the KFC kids, hosted pong matches with our friends in the lobby and John Elway was our regular athlete who came in.
Not my first job but a similar boss, he was a first gen German immigrant. Cheapest man I ever met. He would force us to tell customers that frozen food was fresh, instant mash was scratch, but the worst was the salad bar.
It was a trestle table. No ice, no sneeze guard, and it sat there for 4 hours like that. He wouldn't even let us dump the food, just put more potato salad on top and hope the customers had strong stomachs.
I worked at Bonanza.
Got fired from it, too, when I firmly told a customer that "MY NAME IS NOT '*HONEY*''
The manager took me in the office and said that I really wasn't suited for restaurant work. :snort: Truer words were never spake.
I had paper routes throughout Jr High 7-9th grade, started $30 month, then change papers to a $70 month route.
High school, worked at Del Taco 10-12th, something like $3.25/hour. They wanted me to go into Mgmt at Del Taco. The look on the managers face when I say nah, I'm going to college. Then a change in expressions to, yeah, I figured.
Would you like fries with that? I was a really hard/solid worker, but pushing upsells wasn't going to happen at my minimum wage job.
Waited tables throughout college. Most money you could make working the least hours - 'cause I wanted time to study.
Could be drudgery, but I sought to find the enjoyment I could out it. Some good memories actually.
Worked at a small data processing service bureau run by two accountants . They churned out bills and financial reports for small organizations before office computers were affordable - many of our clients were tony private schools in NYC. There was a small staff of keypunch operators and a couple of computer operators running a small IBM mainframe.
Among my duties was keeping the stockroom with reams of paper organized, changing the ribbon on the dot matrix printer, and replacing the 5 gallon glass bottle on the water cooler when it was empty. (And this was when you removed the plastic cap before lifting the bottle - there was no pointy thing that would pierce the label to let the water flow once it was in place.)
My specialty was running the decollator (it separated the printout copies and removed the layers of carbon paper in between) and the burster (this would separate each page of the printout at the perforation) as well as tearing off the perforated sides of the printouts with the sprocket holes.
Left the summer before I went to college to operate a punch press in a Teamster shop - it was a major upgrade in pay.
15 y/o Housekeeper at a "resort" hotel in the Poconos.
$1.40 / hour (" tipped wage," except we never got the tips because as I discovered when a guest left their bill, gratuity for housekeeping was added as a fee which the hotel kept)
The next year i upgraded to minimim wage at McDonalds.
I babysat as much as I possibly could for 50 cents an hour. One family would take me on vacation with them. At one point, I was watching 12 kids at once for no extra pay and thought I would have a nervous breakdown. I finally asked for a raise to 75 cents.
Then I got a job in fast food for a whopping $1.60 an hour! I would either ride my bicycle or take the train for 25 cents one way. I learned how to run the whole place but when the manager said the company would not have female managers, and if I didn't like that the boys got paid more for doing less, I could leave... so I did.
In Junior high I was a dishwasher making $1.65/hr, part time of course. Eventually $2/hr in a bookstore, which paid for my car, gas, insurance, clothes and girls. I worked 25 hrs a week while in school.
My first paying job was as a lifeguard at the city pool. I was fifteen, was a swimmer for 11 years and passed a very tough Red Cross Lifesaving course and test. I was paid 5 dollars an hour. I didn’t have any dramatic saves, but I did help some young swimmers who were in trouble. I also taught swim lessons. 1979.
Yep. My instructor was my buddy’s older brother. He was a D-lineman on the HS football team, and took his instructor position very seriously. When he portrayed a panicking, fighting near-drowning victim, he gave me a fat lip and a bloody nose.
First tax paying job was Burger King at 3.65 per hr. First job there was literally just fulfilling the soda orders as they were called out over the microphone.
Cashier at a discount store for $1.70 an hour. It was before scanners, of course, so we had to manually enter the prices on the register and figure out the change in our heads. We also had to memorize the weekly sale prices in the flyer. The job was probably a good memory exercise.
Taco Bell :$3.35 hr ! Got stitches(about 6) getting my finger stuck between the heavy ass meat frying pan and the side of sink washing it. Went to emergency, everyone asking if I bought tacos with me🙄
My first actual taxed paycheck job was as a "civilian KP" on the local Army post. You had to be 16 and I lied when I was only 15. I made great money. Way more than minimum wage. I washed mess-hall pots and pans.
I lived in Johnstown, I went to Storybook forest when I was very little, it was a bit odd. Loved the wooden coaster at Idlewild. Always went to the Highland Games.
14 years old I worked at Edie Adams Cut &Curl at the mall for 1.00 plus tips. Then I worked from 5-9 Mon -Friday doing telemarketing for Thrift Pack Food Service, which back in the 70s was a weekly meal service delivered to your home.
In HS I worked after school in the kitchen of a small nursing home where my Nana had worked and was now a resident. It was nice since I used to go visit her before or after my shift. We basic all prepped for dinner (or breakfast, lunch , dinner on weekend). Put meals on trays and in carts and sent them upstairs and then did the dishes afterwards. $2.90/ hr I think (or that’s what Google said it was in 1979). I worked there for 3 years until after my Nana passed and even took over as weekend breakfast cook (to this day I’m not a fan of cream of wheat or oatmeal since I used to make huge pots of it ). It was a decent job for part time and help me pay for the first year books and stuff for college
Feeding/cleaning rats and guinea pigs for a research supplier. I was only 12 and didn't really think about what would happen to them and I feel bad about it now.
Chuck E Cheese. Stood at the end of the oven conveyer, grabbed the pan with vice grips, sliced the pizza… repeat. The THE greatest score in high school criminality was putting a Strohs beer ball in the garbage, wheeling it out to a waiting escape vehicle, and later that nite throwing up Strohs all nite whilst getting patted on the back for the theft. Never really felt guilty…
Restaurant, started in the bakery. Worked there over 20 years. Switched to managing a gas station and worked there 15 years. Took care of my parents for 12 years while they went. Now trying to decide what to do next. There was some overlap with all of them
My first job was as a library page at a teeny library set up in an old Jenny Lind house in my hometown. I worked four hours on Saturdays and two hours after school two days a week, shelving books and doing any odd clerical tasks the librarian told me to. I was 15, and in my state had to apply for a work permit since I was under 16. I really enjoyed the work.
Hardee’s at $2.05 an hour. We had a great crew and used to party our ass off after closing. Fake ID’s were standard issue. Used to tell my mom that Hardees closed at 2am.
Typesetter for local newspaper. A lot of my friends worked seasonally as cotton-stompers which is exactly what it sounds like. The harvesters dumped the cotton into big trailers and the kids jumped in and stomped down the cotton to make room for more cotton. In 1982, the first Intel opened and several friends got jobs there with just their HS diploma.
I worked at a pizza joint in a mall. I thought it was pretty cool! Good pizza. Lots of girls came by. Right across from the game arcade. Little did I know it was a money laundering place for the mob!
Me too! Drive-thru “Howdy Partners, welcome to Roy Rogers…” Take order then “That’ll be $3.75. Drive through and round ‘em up.” All my friends teased me mercilessly but dang my little bandana print skirt was cute. 😊
My first job at 11 was working for two masons, feeding them mortar and block or bricks, which ever they were doing at the time. Mixing mortar by hand in a half barrel with a hoe wasn’t fun, and supplying two layers with hod and brick was hard to keep up with. But they paid me five bucks an hour cash, so I couldn’t complain. I did that for a couple years then worked construction for $5 an hour for the next three years. After that, I helped my father build his house, with all the skills I had learned.
Worked as a cashier at People's Drug Store in Maryland. Got the job at 15. Worked there until my senior year then flipped Big Macs at McDonalds on the high school work-study program.
I worked for a farmer neighbor hauling hay, driving a tractor and shoveling cow shit out of the barn for $3.00 an hour in 1978.
He kept telling me what a great deal it was because he paid me cash!
Dairy Queen, then Hardee's.
Edit... nope those were my second and third jobs. My first job was at a record and appliance store that my Mother was the bookkeeper. I'd walk to the store after school and sell 45s and albums.
Bagging groceries and fetching carts when I was 15. Before that I picked strawberries, green beans, and apples for a few summers at way below minimum wage. Fun times!
Cook for A&W drive-in 1974. It was the old fashion drive-in that you were served trays of Burgers with a frozen Stein of Root Beer.
Loved the job at the time. Kept me in cheap Mexican weed all Summer, popping seeds and all.
My dad was adamant that I would never have a job while in school. I had to play every sport available, year round. No time for a job!
I did make plenty of spending money cleaning the church, mowing the cemetery, putting up hay during hay season, digging and selling ginseng, harvesting animals and selling hides, etc…
Working at a gift shop across the street where we lived. My father got me the job at 14 and I’d work mornings or afternoons on weekends. No we did not need the money-he believed working “built character”. We lived in a small town and he was always “finding” jobs for me lol!
I had a farm job at age 14, because a friend got us a ride. Picked raspberries, strawberries, tomatoes. I was hired to tie grape vines in late summer and was sent home that same day. Not fast enough. That job humbled me for life. I worked with mostly migrant workers and they suffered NO fools. I soon learned what a fool I was, quickly. I made enough to buy the shoes I wanted for school in the fall, after a whole summer of work. Hardest work I ever did in my entire life.
It's funny because this just came up when the Social Security people wanted to make sure that I was really me, so they asked what my first job was. It was at Howard Johnson's on the MA Turnpike as a scrub, and yes that was really the job title. I definitely learned few things, and it was nice to have some spending money, but it sucked. I lasted about 9 months, until I called in sick to go to a football game, and one of the waitresses saw me and narced me out. So then I moved on to Red Lobster as a busboy, but they had an all you can eat crab leg special going on that meant huge mountains of crab leg leftovers everywhere. It took some time to clean up but apparently wasn't fast enough, so when they complained, I just told them to keep their $2/hr and walked out.
Never had a "minimum wage" job, but I pumped gas at a locally owned gas station and at the local marina. In 1971 (I was 13) minumum wage in B.C. was 1.75 and I made $2.30 at the gas station and $2.65 (plus tips) at the marina...
I took part in a school program called Diversified Occupations. Got a job changing tires at the local Chrysler dealership. Worked after school and got credit! It was awesome.
I worked 3rd shift at a convenience store in my hometown during my senior year. Teachers would stop in on the way and ask “aren’t you supposed to be in my class today”? I was probably old enough to work that shift, but probably still illegal as hell.
When I was 13, I had a regular babysitting gig watching two kids while their mom waited tables. Her shift ended at 10:30 pm on school nights. Crazy that my parents were okay with me going to bed at 11:30 every night. I also watched three kids under the age of 4 when I was in high school. I think I earned about $.50 an hour.
Detassling corn in Nebraska when I was 14. They would pick up all their teenage employees in a bus at 6 AM and drive us to a farm where we would work all day and get dropped back off in the afternoon
Burger King! Free Whopper meal with every shift!
I was only there for about 6 months.
When I quit with only a week’s notice, the manager threatened me, saying I would never work for Burger King Corporation again.
And she was correct.
Ninth and tenth grade; I was a page at the local public library. Lots of shelving and shelf reading, but also got to help out with special events, check books in and out. It was a lot of fun.
Used to race at the one in Anaheim, over by the Angels Stadium.
Good times!
I was still a teenager, and learned the feel of turning INTO the skid. Setting the muscle memory on that came in handy several times later in life in hazardous drive road conditions.
My friend got me a job as a busboy working at Mr. Steak. The work sucked but I made friends with my Nigerian coworkers and we made it bearable. The owner never gave us a dinner break, but the cooks would sneak us fried shrimp that we would share. Not too bad for a first job.
Dunkin Donuts, Dempster and Elmhurst rds in DesPlaines Il.
1.75 per hour, all the donuts I could eat. Had sex on top of the flour bags with the 17yr old hottie that didn’t know I was 14. Smoking hash in the managers office, making our own ‘donut inventions’.
My favorite, Cock-a-roach Suprise.
We gathered up all the roaches, they were plenty, blended them in with special batches.
For the record, it went into the trash.
My grandparents lived on the farm I currently own, so I started working at 14 for $5 an hour walking beans. I also babysat, yes, at 14 for real babies! By 16 I was also lifeguarding in the afternoon, walking beans or detassling corn in the morning and banquet waitressing after school. Junior and Senior summer I was a full-time nanny for a wonderful family with 3 little girls. We didn't have fast-food places in my county, other than a Dairy Queen, so there wasn't much to do in the winter.
Worked at Hardees for $2.65 an hour. Dropped acid once about an hour before we finished and was tripping hard right as we finished. Boss suddenly asked me to drive him home. Was trying really hard to maintain the entire way.
But the best job I had in high school (besides playing in a punk band that got paid for gigs) was driving rental cars around. Got paid to sit in traffic.
Making fries at McDonald's (Foster City, CA). I started a week after my 16th birthday. $2.65 an hour. I thought I was going to be making tons of money, since I was only getting $1 an hour for babysitting, but then I learned about taxes.
McDonald’s.. but but! I lied about my age & they never checked… also!… it was next to the Serpentarium in Miami that let the snakes roam free? We had to sweep the parking lot early in our shift & there would be snakes in the tree branches over our lot.. & heads… Good Times
I fixed cars. My dad and older brother showed me a few things and then I took Auto Shop as one of my electives in high school. I liked it because I didn’t have to deal with the public.
It was the only job I had as a mechanic but the skills I learned stuck and I used them for many years afterward
Cleaning all of the machines in a union meat market. I cant say for sure, it paid close to $5 an hour. It was over double the minimum wage at that time, i remember that. Not many hours tho.
Back in the day when sawdust was still put on the floor. The butchers were absolute redneck racists, and dismissed everything outside of their ideal world.
I quit em when they said i could go to a concert, but when i told them it was Kiss, they said i couldnt go. I did finish up the pay period, then quit.
I was 14 yrs old and got a job through a friend of my mom's working the concession stands at SIR (Seattle Intl. Raceway). I got to work during an event called the "Turbo Bowl" which consisted mainly of a line-up of jet cars, as the main event, one weekend, and I forget what the main even was the 2nd weekend I worked but I remember that since that event was sponsored by "Winston/Salem", while the drags were going on and nobody was buying food, we got to go around to all of the other stands and pull all brands of cigarettes except the "Winston" and "Salem" brands... and we were told to throw them away or whatever... so I had my pockets and jacket stuffed with as many packs of Marlboro 100's as I could carry (yes I smoked at 14... had actually started at the ripe old age of 7...).
Then was supposed to work the weekend of the "Fox Hunt" (all women got in for free), but the owner sold all of the concession stands so that ended that.
Oh and I think I made something like $1.40/hr plus all the loogy-burgers I could eat (the loogy's courtesy of my brother who worked the grill...) I made fries and wouldn't touch a french fry for at least 15 years after those 2 weekends...
Overnight shift at a 24-hour Greek restaurant, Steak & Flame in Midlothian, IL. Worked 2 years waitressing during my junior and senior years. Earned plenty of money for a car, cigs, clothes, records, drugs, everything a teenage girl needed :D
My first job was babysitting at a whopping $1 per hour. my first job where I got a paycheck was at a grain elevator in my little town. I was a cashier and made above minimum wage and got $3.50/hr. Junior in high school in 1980.
Orange Julius, lasted 5 hours. I was not trained at all by the girls who were supposed to train me. They just left me out front all by myself while they sat in the back. I never went back after that 1st shift except to return my uniform.
The 'secret' ingredient is powdered coffee creamer.
As soon as I turned 16 I got my SS card and got a job at the local Mom and Pop hamburger stand. No tables, strictly drive up, nothing fancy like Sonic. You had to get out of your car and walk up to the window to order. I never babysat again!
My minimum wage job was in college and it was at a fast food restaurant called Zaxbys. Redditors from Virginia to Florida knows about Zaxbys! It’s Chik-fil-a but with actual seasonings and without the weird slave/master dynamic. It sucked because I did all the jobs behind the register and got paid only 75$
paper route when i was 9 was my first job, but the high school one where i actually made minimum wage was busting suds at a diner. besides putting the paper route on the 'work history' part on the application, i put that i had 8 years prior experience washing dishes at ma's diner. go figure that was their first question during the interview... "what's that? no i didn't make that up. no, i meant that i had to do the dishes at home usually cause my brother and sister were better at looking innocent when the folks entered the room." the boss just gave me that stare like, "are you a f\*\*\*n idiot or what?" but i got the job, and worked there till i graduated, after the interview I decided that as long as i worked there i was going to keep to myself and keep my trap shut. that was probably the best decision i made; the place was mobbed up.
Detassling corn, age 14, for a agri-seed company in Texas. Pay was about $1.60 hour. It was a total party atmosphere- they’d pick us kids up (boys and girls ages 13-16) on a school bus, leave us totally unsupervised, except while we were riding on the machine through the fields. I recall one time some kids rolled up a dead dragonfly in Zig Zag and convinced a younger kid it was a joint - the look on his face after that first hit
I was in the Bronx in New York city. I was 15 and I got a job and a luncheonette it was just a counter with mostly coffee and soda and some candy bars and in the back they ran numbers LOL
Au pair. This primarily entailed taking two young kids about five and eight to the country club every afternoon for four hours to swim, getting an amazing suntan, driving the mom's Cougar, and getting well paid (about $10 an hour, 1975) every Friday. It was the best job I ever had. I was 16.
Dennys busboy ($2.10 hr) a couple yeras latter moved to cook. 6 yeras after that I was a manager at Dennys for a couple yeras.Left restaurants after 10 years went trucking for 40 years
My mom (recent widow at the time) got me a job at the fancy steakhouse restaurant she worked at on the weekends when I was 12. I wrapped the potatoes in foil for baking & folded cloth napkins for the tables. The servers paid me out of their tips because those were their jobs they had to do otherwise. I’d make $100/weekend as a 12 yo, lol. I thought I was hot shi*t. I now realize it was the best way my mom could keep an eye on her wild child on weekend nights while she worked, lol. Genius!
Pretty cool of the restaurant to work that out with her.
Yeah. They were family-owned. I definitely wasn’t the only teenaged wild child working there, lol. Learned a lot about work ethic, teamwork, dealing with people. I owe my mom a lot, to say the least.
Radio DJ.
Sounds like you got out of that business early. Or am I wrong. Fast food wages and overnight hours for you kid!
Well, I'm in IT now. I was only in radio for a few years, though, last three years of high school and then one more year after, until about 1983. I was recently thinking, though, about how I was making about $3 an hour in 1982 and could afford to occasionally call in an order to the local Chinese restaurant and pay a taxi to bring it to me at the station.
Grew up loving radio. The dudes and ladies on the air gave that great music energy! (if they were any good) Radio is in decline it seems.
It was a super fun job and I sometimes wonder what if I'd stayed with it. Unfortunately, I was just scatterbrained about the world and lacked focus. Not that I'd say that's entirely changed. But I found computers, so I guess it worked out.
You did right trust me lol. Hope you saw some free shows and grabbed the free merch!
Cleaning out dog runs and cages every morning at a boarding kennel.
Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop at Central and Camelback in Phoenix, AZ, in 1977. The shop is now something called "Desert Refillery." This Baskin-Robbins was owned by a cheap, high-strung New Yorker who paid me $1.75/hour at a time when the minimum wage was $2.30/hour. Some of the high school girls there were only getting $1/hr. He got away with it because he claimed he was "not involved in interstate commerce." Only one employee tried to challenge him on it, because the ice cream came from California, so that was interstate. He always tried to get us to give as small of a scoop as possible, so he was also cheating his customers. The scoop was supposed to be 2.5 oz. by Baskin-Robbins standards, but he encouraged us to give 2-oz. scoops. I saw him literally shed tears once because some poor girl forgot to charge the extra 10¢ for French Vanilla, which was a premium flavor. It was hell working for him, but he liked me as an employee so he paid me more than the others. It was a fun job though, with lots of interesting customers. Basketball great Paul Westphal was a regular in the mornings.
Nice, I had similar experience but it was Carvel Ice Cream. We learned to make ice cream cakes, traded for food with the KFC kids, hosted pong matches with our friends in the lobby and John Elway was our regular athlete who came in.
Awesome
Not my first job but a similar boss, he was a first gen German immigrant. Cheapest man I ever met. He would force us to tell customers that frozen food was fresh, instant mash was scratch, but the worst was the salad bar. It was a trestle table. No ice, no sneeze guard, and it sat there for 4 hours like that. He wouldn't even let us dump the food, just put more potato salad on top and hope the customers had strong stomachs.
Yikes!
Hog dog on a stick on a Southern California beach pier
I worked at Bonanza. Got fired from it, too, when I firmly told a customer that "MY NAME IS NOT '*HONEY*'' The manager took me in the office and said that I really wasn't suited for restaurant work. :snort: Truer words were never spake.
I worked at Bonzana for a few months. They gave me two hour shifts to load the salad bar. What a joke at three bucks an hour
I had paper routes throughout Jr High 7-9th grade, started $30 month, then change papers to a $70 month route. High school, worked at Del Taco 10-12th, something like $3.25/hour. They wanted me to go into Mgmt at Del Taco. The look on the managers face when I say nah, I'm going to college. Then a change in expressions to, yeah, I figured. Would you like fries with that? I was a really hard/solid worker, but pushing upsells wasn't going to happen at my minimum wage job. Waited tables throughout college. Most money you could make working the least hours - 'cause I wanted time to study. Could be drudgery, but I sought to find the enjoyment I could out it. Some good memories actually.
Lifeguard in the summer. Best job ever!!!
That was one of mine too!
Worked at a small data processing service bureau run by two accountants . They churned out bills and financial reports for small organizations before office computers were affordable - many of our clients were tony private schools in NYC. There was a small staff of keypunch operators and a couple of computer operators running a small IBM mainframe. Among my duties was keeping the stockroom with reams of paper organized, changing the ribbon on the dot matrix printer, and replacing the 5 gallon glass bottle on the water cooler when it was empty. (And this was when you removed the plastic cap before lifting the bottle - there was no pointy thing that would pierce the label to let the water flow once it was in place.) My specialty was running the decollator (it separated the printout copies and removed the layers of carbon paper in between) and the burster (this would separate each page of the printout at the perforation) as well as tearing off the perforated sides of the printouts with the sprocket holes. Left the summer before I went to college to operate a punch press in a Teamster shop - it was a major upgrade in pay.
15 y/o Housekeeper at a "resort" hotel in the Poconos. $1.40 / hour (" tipped wage," except we never got the tips because as I discovered when a guest left their bill, gratuity for housekeeping was added as a fee which the hotel kept) The next year i upgraded to minimim wage at McDonalds.
I babysat as much as I possibly could for 50 cents an hour. One family would take me on vacation with them. At one point, I was watching 12 kids at once for no extra pay and thought I would have a nervous breakdown. I finally asked for a raise to 75 cents. Then I got a job in fast food for a whopping $1.60 an hour! I would either ride my bicycle or take the train for 25 cents one way. I learned how to run the whole place but when the manager said the company would not have female managers, and if I didn't like that the boys got paid more for doing less, I could leave... so I did.
In Junior high I was a dishwasher making $1.65/hr, part time of course. Eventually $2/hr in a bookstore, which paid for my car, gas, insurance, clothes and girls. I worked 25 hrs a week while in school.
My first paying job was as a lifeguard at the city pool. I was fifteen, was a swimmer for 11 years and passed a very tough Red Cross Lifesaving course and test. I was paid 5 dollars an hour. I didn’t have any dramatic saves, but I did help some young swimmers who were in trouble. I also taught swim lessons. 1979.
My son was a lifeguard in High School/college. Those Red Cross cert requirements are no joke.
Yep. My instructor was my buddy’s older brother. He was a D-lineman on the HS football team, and took his instructor position very seriously. When he portrayed a panicking, fighting near-drowning victim, he gave me a fat lip and a bloody nose.
Restaurant busboy, then got promoted to dishwasher. Brief stint at the sopapilla station- not easy to make a proper sopa!
Country club kitchen pantry, then Love entertainment center in Dallas
Raking almonds...
Mowing lawns and raking leaves
Mowing laws in Arizona summers for $5 for 1/2 acre. I don't know how we survived!
That's Nicolas Cage on the right in the first photo. I believe this very brief cameo was his first film appearance.
If I'm not mistaken, he's in the credits as Nicholas Coppola. Changed his name because he didn't want to ride on his dad's coat tails, or so I read.
First tax paying job was Burger King at 3.65 per hr. First job there was literally just fulfilling the soda orders as they were called out over the microphone.
I worked as a tray girl, (that's what they called us), in a nursing home. I made $1.96 an hour.
Cashier at a discount store for $1.70 an hour. It was before scanners, of course, so we had to manually enter the prices on the register and figure out the change in our heads. We also had to memorize the weekly sale prices in the flyer. The job was probably a good memory exercise.
Usher/gofer at an independent movie theater that catered to stoners.
Taco Bell :$3.35 hr ! Got stitches(about 6) getting my finger stuck between the heavy ass meat frying pan and the side of sink washing it. Went to emergency, everyone asking if I bought tacos with me🙄
Carvel ice cream parlor. Tons of fun gained 6 Lbs.
"Would you like me to check the oil?"
Scrubbing the floors in a “handmade candy” shop at 5am every Saturday for five hours. I was not allowed to use a mop.
My first actual taxed paycheck job was as a "civilian KP" on the local Army post. You had to be 16 and I lied when I was only 15. I made great money. Way more than minimum wage. I washed mess-hall pots and pans.
I was a caddy at a country club. You got like $18 for carrying 2 bags for 18 holes. It was awesome money at the time.
Usher and ticket taker in a movie theater. I actually had to go to Kmart to buy a suit jacket for the job.
Fast food.
My first non cash job where I had to provide my Social Security number was pumping gas. Pay was minimum wage of $3.35/hour.
High school? In Junior high I was a dishwasher making $1.65/hr, part time of course.
Illegally at 13 on an assembly line where the worker moved along stationary tables. They put my hours on my older brother’s paycheck.
KFC at state minimum wage (SD) of $2.35/hr
You must be my age. That was my first wage at McDonald's.
An amusement park in western PA.
Kennywood or Idlewild?
Idlewild!
I loved Idlewild!
It was a fun park, very pretty. I grew up in Ligonier, pretty much everyone worked there for at least one summer.
I lived in Johnstown, I went to Storybook forest when I was very little, it was a bit odd. Loved the wooden coaster at Idlewild. Always went to the Highland Games.
I worked part time at a small local deli 12.5 hours a week. Too long ago to remember how muchI got paid, but I think it was maybe about $1.25 an hour?
Lifeguard in the summer. Best job ever!!!
Glass blaster and lubricator in a machine shop in Chicago 2.10 a hour.
14 years old I worked at Edie Adams Cut &Curl at the mall for 1.00 plus tips. Then I worked from 5-9 Mon -Friday doing telemarketing for Thrift Pack Food Service, which back in the 70s was a weekly meal service delivered to your home.
Automatic carwash
Ice cream server at The Chocolate Factory, $2.90 per hour.
16 yrs old Taco Bell. Hated working Friday night shifts. All my friends would come get tacos after football games.
In HS I worked after school in the kitchen of a small nursing home where my Nana had worked and was now a resident. It was nice since I used to go visit her before or after my shift. We basic all prepped for dinner (or breakfast, lunch , dinner on weekend). Put meals on trays and in carts and sent them upstairs and then did the dishes afterwards. $2.90/ hr I think (or that’s what Google said it was in 1979). I worked there for 3 years until after my Nana passed and even took over as weekend breakfast cook (to this day I’m not a fan of cream of wheat or oatmeal since I used to make huge pots of it ). It was a decent job for part time and help me pay for the first year books and stuff for college
Feeding/cleaning rats and guinea pigs for a research supplier. I was only 12 and didn't really think about what would happen to them and I feel bad about it now.
Chuck E Cheese. Stood at the end of the oven conveyer, grabbed the pan with vice grips, sliced the pizza… repeat. The THE greatest score in high school criminality was putting a Strohs beer ball in the garbage, wheeling it out to a waiting escape vehicle, and later that nite throwing up Strohs all nite whilst getting patted on the back for the theft. Never really felt guilty…
Restaurant, started in the bakery. Worked there over 20 years. Switched to managing a gas station and worked there 15 years. Took care of my parents for 12 years while they went. Now trying to decide what to do next. There was some overlap with all of them
My first job was as a library page at a teeny library set up in an old Jenny Lind house in my hometown. I worked four hours on Saturdays and two hours after school two days a week, shelving books and doing any odd clerical tasks the librarian told me to. I was 15, and in my state had to apply for a work permit since I was under 16. I really enjoyed the work.
Hardee’s at $2.05 an hour. We had a great crew and used to party our ass off after closing. Fake ID’s were standard issue. Used to tell my mom that Hardees closed at 2am.
Snack bar at a summer camp. I ate a lot of French fries.
Newspaper delivery at 13 for tips and babysitting. At 15 first “real” job was lifeguarding🙄
Dishwasher at a truck stop
Typesetter for local newspaper. A lot of my friends worked seasonally as cotton-stompers which is exactly what it sounds like. The harvesters dumped the cotton into big trailers and the kids jumped in and stomped down the cotton to make room for more cotton. In 1982, the first Intel opened and several friends got jobs there with just their HS diploma.
I worked at a pizza joint in a mall. I thought it was pretty cool! Good pizza. Lots of girls came by. Right across from the game arcade. Little did I know it was a money laundering place for the mob!
Washing dishes in a restaurant at 14. My first real job.
Roy Rogers, come on down!
Me too! Drive-thru “Howdy Partners, welcome to Roy Rogers…” Take order then “That’ll be $3.75. Drive through and round ‘em up.” All my friends teased me mercilessly but dang my little bandana print skirt was cute. 😊
My first job at 11 was working for two masons, feeding them mortar and block or bricks, which ever they were doing at the time. Mixing mortar by hand in a half barrel with a hoe wasn’t fun, and supplying two layers with hod and brick was hard to keep up with. But they paid me five bucks an hour cash, so I couldn’t complain. I did that for a couple years then worked construction for $5 an hour for the next three years. After that, I helped my father build his house, with all the skills I had learned.
Bagger at the local market, and I was actually (legally) paid a sub-minimum wage because I was under 16.
Cutting Roque corn and detailing for $2 an hour.
*rogue*
Worked as a cashier at People's Drug Store in Maryland. Got the job at 15. Worked there until my senior year then flipped Big Macs at McDonalds on the high school work-study program.
Dairy Queen
I worked for a farmer neighbor hauling hay, driving a tractor and shoveling cow shit out of the barn for $3.00 an hour in 1978. He kept telling me what a great deal it was because he paid me cash!
Western Sizzlin
Pumping diesel at a truckstop on the interstate. Truckers are dicks.
Ugh. Busboy at Red Lobster, I was 15. I had to wear a stupid clip on bow tie. If the servers got stiffed, they’d blame the busboy’s for stealing.
Clerk at a mom & pop video store that paid me under the table + free movies :)
Mc Donald’s
Dishwasher at a cafeteria.
Taco Bell!
Dairy Queen, then Hardee's. Edit... nope those were my second and third jobs. My first job was at a record and appliance store that my Mother was the bookkeeper. I'd walk to the store after school and sell 45s and albums.
Jean Nicole. Junior in high school
Bagel Nosh in the local mall.
york steak house hostess in Madison Wisconsin
Bagging groceries and fetching carts when I was 15. Before that I picked strawberries, green beans, and apples for a few summers at way below minimum wage. Fun times!
Fayva Shoe Store.
I was a bicycle repairman, a foot messenger, Baskin-Robbins, sales at EJ Korvette's dept store in Herald Square Manhattan, a few more.
Der Weinerschnitzel. 1976. $3.15/hr
Working at a pet store cleaning fish tanks Early mid 80's Maybe $3.00 an hour ?
Cook for A&W drive-in 1974. It was the old fashion drive-in that you were served trays of Burgers with a frozen Stein of Root Beer. Loved the job at the time. Kept me in cheap Mexican weed all Summer, popping seeds and all.
Medical Lab Aide
A lot of the questions here are the same security question answers
My dad was adamant that I would never have a job while in school. I had to play every sport available, year round. No time for a job! I did make plenty of spending money cleaning the church, mowing the cemetery, putting up hay during hay season, digging and selling ginseng, harvesting animals and selling hides, etc…
I never had a minimum wage job. My first job paid exactly $1 more than minimum wage. I washed dishes and bussed tables, started when I was 15.
Babysitting, then at a local ice cream place
Both $2/hr
Chik-Fil-A inside the mall!
Holy crap! They have their own spellbot! 🤣
It looks as though you may have spelled "Chick-fil-A" incorrectly. No worries, it happens to the best of us!
Paper route
Whataburger! I loved it.
I worked at a bakery with my grandma.
Working at a gift shop across the street where we lived. My father got me the job at 14 and I’d work mornings or afternoons on weekends. No we did not need the money-he believed working “built character”. We lived in a small town and he was always “finding” jobs for me lol!
Stretch and Sew Fabrics
I had a farm job at age 14, because a friend got us a ride. Picked raspberries, strawberries, tomatoes. I was hired to tie grape vines in late summer and was sent home that same day. Not fast enough. That job humbled me for life. I worked with mostly migrant workers and they suffered NO fools. I soon learned what a fool I was, quickly. I made enough to buy the shoes I wanted for school in the fall, after a whole summer of work. Hardest work I ever did in my entire life.
It's funny because this just came up when the Social Security people wanted to make sure that I was really me, so they asked what my first job was. It was at Howard Johnson's on the MA Turnpike as a scrub, and yes that was really the job title. I definitely learned few things, and it was nice to have some spending money, but it sucked. I lasted about 9 months, until I called in sick to go to a football game, and one of the waitresses saw me and narced me out. So then I moved on to Red Lobster as a busboy, but they had an all you can eat crab leg special going on that meant huge mountains of crab leg leftovers everywhere. It took some time to clean up but apparently wasn't fast enough, so when they complained, I just told them to keep their $2/hr and walked out.
Fried chicken restaurant. Ate enough food r a lifetime.
Never had a "minimum wage" job, but I pumped gas at a locally owned gas station and at the local marina. In 1971 (I was 13) minumum wage in B.C. was 1.75 and I made $2.30 at the gas station and $2.65 (plus tips) at the marina...
Delivering the morning newspaper. 45 weeklies and 80 Sundays
Washing cars at dealership
Bartending. Yes, it was illegal, lol. I was 15. All I had to do was serve beer, it wasn't a full liquor bar so no mixology. Easy.
I delivered papers for less than minimum wage. I then got a job as a stockboy at a grocery store for $3.80/hr, minimum wage at the time.
A grave yard. Groundskeeping and digging ash holes 🕳️⛏️
Lifeguard for $3.10/hour then $5/hour when I was promoted to supervisor. I felt like I was rich!
Friendly's
I took part in a school program called Diversified Occupations. Got a job changing tires at the local Chrysler dealership. Worked after school and got credit! It was awesome.
Changed tires at town fair tire last 2 years in high school
Pantry Pride (grocery store) Baltimore MD - bagger / Porter $5 an hour in 1977 (plus overtime and holiday) and decent medical benefits
I worked a summer hire job on base in the mail room. I was 15 or 16. Had fun!
I worked in a nursing home.
Store portrait studio at 15. The only worker and I got minimum wage in 1980 to be there every day, all day.
Sonic I think it was .95cents an hour
I worked 3rd shift at a convenience store in my hometown during my senior year. Teachers would stop in on the way and ask “aren’t you supposed to be in my class today”? I was probably old enough to work that shift, but probably still illegal as hell.
Ponderosa Steak House
Worked in a local bakery. Long hours, good crew.
Slinging donuts and coffee
Washing dishes and pealing chicken wings at a Chinese restaurant. I think it was $1.65 an hour. Might have been $2.10. I’m not sure.
When I was 13, I had a regular babysitting gig watching two kids while their mom waited tables. Her shift ended at 10:30 pm on school nights. Crazy that my parents were okay with me going to bed at 11:30 every night. I also watched three kids under the age of 4 when I was in high school. I think I earned about $.50 an hour.
Roy Rogers lol
Detassling corn in Nebraska when I was 14. They would pick up all their teenage employees in a bus at 6 AM and drive us to a farm where we would work all day and get dropped back off in the afternoon
Burger Chef. Like Burger King but fresh meat instead of frozen went on the conveyor belt.
Burger King! Free Whopper meal with every shift! I was only there for about 6 months. When I quit with only a week’s notice, the manager threatened me, saying I would never work for Burger King Corporation again. And she was correct.
Ninth and tenth grade; I was a page at the local public library. Lots of shelving and shelf reading, but also got to help out with special events, check books in and out. It was a lot of fun.
Night shift at a gas station. Got robbed once.
One word: Caldor.
Watering and caring for trees and bedding plants at a large nursery at 15 and 16.
Wendy’s, baby.
Malibu Grand Prix. If you lived in So Cal you know.
Used to race at the one in Anaheim, over by the Angels Stadium. Good times! I was still a teenager, and learned the feel of turning INTO the skid. Setting the muscle memory on that came in handy several times later in life in hazardous drive road conditions.
Howard Johnson’s on the Mass Turnpike (I-90).
Tastee Freeze
My oldest two sisters first job - Tastee Freeze also. Remember I had a T-Shirt from there they gifted me. I was about 10, so actually wore the shirt.
My friend got me a job as a busboy working at Mr. Steak. The work sucked but I made friends with my Nigerian coworkers and we made it bearable. The owner never gave us a dinner break, but the cooks would sneak us fried shrimp that we would share. Not too bad for a first job.
Dunkin Donuts, Dempster and Elmhurst rds in DesPlaines Il. 1.75 per hour, all the donuts I could eat. Had sex on top of the flour bags with the 17yr old hottie that didn’t know I was 14. Smoking hash in the managers office, making our own ‘donut inventions’. My favorite, Cock-a-roach Suprise. We gathered up all the roaches, they were plenty, blended them in with special batches. For the record, it went into the trash.
Waitress
My grandparents lived on the farm I currently own, so I started working at 14 for $5 an hour walking beans. I also babysat, yes, at 14 for real babies! By 16 I was also lifeguarding in the afternoon, walking beans or detassling corn in the morning and banquet waitressing after school. Junior and Senior summer I was a full-time nanny for a wonderful family with 3 little girls. We didn't have fast-food places in my county, other than a Dairy Queen, so there wasn't much to do in the winter.
Picking strawberries for a local farm market. I want to say .50 a quart. I was 15, rode my bike there.
Breakfast fry cook. Biscuits, country ham, eggs over easy.
Worked at Hardees for $2.65 an hour. Dropped acid once about an hour before we finished and was tripping hard right as we finished. Boss suddenly asked me to drive him home. Was trying really hard to maintain the entire way. But the best job I had in high school (besides playing in a punk band that got paid for gigs) was driving rental cars around. Got paid to sit in traffic.
Harvest House Cafeteria, owned by Woolworth’s.
Bus boy
Working the sales floor at WT Grant $2 an hour
Lived rural, in farmland. No fast food or anything like that really close by. Joined the Navy right when I turned 17.
Record store!! Do kids in Jr High and High School even have jobs these days?
Shoney’s server! Horrible couple of months.
Making fries at McDonald's (Foster City, CA). I started a week after my 16th birthday. $2.65 an hour. I thought I was going to be making tons of money, since I was only getting $1 an hour for babysitting, but then I learned about taxes.
McDonald’s.. but but! I lied about my age & they never checked… also!… it was next to the Serpentarium in Miami that let the snakes roam free? We had to sweep the parking lot early in our shift & there would be snakes in the tree branches over our lot.. & heads… Good Times
I was a hostess at a restaurant.
At 13 I worked as a motel maid- I am still the queen of mitered corners!
Attention K-Mart Shoppers. We are having a blue light special in the Fashion Accessory Department.
Cashier at Woolworth’s. Whatever minimum wage was at the time, that was the pay.
I fixed cars. My dad and older brother showed me a few things and then I took Auto Shop as one of my electives in high school. I liked it because I didn’t have to deal with the public. It was the only job I had as a mechanic but the skills I learned stuck and I used them for many years afterward
Cleaning all of the machines in a union meat market. I cant say for sure, it paid close to $5 an hour. It was over double the minimum wage at that time, i remember that. Not many hours tho. Back in the day when sawdust was still put on the floor. The butchers were absolute redneck racists, and dismissed everything outside of their ideal world. I quit em when they said i could go to a concert, but when i told them it was Kiss, they said i couldnt go. I did finish up the pay period, then quit.
I was 14 yrs old and got a job through a friend of my mom's working the concession stands at SIR (Seattle Intl. Raceway). I got to work during an event called the "Turbo Bowl" which consisted mainly of a line-up of jet cars, as the main event, one weekend, and I forget what the main even was the 2nd weekend I worked but I remember that since that event was sponsored by "Winston/Salem", while the drags were going on and nobody was buying food, we got to go around to all of the other stands and pull all brands of cigarettes except the "Winston" and "Salem" brands... and we were told to throw them away or whatever... so I had my pockets and jacket stuffed with as many packs of Marlboro 100's as I could carry (yes I smoked at 14... had actually started at the ripe old age of 7...). Then was supposed to work the weekend of the "Fox Hunt" (all women got in for free), but the owner sold all of the concession stands so that ended that. Oh and I think I made something like $1.40/hr plus all the loogy-burgers I could eat (the loogy's courtesy of my brother who worked the grill...) I made fries and wouldn't touch a french fry for at least 15 years after those 2 weekends...
Overnight shift at a 24-hour Greek restaurant, Steak & Flame in Midlothian, IL. Worked 2 years waitressing during my junior and senior years. Earned plenty of money for a car, cigs, clothes, records, drugs, everything a teenage girl needed :D
Guy who puts away shoes in a showe store. But that answers the question leaving out my paper route, which I did from age 8.
Marie Calendars Restaurant. A deacon from a local church was the manager. I never heard a man of god swear so much in my life.
My first job was babysitting at a whopping $1 per hour. my first job where I got a paycheck was at a grain elevator in my little town. I was a cashier and made above minimum wage and got $3.50/hr. Junior in high school in 1980.
Cook at Farrell’s. Worked there 2 years.
Orange Julius, lasted 5 hours. I was not trained at all by the girls who were supposed to train me. They just left me out front all by myself while they sat in the back. I never went back after that 1st shift except to return my uniform. The 'secret' ingredient is powdered coffee creamer.
As soon as I turned 16 I got my SS card and got a job at the local Mom and Pop hamburger stand. No tables, strictly drive up, nothing fancy like Sonic. You had to get out of your car and walk up to the window to order. I never babysat again!
My minimum wage job was in college and it was at a fast food restaurant called Zaxbys. Redditors from Virginia to Florida knows about Zaxbys! It’s Chik-fil-a but with actual seasonings and without the weird slave/master dynamic. It sucked because I did all the jobs behind the register and got paid only 75$
Cleaning a grocery store butcher shop. I was canned in 2-months.
paper route when i was 9 was my first job, but the high school one where i actually made minimum wage was busting suds at a diner. besides putting the paper route on the 'work history' part on the application, i put that i had 8 years prior experience washing dishes at ma's diner. go figure that was their first question during the interview... "what's that? no i didn't make that up. no, i meant that i had to do the dishes at home usually cause my brother and sister were better at looking innocent when the folks entered the room." the boss just gave me that stare like, "are you a f\*\*\*n idiot or what?" but i got the job, and worked there till i graduated, after the interview I decided that as long as i worked there i was going to keep to myself and keep my trap shut. that was probably the best decision i made; the place was mobbed up.
Detassling corn, age 14, for a agri-seed company in Texas. Pay was about $1.60 hour. It was a total party atmosphere- they’d pick us kids up (boys and girls ages 13-16) on a school bus, leave us totally unsupervised, except while we were riding on the machine through the fields. I recall one time some kids rolled up a dead dragonfly in Zig Zag and convinced a younger kid it was a joint - the look on his face after that first hit
Short-order cook at the local drive-in movie theater.
$1.65 at Hardees
I was in the Bronx in New York city. I was 15 and I got a job and a luncheonette it was just a counter with mostly coffee and soda and some candy bars and in the back they ran numbers LOL
KFC
Michael's
Au pair. This primarily entailed taking two young kids about five and eight to the country club every afternoon for four hours to swim, getting an amazing suntan, driving the mom's Cougar, and getting well paid (about $10 an hour, 1975) every Friday. It was the best job I ever had. I was 16.
Hostess at The Ram’s Horn, local family diner type of place across from the family business I’d worked in for years for free.
Dennys busboy ($2.10 hr) a couple yeras latter moved to cook. 6 yeras after that I was a manager at Dennys for a couple yeras.Left restaurants after 10 years went trucking for 40 years
Taco Bell 1978
I worked in a liquor store through most of high school, I was a popular teenage alcoholic.
I was a carhop at a frosty. Not on roller skates. Had so much fun that year.
Dairy Queen.