Please do not comment directly to this post unless you are Gen X or older (born 1980 or before). See this post, the rules, and the sidebar for details. Thank you for your submission, ssb4you.
Short order cook at Dog n’ Suds. We also washed the windows, mopped the floors, took out the garbage, etc., while the girls (car hops) sat on their asses smoking cigarettes and listened to the juke box. They also made a hell of a lot more money than we did because they got tips.
Taco Bell 1985 and yes we got to wear polyester smocks over matching polyester pants the form it gave lol all in the ugliest shade of brown know. To creation !!
I was 16 in ‘78 and briefly worked at a Jack In The Box in Phoenix. I think I lasted 3 weeks. Hated every minute of it. My next job was at a Waffle House in N Phoenix where I worked for 6 months until I moved to Vegas.
A certified nurses aide at 16. Learned a lot by caring for PE with spinal cord injury, amputations, strokes and cancer. Previous to that I babysat since age 11 and worked on the farm baling hay, caring for horses, picking rocks, weeding fields by hand. Also cooked, cleaned and took care of you get children.
Furniture mover from 13-19. Weekends and summers with men who I thought were ancient. They were in their 30s. Convinced me I needed an office job. Much respect to manual labor – hard work but very hard on your body.
In high school and for a couple years after, I helped build and drive tow trucks. In the late 80s it paid $20 an hour. Fun but could be very miserable depending on the weather.
I was 16 and was in a work/study program as a senior in high school. I worked a few hours after school for an insurance company. I was hired on the spot after a 5 minute interview. Try that today!
I worked for a department that was known back then as Personnel cuz you were a person back then. I also didn’t even know what a resume was. We didn’t have cell phones, computers or faxes back then.
I made $1.75 an hour and when I graduated high school, they hired me full time and I made $2.00 an hour! I thought I was $hitting in some tall cotton back then.
In the 70s at the age of 14, I worked as a food preparer in a restaurant kitchen. I made coleslaw, salad and crabcakes, etc. I worked 66 hours a week which came to about $1 an hour. Illegal too. Owner was ripping us off and I always wondered why my parents never questioned my long hours. It was in the summertime so I think my parents wanted the kids out of the house.
I don’t regret it and now I can make coleslaw for about 100 people at a time. It also helped me learn how to work with adults, cook, prepare food, follow a schedule and be responsible with my time and money. It was an invaluable Education.
Newspaper route at about fourteen. First actual job was in the summer of 1972 helping to get a new Sear’s store open in a brand new mall. Both the store and the mall went out of existence years ago.
Shoving coal for a 6 apt flat building, my father had a full time job but was also the janitor. Sort of fun I would mess around with the furnace. Once I left an iron poker in the furnace, 1 foot of the end melted off. I was also a paper boy, which is sort of a real job.
I count being a stock boy as my first regular job, but after that I was an chemical batch worker, then chemist in the same company. For 6 weeks, I had two full time jobs, chemist and electronic repair technician.
Started my first taxed job as cashier at a grocery store when i was 15. Punching in prices marked onto items with pricing guns. Scanners didn’t come out until I’d been working for a few years. Before 15 I sat with our neighbors children after school until their parents got home at 9:00. Those kids are the reason I got chicken pox at 13 years old! It was horrific, the pox where EVERYWHERE!
I do t class my self as old (48) but paper round and at 15 worked Saturday job on a clay pigeon site plus glass collecting (loved this job.for loads of reasons)
Babysitting (specialized in difficult children and charged a premium rate). Made a lot of money before I was old enough to get an official work permit.
Summer or fall 1978, 13 years old either 8th grade or going into 8th grade. Paperboy. 6 day a week morning paper (no Sundays). Started off with about a 40 house route, added 2 more routes over the next year and ended up with about 125 houses. Up at 4:50am, done with the route by 6:45, but came to take us to school at 7:20.
The paper cost 15 cents/day at first, 90 cents/week. I think I made 5 cents/paper plus tips. At 90 cents/week, most people gave me a buck and called it good. Righteous bucks!! Made like $25/week when I started. A few years later they went up to 20 cents/day, $1.20/week. At that point my customers were split between giving me $1.25 or $1.50. Christmas time was what you worked for, most people would give you a $5 tip at least. I had a couple big spender customers who would give me a $50. When I had the big route I’d bring in close to $1000 that week, good money for ~1980.
Had that route until the end of junior year, then got a job at the local supermarket in the deli.
Very first job…summer job picking Raspberries and Strawberries. $2 a flat, if they weren’t too dusty. If they were dusty, didn’t get paid. I was 14. Different times back then.
Doing all the crap jobs for my evil stepdad’s construction crew, starting around 9. Buck an hour. At 15 I got a job working in a costume shop. The shop paid better and no getting smacked for minor mistakes.
I worked on a farm, taking care of livestock, raking and bailing hay, mowing, cleaning stalls, etc. I felt a sense of accomplishment each day. It was a great job and I continued full time for a year or so after high school until I decided it was time to get a job that paid better.
I ended up retiring as a HR Rep. I still think about how great the farm job was though.
Worked on a laundry truck for a summer job, summer of 1972. Made $30 a week to work 5 days and a half day on Saturday. Loved it, one of the best jobs I ever had
Picking strawberries (paid 25 cents a quart, I think) around age 8 and helping my grandmother do lawn work (she mowed, we picked up sticks to clear the way).
First legal job was Godfathers Pizza. Applied and got hired the day I turned 16. Paid $3.35 an hour with free soda and a free personal pizza for each 4 hour shift. First job was cleaning locker room and picking up cigarette butts at a health club when I was 14.
Working at friendly Frost packing out garden supplies at 15. I had the gift of bullshiting my boss noticed. I told him everyone comes in for the cheap bag of lawn fertilizer on sale give me a dollar if I up sell the to the twice the price Glorian super deluxe he agreed. Between the minimum wage, tips humping stuff to customers station wagons and my $1 commission I was making as much as him on the weekends. The next summer I was hanging off the back of a garbage truck in NYC 5am to noon at Jones Beach West end 2 surfing by 2pm
Worked for the carnival for a weekend then they stiffed me on my pay. My mom marched up there and tore the greaseball carnie a new one. I got paid promptly in cash. One of the only times I ever saw my mom lose it.
My first real job was at a public golf course and it was the best job ever.
At 13 I worked on the market selling curtain material. Working out how much was needed allowing for pattern matching, hems, window width, etc., and then working out the cost and taking the money did wonders for my maths skills.
I worked as a scrub at a Howard Johnson’s restaurant for like $1.95/hr, and yes that was the official job title. The all orange uniforms made us look like prison inmates. Fortunately though it was on the Turnpike so no one I knew ever came by. Our town was the next exit so why would anyone in town eat there?
Pulling weeds and planting seedlings at a nursery. Age 14, summer job, rode bike 1 hour to and from. 7am – 5 pm with a 1 hour lunch. I made a good $4 / hour.
My first job was Counting 8 stems of green onions and putting an elastic around the bundle. I got 2 cents for each bundle. This was 1969-70. I was just a kid. If I got 100 bundles done, $2.00 bought a lot of candy and 50 cents to go swimming at the local pool.
Kids who learn to earn young also learn how to work, how to get along to get a job done. How to fit in, the importance of showing up on time and ready for prime time. It is SO Obvious that more and more young people have missed out on learning these critical skills. Calling it slavery is wrong. Slavery is what happens to those who grow up with NO marketable skills, dependent on others and the government and all their rules for how to get help. Honest people know you can never start too early teaching responsibility and work
I lived on a farm from age 6 to 14. We left the farm at that time and moved to a small town that had a printing shop that printed a local “shoppers guide.” I got a work permit and worked in the silk screen dept. making large, window sized sale posters for a large grocery store conglomerate.
This was before electronics and powered machines. It was a large silk screen 4ft x 7ft. I’d work after school and weekends when they were busy. Started at $.75 @ hour, finished at $1.75 @hr., and worked there all through high school.
Age 16 at a grocery store that my buddies in high school worked at. Salary was 3.35/hr. But we all ate about twice that much per hour – guzzled chocolate milk, soft drinks, fruit, prepared sandwiches, chips, etc. Just anything and everything we could get away with.
We used to joke about the “KFC Tattoo” which was two parallel lines burned into your forearm from reaching into that warming display with the windows behind the counter with a pair of tongs and brushing your arm against the heating element. You weren’t really a front counter worker until you were marked……
I worked there through most of high school, I eventually became a cook & was a double threat. You know there really was a packed marked “eleven herbs and spices” that you put into the breading, but they never told you what they were!
I volunteered at the local library in the kid’s section reshelving books and at the checkout. Because it was voluntary they paid a dollar an hour as incentive. I think I was 14? Then I worked as a cashier at a pizza & sub place at 15 in 1988. I worked night shift for $8/hour CAD.
Shoveling snow. ❄️ on school days I’d wake up very early to see if it had snowed so I could get it finished before anyone walked on it. I had 5 driveways and sidewalks to clear. I was 12
I had babysitting jobs when I was 12 and up. My first tax paying job was as a cashier for Family Dollar in ’88, earning $4.25 an hour at 16 yo. Worked after school and Saturdays.
UK late 1960s: Packing dried fruit by hand. The glacé (candied) cherry days were hell: sticky hands for hours afterwards. But what glorious baby softness after packing ground almonds! All the boxes we packed had “machine-packed” printed on them.
Working on my grandparents’ farm, but outside of family, I was a daycare teaching assistant – I had to take an approximately 20 hour class, get CPR certified, and I got to help unpack lunches, supervise playtime, etc. Since I was 16 I worked mostly Summers and occasionally school holidays.
I definitely learned more working on the farm. I’ve been a city dweller since college but I’ve got the skills to make it lol
For pay? lol Did a lot of cotton picking, hay baling, fence repair, castrating hogs, but all that was free. First job for money for the cattle auction; herding catting from the pens to the auction floor.
Short lived. Broke an ankle a couple of months in.
I assembled printed circuit boards for a subcontractor working out of his house, he turned his top floor into an electronics bench for 4, we got pre-made circuit boards and soldered on the resistors and transistors and capacitors according to diagrams, for a 70’s kid it was a lot like assembling model kits, and I got to learn how to solder.
Painting the merry go round horses at an amusement park near us where I grew up. Yes, I am still an artist! I got a hundred bucks per horse in 1967. I also touched up signs and removed graffiti in the same park.
Library page, back in high school shortly after getting my driver’s licenses. 90% reshelving books, but occasionally we would have to babysit the 16mm film projector when it wasn’t working reliably. That was fun — getting paid to sit and watch vintage kids’ films again (that I remembered from when I was a kid.)
Mowing lawns. Early 80s was $8 per lawn. $6 for the retired lady $12 for the snowbird that had a lot and a half. I made like $50 a week at 13-15 yo in Fl.
Then bused tables and washed dishes for $3.35.
Quit school at 16 and started Land Surveying at 3.50 an hour. 1983
2025 I have owned my own Land Surveying business since 2010.
When me and my best friend were about 12, we started a lawncare service, mowing lawns around the neighborhood, edging, picking weeds, just general lawn work. Made decent money! But my first actual job working for a company was at Best Buy in the computer department when I was 16.
Working at the hosiery counter at Montgomery Ward’s. They had a “hosiery club” where folks got free pairs after so many purchases. I was so glad to move on from that after a couple of years.
My dad started them and they grew into 5 stores with around a hundred employees. Being the bosses kid, I made sure that I worked as hard as I could so I prove that I wasn’t getting special treatment. Basically, I was the fill in for wherever they needed help be that working in the storage building bailing clothes into 250 pound bails, working on the trucks doing pickups, sorting goods, or working on the floor.
besides babysitting since was 11……my first “paycheck” was at the Admissions and Records office of a major university. Sending out transcripts for everyone that sent their $1 for a copy….hundreds….I got to file in a huge vault with all the transcripts for 75yrs in there….interesting peeps went there…..I worked there for 3 years–all vacations…and 1/2 days senior yr HS….I learned an awful lot…did not file the whole time….lol
I was 16 and at that time you had to get working papers to work if you were under 18
It was for a woman’s mail order company and I took the returned cataloges and then went to the files which held index cards with addresses for the mailing list – they were a bit like a library card catalogue if anyone is old enough to remember those 🙂
I would take the index card and send it to someone who would then delete from the mailing list.
This was before computers so everything was done by hand and paper/pen and type writers although I imagine the actual labels were printed and put on the catalogues at the printers with some degree of automation.
Then, food service at an assisted living facility for elderly (retired?) nuns at a convent … who obviously had no family (kids) and no means to support themselves. So they all lived in dorms and ate together in a cafeteria. But they needed help getting the food and to their tables etc…
KFC. Ripping apart frozen chickens first thing in the morning and fishing cockroaches out of the biscuit batter taught me invaluable lessons I carry with me to this day.
Babysitting my neighbor’s kid. I was 13 and left in charge of a two year old for entire weekends at a time. I had no idea where the kid’s mom was nor did I have any way to contact her. (no cell phones at that time) It never occurred to me to be concerned about it.
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I was 16 in ‘68 and got a part time job in a mom & pop old fashioned hardware store.
Retrieving shopping carts from grocery parking lot – circa1977. I was 15. Made about $3.10/hour.
Delivering the Detroit News
Iron-on t-shirt place.
My first job was working in a factory sewing t-shirts.
Paper boy. I was seven years old.
i was 13 and worked in an office, typing envelopes and proof reading bills of lading……. 1968, $2.00 an hour
picking vegetables
I was around 6 or7 , by 12 I was loading the trucks
it was a different time that sadly seems to be coming back
Machine shop helper, 1973. They tried to teach me to re-wire electric motors. I lasted a couple months.
Short order cook at Dog n’ Suds. We also washed the windows, mopped the floors, took out the garbage, etc., while the girls (car hops) sat on their asses smoking cigarettes and listened to the juke box. They also made a hell of a lot more money than we did because they got tips.
Fast food. I still hate the smell of fried chicken chains.
Taco Bell 1985 and yes we got to wear polyester smocks over matching polyester pants the form it gave lol all in the ugliest shade of brown know. To creation !!
I was 16 in ‘78 and briefly worked at a Jack In The Box in Phoenix. I think I lasted 3 weeks. Hated every minute of it. My next job was at a Waffle House in N Phoenix where I worked for 6 months until I moved to Vegas.
Baskin Robbins I worked after school my sophomore year.
Detasseling corn in Central Illinois in the early and mid-1980s.
Disk jockey at a one-kilowatt AM daytimer in Central California. I made $460 a month and my rent was $120.
At 17, I was a part-time perfume sniper at the mall.
B Dalton in a mall, $4 hr.
Had a few crap jobs but my first real one was nuclear missile tech.
Drug store. 35 cents an hour, but I got to read all the comics when they came in.
I worked at a liquor store when I was in highschool, paid under the table.
In 1974, I started selling tickets in a movie theater. I was power mad with the ability to keep kids I didn’t like out of R-rated movies. Bwahh ha ha.
Skating Rink.
A certified nurses aide at 16. Learned a lot by caring for PE with spinal cord injury, amputations, strokes and cancer. Previous to that I babysat since age 11 and worked on the farm baling hay, caring for horses, picking rocks, weeding fields by hand. Also cooked, cleaned and took care of you get children.
Page in the US House of Representatives in 1974-75. Paid $600 a month. I was 15-16.
Paper route
Caddie at local private golf club. 12 years old.
Furniture mover from 13-19. Weekends and summers with men who I thought were ancient. They were in their 30s. Convinced me I needed an office job. Much respect to manual labor – hard work but very hard on your body.
In high school and for a couple years after, I helped build and drive tow trucks. In the late 80s it paid $20 an hour. Fun but could be very miserable depending on the weather.
Flipping burgers at a Target snack bar, 1975.
Informal for family – mowing the lawn at age 10
Informal for neighbors – cat sitting at age 12
Employee – bus boy at age 14
My first job was the Navy. I hated it, but Naval Nuclear Power School on my resume got me every job that I had after I got out.
I was 12 and delivered 60 morning prayers and 120 Sundays.
Did that until I was 16, then got a job at Woolworths buffing their floors.
Babysitter
Delivering newspapers.
Paper route, picking berries, babysitting, putting up fences.
First “real job” Arctic Circle in Portland. Also called Arsenic Circle and Septic Curcle.
Delivering newspapers.
I was 16 and was in a work/study program as a senior in high school. I worked a few hours after school for an insurance company. I was hired on the spot after a 5 minute interview. Try that today!
I worked for a department that was known back then as Personnel cuz you were a person back then. I also didn’t even know what a resume was. We didn’t have cell phones, computers or faxes back then.
I made $1.75 an hour and when I graduated high school, they hired me full time and I made $2.00 an hour! I thought I was $hitting in some tall cotton back then.
Waitress at Denny’s near the interstate highway. 87 cents an hour + tips.
Working as a theatrical lighting technician.
Shoveling driveways in the winter. Mowing lawns in the summer. Started when I was 10.
Picking produce, age 8, in the spring of 1971. Thought I made it when I got a job bussing tables at the age of 10.
In the 70s at the age of 14, I worked as a food preparer in a restaurant kitchen. I made coleslaw, salad and crabcakes, etc. I worked 66 hours a week which came to about $1 an hour. Illegal too. Owner was ripping us off and I always wondered why my parents never questioned my long hours. It was in the summertime so I think my parents wanted the kids out of the house.
I don’t regret it and now I can make coleslaw for about 100 people at a time. It also helped me learn how to work with adults, cook, prepare food, follow a schedule and be responsible with my time and money. It was an invaluable Education.
Selling gift certificates in the mall for Ned Kelly’s, I was 14.
Babysitting 3 rambunctious kiddos at 11 for 50 cents/hour.
$1.65 an hour to do laundry in an old folks home.
My first job was working in the Planters Peanut shop. They had hot roasted nuts and the best chocolate bridge mix.
I was 8 and I picked fruit.
Strawberries 10 cents a quart until you picked 100 quarts, then you got 15 cents a quart. You got to take home 2 quarts of bruised or over ripe a day.
Red and black raspberries were 15 cents a quart then 25 cents. 1 quart of 2nds home a day.
Blueberries and cherries were $ 1 a pail, which was held 5 lbs. 1 quart went home. No raise.
Peaches, pears, plums and apples were $ 1 a bushel.
We could bring home a peck each day of ” drops” or bruised fruit.
I earned enough money to buy my 4-h cows, chickens and bunnies.
Newspaper route at about fourteen. First actual job was in the summer of 1972 helping to get a new Sear’s store open in a brand new mall. Both the store and the mall went out of existence years ago.
Pumping gas
A paper girl. I really was bad at it, but I was only 13.
Real jobs or family job?
Shoving coal for a 6 apt flat building, my father had a full time job but was also the janitor. Sort of fun I would mess around with the furnace. Once I left an iron poker in the furnace, 1 foot of the end melted off. I was also a paper boy, which is sort of a real job.
I count being a stock boy as my first regular job, but after that I was an chemical batch worker, then chemist in the same company. For 6 weeks, I had two full time jobs, chemist and electronic repair technician.
Gas station attendant at a camp ground. This was about 1976
Kentucky Fried Chicken, $1.65 an hour
paper route on my bicycle, age 11
Started my first taxed job as cashier at a grocery store when i was 15. Punching in prices marked onto items with pricing guns. Scanners didn’t come out until I’d been working for a few years. Before 15 I sat with our neighbors children after school until their parents got home at 9:00. Those kids are the reason I got chicken pox at 13 years old! It was horrific, the pox where EVERYWHERE!
Delivering newspapers
Hatcheck girl at a hotel, 1966
Babysitting
Technically, paperboy. Then lifeguard. First real job, as an adult, draftsman.
Paper route
I was a lake attendant at a Christmas themed amusement park in Cherokee NC for the summer.
All day long, June/July/August… Christmas music. I hate it to this day lol
In 1965, I was folding shop towels in the laundry at a uniform rental company. It paid $0.50 per hour.
I answered the phone at my high school. It was a boarding school.
Back of house at a newly-opened Kentucky Fried Chicken (now KFC).
I do t class my self as old (48) but paper round and at 15 worked Saturday job on a clay pigeon site plus glass collecting (loved this job.for loads of reasons)
Lawn mowing for neighbors. Then a Taco Bell in the absolute worst part of town.
Babysitting (specialized in difficult children and charged a premium rate). Made a lot of money before I was old enough to get an official work permit.
Working for my dads construction business
Working on my grandpas farm. At the time a lot of the jobs sucked but looking back, it was simpler times that I’d like to revisit.
Summer or fall 1978, 13 years old either 8th grade or going into 8th grade. Paperboy. 6 day a week morning paper (no Sundays). Started off with about a 40 house route, added 2 more routes over the next year and ended up with about 125 houses. Up at 4:50am, done with the route by 6:45, but came to take us to school at 7:20.
The paper cost 15 cents/day at first, 90 cents/week. I think I made 5 cents/paper plus tips. At 90 cents/week, most people gave me a buck and called it good. Righteous bucks!! Made like $25/week when I started. A few years later they went up to 20 cents/day, $1.20/week. At that point my customers were split between giving me $1.25 or $1.50. Christmas time was what you worked for, most people would give you a $5 tip at least. I had a couple big spender customers who would give me a $50. When I had the big route I’d bring in close to $1000 that week, good money for ~1980.
Had that route until the end of junior year, then got a job at the local supermarket in the deli.
Babysitting, then summer playground camp counselor
Very first job…summer job picking Raspberries and Strawberries. $2 a flat, if they weren’t too dusty. If they were dusty, didn’t get paid. I was 14. Different times back then.
Counselor at a camp. Loved it. Summers outside and on the lake
Paperboy 5 years
Doing all the crap jobs for my evil stepdad’s construction crew, starting around 9. Buck an hour. At 15 I got a job working in a costume shop. The shop paid better and no getting smacked for minor mistakes.
Wendy’s, 1979. $3.10 per hour.
Shining shoes in a barbershop around 13 years old.
I worked on a farm, taking care of livestock, raking and bailing hay, mowing, cleaning stalls, etc. I felt a sense of accomplishment each day. It was a great job and I continued full time for a year or so after high school until I decided it was time to get a job that paid better.
I ended up retiring as a HR Rep. I still think about how great the farm job was though.
I worked as a trainee tracer and painter in an animation company.
Turkey processing plant. Don’t remember what I made, I couldn’t do that job very long.
Processing telegram messages, at the post office.
Oh, and counting the coins from the public phones.
I had a colleage, that made the absolute best tomato soup, with cheese & onion toasties.
Newspaper delivery
Selling coupon books by phone for a radio station.
That wasn’t kind of a side hustle like lawn mowing or selling mistletoe that I had climbed trees for during the holidays?
Working in an ice screen shop. Baskin Robbins.
Feeding fish, then promoted to fish killer.
First official job was McDonalds. I did work some in my parents gift shop but I don’t count that.
Worked on a laundry truck for a summer job, summer of 1972. Made $30 a week to work 5 days and a half day on Saturday. Loved it, one of the best jobs I ever had
Picking strawberries (paid 25 cents a quart, I think) around age 8 and helping my grandmother do lawn work (she mowed, we picked up sticks to clear the way).
I worked at a food tent for the Canadian Open Golf championship. I was either 13 or 14 at the time.
Wendy’s – $3.35 an hour.
Cleaning up the local Knights of Columbus Hall on Sunday mornings after weddings. Cigarette butts, stale booze and sticky floors. Yum.
14, cemetery groundskeeper.
Besides babysitting and grass cutting. I got a job cleaning the Lynnette Hair Salon in the Ft. Lauderdale mall. I was 14 and never looked back.
First legal job was Godfathers Pizza. Applied and got hired the day I turned 16. Paid $3.35 an hour with free soda and a free personal pizza for each 4 hour shift. First job was cleaning locker room and picking up cigarette butts at a health club when I was 14.
Working at friendly Frost packing out garden supplies at 15. I had the gift of bullshiting my boss noticed. I told him everyone comes in for the cheap bag of lawn fertilizer on sale give me a dollar if I up sell the to the twice the price Glorian super deluxe he agreed. Between the minimum wage, tips humping stuff to customers station wagons and my $1 commission I was making as much as him on the weekends. The next summer I was hanging off the back of a garbage truck in NYC 5am to noon at Jones Beach West end 2 surfing by 2pm
Cutting tobacco. $1.50 an hour.. but gas was .50 a gallon.
Worked for the carnival for a weekend then they stiffed me on my pay. My mom marched up there and tore the greaseball carnie a new one. I got paid promptly in cash. One of the only times I ever saw my mom lose it.
My first real job was at a public golf course and it was the best job ever.
Babysitting (age 12)
Babysitting at 12, first W-2 job at 16 bussing tables at a steakhouse.
Painting houses
Showing movies at a college theater, Cinema Paradisio style
At 13 I worked on the market selling curtain material. Working out how much was needed allowing for pattern matching, hems, window width, etc., and then working out the cost and taking the money did wonders for my maths skills.
Farm work on my grandparents’ farm but first real job was bagging groceries for $2.30 an hour.
Sears! Kids clothes into electronics.
Running the snack bar the city pool. $1.60/hour and all the candy/popcorn/hot dogs I could eat.
I probably didn’t eat a Three Musketeers again for a year.
It was either babysitting or scraping wallpaper. Can’t remember which was first as they were both in the same summer.
I pretended to be a guy so I could work in a gas station.
I was 12 and I worked for Topps trading card company sorting baseball cards.
I worked as a scrub at a Howard Johnson’s restaurant for like $1.95/hr, and yes that was the official job title. The all orange uniforms made us look like prison inmates. Fortunately though it was on the Turnpike so no one I knew ever came by. Our town was the next exit so why would anyone in town eat there?
Prep geek back end of a little indy pizza place. Slicing, sauce, stocking the walk-in for nights and whatever else they needed.
Carhop 🛼
Pulling weeds and planting seedlings at a nursery. Age 14, summer job, rode bike 1 hour to and from. 7am – 5 pm with a 1 hour lunch. I made a good $4 / hour.
Bagger at Hills Department Stores for Dollar Days
My first job was Counting 8 stems of green onions and putting an elastic around the bundle. I got 2 cents for each bundle. This was 1969-70. I was just a kid. If I got 100 bundles done, $2.00 bought a lot of candy and 50 cents to go swimming at the local pool.
Picking rocks before spring planting at a farm,
Delivering newspapers
Babysitting
Mowing lawns
Does babysitting count?
Kids who learn to earn young also learn how to work, how to get along to get a job done. How to fit in, the importance of showing up on time and ready for prime time. It is SO Obvious that more and more young people have missed out on learning these critical skills. Calling it slavery is wrong. Slavery is what happens to those who grow up with NO marketable skills, dependent on others and the government and all their rules for how to get help. Honest people know you can never start too early teaching responsibility and work
I lived on a farm from age 6 to 14. We left the farm at that time and moved to a small town that had a printing shop that printed a local “shoppers guide.” I got a work permit and worked in the silk screen dept. making large, window sized sale posters for a large grocery store conglomerate.
This was before electronics and powered machines. It was a large silk screen 4ft x 7ft. I’d work after school and weekends when they were busy. Started at $.75 @ hour, finished at $1.75 @hr., and worked there all through high school.
Age 16 at a grocery store that my buddies in high school worked at. Salary was 3.35/hr. But we all ate about twice that much per hour – guzzled chocolate milk, soft drinks, fruit, prepared sandwiches, chips, etc. Just anything and everything we could get away with.
Front counter at KFC.
We used to joke about the “KFC Tattoo” which was two parallel lines burned into your forearm from reaching into that warming display with the windows behind the counter with a pair of tongs and brushing your arm against the heating element. You weren’t really a front counter worker until you were marked……
I worked there through most of high school, I eventually became a cook & was a double threat. You know there really was a packed marked “eleven herbs and spices” that you put into the breading, but they never told you what they were!
Babysitting
As a kid, mowing lawns and babysitting. In college, working for a professor. After college, I taught high school for three years before grad school.
Age 10 picking cucumbers
My first tax paying job was dishwasher.
And when slow I cleaned chickens
$1.89 per hour
1975
“Hot walking” racehorses at our local track after each race during the summer. I got paid $5 cash per horse.
I was 14 and a great summer job.
I started working as a carpet installer’s helper when I was 13 and did that until I joined the Army at 19.
I was a “curb girl” at a drive-in restaurant. It was a hoot.
Cutting grass, first job with paycheck , car wash age 13
I volunteered at the local library in the kid’s section reshelving books and at the checkout. Because it was voluntary they paid a dollar an hour as incentive. I think I was 14? Then I worked as a cashier at a pizza & sub place at 15 in 1988. I worked night shift for $8/hour CAD.
Shoveling snow. ❄️ on school days I’d wake up very early to see if it had snowed so I could get it finished before anyone walked on it. I had 5 driveways and sidewalks to clear. I was 12
I had babysitting jobs when I was 12 and up. My first tax paying job was as a cashier for Family Dollar in ’88, earning $4.25 an hour at 16 yo. Worked after school and Saturdays.
UK late 1960s: Packing dried fruit by hand. The glacé (candied) cherry days were hell: sticky hands for hours afterwards. But what glorious baby softness after packing ground almonds! All the boxes we packed had “machine-packed” printed on them.
peeling potatoes and doing dishes in my grandparents’ restaurant
I was a manual pin setter at a 4 lane bowling alley.
Picking fruit. In my state, you couldn’t work at anything before you were twelve, so that’s when I started.
Working on my grandparents’ farm, but outside of family, I was a daycare teaching assistant – I had to take an approximately 20 hour class, get CPR certified, and I got to help unpack lunches, supervise playtime, etc. Since I was 16 I worked mostly Summers and occasionally school holidays.
I definitely learned more working on the farm. I’ve been a city dweller since college but I’ve got the skills to make it lol
5 & Dime.
For pay? lol Did a lot of cotton picking, hay baling, fence repair, castrating hogs, but all that was free. First job for money for the cattle auction; herding catting from the pens to the auction floor.
Short lived. Broke an ankle a couple of months in.
I assembled printed circuit boards for a subcontractor working out of his house, he turned his top floor into an electronics bench for 4, we got pre-made circuit boards and soldered on the resistors and transistors and capacitors according to diagrams, for a 70’s kid it was a lot like assembling model kits, and I got to learn how to solder.
Picking strawberries as a nine year famer worker now I’m 65 yrs old.
Worked at a local ice cream shop when I was 14.
Painting the merry go round horses at an amusement park near us where I grew up. Yes, I am still an artist! I got a hundred bucks per horse in 1967. I also touched up signs and removed graffiti in the same park.
Library page, back in high school shortly after getting my driver’s licenses. 90% reshelving books, but occasionally we would have to babysit the 16mm film projector when it wasn’t working reliably. That was fun — getting paid to sit and watch vintage kids’ films again (that I remembered from when I was a kid.)
I made about $5/hr, which was minimum wage IIRC.
Mowing lawns. Early 80s was $8 per lawn. $6 for the retired lady $12 for the snowbird that had a lot and a half. I made like $50 a week at 13-15 yo in Fl.
Then bused tables and washed dishes for $3.35.
Quit school at 16 and started Land Surveying at 3.50 an hour. 1983
2025 I have owned my own Land Surveying business since 2010.
Setting pins for a manual bowling alley 1984
When me and my best friend were about 12, we started a lawncare service, mowing lawns around the neighborhood, edging, picking weeds, just general lawn work. Made decent money! But my first actual job working for a company was at Best Buy in the computer department when I was 16.
Working at the hosiery counter at Montgomery Ward’s. They had a “hosiery club” where folks got free pairs after so many purchases. I was so glad to move on from that after a couple of years.
Working at my parents thrift stores.
My dad started them and they grew into 5 stores with around a hundred employees. Being the bosses kid, I made sure that I worked as hard as I could so I prove that I wasn’t getting special treatment. Basically, I was the fill in for wherever they needed help be that working in the storage building bailing clothes into 250 pound bails, working on the trucks doing pickups, sorting goods, or working on the floor.
Sticking price labels on rolls of bread bags when I was 7.
I sorted hangers for a small resale store. I was 9ish.
Cleaning horse stables for $20 a week (1983)
besides babysitting since was 11……my first “paycheck” was at the Admissions and Records office of a major university. Sending out transcripts for everyone that sent their $1 for a copy….hundreds….I got to file in a huge vault with all the transcripts for 75yrs in there….interesting peeps went there…..I worked there for 3 years–all vacations…and 1/2 days senior yr HS….I learned an awful lot…did not file the whole time….lol
Usher at a movie theater.
Pulling skeet at a gun club. Tinnitus is real boys and girls.
Cleaning a small 2 chair beauty shop in our small rural town. I was 12.
I was 16 and at that time you had to get working papers to work if you were under 18
It was for a woman’s mail order company and I took the returned cataloges and then went to the files which held index cards with addresses for the mailing list – they were a bit like a library card catalogue if anyone is old enough to remember those 🙂
I would take the index card and send it to someone who would then delete from the mailing list.
This was before computers so everything was done by hand and paper/pen and type writers although I imagine the actual labels were printed and put on the catalogues at the printers with some degree of automation.
I made $1.50 per hour
Worked for my grandparent’s business every weekend starting in junior high.
I was 14 in 73. $1 an hour weeding and doing domestic chores for who I considered the elderly back then. Now I’d consider them young.
Paper route.
Then, food service at an assisted living facility for elderly (retired?) nuns at a convent … who obviously had no family (kids) and no means to support themselves. So they all lived in dorms and ate together in a cafeteria. But they needed help getting the food and to their tables etc…
A&P Grocery Store at 16. Cashier, bagger, stockboy, parking lot cart gatherer
Picking strawberries nine years old.
Taco Bell, 1989
Newspaper photographer, 1975. I had a paper route at age 11, but I don’t know if that counts.
Babysitting when I was 12 or 13 if that counts. Summer job at local amusement park at 16 otherwise.
Sales clerk in my sister’s gift shop at 11 years old.
Working the snack bar at Eldorado casino in Reno serving the specialty of shrimp cocktails for .69 in 1979.
Got to see Chuck Berry rehearsing for his show there. That was awesome.
Paper route in elementary school
KFC. Ripping apart frozen chickens first thing in the morning and fishing cockroaches out of the biscuit batter taught me invaluable lessons I carry with me to this day.
Well, one lesson, really: Don’t eat at KFC.
Dishwasher at a local pizza parlor for $3.35 an hour. I was 14 years old and bought a BB gun with my first check!
I worked at a one-hour photo shop.
Burger King at $3.35
Lifeguard
Chambermaid I was 13
Very first was delivering newspapers i was 6 or 7 in 1967 ish.. First after old enough to work was bus boy, then dishwasher, prep cook, cook, .etc.
Busing tables at 13
Caddy at a local golf course when I was about 12 or 13
Grocery bagger
Babysitting my neighbor’s kid. I was 13 and left in charge of a two year old for entire weekends at a time. I had no idea where the kid’s mom was nor did I have any way to contact her. (no cell phones at that time) It never occurred to me to be concerned about it.
Pearl Diver- code for dishwasher.