Your first job

[Harp]

I think you did.

I lost that fantasy fast however. Learned what a "lipstick lesbian" was. For a kid from Chicago's south side,
the LA side of things proved an eye-opener in more ways than expected.

 

[vitanola]

When I was 13 my dad got me a job sweeping up in a machine and heat treating shop. 3 hours or so after school on Thursdays and Fridays, and six on Saturday. Learned an awful lot from the men in the shop in the two years before I left to go to off to college.

 

[BobHufford]

My brother and I had a lawn mowing service when I was 12 (he was 14). Did several yards in the neighborhood. Dad fixed our price at $3.00 (when friends were getting $5 or more) and free sidewalk edging (with those garden scissors/shears ... I hated those things ... I can still hear the sound of them scraping the edge of the concrete).

The next job was working as a janitor for a couple of years at the pre-school my Mom worked at. I had a key and could go in anytime after 6:00 pm until 6:00 am. I remember riding my bike across town at midnight sometimes to get the job done.

At age 15 I landed a job as a busboy at a higher-end restaurant and worked in that field (all positions front and back of the house) for the next 13 years.

 

[Eyeofsauron]

"jack of all trades"!

Most frustrating job!

Working for Ma Bell "information".

Thought I was in heaven working with
lots of babes.
But that was not the case.

Had a supervisor who trained @ Gestapo
University.
Rude customers who asked for the phone number of a friend but didn't know their last name only the first.
Had to supply the phone number within a certain amount of seconds.
Was not allowed to chat with the gals sitting next to me.

I lasted less than a month!

I actually am an "information" operator and customers haven't changed a bit, still don't know the name of their "friend" or where they live. Gestopo managers are really a thing of the past, I've been here 21 years, and I did have one when I started. What's left of us are still plugging along.

Sent from my XT1650 using Tapatalk

 

[2jakes]

I actually am an "information" operator and customers haven't changed a bit, still don't know the name of their "friend" or where they live. Gestopo managers are really a thing of the past, I've been here 21 years, and I did have one when I started. What's left of us are still plugging along.

Sent from my XT1650 using Tapatalk

I salute you for still plugging along.
My sister retired from doing this line of work several years ago.
She is sweet, patient and favorite of my five sisters.

BTW:
My shortest job of all the jobs I’ve had was working
in a ladies shoe store in Beverly Hills.
Lasted only two days.
The ladies were good tippers and some were teasers
When I tried to measure their feet.
But it was the manager who was terrible.
He felt I was not trying hard to push the items
that went with the shoes like polish or shoe brush.
I had enough yelling from the military...so I told him
what he could do with the merchandise.

 

[Zombie_61]

Oh, shortest job. For me that would be the two days I worked as an extra on Oliver Stone's movie The Doors back in 1990.

That's me under the arrow as "indistinguishable audience member #847" sharing about 1.3 seconds of screen time with some guy named Val Kilmer (the gyrating bearded fellow in the lower left corner) during the "Miami Concert" sequence.

It was supposed to be four days, but they got the footage they needed and dismissed most of us extras at the end of the second day. In terms of hours worked I suppose you could consider it four days because I worked 16 hours the first day and 15-1/2 hours on the second. It was the easiest and most unusual job I've had.

 

[2jakes]

Oh, shortest job. For me that would be the two days I worked as an extra on Oliver Stone's movie The Doors back in 1990.

That's me under the arrow as "indistinguishable audience member #847" sharing about 1.3 seconds of screen time with some guy named Val Kilmer (the gyrating bearded fellow in the lower left corner) during the "Miami Concert" sequence.



It was supposed to be four days, but they got the footage they needed and dismissed most of us extras at the end of the second day. In terms of hours worked I suppose you could consider it four days because I worked 16 hours the first day and 15-1/2 hours on the second. It was the easiest and most unusual job I've had.

There was lots of waiting in between shots.
Best thing about shooting on location....
We got to eat a free hot lunch courtesy of Universal Studios.

 

[Zombie_61]

There was lots of waiting in between shots. Best thing about shooting on location....
We got to eat a free hot lunch courtesy of Universal Studios.

Very true. I got paid for just waiting around far more than for actually doing anything. It was an interesting experience.

The actual actors got hot food; we measly extras were offered sandwiches and bags of chips. Apparently, Carolco and Imagine Entertainment didn't have Universal Studios' catering budget. Some of the experienced extras brought their own food, but most of us either got something from one of the hot trucks in the parking lot or walked to the nearest burger joint 'cause those sandwiches didn't look too fresh.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

First paying job was for baling hay in the summertime during the seventh grade.

 

[3fingers]

First paying job was for baling hay in the summertime during the seventh grade.

This was my first paying job as well, along with walking beans. For anyone not familiar, walking beans involved walking up and down the rows of soybeans with a weed hook removing weeds and volunteer corn. It is hard for young people today to believe that summer farm work paid for a lot of first cars, school clothes and Saturday night fun.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Here it was raking blueberries, something I never did but my sister and a lot of other kids did. It's brutal, backbreaking work -- you spend 12 hours or so bent over in the hot, unshielded August sun pulling one of these thru the tangles of endless blueberry bushes.

You got paid by the pound, and if you survived you could make good money, but a lot of people couldn't take it. I knew I couldn't, and never tried.

It's still done this way, but the packers have long since figured out they could get away with paying less by bringing in busloads of migrant pickers. They also figured that by doing this they wouldn't have to deal with phone calls from angry parents wondering why their kids suddenly can't stand up straight.

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ the tie to "The Grapes of Wrath" makes sense.

Other than odd neighborhood jobs - raking leaves (not blueberries), sweeping driveways, shoveling snow, etc. my first somewhat real job was when I was 14 and an older friend got me a job doing inventory for the store Linens 'n' Things.

I don't know if stores still do this, but they'd close on a Sunday and an army of kids would be hired to go in and count, literally, every single item in the store's display area and warehouse (behind the store). We'd get there early (I think 6am, maybe 7am) and would work for 12 hours.

It wasn't fun - very dusty work (sound silly, but you would be covered in dust and could feel it in your lungs by the end of the day) - but for the time and my age (below legal working age) it was great pay, $5 / hour, off the books. At the end of the day, they gave you an envelope with cash - no names exchange, no tax forms, nothing.

Looking back, it seems odd as Linens 'n' Things was a chain - how did they get away with that off-the-books stuff (and did it even make sense as they couldn't count it as an expense)? I did that for a few year every quarter along with my odd neighborhood jobs until I was old enough to get working papers.

For comparison, my first on-the-books job was at Stern's departments store for minimum wage ~$3.35/hour (at the time) - less taxes, etc. That off-the-books pay looked really good by comparison.

 

[scotrace]

My first job was cleaning the dog crap in the morning twice a week at a boarding kennel I could get to by bike at 16. I think I made about $1.50 an hour.

The big dogs were fine. The little ones shredded my pant leg.

 

[31 Model A]

So far I've not read where anyone de-tasseled corn. Am I the only idiot here or am I the only one that remembers de-tasseling corn?

I never listed that as one of my first jobs, it only lasted one morning. Something ya just can't do when you have not grown vertical much and I was considered tall and lanky but the corn was taller and not lanky which resulted in many broken stalks.

 

[belfastboy]

My father passed away when I was 11 in 1960. Money was real tight as Mom was a stay at home with no marketable skills. Earning money became a family priority and she got me a job delivering prescriptions for the local pharmacy.....50 cents and hour and the occasional 10 cent tip. At 12 I started my first real job where I had to punch a clock.....I became a "balloon boy" for the local carnival.....I inflated balloons by mouth for the dart/balloon game. Did that on weekends til school got out for the summer and then did it 12 hours a day, 6 days a week although the cheap boss would split shift me on slow days to save a buck. At 14, being stellar at blowing balloons (being stellar just meant that I kept showing up) I was promoted to running the concession. Running my own game was into the big money as it was a commission gig and I ended up making really good money. Worked at it March through September until I finished university and graduated with enough money to travel the world for 18 months after university and then settle down and buying a house, all from being good at blowing up balloons. I even considered not going to university and becoming a full time travelling carny but the guys I worked with (all full timers) threatened to kick my ass off the lot if I threw away an education to work the circuit.

 

[Musher]

This was my first paying job as well, along with walking beans. For anyone not familiar, walking beans involved walking up and down the rows of soybeans with a weed hook removing weeds and volunteer corn. It is hard for young people today to believe that summer farm work paid for a lot of first cars, school clothes and Saturday night fun.

How true. I grew up in the NYC suburb of Northern Westchester county and loved working as,a day laborer on the local farms in the early seventies. The old farmland has all been developed now with McMansions.

 

[2jakes]

One of my first jobs was washing dishes, mopping the floors
and cooking hamburgers at a local diner after school.

The owner was an ok dude but his daughter who was my age
was not.
Always watching, being very critical and ordering me around
constantly. I tried hard but nothing I did pleased her.
Finally told the father that whatever I did was not good enough.

He said I was doing a fine job and not to worry,
that was her way of showing she liked me!
That was the beginning of the realization that boys
were from Mars and girls from Venus and I knew right then
and there, that I would never quite figure out why girls
behave the way they do.
I still don't.

 

[Edward]

Back in the eighties and well into the nineties in Northern Ireland there weren't many jobs going for teenage kids looking for something part time as unemployment was high, there was a lot of competition for any jobs (regularly if you phoned the number given in Friday night's paper on Saturday morning, there was already a "we have enough applicants, thanks" voicemail). After a few years of trying, my first real job was when I was nineteen; as an academic kid at school, I was one of those discouraged from part time work so I could concentrate on getting to university (being from a class background where, well... let's just say for those considered middle class who got into grammar schools in NI in those days, careers advice consisted more or less entirely of 'which degrees can lead to which jobs', and not getting to university would have been considered a failure). When I was nineteen, I got the chance of a Summer job in a local hardware store, real old-school, family run, pre-war wooden counter.... DIY, plumbing, woodyard, trade and public.... learned a *lot*. I earned GBP75 for a forty-hour week in 1994; by the time I left in 1998, it was £125, around about the equivalent of Minimum Wage which was introduced I think shortly thereafter in the UK. I used to work all Summer, spend almost nothing, and then eke out about a grand and a half across the rest of the academic year. In my postgrad year I worked Saturdays through the year for the first time. Bought all my books for university that way - and a genuine, American Fender Stratocaster (1994) which I still have. Saved for years til the job enabled me to buy that.

Oh, shortest job. For me that would be the two days I worked as an extra on Oliver Stone's movie The Doors back in 1990.

That's me under the arrow as "indistinguishable audience member #847" sharing about 1.3 seconds of screen time with some guy named Val Kilmer (the gyrating bearded fellow in the lower left corner) during the "Miami Concert" sequence.

It was supposed to be four days, but they got the footage they needed and dismissed most of us extras at the end of the second day. In terms of hours worked I suppose you could consider it four days because I worked 16 hours the first day and 15-1/2 hours on the second. It was the easiest and most unusual job I've had.

Very cool. I've done a little bit of extras work, though nothing on this level. I was 'Goth Gust at Goth Wedding' in an episode of UK daytime soap Doctors a dozen years ago; never seen the episode, but I believe both I and my black lipstick ended up on the cutting room floor. A one day affair, and yes, most of it spent sitting around waiting. I intend to do more of this sort of thing in time; actually, I'm planning a retirement hobby of being an extra, if I can't manage it before then.

My first job was cleaning the dog crap in the morning twice a week at a boarding kennel I could get to by bike at 16. I think I made about $1.50 an hour.

The big dogs were fine. The little ones shredded my pant leg.

Nothing on God's earth suffers from Napoleon syndrome like a small dog.

 

[Edward]

Back in the eighties and well into the nineties in Northern Ireland there weren't many jobs going for teenage kids looking for something part time as unemployment was high, there was a lot of competition for any jobs (regularly if you phoned the number given in Friday night's paper on Saturday morning, there was already a "we have enough applicants, thanks" voicemail). After a few years of trying, my first real job was when I was nineteen; as an academic kid at school, I was one of those discouraged from part time work so I could concentrate on getting to university (being from a class background where, well... let's just say for those considered middle class who got into grammar schools in NI in those days, careers advice consisted more or less entirely of 'which degrees can lead to which jobs', and not getting to university would have been considered a failure). When I was nineteen, I got the chance of a Summer job in a local hardware store, real old-school, family run, pre-war wooden counter.... DIY, plumbing, woodyard, trade and public.... learned a *lot*. I earned GBP75 for a forty-hour week in 1994; by the time I left in 1998, it was £125, around about the equivalent of Minimum Wage which was introduced I think shortly thereafter in the UK. I used to work all Summer, spend almost nothing, and then eke out about a grand and a half across the rest of the academic year. In my postgrad year I worked Saturdays through the year for the first time. Bought all my books for university that way - and a genuine, American Fender Stratocaster (1994) which I still have. Saved for years til the job enabled me to buy that.

Oh, shortest job. For me that would be the two days I worked as an extra on Oliver Stone's movie The Doors back in 1990.

That's me under the arrow as "indistinguishable audience member #847" sharing about 1.3 seconds of screen time with some guy named Val Kilmer (the gyrating bearded fellow in the lower left corner) during the "Miami Concert" sequence.

It was supposed to be four days, but they got the footage they needed and dismissed most of us extras at the end of the second day. In terms of hours worked I suppose you could consider it four days because I worked 16 hours the first day and 15-1/2 hours on the second. It was the easiest and most unusual job I've had.

Very cool. I've done a little bit of extras work, though nothing on this level. I was 'Goth Gust at Goth Wedding' in an episode of UK daytime soap Doctors a dozen years ago; never seen the episode, but I believe both I and my black lipstick ended up on the cutting room floor. A one day affair, and yes, most of it spent sitting around waiting. I intend to do more of this sort of thing in time; actually, I'm planning a retirement hobby of being an extra, if I can't manage it before then.

My first job was cleaning the dog crap in the morning twice a week at a boarding kennel I could get to by bike at 16. I think I made about $1.50 an hour.

The big dogs were fine. The little ones shredded my pant leg.

Nothing on God's earth suffers from Napoleon syndrome like a small dog.

 

[2jakes]

So far I've not read where anyone de-tasseled corn. Am I the only idiot here or am I the only one that remembers de-tasseling corn?

I never listed that as one of my first jobs, it only lasted one morning. Something ya just can't do when you have not grown vertical much and I was considered tall and lanky but the corn was taller and not lanky which resulted in many broken stalks.

I was 15 and for no reason other than it seemed like a good idea
at the time. I went to the local feed store and bought corn seed.

Cleared enough space in the backyard for two rows of corn to grow.
Hardest part was clearing the dirt of grass & weeds.

I don't recall exactly how long it took to grow but it did.
I was so proud, my mom took a picture of me in front of my
"cornfield".

I don't recall if I cooked it or my mom.
The corn didn't taste like the kind sold at the grocery store.

Someone told me that it was corn for feeding hogs.
I wouldn't know if that was true or not.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed it because it was something that I
had created when I was a kid of 15.
Things like that I will never forget.