Good Hunting... from Varmint Al
Posted on 09/06/2015 6:35:43 PM PDT by blueunicorn6
In honor of Labor Day, tell us a little bit about your first job.
Paper boy in Newark, N.J. in 1951 at age 11. Did several other things and at age 16 worked in a candy & cigarette wholesale warehouse for .85 cents an hour. I worked a full week over Easter recess and brought home about $32.00 which I proceeded to lose in an acey-deucey game. I learned my lesson and have not gambled since.
~John Prine, "Fish and Whistle"
Similar story here. First car was a ‘67 Camaro 327. Had it for 6 months before I got my license.
Wish I had a dollar for ever time I listened to the song “Brandy” on that 8 track, just sitting in the driveway
Worked as a clerk at a supermarket. Great life experience. Learned that a clerk meant they could have you do anything, like clean bathrooms, push carts, clean spills. Here i thought i was just a cashier. Learned that unions are thieves. $75 to join, and $25/wk dues out of a $3.35/hr wage. No union, no job. And learned a hell of a lot about human nature. The store manager was having an affair with the head cashier, the produce manager with another person, and the deli girl was pregnant at 17. This was all heady stuff for a 16 yo, and a hell of an incentive to get an education and a good job...
My first job, other han baby sitting (which I didn’t like all that much) was at a Dairy Queen when I was about 14, making desserts and grilling sandwiches.
During high school I worked at both a pharmacy and a grocery store, doing cashiering.
Pinsetter in a four lane bowling ally, 1957. My recollection is I made 10 cents per “line”!
I was a facehugger removal specialist on Zarkon Prime back during the great intergalactic civil war between Xenu and the Mormon god who dwells on Kolob.
WOW! A flat field to load bales!
Most of our hay ground was rolling, to downright dangerous.
And we almost always racked with the wagon attached to the baler. That saved having a kid or two walking along picking up bales off of the ground. I got pretty good, with both hands, using a bale hook. Once a guy gets used to the hook, he feels lost without it.
Burger King, 80 cents per hour.
Ugh. That was me 33 years ago. Damned winter roads. At least I had padding in the form of winter clothing.
Worked for a couple of days at the Bulkie in Boston as a server. Then found apt and job, worked packing donuts in a picture window for a few weeks on Rt 1. Then worked as a nurse’s aid for a year.
My first real “paid” job was putting cut up pine tree branches into a flower pot. It was for some kind of decorating thing.
My boss was Drunk Mike. He would cut the branches. I would put the branches in a flower pot. Jimmy would put a small US flag in the middle of the pot.
It was an assembly line operation.
My job took more time because you had to line everything up, so Drunk Mike would start yelling at me.
“Get those damn branches in the pot quicker! A monkey could do a faster job!”
Well, yes, but they were used to handling tree branches.
Then, Drunk Mike would pull out a bottle of whiskey from his pocket and take a snort.
“You even look like a monkey!”, he’d yell at me. “Pick up the speed!”
So I hit him with my banana and grabbed my lunch pail with my tail and swung through the trees home.
Naw.....
Drunk Mike continued to yell at me. Jimmy was his nephew, so he didn’t yell at him.
Drunk Mike was the first of an illustrious list including French Officers, Doctors, U.S. Senators and a guy in an Easter Bunny costume to yell at me on the job.
My favorite boyfriend had and raced a z28 sweet car.
Good Hunting... from Varmint Al
I got my first part-time job while I was going to high school. Worked after school as a sales clerk at Sibley’s Department Store in downtown Rochester, NY. That was around 1964.
Excellent.
The local (family) farms would hire kids to put up hay.
In retrospect, I think they were shoveling a few bucks to "poor" local kids. I wasn't aware that we were poor until I got into my 20's.
Anyway, it was a thrill to drive an old John Deere B with the hand clutch. Did anyone else stack the hay in the barn with secret passages and chambers that only we knew about?
Round bales are probably the result of a few kids getting their limbs caught in elevators with lawyers close behind. Progress, I suppose.
Delivering Sunday papers in the neighborhood at 4 am, rain or shine, hot or cold. Made like $0.02 per paper.
OMG...You were at the Bulkie???
We may have met. I used to eat there a lot.
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