I started working at a little grocery store at the age of 9 and have worked ever since. Back then I worked for 25 cents per hour and later got a raise to 50 cents.....wow!
My first business was selling cold drinks to the construction workers building houses on my street. On hot summer afternoons they paid handsomely for a cold bottle of Nehi. My bicycle would carry enough to take care of those working on one or two houses. They would take their break when I arrived with the cold drinks.
As an 11 year old entrepreneur I did well. (I did have help. My mom drove on public roads to the store where I bought the drinks)
Harvesting Tobacco was my first job.
I worked on my fathers farm and after we got our crops in I hired out to the neighbors, for 5 dollars a day and lunch.I was 14 the first time I was hired.
I disagree. Politicians, particularly Democrats do get it. They want more unemployment and dependency while claiming they are helping people. Dependency on government programs guarantees a larger Rat power base. Why would they want a prosperous, independent and free voter base? They might vote Conservative.
I started my FIRST job in 1945 at age 10. At 77 I’m still at it, but I’m down to 50 hours a week. I’m a 4th generation watchmaker, taught by family, in a traditional apprenticeship. This country is woefully short of people of my trade, and the rules and regulations handed down by the governments is a large part of the problem.
I’ve always wanted to teach a youngster this trade, but with the exception of two young cousins, the 5th generation at the bench, I wouldn’t consider it. What a shame.
You could substitute any of dozens of vanishing trades for the word “watchmaker” and the reasons are the same.
It was awful.
And I was thinking the whole time about all my friends out having a ball while I was dying in that dark, dirty, noisy place.
Of course, the pay was great and I was able to buy my first car cash and get into college.
This can't be stressed enough. Many students coast through school without any real idea of the value of an education. Oh they say the right things, but when it comes to applying themselves toward getting an education (as opposed to getting good grades) they fail. And that failure continues through college where the expectations about that first "real job" veer off into fantasy-land. Lessons about word & education are better learned early.
Summer at age 14.
Mowed 4 peoples yards on a regular basis
Caddied 2-3 times a week at the local golf course.
Sold golf balls (recovered from fields) You would not believe the money this generated....
Dug a foundation ditch (helped) (shovel) for a person building a garage.
All cash jobs and I made GOOD money
My first job was covering my High School’s varsity sports games for the local newspaper when I was a freshman. I was paid by the age so I learned about ‘padding’ quickly.
Washing walls.
My first job was shoveling hog manure on the farm.
Was always paid in my internships. Engineers usually are. Honestly, I don’t understand why you would work for free at one. That hints your field is not very good.
I picked radishes and green onions. On my knees. In the field. I was paid by the “twistie”.
People may not know this, but the green onions and radishes you buy at the store were bunched in those little twisty ties right where they were pulled out of the ground. By a human being.
When I turned 15 I sometimes would be paid by the hour to come up behind the other “bunchers” and put their piles of bunches in the wooden boxes and load ‘em onto the tractor, take it into the barn and wash it. Washing meant dunking each box into a big sink a couple of times and pulling it out and into a stack.
When I turned 16 I drove the truck load of veggies to the distribution centers for places like Safeway.
I think most of what I did is now illegal to allow young people to do. What a shame.
Babysitting. Then waitress in a diner. Then short order cook in a factory.
I was 14 doing farm work at a beef cattle operation. $1.10 an hour in 1972. Hard but interesting work (forking manure, putting up hay and ensilage, grinding feed, helping dehorn and, ahem, “emasculate” the little bulls, plowing and discing the fields).
Being tighter than 2 coats of paint, in about 18 months I saved enough for a 5 year old Camaro.
I doubt many farmers hire local kids for this kind of work much anymore. Too many illegals and lawyers around.
I earned my own money as a kid from an early age maybe eight or nine, cutting lawns, delivering newspapers, selling garden produce and crafts. My first real hourly wage job was at a veterinarians cleaning kennels, I loved dogs and still do. I smelled like a nasty kennel if I didn’t shower and change clothes, that was not big with the ladies in high school.
First job - (unpaid) - worked at Grandpop’s gas station. Learned customer service, how to make change and “face” the bills, etc. Went with Pop to weekend masonry gigs (fetch bricks, find where I put that hammer I was playing with)
First paying job ever - went with Grandmom to bingo and walk up and down the aisles - I’d fetch coffee, hot dogs, sodas, whatever, and the ladies would tip me with dimes & nickels. (around 8-10 years old?). Would also mow lawns, shovel snow, clean out garages in the neighborhood.
First official job ever - worked at the local five and dime as stock boy, gopher, sweeper-upper, whatever.
Other jobs over the years:
Lifeguard (3 summers)
Dishwasher (includes KP)
Waiter
Busboy
Bartender
Office cleaner
Store-window squeegee & floor waxer (at malls)
Ice Cream Man (back in the days of actual bells, not muzak)
Animated film-cel painter
Oil-spill mopper (factory)
Line attendant (factory)
Sludge-pit cleaner (factory)
Furnace cleaner (factory)
UPS warehouse
Mall clothing store stockboy
Church sexton
Furniture mover / delivery
Limo driver
Door-to-door salesman (cable TV)
Banquet worker (set-ups, serve, cleanup)
Short-order cook
French cuisine cook (coquilles St-Jacques a specialty)
Data-entry clerk
Computer (mainframe) operator
Computer (PC) programmer / systems designer (consolidating international subsidiaries’ accounts)
Beer drinker (oh, that’s right, never got paid for that)
Corporate financial analyst
I could go on.....
Many of the jobs I did at several establishments (e.g., bartender), some for long periods of time (22 years at the longest stretch)
Sad part is, not many of these jobs are available to the youth of today (what with OSHA, lawsuits, regulations, etc.)
I started as a 9 year old paperboy. Had my own route, did my own paperwork keeping track of my collections. Tough job for a little boy. Difficut getting customers to pay at times. And delivering papers in a snowstorm was a nightmare. Good lessons learned though.
“Any work is creative work if done by a thinking mind.”
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged