What was your first paying job and how old were you?

Just another one of those threads where we get to taste each others lives a bit.

Oh and if you can remember What was the going wage hourly?

I worked at Artistry for Redwood- and I was responsible for shellacking the plaques that they made. I was 15 years old. I got paid $.75 an hour! LOL



next?

The summer that I was 13, I worked with my parents, cleaning new constuction. My job was to scrape paint flecks, off of the kitchen and bathroom fixtures and clean them. I was paid $1.25/hr.

My first job was delivering junk mail I got paid 25 cents each circular. I hated that job because I still had to walk around delivering them in the rain. I was 14.

I was 13, and I worked cleaning shrimp at a chicken and seafood restaurant for $1.00 an hour. YUCK!!!!!

Apprentice at a small Architecture firm, started at 16, left at 23 and bought pie.......mmmmm pie!

I was 14 and I worked for a temp agency as an office clerk and I made 7 to 9 dollars/hour depending on where I was placed. That was 17 years ago.

I was a drug clerk at a local drug store chain, I started when I was 15, and I was paid $3.25/hr. I am 25 now so that was 10 years ago. Dear god.

LOL How funny to think back to those days!

In 1988,a month or so before I turned 16, I started working at the local Dairy Queen. We made less than minimum wage because they classified us as waitresses even though we never waited tables. HELLO CHEAP EMPLOYER! lol OK, can I just tell you how HIDEOUS it was wearing those brown polyester bend-over pants?? What were those employers THINKING back then?

A month later, the day I turned 16, McDonald's called me. I worked there for the next three years while in high school starting at $3.35/hr.

When I turned 14 and got my labor license ( its required here in MA), I got a job at CVS, a drug store chain here in the east. I was a cashier/ stocker and made $5.25 per hour. I only stayed there a few weeks, then I was hired at the local dry cleaners/tailor shop. I got $5.50 per hour and stayed there till I was 18!

I started as a Saturday girl at Woolworths at the first legal age, 14 and a half. I think I got 9 pounds for a 8 hour day. I worked there until I was 19, so it can't have been that bad.

My first year of college, during the summer I worked at Burger King as cashier. So I must have been 18 or so. I think I made like $5.25 per hour.

My parents were really cool about summer jobs when I was in school. They said if I needed money to ask. I would have to work for the rest of my life, why rush into it? I loved my parents.

Heidi, I wish I'd of had your folks. My mum used to pop me the odd fiver now and then, but I had to fund all my needs after I started working at Woolies - even to the extent of buying my own school uniform, paying for school trips etc!

My first job was working at Radio Shack, I was 14, and I made 4.75/hr

Very cool folks, Heidi! Money was always an issue in my family. We were taught at a very early age to "be responsible" about it. In 5th grade, I was taken to the bank and opened a checking account, taught how to balance it and "how to write checks." I then recieved an annual allowance - $325. I had to buy all my school stuff and all my own clothes for the year and keep track of it all myself.

First paying job? Actually, I supplemented my allowance at the age of 7 by ironing my neighbor's shirts each weekend for about a year. My neighbor was THE Kemper of Kemper Insurance. It was very sad when I heard he died two years ago. The $325 allowance wasn't enough, so I babysat as much as possible, and although the Kempers didn't need me to iron any more, he did pay me to help weed his beautiful gardens. I'll never forget his pansies - they were so beautiful. I loved helping him plant them. I don't remember how much he paid me to help do that stuff.

The ironing, I'm pretty sure I was paid $0.25 a shirt. ????

My first legal job was at the age of 14 (the legal age). I worked as a cashier in a bakery. I helped frost donuts, cookies and brownies, put custard in stuff, etc. when people weren't in there. I was paid minimum wage. That was 1977. I think minimum wage was $1.25 then. Maybe $1.50. ?????

Once you were a sophomore in high school (11th grade for those not from the U.S.), our school had two work programs available where you could attend school in a way that your free periods were stacked up all at the end of the day, so you actually only went to school until 1:00 in the afternoon, and they helped you find a job. You could either go retail or office. I went office. I learned to type in that class, and I had an afternoon job as a receptionist for a branch of Encyclopedia Brittanica that rented movies. At the time they were those 8mm films, I think? 16mm??? The stuff churches, schools and colleges rented. Not individuals. I think I earned $2.00 an hour, which was a lot. It turned out to be a very cool job, because cool people worked there and were really nice to me. Not only did I learn a lot, but I got to go to a lot of movie previews - you know, where you get to see them in a theatre before they're actually out in distribution? It was fun.

If you were in that program, you actually had to join some club and participage in contests and stuff. I don't know what the retail people had to do - office people had to do things like typing contests, shorthand (which I didn't do), "interviewing," and I don't remember what else. But I did place 3rd in the Nation for fatest most accurate typing!

I was SO GLAD I learned that office stuff early. I had to pay my own way through college, and I left home after high school and didn't go back, so I had to pay rent and support myself as well as pay travel and tuition. My college was based in Long Island, so I could get reasonably paid by working in New York City, which I did the first summer and the year I took off to work. I could also barter my office skills (especially typing) for things like rent as I travelled (for my college studies) places like Costa Rica and India.

I was 13 and worked at a horse riding school in Centennial Park (kind of like a HUGE Central Park). I worked from 7am until 7pm and got paid $25. BUT considering I was a horse mad 13 year old and got to ride and be with horses all day, I would have done it for free. I worked there for 3 years before I realised that $2 an hour was pretty lame LOL.

I worked as a kennel aide at a local veterinarians, starting at 15. I think at first I got $3.50 an hour (in 1985). By the time I left for college, I was up to about $5 an hour.

I was 14 years old worked at a hospital in housekeping,got paid $1.50 a hour! Today I work in a Nursing home in the housekeeping dept. Making belive it or not $6.49 a hour! I was 14 in 1970!Just goes to show you how people judge our line of work. I work my butt off and am not getting nowhere. Well I am happy and healthy have a wondferful husband,2 great kids and 6 wonderful grandchildern! and 5 Siamese cats!My home is paid for.The only bad thing in my life,MY 89 year old mother-in-law living here!

My first paying job was as a cafeteria worker at college. I hated getting there by 7:30 am, as I am not a morning person. Needless to say this did not last long!

When I was 16 I babysat Mon-Fri 8 or 9 hours a day for a two year old girl and made $50 a week. I did it in her home, and also did the woman's laundry, and cleaned her house as well! that would have been about 1982.

I babysat at 11 but my "real" first job was at 12 or 13 I worked in a pet store cleaning the cages in the boarding department and walking the dogs. I also weighed out bags of food, gravel, and shavings. I cleaned the cages in the pet shop as well. I loved working there. It was about 1962, or 63. They had racoons, monkeys, honey bears, koti mundi's, possums, dogs, cats, birds, fish, reptiles.... I learned so very much about animals and their needs. I've been hooked ever since!