What Was Your First Job . . . .and when??

Mine was in the mid-60's. I was in third grade at the time. My job was picking up potatoes and putting them in 100 lb gunny sacks. For every 100 pounds of spuds I picked up, I got 6 cents. On a Saturday, if I got to the field early and worked steady all day until dark, I could get 100 sacks. Imagine, a whole $6 for just a day of work!!! I was convinced I would become rich. They were long days -- freezing in the late September/early October mornings and blistering hot by noon. I still remember watching the shower drain turn coffee brown with all the dirt I washed out of my hair, ears and nose. Ahh, those were the days. I bought my first traps with some of that money -- Blake and Lamb #2 1/2. They were a single spring but still had enough power to hold a coyote. I think they were $12 delivered.

My 1st job was back when they had "Full Serve" gas pumps. Pump their gas,wash windows and checked the oil. I also did oil changes and fixed flat tires. That was in the mid 70's.

Brad

My 1st real job was Subway, when I was 16 in 2001, I worked after highschool let out, eat fresh...ish lol

Paperboy in Milwaukee. Morning and evening routes. 12 years old in 1963. 53 customers. Papers were $0.70/week. If somebody gave you a dollar and said keep the 30 cents it was big time cool and you assumed they were really well off. Most gave 75 cents and some would string you on for weeks before they paid and then tried to stiff you on the amount. Lots of life lessons early. When I quit at age 16 for a better job one of my customers, after asking my dad if it was okay, gave me a 1904 Remington single shot .22 as a gift. I still have it.

About 1970 or 71 worked on a mink ranch on weekends. Who new mink crap could be so heavy, lol ! Myself and another guy would shovel while the owner drove the tractor pulling the manure spreader. Made about $2.00 an hour, big money for a 10 or 11 year old kid .

When i was about eight or nine (late sixties) my brother and I went into business for ourselves. We'd wade in the three ponds on a local golf course at night and find golf balls that had been hit into them. We'd clean them up with the courses own ball washing machines then display them in egg cartons along a T-off. We'd get fifty cents a piece for the like-new Titleists, Spaldings and better brand-name balls, a quarter for the lesser brand-names or scuffed-up balls and a dime for balls with cuts or dings in them.

Soon after I went to work for a gun club as a trap boy. Back in those days some kid had to crawl into the trap houses and manually feed clay birds onto the thrower. It was dirty, dangerous work. I got a quarter for each squad (five men, twenty-five rounds each). I eventually graduated to scorekeeper which doubled my pay. I had to push a button to release the birds when a shooter called for one. Today, everything is voice-activated and automated.

And of course we trapped, mostly muskrats. This was a time when my weekly allowance was $5.00. One brown muskrat would bring that much, black ones up to $8.00!

I was 8 years old. Worked 8 hours each day 6 days a week and was paid 2$ per day & lunch. I was packaging bacon in 1 pound wrappers. It was in a refrigerated building so that was great during the summer in southern California !

Pitching hog manure for a hog farmer, 1.00$ an hour

I use to work for farmers in the summer riding the bean buggy spraying weeds. And when sweet corn was ready help pick it. Started doing this in about 1984. Bean buggy paid 8.00 a hour, sweet corn pick paid 30.00 for 3-4 hours work and they picked me up but after work was more than willing to walk home I would scout along beaver creek.

My first job was mowing lawns and cleaning/picking up anything that someone else didn't want to do when I was 12. My Dad built me a trailer I could pull behind my bike and off I would go, I charged $10 dollars a lawn. The price didn't change on the size of the lawn... sure wish someone had taught me some business sense to go along with the work ethic. Only ever had one person take advantage of "rate", 1 acre lawn for $10, but he always gave me a soda after I finished mowing. They were better times...simpler times.

Picking rock and thowing on the stone boat, picking sticks and throwing to the windrow, and clearing land.

Beartooth, that's a good wage for the mid eighties, I couldn't find a farm job then, went to NY for two years to work for a well drilling place
Lol I forgot about lawn mowing

Horseback driving a herd of wild Idaho cows about 15 miles or so and helping brand afterwards,11yo '61, two days paid $5 in silver dollars. Other ranch and farm work, pay depending on the owner, $2-10/day; haying and post cutting paid the best because both were piece work.

I got paid to do all manner of work as a kid.....ten cents for each tomato worm picked off my aunt's tomato plants, baling hay, commercial fisherman(sold 2 carp to the neighbor lady for fitty cent!), help Grandad pull nails from old lumber to recycle before recycle was a word........but the first "official" job with actual wages was when I was 14 and worked for an uncle that was a well-driller and all-around builder/handyman. My memory says I was paid $1.65 per hour (minimum wage then??). I know that was the first time I had withholdings withholded! This was the summer of 1969.

p.s. Heard my uncle tell the Old Man that I was a "good worker"......had to grease my ears to fit through the door for a bit!

I still work my first job lol. I started mowing lawns in 5th grade and am a junior now. 3 years ago I started working for the local plumber during the summer

stackin lumber and working at the girlfriends parents bowling alley at night.-the day i turned 16

In '72 I helped a carpenter and his wife build a good sized ranch style house, I was like 14, he was on strike that summer, they got 11 an hour, they wanted 12$ an hour

early 90's. Apartment painter working for my Dad. I was 13. He'd drop me off in the morning with a couple of 5 gallon buckets, a list of apartments, and keys. He'd come back at lunch to get me to eat, then gone again until 4:30. he'd come behind me and edge everything and QC my work. Up at 5 am the next morning to do it again.

Cleaning boy at the Danish bakery across from my mom's.

Make the 2nd best kringle in the world.

2X Same here just the later 60s!

well I cut lawns an did paper routes bale hay an anything else I could get pay for but the summer of 75 I worked for forest service an made 2.15 an hour min. wage back then.40 hour a week bought a 30-30 marlin and a bear bow still have both

I was 8 or 9 years old. On the ranch with my father riding the show horses. I was riding on my own a couple years before that and wanting to learn and do everything .

Da put me to work learning how to maintain and clean leather- all the tack...cleaning up the stable ...the trailers.....mow the lawn, and even had me helping him at the shows, riding to warm up the horses, and to cool them down after an event. Just enough pay for me to save for some things I wanted.

First job cleaning and waxing the neighbor's floor I was about six not sure how old she was but I remember Mom and I making her a birthday cake and I insisted we put a candle for each year and the frosting melted off. Lol I remember it took all day to clean and wax those floors and I made a buck...not much but better than helping her son next door on his farm he didn't pay anything so a dollar was ok with me.

Sounds like fun sharon

First paying gig I remember is pulling all my moms carrots from the garden, loading up my red wagon, and selling them down by the road. That was 1985, and I made several dollars from the wagon full- it was worth it- my mom wasn't too mad- I was 3...

Grew up in a logging family. Driving skidder since I was 8 years old. This would of been in early 1970s.

Got fed and a bed to sleep in.

I miss working with my dad and would trade those years for anything.

1973, making boxes for packing cukes and cantaloupes.

It was, T20.

Horses, crop dusting and stunt planes, boats, airboats, fast cars and trucks....he was amazing . The best years of my growing up life.

First actual legal job that I applied for and was hired for was putting away books at the public library.

Working in the rice fields in La. driving tractors and butting levees w a shovel. 1966

We didn't have a skidder till in the '80's. Did the skidding with a team of horses. I got to do all the grunt work behind our sawmill. Also helped Dad load a lot of 4' lath bolts by hand. With a little practice it isn't as hard as most people think.

1979, I was 10 and would ride around with an oil well man in the mornings servicing oil wells. Would refuel, grease, and start the pump jacks until around 11:00. Then go to his father-in laws farm and bale hay and other farm chores. Got paid 3 cents a bale and $2.50 an hour running the oil wells.

Sweeping floors at Lund boat factory.

At age 8 I picked Strawberries, raspberries, cucumbers and started raising calves for a neighbor. I did that for 6 years while taking care of our chicken flock and our swine herd. I left home at 14 to work on a dairy farm and have been on my own sense the day I graduated from the 8th grade.

Bryce

Did lots of different jobs as a kid.(9 to 18).

-Worked in the sugar bush emptying sap pails into the trailer tanks(before they went to hoses).

-Did a paper route.

-Tossed hay bales on the wagon.

-Mowed lawns.

-Set up bowling pins(hated that job).

-Picked and sold dew worms,trapped and sold minnows.

-Trapped fur.

-First real job was working as a milk delivery and at the warehouse packing boxes for the north train for the isolated communities along the railway line.

-Tree planting.

-Fishing guide.

-Timber cruiser.

Wow crop dusting, hazardous job, stunt planes too!
Fast cars, ya! I liked that when I was young and sorta crazy! Wife didn't like 140 mph as much as I did, lol

First job out of school was at a printing company. Bagging mail, feeding the mailer, jogging and feeding the binder then jogging for the press then cleaning plates. I made the rounds and realized I didn't want to be indoors working the rest of my life. lol

Worked for my uncles building houses at 14, $5 hr. 1975

oh I know my dad sold both them farmers diesel and gas, and they had hard time finding people to do short term work. I enjoyed it for about 3 summers . Than I could drive lol.

You were in Midwest then?
Carter's grain embargo on Russia caused me to loose grain elevator job, 1980, spent four years doing hog chores n working part-time on cattle farm next to Brushy Creek. Then bro in law told me of job in ny

Baled hay & straw. Last wage I recall was $5 for hay and $4 straw per hr.

My dad did masonry work part time in the summer for a local contractor. When I was 12, I got a job as Mud mixer (with a hoe) and carrying blocks for 50 cent an hour. I saved up enough to buy myself an old beater dirt bike!

We actually had a d2 cat for our first skidder. I remember dad carrying the big heavy chainsaws as they were not built light back than. I was to young but he split and loaded 4 foot oak cants as they called them back than. We lived in Iowa at the time hauling the cants to Wisconsin to make barrel staves.

Hauled a lot logs into Dubuque Iowa as well. My mom is only 4 foot 10 and she drove the truck while pregnant. She said she got lots of people attention when she climbed out of the truck. Lol

At 13 I was tailing the sap wagon in late winter and general farm work the rest of the year. Best shape I was ever in.

Middle 60s I picked tomatoes and sweet corn for the local produce stand. Only and hour or so a day.

Mid 70's carrying my dads mud board and umbrella on pipelines that were close to home. This was prior to OSHA catching us out there. Two of my older brothers were out there too. Oldest was buffing and grinding welds and the one a year older than me was rolling up leads, gopherimg welding rods and steering the truck when the dozer pulled it to the next joint of pipe. Got paid three times a day. Learned how to work and to do it right the first time

Mowing, raking, and baling square bales of hay by the thousands. It was more fun when you got to go to the other neighbors were you got paid or help my grandpa. Gramps would let me drive his truck around the field during lunch. Learned "3 on the tree" that way at 10 or 11. He would give a wave when the dust was getting a little too high or it was time to get started again. I wish he could remember it like I can. Square bales were still better than walking beans......that was miserable.

Selling cherries and apricots at a fruit stand in Oregon for $5 an hour in 2002 at the age of 14.

Had a paper route as a kid 40cents a week, collected all in silver, I'd like to have the value of what I collected back then now. Quit that about the time the sandwich coins came out. First hourly job was at a Dairy Queen, 85cents a hour.

Hey Lug, what club did you set targets at? Starting in 1973 I shot a lot of clay birds in Berks County. South End, Fleetwood, Leesport

1965 - Dishwasher at the Pelham House restaurant after school in Culpeper, VA.

6 years old, took a night shift job at the steel mill...

It was actually hauling hay and mowing lawns... made decent money for a kid.

First real actual workforce job was at a local laundry/dry cleaning place. The owner had a contract with the nearby Big Smith factory to wash all the jeans they made before they were distributed to customers... After school, a few friends and I would go down to the laundry and unload the bundles of jeans and turn them inside out, then rebundle them for the wash operation. It was a good job. Made some money while working with friends.

Mike

1958 I got my first paper route but was already trapping a few muskrats and pocket gophers. We got a 20 cent bounty on the gophers and rats were selling for 35 to 50 cents. I made more money on the paper route and bought my first .22 and deer rifle with the money I saved up from my endeavors. I had no overhead since I lived at home and was able to save everything I earned. I was 11.

Grew up on a farm and whenever i did get any free time that i wasnt working doing chores around our farm i worked at the neighbors fox farm,cleaning pens,feeding fox and pelting..learned alot from those fellas.

Til fifth grade we lived on a small farm, picked up rocks, walked beans, got paid 10$ a summer, I think I started at 7 years old
Was no fun at all, walking beans mom would hide a mason jar of water at the end of field to drink from after each round, 1/2 mile out 1/2 mile back

Six years old and working the night shift at the steel mill.

Never realized how bad I spoiled my kids until I read that.

Rink Rat at the old Hershey Sports Arena.

I have always been a mover and a shaker. Started fur trapping when I was 9 in 1974, picked crawlers for 25cts a dozen, shoveled snow, bailed hay and harvested rocks out of farmers fields, nutted hogs, worked for the neighbor who had a few carnival rides, cut grass, But my first actual job, with a paycheck was cleaning under the roller tables and the slag from the melting pot on weekends at a foundry when I was 16, in 1981

My first paycheck came from a mink farm in Wyoming MN 1983. I cleaned up from under the cages, maggots and crap.

My first "real" job (good pay, set schedule, full work week) was stonemasonry. Started at 14 doing my homeschooling at night, laying rock by day. Went until I was almost 18, since then I've been taking it easy (har har) doing seasonal work. Fishing, farming, sailing etc. Anywhere from 20 hours a week to 90.

Not counting paper routes,snow shoveling,selling worms,lawn mowing....My first real Job with Taxes with held...1971 age 15...worked at the local Sports Shop /Hardware store...1.60 per hour...fixing bikes, selling ski equipment, skate sharpening, mounting skis, selling and ordering Hockey skates and equipment....I LOVED MY JOB !!! Stayed for 5 years ...then went into the Autobody field...and Nevah left...and still doing it.

First job besides working for my dad was in 1980 and I was 16. I unloaded tractor trailers of Sheetrock all summer at an apartment construction project. Me and a few buddies worked together and made $5 per hour. I was in dang good shape after that. I can still remember wanting to kick someone's butt when I got my first check and it was lower than expected because of taxes. I had no idea!

First actual paid job was Zobels boat yard in Sea bright NJ, $56.22 everyother week in a little brown envelope 1954-56.......jk

Grew up farming and my first job that I worked daylight to dark and got paid was hauling peanut wagons to and from the fields. Dad had screwed some pieces of 4x4 posts to the pedals so I could reach. I was 6 yrs old. First job I had off of our farm I was 16 and ran a harvester on a sod farm.

I thought you were going to say "building the Ark".

White ..must have been in China, in his youth...I was in school when I was 8 years old...from 8am -2:30 pm..

Worked on a tobacco farm that also included a dairy. Hot and dirty but had fun. Made 50 cents per hour. Accepted 40 cents witha $20 Chistmas bonus and no pay until the end of the season. Bought my school clothes. Was a young teen.

When White was in his youth, schools had not yet been invented.

Of course there is always the chance that he had graduated already at the age of eight.

Excluding delivering newspapers, my first job was working in a coal mine in 1976. I was 18 years old, you had to build muscles on muscles to keep up. My starting pay was $5,55 an hour. I didnt plan on making it a career, but spent the next 37 years in the coal industry.

Cutting splitting and delivering wood in the early 90s. Uncle would run saw while I scouted for sign. When that saw went quiet you'd better be real close to help load...

My first paycheck age 14 at sonic.

Other than delivering newspapers and mowing lawns, my first job was at the grocery store. Worked after school every day, Thursday nights and both days on the weekends. Took home $50 a week, had all the money I needed. Paid for my own insurance, gas, clothes and anything else. Started in 1976 and was 16 years old.

Picking rock for my great grandfather at 25 cents a day in the early sixties also trapped ground squirrels for my grandfather for a nickel a piece then moved up to bucking hay bales 6 cents a piece split 3 ways.

'77' Paper boy Mpls.Star &Trib. In Richfield. '79' Started cleaning after Games at the Met Stadium.

Early 80’s I was 14 and the mechanic down the road hired me to clean and put away tools every day after school. Yard work and such. I grew up on a small farm so I had lots of chores, but that was my first job I got a paycheck for. 3.35 an hour plus a beer after work on Friday.

Man how times have changed. I hate to even post this. I implemented a pos computer system at a tanning salon at age 16 and then managed it. Cleared about 450.00 a week.

Other than walking beans, shoveling snow an mowing lawns, my first real job paid $2.00/hr working at a service station pumping gas, fixing tires, cutting wood and cleaning the shop. I was 15 years old and RICH!

When I was 12 I went to work for my uncle on his shrubbery and tobacco farm. It was in 1994 and I made $4 a hour. Saved up the money and bought my first truck at 15 and a brand new dog box for my coon hounds. Those were definitely good times

raised on farm for first 18 years, summer time put up hay for other farmers when had time from 1964 to 1969 got my first factory job remember my first 100.00 pay check for a 45 hour week 1970.

Mid 80s worked making a few bucks cleaning the boats coming in from fishing, or tying rigs for the next days fishing, prepping baits, whatever I could do for a dollar around the boats on the waterfront, then started actually making trips out fishing.

J

12 years old early 90's. I delivered newspapers. Started out with 65 customers. 4 years later quit to start playing football and had over 200.delivered them by bicycle or on foot if there was to much snow. Never asked for a ride during those NY winters.

Not to be as old as Lazarus, but in the early ‘60’s I was working for the local farmers hauling baled hay from their fields to the stack yards. Those 50-55 pound bales seemed like 90 pounds at that age. I also caught more night crawlers than I care to guess to keep my self serve night crawler stand well stocked. At $1.00 an hour for hay hauling and 15 cents a dozen for the night crawlers I thought I was rich!

Worked at Autoshack ( now Autozone ) in high school , $3.35 hr in 1984

Caught a ride a few times from a big hair rocker chic ( co worker ) prolly ten years older than me in her 1970 Chevelle 4spd car .

I bought my first car ( 1967 lemans ) working there.

I worked two hours after school everyday cleaning up in a shake and shingle mill after the sift went home. It was mainly shoveling saw dust that didn't make it into the conveyors. Then about 4 hours on the weekend doing the same. $1.35/hr. Must have been 66. About the same time I planted trees on weekends.
After I had bulked up a little all the high school boys loaded shake trucks after school, better money and I quit the clean up job. Most night I would load a truck and maybe 2 or 3 on the weekend. Anywhere from $12 to $20 per truck, piece work. Take 2 or 3 hours.
In my Senior year I had early dismissal to work. Me and another guy would go up in the woods where the block cutters were working and load and haul a 5 to 6 cord truck, haul it back and unload. I think $5/cord.
Got a job setting chokers as soon as I graduated $3/hour.

I put an ad in the local shopper for odd jobs for $2.00 an hour when I was 15, I think that was 1977? It was the year Elvis died.

Was busy all summer, also hauled loads of black dirt from our swamp for $2.00 a big trailer load.

Took about an hour each load to dig out and then unload in the garden.

A couple years before I got a nickle a piece for all the eelpout I could scrounge while out ice fishing..dad put them in the garden for
fertilizer.

My first job was working on my family farm and the wage was room and board. lol

My first paying job I worked on a farm for a vet. He Had some of the finest Holsteins in NY. He also had an embryo

transplant operation where we would shave then cut a fist size hole in the Abdomen in front of the hip bone and implant the

embryo.

Probably did a couple hundred that summer. He auctioned some of his herd at the end of that summer to mostly Arab buyers

and the AVERAGE price per head, including calves was over $12,000.

Wage was $1.65 an hour and around 90 hrs a week. 1983 I was 17.

14 years old, 1998, worked for a school supply shipping company. Picking boxes of reams of paper, down to counting little boxes of paper clips and everything between. Packing the shipping boxes with said supplies, shrink-wrapping pallets, loading trucks.

Don't miss it at all.

Around 13 years old--Hay fields and fence post.

Started by mowing lawns in the summer, push mower and bicycle to get around, and setting pins in the bowling alley for a dime a line in the winter. Would have been around 1962.

raking gravel out of yards back into drive ways I was about 10 , I hated it but so did everyone else so it paid 5 dollars an hour cash.

I had another job word of mouth from a satisfied gravel raking customer moving duck manure I think I was 11 , I rode may bike 5 miles to the ladies house then used her Harley Davidson golf cart and garbage cans to haul composted duck manure to all of her gardens.

got a regular job at 12 stayed there weekends during the school year a week at Christmas break and all summer working for a pool and construction company. did pool service and construction till I was 17 and left for college , I returned to work weekends and special projects for a while afterwards also when I turned 16 I got my own service van and made service calls.

I Grew up on a farm I don't remember not working. Made me the person I am

First cash job was spring of 1968.
North of K I Sawyer Air force base in U.P.
Cutting pulp wood.
$.15 per stick , cut , peeled and stacked. 8' lengths ( Aspen trees)
300 per day = $45. tried to be done by 1-2 pm. This was a 2 man crew.
My brother in law and I.
Homelite then Jonsered's were the saw back then.
Once the bark started sticking on the poplar.
We moved to the Jack Pine off 28 between Munising and Marquette , for the summer.

13 years old--1976--peeling felled trees for a log home and got paid $2 per log. Long summer but we thought it was great money.

My first job is when I was 12 years old working for my dad seining minnows. I was paid .50 a gallon. We mostly seined red tail chubs. Back then he got $7.50 a gallon.

6 years old, planting plugs in cells in my parents greenhouse, because my brothers and I had tiny fingers and were very fast. In the early mornings we would load and unload the trucks, after school transplant, and in the evenings, load and unload trucks. We got .25 a flat,and all of the change at the end of the season for vacation.

My 1st job working for someone other than family was bailing hay for one of our neighbors. Made 50 cents an hr in 1961. I can hear what my Dad told me before we, my brother & I, went to work for Don. "Boys, Don wants you to help him bale today. He is going to pay you a man's wages & will be expecting a man's work. If you don't give him a man's work he don't owe you a dime! Do you understand?" We both gave him a man's work & more.
My 1st job after I graduated was working in a hog buying station. Graduated on Sunday, went to work Monday morning. Worked 5 1/2 days a week. Started out at $35.00 a week. The year was 1966.

I worked for a disabled farmer down the road. Get off the school bus at his house, his wife always had dinner ready for me.
I knew nothing about cows,corn,trees or driving. I didn't make much for wages and he about worked me to death.
I complained to my folks about it and they would have none of it.
The gentleman was a retired school teacher, and every single day was a learning experience that I cannot thank him enough for giving me.
R.I.P Mr. McKinney

I was 12,i worked for a logger in virginia. Me and my buddy also 12 and cocky. We carried pulpwood logs out of the woods and loaded on trucks...1971 i think,,real paying job for 2.50 an hr. before that paper route. 10 yra old .