First job you remember?

I'm not talking first job you got paid and took taxes out of, I mean the first job you had as a little kid. Mine was around 10yo or so shoveling snow. I would do a huge driveway that would take most of the day for $10 That would have been back in about '78 or so and was huge money back then. In fact, I'm surprised I'm not living off of it now??? At least that was my thought process back then Then I cut grass in the summer. I would mow acres with a push mower for $5. The same lawn that most landscapers would charge $75 or more today and do in an hour. Hummmm… now I feel exploited

My uncle, who was 3 months younger than i was, and I were paid a nickel a row to hoe grandma's garden. Those rows were 50 yards long. As soon as my uncle and I hoed enough to buy some BBs, we'd get on our bikes and ride 2 miles to the store to get the BBs and get back and start shooting until they were all gone, then do it again. Those 2 miles were awfully hilly too.

Painting farm trailers . Green upper ad red chassis ... I was about 8 back in Germany

Shoveled driveways for 2.00 and split it with my buddy....1968. Mowed lawns with a push mower ( the owners) for 2.00. Collected night crawlers for 1/2 cent each. And delivered the local news paper on Thursdays for .06 cent per paper profit. Got a 1.00 tip from most customers at Christmas....I was Rich !

While I did shovel snow for neighbors,I also started selling worms and frogs while we were still living in St.Paul
Worms a nickel a dozen and frogs were 3 cents each.Made $60.00 that first summer ,which was a good sum for a kid in the early 60s.
Tom

Neighbor had about a 5 acre field he wanted mowed so my dad let me use his new Economy garden tractor with a 4' mower deck to do it.
Can't remember how long it took but it paid $20.00! Then I found out I had to pay for gas, lesson learned lol. That was 1971

clean up my dads job sites on the weekends i got paid in shotgun shells for my 410

not sure ut was a job but first money venture was trappin gophers nickle a tail ..them i was maybe 11 or 12 my older brother contracted with a guy to haul flax straw bales to town.. id drive the truck and brother 7 yrs my elder threw them up over the box... he was a big strong boy... we would stop and stack every so often... took em to town and loaed em in boxcars we got 13c a bale. lookin back it wasnt near enough if i remember right we get 300 on a load so 39 dollars we would get 3 loads a day but man that was hard work. i guess 120 bucks in 1970 was some money.. always had chips in my pocket.... then i got married

Grew up on a farm. Not sure what hours I was expected to work but it was something like 1 hour after school each day and 2 or 4 hours on the weekend. I casually mentioned this to my 5th grade teacher thinking this was just how everybody's family did things. She mentioned that I must be getting rich working all those hours. I hadn't gotten paid, it was just part of my responsibilities. But, that got the wheels turning and within a few days I decided I was getting ripped off. I never said a thing to my dad about it though. About a week later, without me saying a thing, he told me he was proud of how hard I was working and was going to start paying me 50 cents an hour. I was thrilled! I was 10.

we didnt get payed either and didnt expect to... everybody pitched in... when it was time to pick rocks even my sisters were out in the field....i ground feed for the hogs id say bout 7 or 8 dad would set tractor and grinder by big pile of barley in the center of big grainery.. he dumped in the 50lb bags of suppliments and id shovel into the grinder..most of the time was 2010 jd diesel so ya couldnt feed it too fast ground a batch a night sometimes 2 dad always had 200-400 on feed plus 20-30 sows... hogs were definitly our groceries clothes ect... sure we had the cows and other grain income... but the hogs was the monthly paycheck..

combing coon for the fleshers at 8 or 9.nickle a piece and i walked home thinkin i was E.J.Dailey.it was better than dads plan for me of being a proffessional rock picker.

and i cant say we didnt get payed we got money whenever we needed it but nothing frivilous..... think i was 14 dad said this 20 acre patch is yours this yr for workin ... planted sunflowers dryed out didnt get much think 600 dollars..

how much you get for pickin rocks... we didnt get payed but when they hired high school kids and had 2 crews think they got 1 .25 hr... we could go work out on saturday if we wanted sometimes... but i was too sick of pickin rocks to go do it for the neighbors

Picking worms for the local store. 1976 my back is akin just typing this 🤣 l was getting. 75c doz. I could do about 75 to 100 dozen a night if the weather was right and I had the lawn mowed 2 acres

Father hauled logs all his life. I would go with him on the weekends to go fishing on the creek and river along the roads. My task was to make sure that all the sharp rocks were thrown into the Bush along the way. I always thought it was a waste of time until I started driving a haul truck and saw what sharp rocks do to tires under heavy loads.

i got caught with firecrackers the year my parents built their house and i got nothing a 5 gallon pail full.

Don't remember my age at the time but I was very young working on our farm taking care of our cows, horses, dogs and chickens. It took me almost 3 days to mow all the grass around the house and orchard with a push mower. I also worked on the neighbors fox farm and I learned at a very early age to put up fur so I worked for the local furbuyer also. I enjoyed all of those jobs. It was hard work but very rewarding because I always felt like I was getting things done all of the time and learned new things almost daily. The furbuyer payed me in trapping supplies I needed which is the way I really wanted it. The fox farmer tried to pay me cash but I didn't want it so we worked out a deal where I received a beautiful pair of silver Fox and pens to keep them in.and on our farm I didn't get paid with money but I always had clothes on my back, food in my belly and a nice roof over my head and that was good with me but I believe the most valuable"pay" I received was the life experiences that helped mold who I am to this day. I helped and watched 3 different businesses run 3 different ways and they were all successful but all 3 had the same core values and I believe the best one was, if you want something you must work for it and I carry that with me still today.i worked all 3 of these jobs simultaneously all through my school years until I graduated high school then went in the military for 14 years and I still think about those jobs and the people I worked with almost everyday all these years later. Those were great times.

cropping deer for farmers on damage permits, think I was 16, worked on the family farm for room and board till then.
RR

Picking weeds trk farm 35 cents an hour, when maters were ripe 10 cents a bushel. One day i picked five dollars worth by end of the day

Selling golf balls retrieved out of the golf course ponds and sold back to golfers was my first job. I was eight or nine at the time.

Starting mowing the local cemetery when I was 12. 16 inch Lawnboy pushmower. I even graduated to gravedigger when I got older. Made good money but it was hard work. My Great grand parents, grand parents, and Father are all buried there.

I was 14 or 15 so that was about '67 neighbor asked me to help him load out a potato truck don't know what they weighed but they were burlap bags and had to be carried out of the basement just me an him driver had a bad back got paid 5 bucks and got home at 3am Dad was waiting didn't say anything but he looked like he was on fire neighbor never asked me to work again

Grew up on a farm, my dad paid me 25 cents an hour. During the summer when off school I could get an easy 60 hours a week. During school I usually got in about 20 hours a week. That was in the late 50's and very early 60's.

Picking up drops, piece work, a nickle a crate. Drops were apples on the ground, they were used for cider. I was about eight years old.

First paid job was mowing our church. That was 20-25 years ago...still doing it, pays a bit better and takes 1/4 of the time thanks to my zero turn.

After that I did some lawn work/light farm work on a doctor's horse/pig/goat farm.
First official job according to social security was tutoring Spanish at Ohio State University-Newark.

Picking up baseballs and mowing the field at a batting cage. That was 1974. They didn't have nets and fences to stop the long hitters so we carried a 5 gallon bucket around collecting balls and dumping back in the machine. I made.25 cents an hour back then it was pretty good money especially for a kid. Had to watch for fast flying line drives. At least we mowed with a big gang mower.

Working around the farm.Feeding animals,mowing,shovel snow,do hay,cleaning barns and coops.Got paid in BBs and .22 shells.

Let me know what I missed. Grandparents and uncles/aunts had farms so come summer and after school I spent my vacations and after school hours: picking rocks, baling hay/straw, forking s--t, combining corn, wheat, or oats, mowing yards, hay, etc., shoveling ear corn into cribs, snow, coal, grain into graineries, selling fruit/veg at roadside stand. So graduating high school and getting a real job was like a vacation. Not-went to farm after work. Missed one-dairy farm-back when u carried buckets back and dumped in tank!!!

Sold Sunday papers

paper boy at 10 yrs then bottle washer at grandpas dairy at 12 for $1 hr.. I remember when Dems voted to put social security in general fund gramps said that money they were saving for you when you retire some day? well boy you"ll never see it!!! HA gramps! I got it before its all gone!

I worked in a pepper factory. My job was to separate the pepper from fly poop. The only way to do it was by taste.

When I was 12 My father had a massive heart attack. I had to cut enough fire wood for the entire winter. I would fall the trees and cut 2 pick up loads EVERY sat starting that Oct. I may have weighed 75 lbs soak and wet. I would load the bigger blocks and split them every evening after getting home from school. Saturday roll around back at it. I was so small I had let the saw ride on my leg and once it kicked back and laid my knee cap open. Put some dirt on it and kept sawing .LOL
Love to see a kid now days even know how to start a chain saw let alone cut , load , and split 1 load of wood, let alone 2 a week !!!

First job was picking marionberries for 50 cents a 9 lb flat. That would have been July of 1963 and I had just turned 6 years old. Still remember getting that first flat picked and getting paid with a 50 cent piece and then running to the local store to spend it.

Nothing much has changed in my spending habits over the years.

Paper route fill in for my best friend. Few bucks for a week while he and family away. Mason tender summer job when I was 14 and got 75 cents an hour. Big money then. Friend were working farms for 50 cents an hour.
I learned a great lesson that summer...not going to do that for a living.

Our next door neighbor owned the farms across the creek and at the end of our road. We picked tomatoes and sweet corn for his truck stand. After that I washed dishes at a large restaurant.

Trapped rabbits for local rabbit clubs. Never caught a ton and cant remember what I got paid.

hard to deny it when someone says"i think there is somethin in the water in PA."

I was 8 years old and worked for my uncle packaging bacon.

10 hour days, six days a week (summer). I was paid $2.00 per day plus lunch.

I was in grade school when I started hustling up lawn mowing, brush trimming, fence painting type jobs. Deep snows Id shovel out sidewalks and driveways. I worked for what ever was offered on these jobs. There was a steady flow of traffic in and out of the Coop elevator and by the time I was in middle school some of the old farmers would pick me up and pay me to chop weeds out of their soybean fields. I got $3/hr and figured to get rich LOL. About the time I got to HS the local cowpokes kidnapped me from the bean fields and took me with them to build fence, work cattle, and put up hay bales. I don't remember exactly how much it figured out to an hour but I think it usually averaged out to better than double what walkin' beans paid.

To this day I still day wage when claims are slow.

I was 12-13 yrs old

Hand trimmed Christmas trees , in the spring.
Uncles dairy farm all summer ( 60# round bales).
Bailed and loaded boxcars with x-mas trees , Nov - early Dec

Spent the next spring in the UP.
Peeled and stacked Pulpwood. ( We got 15 cents a stick piled and ready for the loaders)
Fished brook trout on the rainy days, camped and fished northern pike on the weekends.
Beat the crap out of all the pine pitch from the spring before.

You had a chain saw !!! I had a double bitted axe and a buck saw.You were spoiled.

Right out of high school, I got a job working in a Pepsi bottling plant. I was paid $1.00 an hour.

Worked in the family grocery store, got payed 25 cents per hour. Was thrilled figured out I got a buck every four hours.

Putting up hay 2 cents a bale and free lunch.I was fourteen good old days.

During high school in summer I seined minnows with my dad who wholesaled them to various bait shops. During the winter months we trapped suckers and fatheads in ponds he had leased for that purpose.

Herding dairy cows and helping around the barn, probably 8 or 10. Started getting paid five or six years later, didn't like getting paid we were poor and I knew it. Grateful for the life I've had, wouldn't change much but my own mistakes and shortcomings. Most of the bad times in my life have been self inflicted.

Haying all summer growing up.

First steady job starting 14 through 19. Farm I could bike to, a friend's family ran the farm. Summer was haying, growing and harvesting sweet corn, moving cows and sheep around, castrating, firewood processing, odd projects. Winters processing and delivering firewood after school, sugaring.

I was real lucky. The farm, huntjng and fishing kept me out of trouble. I wouldn't have traded it for any of my peers' jobs scooping ice cream or bagging groceries, that's for certain.

I think yr onto something there!!!

Farm work for $1 hr. Then room board in summer on farm, $25 a week , not hard work, an several times during summer went out town an eat out bishops or someplace an went something , county Fair somewhere, 13 years old , forgot about paper boy job in between 2 farm jobs.

Paper boy

there was a local fellow who would hire kids if you where willing to work (he paid very well)i worked for him several times usually splitting wood and stacking even shoveled the horse stalls out once i forget what he paid but he couldnt get round very easy so he was always happy for the help

Pulling tassels for Pfister Hybrid Corn Co. in Woodford County, Illinois for 40 cents an hour. That was in the late 1940's.

Very first job? All you farm boys know this was yer first real job

Gate opener!

First work that I did.. that I received any money for ....was walking beans on the farm I grew up on....got a penny for every cucklebur that was pulled up by the roots....that might explain some of my back issues to this day...lol

Paper boy ,then, at 18, working in the mines.

Detasseling corn when I was 14 about 1976. I think it was about $1.20 an hour. I got to keep .50 an hour, the rest went for school clothes

When I was 12 our dad left my mom and the 6 of us. I raised calves for a man for two years while finishing grade school. The day I graduated from 8th grade I packed my two grocery bags of belongings and moved in with a farm family to live and work every day all through HS. My mom could not afford to feed 6 of us and my leaving helped her be able to care for the 4 younger siblings as my sister a year older than I did the same as I did. Turned out I came to live with a great family and I learned to not waste my time peeing and moaning about others and learned to work but also learned that demeaning those that have much less (like we did) was not a way to make me better. I try hard to give back what I have been graciously given.

Bryce

I didn't get paid for working at home(firewood,gardening,mowing,putting up hay etc.) Everyone was expected to help out. Dad did pay 5 cents a piece for pocket gophers that I trapped. I remember picking rock for an entire afternoon for my great grandfather. When I was done he told me I did a great job and handed me a quarter, he was a very frugal man. My first real paid job was bucking hay bales for a neighbor, three of us split 6 cents a bale. I was the biggest so I bucked and the other two stacked and drove the truck. We were in the sixth grade.

Started driving the pickup pulling the pipe trailer for Dad and whoever he had helping him at 5 stringing out or moving irrigation pipe, started driving the tractor and helping with irrigation pipe at 7. Dad had a hired hand for a month or two in the summer til I was 9, then I was the help. Got paid for driving the tractor but not for anything else working on the farm. Started working for neighbors at 14. Talking with guys around this area and I'm about the only one my age (47) that spent any real time on a hand clutch tractor. I might like farming now if I had enough ground to justify a late model tractor with a good AC, radio and AutoSteer, but I am not willing to spend the money to try to find out, I think my burnout on tractor driving is permanent. I'll do a little farming for a neighbor in a bind, and my own little piece of dirt, but Dad broke me of ever wanting to be a 'real farmer'. Worked construction and farming in the summers through college.

Working at a bait shop, night crawlers were 25 cents a dozen. Boat rentals were $7.50 a day.

shoveled snow when 10, at 12 mopped floors, cut vegetables, cleaned up at a Italian fast food place, I made 35 cents an hour, after awhile there I got a raise to 50 cents

Back in 1951 worked for a neighbor farmer all haying season for an Iver Johnson 22 revolver.

Raised chickens and sold eggs. Also built and sold birdhouses and tied a few fishing flies. Good times.

Picking potatoes fifty-some years ago. That's my little sister doing the same thing. Forty cents a barrel. If I wanted something through the course of the year, I earned it during our three week harvest picking spuds.

My mother hated snakes. She paid me a penny per inch to remove them. She hated them so bad she didn't even want to see the harvest, so pay was on the honor system.

I shagged golf balls for a travelling pro in 1973. $8 a day including lunch.

I sold a bee nest /hornets nest removal job to a neighbor. For a quarter. Got stung 5 times in the face, used a can of Fuller brush bug spray and a hockey stick to beat that hive out of the bushes.

I was 7