What was your first job and what was the wage?

First job was working at a fruit stand at age 14 for 50 cent an hour in 1956. (Looks like GreenMachine and I are of the same vintage!). Rode there on my Lambretta motor scooter.

I think it would also be interesting to hear about everyone’s first R-E-A-L job. The one that lasted more then a week or two. The job that gave you some independence (and your parents some independence!)

My first real job came after I finished a two year program at a local electronics school (RETS) after high school. My high school counselor told me I was “too stupid to go to college†- and I thought he knew what he was talking about. So I went to RETS and, two years later got a job as an Electronics Technician in sunny Calif (I’m from Michigan) at North American Aviation starting at $3.11 an hour. I worked on the guidance systems for the Polaris Subs and Minuteman Missiles. $3.11 was a great starting salary back in 1962!

 

I started working in a grocery store when I was 15 years old. I believe I was paid $2.15 an hour (the minimum wage) for that job.

The job responsibilities included:

(1) bagging groceries and helping customers load their cars. We were instructed not to accept tips or risk being fired.

(2) moving the empty bottles that customers returned to the back storage area. Remember the days when pop (soda) was sold in returnable bottles? The various soda companies would come by weekly to pick up the bottles.

(3) burning cardboard boxes in the incinerator room. This was particularly scary because numerous rats lived back there where garbage was stacked nearly waist high.

(4) gathering carts from the parking lot (or wherever customers left them). It seemed like every other cart had broken wheels.

The best thing that this (and other similar jobs) did for me was to teach me the value of obtaining a college education. I was motivated to learn as much as I could in school so that I could choose the occupation of my choice.

I'm glad to report that things have worked out for the best, in part due to my experiences at my first job.

 

First job was working as a go-fer in a clinical lab at the hospital. It was 1.80 an hour no benefits. I got all the dirty jobs including bringing the bodies to the morgue, and the worse was the pregnancy tests. You had to inject 50 cc of urine from the patient into the ear vein of a female rabbit then later kill the rabbit by injecting 50 cc of air into the vein. PE (Pulmonary embolism). Then you removed the ovaries for the pathologist to look for follicles induced by the HCG (Human Chorionic Gonadotropin). I started using either to anesthesise the rabbits before killing them. Rotten job. Glad we can do this in a "test tube" today. It was a lousy test and not very accurate. And yes the rabbit always died.

 

wow...that job really SUCKED!!

 

My first real job (I'm not counting the numerous babysitting jobs or helping my dad out in the office during the summer) was the summer that I was 15 and had to get a permit from my school (b/c I was under 16) to work as a party hostess in the party room of the local roller/ice skating rink. I believe the year was 1993?

I worked Tues-Thurs, Sat & Sun for about 4-5 hours a day, got paid ~$3.75/hour, got to skate in any public skating sessions (outside of work time) for free, and got to eat leftover pizza, cookies, and Baskin Robbins ice cream cake after the screaming children were hauled away from the birthday parties.

We (usually 2-3 of us) set up the tables in the party room for the appropriate # of parties (it was not unusual to have as many as 10 different birthday parties going on at one time), greeted the parents and went over the rules and details of the package they had purchased, handed out skating tickets so the kids could rent skates, served the meal, drinks, and cake. Then we cleaned up everything after they left...the hardest thing for me was cutting the cakes. Because they were ice cream, they were pretty well frozen at the time they were taken out of the freezer and we had to cut them into many pieces to serve the children, and I got blisters on my hand from that knife.

 

Yeah, I just mumbled "thanks ma'am" and hurried off so she would see me laughing. I didn't wanna be rude but it seemed pretty funny at the time. I think I converted the dime into a gumball on my 15 minute break.

 

amazing how far things have come, isn't it? whew, what a job!! :blink:

 

My first real job was working at Disney World. I sewed names onto those mouse-ear hats. It was a great job, and if it paid any money whatsoever, I would say forget science and do that for the rest of my life

::EDIT:: I forget what the wage was... whatever minimum wage was at the time plus maybe $1 an hour

 

Paper route, ~8 miles.
I think I recall making between $17 and $26 per week.

 

Hmm, first real job was a cook at Pizza Hut in the late 70's, I think minimum wage was 2.35. Became a manager and was salaried at $13,200 for a 60 hr work week. In 1980, hired by my present PD for $17,200 a yr. Now, as a sergeant, my pay is $68,200. (That's base pay. OT is $47.00 an hr, my OT in 2004-2005 was about 10 hrs, I am hoping road work will give me 4-5 hrs OT a week)

 

Viticulture - picking grapes @ $0.06 per tray; pruning and tying vines ($1.25 per hour). Hot in the summer with lots of insects and spiders, cold-to-bone in winter with wet, dense fog.

 

My first job was working for US department of Agriculture In biological weed abatement. We engineered bugs that ate weeds or layed their eggs on weeds causing the weed to expend all its energy combating the larvie. What a bad idea. Have you seen Jurasic Park? The project lost funding and they wanted to keep me on so I worked in the agri lab raising leeches. That was nasty. We had to feed them fresh cow blood every day. We were trying to synthecise their anti coagulant. I was the gopher getting the fresh cow blood at the slaughter house and feeding the leeches.
Have you thought about how to purposly feed a blood sucking leech? We made up plexiglass cubes with one side missing. Cow hide was sandwhiched between the two cubes and clamped. One cube holding water with leeches the other cube held the cow blood. The leeches would crawl onto the cow hide and feed on the blood through the cow hide. 2.15 an hour.
Now, I work at UC Berkeley trying to map and photogragh the visual cortex in animals. It's all basically the same stuff... the only difference is now I have a title and more schooling. I think the pay is still 2.15 an hour!!
:lol:
-Paul R. Haller-

 

My dad had a small but successful heavy construction company and I was EXPECTED to help out. Of course I was paid, actually very well given it was the late 70's and I as a 15 year old was getting as much as his regular laborers: $6/hr.

But my mom and dad had a firm rule they never gave in to: they had to sign off if I wanted money. School supplies, clothes, fine. Goof-off, no way. So I took part time jobs at a fraction of the wage to have "my" money.

I did it all: shovelled crap out of barns, mowed lawns, washed cars, flipped burgers, scrubbed urinals, etc. I learned the true value of money - and the value of saving - the hard way, a trait I still have.

I kept my high school math and science grades high enough to get a small scholarship when I went for my first degree. That was a B.Sc. Computer Science at the University of Utah and I graduated '88. Kept the grades high enough to land good internships.

My first "real" job was as a sub for Honeywell Process, and it paid around $50K/yr. That was when the process field was still growing here. A guy who was a long-time Honeywell employee convinced me of the many benefits of becoming a contract employee. I eventually became an S-corp (Single shareholder), though for some professions it may make more sense to incorporate as a Professional Service Co, especially if income is very high.

When I went on my own, I also went back to the U and got a B.Sc. in Economics (Production and Operations Management) to better understand how companies worked. With the process side I knew HOW they worked, with the Economics degree I knew WHY they did.

My years with Honeywell allowed me to network with a great collection of clients, many of whom I still continue a relationship with. I currently contract for a large global privately held engineering firm, with a base contract and upset limit I would have written off as fantasy back when I was a kid.

An important question nobody appears to have asked: are you happier now? I'm willing to bet with the increased responsibilities, increased workload, higher stress, etc, most of you would answer in the negative.

The present nature of my work is mostly "crisis mode" where I'm running around fixing critical engineering/process problems. I also accepted supervising new-hires during their probationary.

I haven't had the time to do original engineering/programming in years, at least 4-5 years. I miss it

 

1996: Cashier @ Toys R Us... during the holiday season. $5 something/hr
If not for the very cute, older goth manager I would have hated that job!

 

The year, 1977...age 14. I cropped tobacco in South Georgia for 15.00 a day plus meals. They also picked me up and brought me home. Did this for one full season. It was very sticky and smelled bad but was still a sweet job at that age. Worked with all that tobacco and never have smoked in my life.

 

$15.00/week as a sort of bellhop and sailboat instructor at a resort near Yarmouth, NS called Braemar Lodge in the late 40's ( not including tips)
Just couldn't figure out how to spend all that money.

 

Lifeguard

THE best summer job for a high school / college kid.

They paid well above minimum wage. They could have paid me half as much and I still would have been a very happy boy . . . the fringe benefits were outstanding . . . and cute!!!

Paying lifeguards only minimum wage is an invitation to losing a lawsuit and paying a large settlement should someone drown.

A friend of mine did it even better. She was a lifeguard in the Summer and ski instructor in the Winter.

 

51 Merc probably got around 12 miles to the gallon ... I have a few old Popular Mechanics magazines, and they list the mileage of the cars they tested, and they all hovered around that level back then.

My first job was as a stock boy (yes, that was the official title) in a full service shoe store (see, in those days, "full service" was a given, and every retail store had a ton of sales people.) I was paid $1.50 an hour, but the state of California upped it to $1.65 an hour shortly thereafter. Year was 1972, I think. I then went on to the lofty position of shoe salesman (yes, that was the title and we didn't allow women to sell shoes ... they sold the hosiery!) I was paid commission, worked 5 days a week with two of those days 12 hour shifts, and then was promoted to Assistant Manager. As an AM, I was able to work 6 days a week on alternate weeks (always Saturday and every other Sunday, with one weekday off during the week), and the aforementioned two 12 hour days.

I think I'll tell my boss how much I appreciate him tomorrow!

 

hmmm, i forget =)

either an after school tutor or movie theater worker. both in high school, i dont remember which came first!

both minimum wage... whatever that was in 1995