What was your first job ever?

[commoncentsmike]

My first job was a 6 week stint for the local school district the summer I was 14. I worked 6 hours per day, 5 days per week and made minimum wage ($3.35 per hour).

The first week I worked in the high school library, cleaning and dusting books. Every book on every shelf had to be pulled out and wiped down.

Weeks 2 through 5 I was a teacher's assistant in a summer school class for primary grades (kiddos entering grades 1 through 3). This was back when summer school offered fun activities like art and music.

The last week I spent doing janitorial type stuff in the junior high campus.

I feel like every student should do the janitorial type stuff for a week. Hopefully then they would treat the place with respect. My girlfriend is a teacher, so I hear about this stuff all the time.

[msomnipotent]

Yeah, I helped out at the family radio station when I was like 13. I laugh when people haven't worked a day until they're out of college.

I think that puts them at a real disadvantage when they start to go job hunting at that late stage. I would walk into an interview and basically be handed a job because I had experience. I plan on my daughter having a decent resume before she starts college, even if it is just summer odd jobs and volunteering. Something that proves she can be dependable.

[phantom]

My first job was teaching swim lessons for $5.25/hour. I was in middle school and swam competitively with an aquatics club at a nearby school. There were two half hour sessions immediately following my swim practice a few times a week. I may not have gotten a lot of hours or earned a lot of money, but it was a great job for someone who already had an after school commitment everyday, and helping little kids learn to swim felt awesome.

[Mjenn]

My first job was at a horse farm. Yes there was a lot of manure shoveling, but I also got to 'teach' younger kids how to ride and that paid extremely well. At 16 my summer job was paying more than 10 dollars an hour, and I learned a LOT about saving from that experience. I had to budget my own horse costs that my parents made me responsible for.

[AJ444]

I feel like every student should do the janitorial type stuff for a week. Hopefully then they would treat the place with respect. My girlfriend is a teacher, so I hear about this stuff all the time.

My wife's first job out of high school was as a janitor, it motivated her to start college the next semester.

[commoncentsmike]

My first job was at a horse farm. Yes there was a lot of manure shoveling, but I also got to 'teach' younger kids how to ride and that paid extremely well. At 16 my summer job was paying more than 10 dollars an hour, and I learned a LOT about saving from that experience. I had to budget my own horse costs that my parents made me responsible for.

As a Texan, I'm sad to say I've never been on a horse. I bet that was a great/rewarding job at 16.

[TexasHusker]

I took on a newspaper delivery route of 110 customers at age 12. I did that for two years, and the day I turned 14, I took a "real" job as a bus boy at a local restaurant bar and grill and did that for 2 years.

[Milly]

Here's my career journey:

I was super lucky in high school and scored a job with our local credit union through a "Regional Occupational Program". I got paid $8/hour 4 hours/week to work as a teller or work the deposit services at 15 years old. I wonder if it partially instilled the interest I have in money today. I felt really important being trusted with pretty much every one in town's SS# and savings balances. I also got to hold $80K in one hand once when we got an order from the FEDs. My favorite was the coin machine. I always carried coins to trade out for when interesting old coins got rejected. It counted towards two classes of school credit too, so after lunch, I'd either go to 2 hours of work or home. Not a bad gig =)

It was hard on my pride to switch to making omelets in a cafeteria at crazy early morning hours for only $7.25/hour in college. The good news was the early hours were so empty we could goof off a little and practice important things like juggling spatulas, and flipping the omelets high enough to spin the pan before catching it.

The next two summers I spent working as a government defense intern editing process manuals and such at $10/hour. Really boring work, but the tours they gave us were amazing.

I then worked as a Teacher's assistant at $12/hour my final year at college teaching mechanical engineer students to design/build/fly remote controlled airplanes. I loved what I did, but I did't log half my hours.

After graduation, I stuck around a few months doing odd jobs while my husband finished (building RC airplanes, designing fishing poles, helping with instillation art)

We then got "real person jobs". I worked for a different defense contractor doing structural data analysis for more like $30/hr. I worked for about 18 months until baby #2 came and I quit.

Started blogging this year. No earning yet, but it is starting to look nice...

[alexander grey]

Baby sitter and dog walker when I was 16. At the beginning it paid about 5 per hour. It was good to start getting conscious about money and how hard it can be to earn it.

[97guns]

My second job was a dishwasher for a buffet, those dishes never stopped coming in, at the end of the night I smelt like a mixture of KFC and the city dump.

[scfr]

I had my first W2 job at 14, but I had my first "job for pay" before that. I think I was 10.

A neighbor's husband managed a clothing store.
She did the inventory counts for the store and it involved tags that had been removed. Many of the tags had staples in them. She got tired of her fingers getting cut on the staples, so she hired me to go through the tags and pull out the staples before she started the count. I did that for a couple years during "inventory season" until we moved.

If my memory is correct, I got a tiny bit of piece pay and a glass of soda which was a real treat because we never had soda at home.

[Gailete]

My first job was a 6 week stint for the local school district the summer I was 14. I worked 6 hours per day, 5 days per week and made minimum wage ($3.35 per hour).

The first week I worked in the high school library, cleaning and dusting books. Every book on every shelf had to be pulled out and wiped down.

Weeks 2 through 5 I was a teacher's assistant in a summer school class for primary grades (kiddos entering grades 1 through 3). This was back when summer school offered fun activities like art and music.

The last week I spent doing janitorial type stuff in the junior high campus.

While it wasn't my first job, I did a six week stint myself although I was a summer school's teacher helper for six weeks. I learned when doing something for the government you are going to be waiting a good long time for your first paycheck. This was a program for disadvantaged youth, and would you believe that I got my first paycheck after working 5 weeks and was done with the job for three weeks befor I got my last one!

[Gailete]

My first job at 11-12 was babysitting for 75 cents an hour before midnight and $1/h after midnight. One night the folks came home and the guy was drunk (so he said he wouldn't be driving me home) and asked my what I owed him. He reversed it and paid me $5.75 instead of $4.75. You better believe that was a significant mistake back in those days - LOL. Then I was self-employed selling Christmas cards door to door. I realized than I hated approaching people to get them bo buy something, but the thought of being my own boss never left me and now I sell stuff and never see my customers

After working my way through college, babysitting, grandpa-sitting, typing term papers, working in the library, working in the cafeteria, working cleaning toilets and the rest of the bathroom, and any job that needed to be done, I would do cheerfully. I graduated in 1977 and when I got home, my first paycheck job was parttime at Arby's for less than $2/hour if I recall correctly, AND I was totally self-supporting. The parttime evolved to fulltime within weeks and when I left for a better job a year later, I was the first one from that place to leave with a weeks notice! as everyone else had been fired or quit on the spot in the two years it was open! I've basically been supporting myself since I was 17 when I graduated HS in 1973. I also did three years of camp couseling at $10 a week. I helped a couple keep their house clean/ironing, etc. for a couple of weeks but lived in and we had unfortunately never discussed wages and when she went to pay me the first time she gave me a $10 bill folded into the smallest size she could get it and practically flung it at me. I lost a lot of respect for them then as if my work wasn't satisfactory they should have told me, and if it was they should have treated my pay with more respect as well. I only got a decent paying job when I went to nursing school when I was 30.

Reading so many of the replies made me realize just how old I am for sure!

[Sammydabullz]

My first Job was a paper route at 13. After the first year I was running 3 routes. I rode my bicycle and walked the routes when it snowed. I did my paper routes for 3 years making nearly $150 a month.

[Mandy63]

My first job was at a small Christian bookstore. I loved it. Met a lot of great people that I still keep in contact with to this day.