Your first job...what job and pay.

[timberlinetree]

 I was visiting with a hospice patient and we started talking about his first job. I find this old day stuff really interesting. What was your first job and how much bacon did you bring home?
  My patient who is 85 started in Holyoke, Ma at age of 16 made 85 cents hr at a thread company.
  My first paycheck job was at 14yrs old on tabbco farm making $2.86 hr.
  In the 80's an old man told me he made a penny a bale for everyone put in the barn.

[Cedarman]

Summer job for 2 weeks detasseling corn.  60 cents per hour, 8 hour days,  12 straight days, 2 off, then 2 more days.  Did get a bonus of 15 cents per hour for staying the season.  Nice fish sandwich and megaphone of root beer at A&W was 50 cents, no tax.  2 years later got $1.00 per hour as crew boss supervising 12 teenage girls in the cornfield riding a machine looking down on the girls.  Can you imagine a 16 year old boy in a huge cornfield with a dozen girls? One day at the far end of the field when we took a break, they suggested a kissing contest to see who I would kiss the longest.  I gave them all a chance.  I should be in jail. Thanks for bringing back those memories.

[scgargoyle]

My first job was working at a marina, before I was even 'legal' age. I spent a couple summers there, starting when I was 14. IIRC, we got $1 an hour. When I turned 16 (1969), I went to work at a supermarket for minimum wage, which I think was $1.65/hr. They paid us in cash. In my early 20's, I went into my trade, machining, and was still making $1.65/hr. I gradually worked into tool and die work, and my pay went up considerably. It's sad to note that the most money I ever made in one year was some 24 years ago, in 1992. Today, I only make slightly more per hour than I did then, with 24 years of inflation making my pay pretty poor these days.

[coxy]

working for my dad for room and board 

[Bert]

My first job was working at my fathers sawmill off bearing for $5 an hour. Hated it. Man what a change of heart I had at about 23 years old when he made me partner.

[Andy White]

In 1965 at the age of 14, and being very "car" oriented, I got my first job at the biggest Gulf station in town. Working every day after school, and Saturdays, at 1.25 an hour. Soon the owner asked if he and my dad could help me get my drivers license to pick up and deliver customers cars after servicing. A legal driver at 14, with my own car working at the station, gas with my employee discount of five cents a gallon was .17 cents. I could fill my tank, take Nancy to the movies, eat out, and still have money for school clothes and car insurance. Now whose were the Good Old Days.      Andy 8) 8) 8) 8) 8)

[Bill Gaiche]

Started working with my brotherinlaw at a sawmill. 9 hrs per day and 4 on Saturday. Pay was $1.15 per hr. Thats $56.35 before taxes. Offbearing at the mill, going to the woods with a 46 chevy truck by myself lots of times, no winch, a large mare horse and a old Pioneer chainsaw. Man that was some hard work, but what an experience and am glad that I did it. Paid $900.00 for 55 chevy 2 door Belair before I could even drive it off the lot. I had enough money left from my check that day, that I bought a couple of dollars worth of gas. bg

[Sixacresand]

After high school, 1967, I was hired by the Kaolin plant (chalk mine) during the Summers while attending college.  My first check for working 5 days was $48.  I thought I was the richest kid on earth.  Us kids and young adults were very fortunate back then.   

[Magicman]

I worked the Summer of 1962 as an electronics flunky for a heart surgeon at University Medical Ctr.  Amazingly I operated the recorder during heart catheterization procedures and was in the operating room during one of the very first heart valve replacements.  I was making a whopping $200 per month.  After one semester of college I had no money to return and I (foolishly) refused my bosses offer to pay for my education.  What did I know, I was 18 and bullet proof and did not realize what was being offered.

In October of that year I began my career with Southern Bell Telephone Co. for $60.50 per week and as they say; the rest is history.

[Tom the Sawyer]

Started as a busboy for .50 p/hr when 14 (big for my age).  Shortly made waiter - .50 + tips.  Got a better job at 15, working at a drive-in theatre (remember those) for .65 (hey, that was a 30% raise).  This was 1965/66, when minimum wage was 1.65 but there were 'student exemptions'.

[WDH]

In 1969, $1.25 per hour working at a peach packing shed.

[pineywoods]

Fresh out of high school, 1954, got a job in the brand new local tv and appliance shop for $30 a six day week. Bonus, the owner taught me basic electronics. Bought my first car, 1941 ford for $95, financed by the local bank. Left that job to join the army, that changed my life completely.

[Ron Wenrich]

I did quite a few odd jobs.  My very first was helping my aunt at an amusement park by manning the concession stand.  We sold hot dogs for 5 cents.  I was 7 and could make change.  We rarely saw a bill over $1.  It was weekend work and pay was 50 cents/hr.

I also helped my dad with auctions.   Did jobs as a runner, again making change.  I started that at about 10.  When I was big enough, I hauled furniture for a local auction house.  We got paid on commission.  Did that all through high school, a couple of nights a week. 

First regular job was working as a stock boy in a local department store.  Pay was probably about $1.25/hr.  Went to college after that.

[Bruno of NH]

At 13 started helping my Pepere he had a swimming pool service and repair business.
In the winter helped him renovate his rental units.
He was hard to work with and didn't pay much $2.00 per hour .
But he taught me how to work hard and how not to treat people .
Bruno

[Dakota]

1964, working on the farm, $1/hr.  Quickly found out that the tractor I was cultivating corn with, would steer it self all the way to the end of the row, bump over the first row going the opposite direction, and wake me up from a very needed nap.  Welp...., you know what happened.

[WV Sawmiller]

   My first job was helping my dad with the family business putting up monuments and chain link fences. I did that till I left home. As a teenager Dad sometimes had to hire an older helper who could drive till I turned 16. I could do and manage the work but I was not old enough to drive. There was no pay.

    When I was 17 and graduated from HS I got my first paying summer job working at a Boise Cascade Plywood plant working midnight to 8:30 nightly. I worked as the core layer/feeder on the crew actually making plywood. (Half the night I would stand on a raised platform feeding sheets of kiln dried 1/4" core wood - the horizontal pieces of the plywood sheets - through a glue spreader. The rest of the night I worked down below wearing rubber gloves catching the glue coated strips and laying them side by side till I had a whole sheet laid then I'd bend over while 2 other team members picked up thin sheets of veneer over me and covered the glue covered centers - the vertical sections and face sheets of the finished plywood.) This was one of the better jobs at the plant and I was paid $2.35/hour (My older brother was working on a road construction crew making $1.70/hr but they would not hire me because I was not 18 yet.)

    On weekends I'd work overtime making $3.01/hr on clean up chipping the dried glue off the spreader machines, shoveling out glue ditches (think of a sewer ditch with 3" sheets of laytex like dried glue that had accumulated since the last cleanout), and finally I became the designated press pit clean out guy - I'd find a submersible pump, hook it to a fire hose, drain up to 4' of oil mixed water out of the pit to a glue ditch and when drained I'd pick up and remove all the scraps of wood and sometimes whole sheets of water logged plywood that had been soaking in the pit all week lifting them 8' with a sawdust fork or my hand. All this time the big platform above was slowing easing down towards me as the hydraulic piston leaked down.)

   The company usually hired a new crew of 7-8 people a week and very seldom did they retain more than 1, if any, the entire summer. I stayed the whole summer and continued to come in part time 2 nights a week on weekends to clean up for another 6 months or so after college started.

[ESFted]

Loblaws grocery store in 1958 stocking shelves and bagging groceries for $0.75 an hour.  Eventually became a cashier there and worked that job on and off until I graduated from college in 1965.  Think I was up to $1.75 an hour.  I remember keeping my family's freezer stocked with cheap day old bread and other on sale goodies the manager conveniently marked down just before closing on Saturday night.  Good times.

[VictorH]

My first job was a newspaper route.  Soon I had three, I was 13.  Bought a good used moped when I was 14 for $300 - paid cash.  At that time you bought the papers from the newspaper and resold them to subscribers.  I had to go around and collect the money due from my customers every month.  Some of them I ended up mowing their yards in the summer and shoveling their walks in the winter.  Collecting in December was great as the "tips" added up nicely.  My first "real" job was a bag-boy for A&P Grocery.  After a year or so I was promoted to cashier with a raise, don't remember how much I made but I do remember realizing that I made more money as a bag-boy with tips.

Victor

[Ljohnsaw]

I worked a "regular" job over two summers with a buddy painting concrete statues and cast iron outdoor furniture for $1.25 first year and $1.50/hr. the second year.  I also scrounged broken lawnmowers from trash day to fix and sell as well as fixing/tuning lawnmowers for about $15 to $25 each.  Once I was out of high school, on to college, I got a job in a print shop delivering printed material.  That one was about $2.50/hr + mileage in 1978/79.

[pine]

12 years of age
$.05 per bale for moving hay from field to barn and stacking.  Bloody bales were as big as I was, but I did make a little money

16 years of age
$1.25 per hour
Pumping gas and doing oil changes and tires at a gas station.
Had never changed oil or done a tire before that job.  Owner taught me how on the first day.

Several weeks later the owner's wife told me that they were making over a $800-1000 more a day than before they hired me.  It seemed that their previous employees skimmed a lot off the till.

My mother had a near heart attack when she found out that after closing at midnight, I would drive the days receipts across town and meet the owner's wife in a parking lot and transfer the money from the day's receipt till.  It would vary from $4-5K on some good days.  While that is a lot of money today it was even more back in the day.

[Ox]

11 years old.  $1 per hay wagon to put bales on the hay elevator.
14 years old.  $4 per hour stacking hay bales in the mow and running wagons back and forth.
16 years old.  $1.07 per hour ($100 per week, many many hours).
All different farms.

[sawguy21]

Some interesting stories here, many of us started with menial jobs but that was a valuable part of our education. I had a paper route at 11 then at 16 bucked bales for the local farmers. My buddy had a pick up so we traveled to the farms and split the truck expenses. Still, we did alright although there was no late night partying. :D At 17 I was driving a grain truck to the mill for $1.25/hr, learned to shift a crash box and keep my thumbs out of the steering wheel in the fields.

[Roxie]

From 13 until I graduated high school at 17, I worked the 3pm to 11pm shift in a restaurant that specialized in pork or beef barbecues. Had a corner booth where I did my homework between customers. 

During summers, I served Curb Service in the parking lot on roller skates.  I was always fiscally conservative and had plenty to buy my own clothes and a car when I was 16. 

[21incher]

50 cents a hour to mow around Christmas trees with a push mower.
Then I moved up to $1.00 a hour to unload, paint, refill, & reload 100 pound lp gas tanks on big rack trucks when I turned 14. That summer I had the biggest muscles of my life.  :D

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

14 years old....cleaning brick from a torn down mill. 3 cents a brick.