Your first job...what job and pay.

[David Freed]

I made $1.50 - $2.00/ hr putting up hay for several farmers when I was 11 or 12. I got my first steady job working for a farmer for $1.50/hr at 15.

[Kbeitz]

First job was in 1968 and I started work at Magee Carpet Co.
chasing the girls around... At least that what I remember doing
most of the time... I think my pay was $1.65 hr.

[Den Socling]

My dad had a business making wrought iron railings. When I was small, I would help him on installations on weekends. Later my parents had a kitchen and bath business. Same thing doing installations on Saturdays. When I got my drivers license, I got a job pumping gas for around $1.50 per hour. The station also housed the area ambulance. One of my jobs was keeping it clean which was sometimes an ugly job after a traffic accident. When I was in college, I got a job at a sports car shop pulling and replacing engines and transmissions. My specialty was British cars. I moved to Phoenix and started pumping gas again. I think I got around $1.90 per hour even if I worked 90 hours per week. I went back to PA and got a temporary job in manufacturing. After 6 weeks, the production department offered me a job as a supervisor but the engineering department offered a job as an engineering technician. I took the job with engineering. After a couple years, a guy who was president of a manufacturing company that built scientific instruments offered me a job. I took it and was their production manager for 10 years. Feeling restless, I decided to start my own company. That led me to vacuum kilns that I have been working with for about 30+ years.

[glassman_48]

My uncle had a large construction business in Plymouth Michigan.  When I was 10 he paid me $1.00 per hour to come and pull weeds out of their garden.  I was so excited, I couldn't sleep the night before, skipped breakfast rode my bike over to their house and got there early.  It was about 95 degrees that day and just before noon I almost passed out.  Years later I found out about being hypoglycemic, I hadn't had any sleep, no food and don't remember drinking any water.  My cousin threw my bike in the back of his pickup and took me home.  I was devastated, never thought anyone would ever ask me to work for them again. I went back the next day after a good breakfast and finished the job.  I will never forget the look on my cousins face when he had to take me home.  My other uncle had a greenhouse business also in Plymouth, all my older brothers worked there during junior high helping him.  I started there when I was 11 and got paid 2 dollars an hour.  My aunt and uncle always made me a good lunch and made me drink plenty of water it easily got over 100 in the greenhouses during the summer. I worked there until I was 18 every summer.

[terrifictimbersllc]

Mid 60's, paper route don't remember maybe $2 per day. Painting in the summer, $1.50/hr.  First job punching clock at 17 unloading lumber by hand from boxcars, $1.65/hr

[sawguy21]

That brings some painful memories. At 17 I was a skinny kid, a good wind would have blown me away. The first day on the job was spent with old Ed unloading a rail car of bagged cement with hand trucks onto a 1 ton flat deck. We then had to hand bomb into the warehouse because they didn't have a fork lift. I could hardly lift a fork to eat my supper. :D Last day on the job same thing, I was happy to go back to school.
I spent most of that summer hauling grain with an overloaded under powered 1946 Maple Leaf (Canadian GMC) with a four speed 'crash box' and vacuum two speed. That thing was a real education.

[timberlinetree]

It is so neat to hear all the different jobs and what they paid and the experience and life time learning lessons. One thing for sure , lot of hard working kids back then! Thanks for sharing your stories!