Just For Fun - First Job?

[3798j]

My first paying job was as a "runner" for a furniture company in downtown Fort Worth, 1965....We got the rousing good wage of $2.25 per hour!

Wow, $2.25 per hour! According to this inflation calculator: https://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php?, that's $18.53 per hour in 2020 dollars.
My first real job was also in 1965, part time in high school as a cashier/stock clerk in a Central Pennsylvania grocery store chain...$1.47@1/2 an hour ($12.11/hr today..thought I was rolling in dough, the new McDonalds was paying $.95/hr). Pressed white shirt and tie (no blue jeans, no sneakers) was the required dress.

 

[waltesefalcon]

My first real job was in 1996 when I was fifteen. I landed a job working at a music store in Lawton (Frontier Music Co.) as a woodwind repairman. I made good money, 50% commission on everything I repaired (usually about $1500 a month), and kept the job all throughout high school.

 

[pdplot]

First job in 1949 - soda jerk in Bedford Drug store. 50 cents/hour. Owner would send you home when things got slow, so - into Grand Central Supermarket as clerk at 75 cents an hour. Saved money to buy a set of dual mufflers for my 1934 Ford convertible. Worked as a letter carrier in the Post Office over Xmas vacations. In college, during summers I had several jobs. Assembling JATO units for Korean War in a factory; worked 2 days in a boiler factory as a paint sprayer but quit when I was spitting up zinc chromate primer and gray finish paint. Then I went to work building houses as a non-union carpenter. Lugged 40 lb.s of shingles up a ladder to the roof in 100 degree heat but thankfully was transferred to driving the 1935 Ford truck loaded with material from house to house. Every 20 minutes or so, it overheated and I had to add water from a running spring on site. Then I worked for an exterminator digging a 1-foot trench around the foundation - inside and outside - of the Ambassador Arms apt. house, filling the ditch with chlordane (a deadly poison, now banned) and back filling the ditch. Also worked for a builder installing fiberglass insulation in an attic (came home itching like mad), and finished up clearing stumps, including smashing into a stump wnich turned out to be a Yellowjacket nest and they were mad as hornets from being disposessed, chasing us back into the pickup truck. My first real job out of college was as a P & S Clerk for a Wall St.brokerage firm. Lasted 6 months - its a story for another day. Then as a mechanic and service manager for a small foreign car shop in Boston, account executive for a printing firm and finally - law school in 1959. The rest is history. I have to laught at today's kids "interning" in some air-cooled office.

 

[mikephillips]

Me too. beside the factory work I spent one summer working a sewage plant doing all the dirty jobs since I was the low man. They had one of those retention ponds where the air feed failed and the bacteria "died. While they drained as much as they could there was still about 3 feet in the pond and when they needed someoneto go in and lay new air feed lines, setting them up on concrete blocks so they wouldn't sink like before, that guy was me. Nothing like spending a couple days feeling around with your feet, lifting the lines up and setting them on the blocks I had to carry in and place. Least they'd literally hose me off each day when I came out...

 

[Trevor Triumph]

Jr hi I mowed lawns in the summer had had a paper route that paid a dollar a week. I worked for an art theater in Lakewood, Ohio - earned a dollar per hour there. The first job that required all the necessary deductions. The job meant I was cashier, usher, gopher for the manager and projectionist and other jobs - finding the letters for the theater marquee. Took my dates there - free viewing and used the otherwise closed balcony.

 

[glemon]

I didn't get that far in my early career, but I worked at a movie theater too. Did a little bit of everything, that was a fun job. Free popcorn and pop, for a while I didn't have a lot of money and tried to more or less live off popcorn and pop, even my cast iron 20 year old stomach didn't like that.

 

[DrEntropy]

Jr hi I mowed lawns in the summer had had a paper route that paid a dollar a week. I worked for an art theater in Lakewood, Ohio - earned a dollar per hour there. The first job that required all the necessary deductions. The job meant I was cashier, usher, gopher for the manager and projectionist and other jobs - finding the letters for the theater marquee. Took my dates there - free viewing and used the otherwise closed balcony.

Spent summers from childhood at Geneva-on-the-Lake. In my tween and teen years a neighbor there mentored me, teaching me the craft of photography. One of the photo jobs he had was the weekly "Miss Geneva-on-the-Lake" beauty contest, he would take me along to shoot the event. :wink:

He was the medical photographer for the hospital in Warren, OH, and where I did that senior summer riding along to Warren with him to assist. An hour trip each way, in his '57 Chevy convertible.

 

[Sarastro]

I was remarkably lucky, since I attended one of only two high schools in the US that, at the time (mid 60s), had a licensed, noncommercial FM broadcast station. I got my first FCC license, learned the ropes of broadcast technology, and worked my way up to a first-class commercial license. That was the basic credential for working in a radio or TV station. So, I easily landed jobs as a summer-replacement broadcast tech; there was a ready-made opportunity, as someone had to man the station when the regular techs were on vacation.

My first job was at a small religious station in Media, PA. It was a great job for a young guy, as it came with a lot of responsibility. I had to show up early in the morning, start the transmitters (it had both AM and FM), and get the shows (prerecorded) started by myself. I was paid minimum wage, but still I saved enough of my pay from that job and another similar one, the next summer, to have a nice nest egg when I got married a few years later. In many respects, that was the best job I ever had.

 

[Jerry]

My parents had a flooring, cabinets and formica tops business. When we were 12, my dad handed us a broom and took us to do prep work on floors for new tile or linoleum. After we got the floor prepped, we cut open tile boxes and keep the tile stacked on a dolly for my dad to lay down. 3 boys in the family and we are all big boys. We got lots of exercise growing up. Pay rate, well, my dads attitude was that we got fed at home. He did teach us how to use many tools and that we could learn to do anything.
Worked on my Uncle's ranch one summer bailing hay. My uncle paid us $1.00 and hour.
First jobs are great for teaching you to excel in something so you don't have to do those jobs anymore!

 

[RestoreThemAll]

My first W2 job was delivering pizza in 1976. One dollar per delivery plus tips. I made from $50 to over $300 per night depending on the time of year. Excellent money for that point in time. Working in a college town. I have plenty of stories to tell about that.