Hhhhhmmmmm... I was a cart girl at the local country club which moved into banquets.... My boss was cool as Hell he would keep the left over wine/liquor bottles from the banquets, we would drive around in the golf carts getting drunk all night not very wise when I look back on it but dang sure fun!!!! arty:
I can't be the only one here (besides Zel) who's teenage job was McDonald's?? Oh...I guess this counts because I was 19, even though I was already married a year...I worked at a recycling center/landfill. I had to manually crush glass with some large heavy piece of metal off some kind of vehicle. Throw the glass bottles/jars/ect into a barrel and when you get a layer, crush it. The same with cans, piling newspapers, cleaning the bathroom...all next to large piles of trash to be incinerated with the company of rats, spiders and occasional other wildlife. Worst days were Thursdays when the seafood restaurants and the island pet kennel brought their garbage. Week old leftover seafood and shells and pet shit in the heat of August. That was the worst.
First job: At a pizza place in the town where I grew up. I worked there the summer after my junior year of high school, continued through senior year and the next two summers, then briefly a few summers later. There were four main positions in the kitchen -- drawer, sub counter, oven and bench -- and while I did them all at one time or another, I was usually on the sub counter. The worst part of the job was working morning shifts and making the chicken salad from scratch. Mmm, disassembling dead bird. The boss was a pretty funny guy who loved catchphrases. When somebody's total came to a few pennies over an even dollar, he always rounded down and said "it ain't gonna make or break either one of us." When we were shorthanded and he helped with deliveries, every time he left, he always said "I'm off like a prom dress!" He also had a killer Jefferson Airplane collection. My second job, which ran concurrently to the first one, lasted about a month. It was as a summer canvasser for a Public Interest Research Group chapter, campaigning for an expanded bottle bill. It was a complete scam ... the money we raised going door to door signing up members just paid the operating expenses of the office, and that was it. I wasn't very good at it, failed to meet the $90-per-day quota, got fired after a month, and discovered I absolutely suck at fundraising.
Cashier at a hardware store. Then I worked at Burgerville, a local fastfood joint that tries to paint itself as envirofriendly.
I got my first paying job three days after my 16th birthday. McDonald's. I worked there for exactly six weeks. That's when I got a job at my local home owned and operated NAPA store. I worked there through college and a little after my 22nd birthday. I still miss working at the parts store and have often thought about opening my own. You can beat the big national chains. You just have to out service them, which isn't hard as their customer service and employee knowledge suck. You also have to out stock them by knowing your customers. It's where I learned to mechanic, from men who had combined knowledge of hundreds of years. It's where to learned how to machine parts and build carburetors from a local legend. It's where I learned to mix and paint cars from some of the best. It's also where I learned to work clean. The guy in our machine shop could spend all day milling and rebuilding heads, turning drums and rotors, sandblasting various things, and boring blocks and not have a drop of dirt or grease on him. Unfortunately, it was also where I learned to smoke. All five employees smoked and this was back when it was socially acceptable to do so. I remember one time a customer coming in and complaining about the fog. The owner told him to leave, he didn't want his business. Edit for an example: If you go to one of the big national chains and ask for a set of plugs for your truck with a small block Chevrolet because the plugs you have are fouled with oil, they're going to give you AC Delco R45's because that's what the computer says to give you. I'm going to suggest R46's because I know they're one step hotter while keeping the same thread size. It won't fix the oil leak you have, but they won't foul as fast because, being hotter, they'll burn the oil off. Put that in your pipe, Autozone.
Paper route when I was very young, then I started working for a theater chain when I was 13. Worked my way up to projectionist by the time I started high school. This was the dream job for a high school kid since I had to "build up" the new movies on Thursday night and then watch them to make sure no reels were on backwards. I used to invite my friends to watch special "free previews" and my very cool boss didn't mind. Popcorn, nachos, and sodas were all free, too, provided you brought your own containers.
Family job from an early age, worked in the oilfields as a swamper on a winch truck at twelve, then worked for a lease crew doing service work on well sites when I was fifteen. Worked as a guager at seventeen which is the guy who operates the production leases for my Dad for a while. Crap hit the prop there between us for the second and final time and I moved on. Went on to work as a roughneck on the rigs at 17, working 7/12s on most of them. Numerous rigs and a handfull of companies later I was 25 and left the oilfields behind for carpentry work when Carter screwed the pooch for everyone and caused massive unemployment in the oil industry. Out of all of the rigs in the company two continued for another year employing the top of the food chain in the company and then they went belly up, along with numerous others. I knew it was over when I went up to a rig floor and saw drillers working tongs. Over and done. I took the opportunity to see more of the states and moved north where I entered the construction field as a carpenter and still whack wood. Seven days a week has been engrained into me since I was a kid. Weekends were just another day and holidays were reduced to the time it took to make the rounds servicing equipment. If a compressor or pump jack was down or needed repairs it got done, rain or shine, day or night. Still a seven day a week guy doing something. I was lucky I guess, I had something to do that didn't involve hamburgers and fries though I did work as a cook at a Pizza Hut on off days from a rig, that one was fourteen on, seven off.
That's because he was a machinist, not a mechanic. I work with a couple of those "clean" guys now at the local NAPA. Amazing people.
My dad owned a pallet factory from the time I was five until I was 19. From the time i could do any useful work...say 11 or so? - i spent all day every Saturday shoving sawdust into the vacum system that blew it out into the truck. By the time I was 13 you could add working all week at the shop during the summers to that. Most of it set up (forklift, pallet jacket, fetching more nails and so forth) and cleaning but eventually actually running a saw or working one of the jigs building pallets. I did that all the way through the time I joined the navy, including working on what had been the school year when I didn't go back to college that fall in anticipation of my enlistment date. When I came back from Great lakes i was really relieved to get a job elsewhere. The work itself wasn't always bad, other than the summer heat, but working for your dad (ok, working for MY dad) increased the suck-age significantly. He had - has - pretty high expectations for his sons and I was pretty good at failing to meet them.
My second job was at a Hardee's in Elkton, Maryland. Hated it. I quit after 3 weeks. My first job was at the old Madison House Restaurant in North East, Maryland, 1982. Also hated that. I hate restaurant work. I'd rather dig ditches all day.
My father was the foreman in a local machine shop, and since I was taking drafting courses in high school, he got me a job in the drafting dept. I think I made $80 a week in 1974. The best-paying job any of my high school friends had was shoveling chicken shit at a local farm for $3 an hour.
Nope... Did the paper route thing for a few years, 13 - 16. Then worked a summer at Montgomery Donuts, washing trays at the doughnut "plant". 110 degrees inside, working over a double sink of hot water sucked. My parents were happy with the free donuts though. Second job was working at a fast food restaurant called "Gino's". they had a KFC franchise, and did burgers and roast beef sandwiches as well. Loved that job. It wasn't so busy that you had to crack ass for 8 hours at minimum wage, and, again, my parents enjoyed the free KFC chicken I brought home. Third job was McD's when Gino's closed down. Hardest fucking job I have ever had. Full tilt all the time. Even at 16/17 and in very good shape, an eight hour shift there exhausted me.
As I mentioned , the sawmill at which I worked also made pallets. Basically we were self-contained, logging + milling our own trees and making the pallets. I started out nailing pallets together, by hand of course. You get pretty good at nailing fast + accurately. The pallets were aspen (soft wood, a cakewalk) but some were birch.....AAARGH! Birch was hard as a rock and heavy. Also the wood split a lot. I never was allowed to do the actually logging (only in the winter when the swamps were frozen) because I didn't have the upper-body strength to safely handle a chain-saw. All I could do was drag the limbs off out of the way after the trees were limbed, but that's still pretty hard.
We had a lot of Gino's here on the East Coast back in the 70s and 80s. It was my favorite fast food place. They were bought out years ago but they are trying to bring them back in the Baltimore-Philadelphia area.
I did have a paper route when I was 12. One day a customer's German Shepherd guard dog tried to pull me off my bike and eat me. I had a dog-jaw-shaped bruise on my arm for a looong time.
Was earning money while my age was still in single digits. Went door to door in my neighborhood until a little old lady agreed to pay me to rake her yard and move her sprinklers for her. It was only for $5-$10 a visit, but she wrote me an actual check and I thought I was hot shit. Once I was old enough to push a mower, I was doing that for several houses in the neighborhood. All of this I mostly did so I'd have my own fireworks money in the summer. First taxed job was a place called the Variety Center. Basically a little dime store with a restaurant on one side. Title was "clean-up boy," because the owner was a bitter prick who had to be condescending about everything. I would sweep, mop, vacuum, dump trash cans, that sort of thing. He also occasionally threw me side jobs like painting rental houses and whatnot, because he was a cheap bastard and I always needed money. By this time I was making payments on my first Jeep. Then we moved to Chadron, and the first job I could find initially was a nasty, greasy spoon type place called Chuckwagon. Dishwasher first, then salad line and finally as a cook. Filthy, miserable work that sent you home soaked to the bone in grease and dishwater every night. Owner was another crusty old fuck who took his frustrations out on the employees, but he was gone often enough that we raided his beer cooler once in awhile. Eventually, one of the managers pissed me off one too many times, and I walked off on him in the middle of a breakfast rush. While I was still working at Chuckwagon, I was in this pud "technology" class and soldered some leads back together to fix the teacher's laser demonstration kit. He decided I was an electronics genius on that basis, and called the local Radio Shack to recommend me. The guy who owned that place then called me out of the blue at home to offer me a job. So for a time, I was working two jobs in high school. Chuckwagon and Radio Shack. Last paycheck at Radio Shack paid off the stereo I'd bought there for my first jeep. Then it was Omaha for a bit. Worked security at a warehouse for a month before quitting. Worked as an actual telemarketer before quitting. Then McDonald's for a couple months before they fired me for calling in to go to a concert. Moved to Kearney after that, where I was fired from another telemarketing job for sucking too badly at it, and then I worked at Hardees until moving back to Omaha, where I ended up working overnights at a Kwik Shop at 19 years old.
I started mowing lawns/shoveling snow covered driveways around 11. I did it for video game money and the ability to buy my own stuff. (I hate asking for help.) First "real" job was working as a stage hand at the auditorium my mom runs, it paid minimum wage but it was damn good experience! I learned, pretty much, everything there is to know about theatrical work. From set-up & set building to make-up, lighting, and sound. Then Subway came, I had a lot of fun there but I ALWAYS smelled like that place. When my car at the time started smelling like it, I quit. lol Then Papa Johns, I worked on the line at first and then started delivering -- even though it was illegal for me to do so. I had a fucking blast delivering pizzas! Driving around listening to tunes, smoking, and free pizzas! Unfortunately, this is the place that started my smoking habit; when I was working on the line, even in a dinner rush, the smokers would get ten minute breaks while I got stuck doing all the work. So at first, I would just say I was taking a smoke break, but then I actually started smoking. I worked at Papa John's and the auditorium for several months after I graduated, then I got into men's clothing sales and was stuck there for years while I played in bands and just lived life.
Shoot, I forgot about farmwork. When my Dad retired from Postmaster for the small village we lived in, we moved out to the sticks. Closest "town" was 5 miles away--and it was a car/farm implements dealership/gas station, cheese factory, bar, church, post office, and trailer park. Today it is a church, cheese factory, post office, and trailer park. So working at the local Dairy Queen was pretty much out of the question until you had a driver's license and a car. Worked summers on my Grandpa's farm, where my Dad grew up--and his brother ran. Started stacking haybales--as they'd come off the baler, unloading them from the baler to the conveyor to the haymow, and then stacking them in the haymow. Eventually graduated to driving the tractor that pulled the baler and haywagon and sometimes raking. Forget the pay, but I'm pretty sure it was in cash. Benefits included a couple cans of 7-Up per day, all the water you could drink from the little rootbeer mug that hung from a hook on the spigot on the front of the house, home-cooked lunch, and the occasional trip to town (and a stop at the local cafe). I hit the "big time" after I got my license and worked as a dishwasher at the local supper club. I forget why, but the next summer I worked for the local supper club in the other nearby town (I think partly because the first job sucked and I probably was way slow at it). That one, I didn't get fired, but after they found out I was old enough that they had to pay me minimum wage, the owner stopped scheduling me for any hours. Second year of college I was a cook at a lounge my roommate had been hired at. The owner's wife loved "That's the Sound of the Men, Working on the Chain Gang" and the Beach Boy's "Kokomo", so they played near constantly on the jukebox when we were getting ready to open for the day. Post teenage, but interesting (and dead end) enough to merit mention. I got a college degree in art--which is a whole other story for a whole other time. This basically qualified me to be a game show contestant. Minored in theater. Realized I would never be an actor, so I tried to break into set construction. Problem is, Minneapolis is a union town, so you get your union card and go to the bottom of the list for when there are gigs. Unless you've willing to burn your day job boss and call in sick when the shop calls you up at 5:30pm the night before, you can't work your way up the list--and God knows how long it takes before you're making a living at it. Anyway, I wound up working as a janitor for the company that cleaned one of the big Minneapolis theaters. At midnight they'd lock us in and arm the alarm (we had radios to talk to security--and each other). I'd clean the "front of the house", where the customers were--bathrooms, concession stands, hallways, theaters, gift shop... while my partner cleaned the "back of the house"--offices, scene shop, dressing rooms, etc. It was ass backwards from anything that would possibly give me any hope of making any connections (well that and that most of the shift the alarm was on, so no one from the theater was in there). Since the back of the house was smaller and easier to clean, my "partner" would spend much of his time hiding in places and shining a laser pointer (which were still hot--if you were borderline retarded--in those days) at me. One time he was on vacation so I got to work back of the house. It was closing night for a show, so the theater director was in late and he'd locked his keys in his office so I got to let him in. But because I have this stupid work ethic, we had a lot of cleaning to do (because the place is trashed on closing night) and security wanted to turn the alarms on, I brusquely hustled his drunk ass out of the place. Best part of the job? Emptying tampon receptacles. Unless I marry and/or have a teenage daughter I have vowed to never again empty dirty tampons.
I worked tobacco. I will be very hungry before I do that again. I worked as a dish washer but quit because the waiters were perverts and kept groping me like a TSA agent. I finally went to work for Exxon as a petroleum transfer technician. Fun job but the pay sucked.
Freelance tech support from age 13, mostly for my mom's business, but I had a number of other customers. I was never sure whether I just did too good a job or people were trying to get rid of me, because I was usually paid 20-50% over what I actually charged, and I got lots of referrals, but next to no repeat business. I suspect it's because I'd actually tell people what I was doing and why their printer only worked occasionally, rather than just fixing it and leaving. Later I had a couple of internships doing software development. I stuck with the tech support on the side as well.
I worked at Dairy Queen. After that I babysat over the summer and then got a job at the after school program at my high school. That job rocked.
