What was your first paying "real" job growing up...

[Charles Wiggins]

First job - mowing lawns for neighbors
Next - worked at a hardware store/garden center where my dad was manager (cash under the table)
Next - first "real" job - busboy/dishwasher in a steakhouse

I missed the "pay" part the first time.

Mowing - I got $5 for a quarter acre or so and $5.50 on the other one because it was irregular
Hardware store - It was minimum wage at the time which I think was $2.90/hr. I remember it going up to $3.10 because I could walk to the steak house and get an open-faced roast beef sandwich, fries, and tea for exactly $3.10.
Steak house - Again minimum wage, which was still $3.10/hr. Not long after that minimum wage went up to $3.35 and I got my first taste of why a progressive income tax stinks. I got a raise and my take home pay went down.

[Jim Mattheiss]

I started out mowing lawns for cash. Took over my brother's paper route for a while.

First W-2 job was as the landscaper at a garden complex. The company wouldn't pay the hourly rate my boss Walter thought was fair so I worked 30 hours and he put me in for 40 hours. I remember the check was $172.60 after taxes.

Jumped to pumping gas for minimum wage. Then went to another station that paid more than minimum wage but worked for a drunk - that was interesting.

Worked for a landscaper and as a Fruit and Vegetable Delivery Driver before finding my current gig of 21 year - IT professional.

Jim

[Bill Edwards(2)]

Good guesses on the gas prices... I was born in '47

[Howard Garner]

First "job" was tending the grain wagon during threshing day. No pay, but good food. I must have been only 8 or so at the time.
Living on a small farm, there was always work to be done. Long about 1955 started working for the neighbors, plowing and lots of stacking bales on the wagon behind the baler. One neighbor did custom baling and I was his regular wagon man. I remember when the minimum wage went to $1.00
Summer after high school, drove a truck on the pea pack. Hauling the complete vines from the field to the vinery that did the separation of the peas.
Off to collage for 1 year (poor grades0, a summer working for the highway department (with sisters' father-in-law) Then off to NYC for a variety of jobs and into the Navy in '62.

Howard Garner

[Ryan Mooney]

My first job was hauling hay. I was 15 years old and got a penny a bale. We started at 7:00 and worked until all the hay was up in the field we were working. Usually sometime between 6 and 9pm. We could haul about 1600 bales a day with our max a little over 1900. Wages at that time was around $1.50/hour. We had a flatbed truck and 2 guys would walk along the side and throw the bales up to one guy stacking. The owner of the truck drove and got 2 cents a bale. We had to throw the bales as high as we could and the guy on top would reach downand snag the bale with a hay hook. Stacking the hay in the barns was the hard part. THe temperatur ein the barns would reach 140-150 degrees at time.

Heh inflation had kicked in some by the time I got there. Stacking hay was also my first outside the family paying job. By 1985 when I was 13 we were up to 27 cents per bale (split between the crew so compares to 6 cents when you were doing it - although this was also in canada so a dollar there was worth about 70c down here then if I remember correctly). Me and a friend were the crew, we had an old jeep and would block the wheel straight, one of us would run alongside throwing bales up and the other would grab and stack on the trailer. If it looked like we were going to hit something the guy on the ground would run up and turn the wheel. We got pretty fast and on our best day were able to pull in a bit over $200 after dinner one evening (about 800 bales from 6:00-10:00 pm, it was cooler in the evening and we were able to basically operate at a run the whole time, the haystack was also right next to the field so no real transit time that day). Normal operations were a fair bit slower, and I feel your pain on stacking in a barn just way harder/more miserable.

Next real paying job was cleaning stalls and feeding horses when I was about 15-16. Don't remember what it actually paid, whatever minimum wage in Alberta was.

I quit that job for the summer and went back to my grandparents ranch where I was able to pick up a couple of horses to break from some fellows who would come out to visit/hunt/etc.. If I remember correctly it was $500 and a side of leather saddle leather flat rate for the two horse for about three months training. That was a good job quality of life wise. I spent about 2 weeks on corral work each and then would ride one horse for about an hour in the morning corral training and take the other for a ride up/down the mountains in the afternoon (saddle up; go pan for some gold - never really successful there, ride up and back from the neighbors who were about ~6 miles away, etc..).

After that I had did a little more horse training after school (and also the stall cleaning, feeding, etc..) at the same place my folks worked until I left for college. That was at around whatever minimum wage in washington was (we moved some). A few crap jobs through college.. nothing interesting.

First out of school full time job was as a computer programmer and have been computer programmer/network admin/systems admin ever since. Funny when I was a kid we didn't even have electricity or a phone at the ranch. Go figure. It was a lot simpler back then anyway.

[Jerome Stanek]

I remember gas wars where the price dropped below 20 cents. When I was out I didn't feel bad about pulling in and getting a dollars worth.

[Larry Browning]

I remember gas wars where the price dropped below 20 cents. When I was out I didn't feel bad about pulling in and getting a dollars worth.

I could cruise the drag all night on a $1.00 worth of gas.

[Bill Edwards(2)]

I remember gas wars where the price dropped below 20 cents. When I was out I didn't feel bad about pulling in and getting a dollars worth.

I changed those price signs a lot during gas wars.

I remember posting 7 cent gas.

[Rick Potter]

Bill,

You put up a sign for 7 cent gas?? You sure that's not when you LOST your first job??

Rick P

[Larry Browning]

I remember 19 or maybe ever 17 cent gas during a gas war. It would then go back up to 26 or 28. I worked at a gas station when I was 16. It was about 3 block from my house. I would walk to work most days, unless I had something wrong with my car (quite often). The owner would let me put my car up on the rack and use his tools. I would work on my car in between customers. He had a pair of binoculars we would use to check out the stations down the street during a gas war. I also changed the sign during a gas war. Those were fun for me, however I don't think the owner enjoyed them very much. I'd come running in and "Mr. James, the Skelly down the street just went to 19. What do you want to do?" He'd say "Damnit, I can't afford that!" Then a few minutes later, he'd say "let's go to 18, and see how he likes that!". Those were the days!

[Jim O'Dell]

Yeah, I remember filling my motorcycle up during the gas wars for 17.9/gal. That would be in the late 60's. Jim.

[Matt Meiser]

My first job was cleaning the meat department at a local grocery store, about 1988. I made whatever minimum wage was and got a grumble from my boss when that increased. After a little more than a year I got a job at a regional auto parts chain where I got a number of raises as I passed parts of the training program. They brought me back a few summers while I was in college. Then I got a summer job for 2 years at Tenneco doing tech support for Monroe Shock Absorbers making maybe $8-10/hr which was pretty good money for a summer job.

[Eddie Watkins]

Heh inflation had kicked in some by the time I got there. Stacking hay was also my first outside the family paying job. By 1985 when I was 13 we were up to 27 cents per bale (split between the crew so compares to 6 cents when you were doing it - although this was also in canada so a dollar there was worth about 70c down here then if I remember correctly). Me and a friend were the crew, we had an old jeep and would block the wheel straight, one of us would run alongside throwing bales up and the other would grab and stack on the trailer. If it looked like we were going to hit something the guy on the ground would run up and turn the wheel. We got pretty fast and on our best day were able to pull in a bit over $200 after dinner one evening (about 800 bales from 6:00-10:00 pm, it was cooler in the evening and we were able to basically operate at a run the whole time, the haystack was also right next to the field so no real transit time that day). Normal operations were a fair bit slower, and I feel your pain on stacking in a barn just way harder/more miserable.

Next real paying job was cleaning stalls and feeding horses when I was about 15-16. Don't remember what it actually paid, whatever minimum wage in Alberta was.

I quit that job for the summer and went back to my grandparents ranch where I was able to pick up a couple of horses to break from some fellows who would come out to visit/hunt/etc.. If I remember correctly it was $500 and a side of leather saddle leather flat rate for the two horse for about three months training. That was a good job quality of life wise. I spent about 2 weeks on corral work each and then would ride one horse for about an hour in the morning corral training and take the other for a ride up/down the mountains in the afternoon (saddle up; go pan for some gold - never really successful there, ride up and back from the neighbors who were about ~6 miles away, etc..).

After that I had did a little more horse training after school (and also the stall cleaning, feeding, etc..) at the same place my folks worked until I left for college. That was at around whatever minimum wage in washington was (we moved some). A few crap jobs through college.. nothing interesting.

First out of school full time job was as a computer programmer and have been computer programmer/network admin/systems admin ever since. Funny when I was a kid we didn't even have electricity or a phone at the ranch. Go figure. It was a lot simpler back then anyway.

After I graduated from high school I went to work as a plumber's helper for $1.50/hr. I really liked it thru the summer but as soon as it got cold and water lines started breaking it got really un-fun. Guess who crawls under the houses to fix broken waterlines? A hint, it's not the plumber!! Between hauling hay and plumbing I decided there had to be an easier way to earn a living. I quit in January and went back to school majoring in accounting and computer science, a new degree program. I was in computers for nearly forty years. I started writing machine language and ended up with C and BASIC.

[Steve Clardy]

Mowing lawns for the neighbors.
Running a tractor [after we moved to the rented farm] for the landlord plowing ground.
Worked in a Phillips 66 gas station in tow. Pumping gas, washing windshields, repairing flat tires.

[Bryan Morgan]

Folding stacks of blueprints. Nothing impresses the ladies like smelling of pee from the ammonia. Back before all this terrorist witch hunt stuff we had prints of missiles and fighters jets and all kinds of cool stuff.