Posted on 07/18/2012 4:15:47 AM PDT by Kaslin
Have an acquaintance who’s business needs drivers. Hard to find one that you can trust NOT to text or check them when driving. Last driver ran off the road with the hard work of the shop wrecking an F-350.
I know there are LOTS of good stories but we are like the news, tend to hear the bad ones....
I was 14 doing farm work at a beef cattle operation. $1.10 an hour in 1972. Hard but interesting work (forking manure, putting up hay and ensilage, grinding feed, helping dehorn and, ahem, “emasculate” the little bulls, plowing and discing the fields).
Being tighter than 2 coats of paint, in about 18 months I saved enough for a 5 year old Camaro.
I doubt many farmers hire local kids for this kind of work much anymore. Too many illegals and lawyers around.
I earned my own money as a kid from an early age maybe eight or nine, cutting lawns, delivering newspapers, selling garden produce and crafts. My first real hourly wage job was at a veterinarians cleaning kennels, I loved dogs and still do. I smelled like a nasty kennel if I didn’t shower and change clothes, that was not big with the ladies in high school.
First job - (unpaid) - worked at Grandpop’s gas station. Learned customer service, how to make change and “face” the bills, etc. Went with Pop to weekend masonry gigs (fetch bricks, find where I put that hammer I was playing with)
First paying job ever - went with Grandmom to bingo and walk up and down the aisles - I’d fetch coffee, hot dogs, sodas, whatever, and the ladies would tip me with dimes & nickels. (around 8-10 years old?). Would also mow lawns, shovel snow, clean out garages in the neighborhood.
First official job ever - worked at the local five and dime as stock boy, gopher, sweeper-upper, whatever.
Other jobs over the years:
Lifeguard (3 summers)
Dishwasher (includes KP)
Waiter
Busboy
Bartender
Office cleaner
Store-window squeegee & floor waxer (at malls)
Ice Cream Man (back in the days of actual bells, not muzak)
Animated film-cel painter
Oil-spill mopper (factory)
Line attendant (factory)
Sludge-pit cleaner (factory)
Furnace cleaner (factory)
UPS warehouse
Mall clothing store stockboy
Church sexton
Furniture mover / delivery
Limo driver
Door-to-door salesman (cable TV)
Banquet worker (set-ups, serve, cleanup)
Short-order cook
French cuisine cook (coquilles St-Jacques a specialty)
Data-entry clerk
Computer (mainframe) operator
Computer (PC) programmer / systems designer (consolidating international subsidiaries’ accounts)
Beer drinker (oh, that’s right, never got paid for that)
Corporate financial analyst
I could go on.....
Many of the jobs I did at several establishments (e.g., bartender), some for long periods of time (22 years at the longest stretch)
Sad part is, not many of these jobs are available to the youth of today (what with OSHA, lawsuits, regulations, etc.)
I started as a 9 year old paperboy. Had my own route, did my own paperwork keeping track of my collections. Tough job for a little boy. Difficut getting customers to pay at times. And delivering papers in a snowstorm was a nightmare. Good lessons learned though.
This was my first "real job" too. I did it for 2 summers - '63 and '64. You had to start showing up in March-April on Saturday and Sunday. After that, it took a couple of weeks for the caddy master to put you out shagging balls - his way of insuring that he had people he could be sure were going to show up.
There were 3 or 4 of us from my neighborhood who did this. During the summer it was a 6 day a week job - the course was closed on Mondays - and, on a typical day, we would be on the course before 7 and back before noon . with $5 or $6 in our pockets. If we got a double, it would be $10 or $12.
Then, it was down to the bus stop in Freeport and off to Jones Beach.
I had more "just for me" disposable income then than I ever had again until my kids were out of the school and out of the house.
Any work is creative work if done by a thinking mind.
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
I got my first job at age 13 delivering newspapers. It was the summer of 1975 and I remember waking up at the crack of dawn for that stack of newspapers to hit my front porch. I was making $15 to $20 a week and for a 13-year-old, that was a lot of money at that time for what basically amounted to an hour of work a day.
Having that paper route gave me a taste for having money in my pocket so I kept that route for several years and took on whatever other part time jobs I could find. Shucking clams in a clam shack. Bagging groceries at a supermarket. Washing dishes in a restaurant. By time I was in high school, I was used to taking home at least $50 a week - the minimum wage back then was $2.65 an hour.
I managed to get my own kids into part-time jobs when they were in high school but it was a struggle as most of these jobs have dried up. About the only employers who still take on young kids these days (under 18) are supermarkets and fast food joints.
Not counting babysitting or mowing the neighbors’ lawns, my first job for a real company was in a flower shop when I was a bout 14.
I got to learn how to work a register, take phone orders, check deliveries for accuracy, take inventory, and of course...arrange floral arrangements.
Fun job. Harder than it looks.
Regards,
First real job was at 15 as a waitress. It was a nasty little place that stored food in the back on the dirt because there wasn’t a floor. The toilet got stopped up one day and the owner never fixed it. He also never turned in our w/h or ss and forgot to pay us sometimes. Lots of lessons learned right out the gate.
Between my senior year in High School and my Freshman year in college worked as a clerk at a discount store.
Then I parlayed a computer programming class I took in High School into a job as a computer operator, part-time, at the University I was attending (at 2.5 x minimum wage!). This was back in the early 1970s when computers were booming and anyone with any familiarity with them could find something in that field. Paid all my college expenses (except tuition, which my parents paid), and actually allowed me to save a few bucks.
Of course this was well before the ridiculous run-up in college costs, so you could work and pay for college.
Of course, I could not have done any of that without the government allowing those businesses to operate.
Agreed, however, with hindsight, I'd still have taken one. Got a degree in Electrical Engineering, looked for over a year for a EE job and no one would take me without any formal experience. Any kind of an internship would have made that transition easier.
So instead, I went into computers and that's paid my bills for the last 20-ish years. I guess I can't complain.
Instead of interning, I worked college summers as a Convention Coordinator. Ultimately, that was more valuable than an internship, I think, because it taught me how to deal with people.
But, at the time and after being told for four years... "Yeah, you'll graduate. No problems finding work. Engineers make a ton of money, too!" .... no work was a little hard to swallow.
Spotting nails at 4 while my dad hung sheet rock/drywall - 50 cents/wall. Stocking and pricing groceries at 5 and 6....loved that paper price tag gun. paper route at 13, lifeguard at 15...
Hostess at a lunch resturaunt in Downtown Boston, the Bulkie, remember it? Packed donuts and then worked as a CNA all through age 16. Worked in a factory for a little while, it was a PhD in Life.
My first job was at 10 years old, washing the udders of cows, ahead of the milking machines being applied.
I was hired to play the organ at a little church out in the country at 13 (8th grade). The organ was so small that I had to push it out from the wall and plug it in when I arrived. I worked with a cantor (congregational song leader) and a tiny choir of her 3 friends. The monsignor promised that if this format worked out, he would buy a good quality organ at the end of the first year, which he did.
I was paid $40.00 a month, which equaled the cost of my music lessons. This worked out to about 4 hours of work at the church for rehearsal and mass, and a couple of hours at home practicing.
I was treated like a professional, and I did my absolute best to merit that respect. I felt the weight of adult responsibility to a large crowd of good people. Every mistake I made was out loud and in public, so I didn’t want that to happen too often. Holy Week was very stressful.
I kept that job through college, with increased pay and responsibilities (weddings) and my boss, the pastor, helped me get a scholarship that helped pay the expenses.
Monsignor Michael Flynn is one the first people I want to see when I get to heaven.
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