Tell me about your first job WINNER PICKED

L

LeatherMan64

Joined
Jan 15, 2013
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Hey guys! So, recently I haven't been able to post very much around here (probably something of a blessing in disguise), but I've got a great excuse: I started my first real job! I'm busing tables at a local Italian restaurant. It's a pretty cool place to work, and I'm super happy about having a steady (albeit small) paycheck coming in. So, to celebrate this turning point in my life, I'm giving away a knife. All I want from you is to hear tales about everybody's first work experiences that I can read and tell myself "see, you don't have it that hard at all, just look at what those guys had to do!" I'll draw the winner one week from today.


The knife itself is a Schrade USA medium stockman. It's about 3 or 3.5 inches long. It has 3 stainless steel blades, a turkish clip main, with sheep and spey secondaries. The backsprings are carbon and do have some rust on them which could be easily removed. Very minimal gaps in the construction, all the blades are tight with little to no play. Snap is medium, about like my red handled SAKs. The brown wooden handle covers appear to have lifted from the liner near the bolsters, but are flush with the tops of the bolsters (?) The blades have been sharpened once, but other than that the knife has seen no actual use. It's nothing notable, but it would be perfect to stick in the pocket of your favorite jacket, fishing vest, or what have you. ETA: I bought this knife at a yard sale, and the box I received it in apparently went with some other product called a "badger" that was produced in China.
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Besides cutting grass....when I was 14 I started working as a volunteer at the Vicksburg National Military Park. We did a first person living history display all summer. I was paid per idem which amounted to about $12 a day. This was great to a 14 yo though. We wore wool uniforms and sat out in the Mississippi summer heat and fired a cannon and rifles. Gave presentations and did it all in first person. I loved it and did it until I was 18. Then I was a seasonal employee and made real money as a GS3. Did that for 2 years then boot camp. Ended up being an Artillery Officer. Wonder where that seed was planted.;)

I'm in
 
Not an entry but ill share my first real job. In high school I had just turned 17 and had the oppurtunity to be a camp leader for a summer camp. I have always been an outdoorsy sort so I had experience with camping, hiking and canoeing. As such I did that for the summer. It was awesome to get a first real pay check. It was tough work as I had no experience as a leader for a bunch of kids, but I learned a lot about myself. I actually never worked a summer camp again and actually worked labour work as a gardener and landscaper after that while I worked on finishing my degree. I am actually just finishing up my secondary degree in physical therapy and hope to start my career in this field by mid October. It's been a long journey in school and I sure am broke haha
 
My first real job (meaning I paid taxes on it) was as a table boy at DQ. Because I was only 12, I could not do anything but clean.

Best job ever............super bosses, all the cute girls............. Eventually my three best friends all worked there with me.

The second real job, held at the same time, was cleaning trash off the sides of the freeway and highways. Ecology Youth Corp. We wore the hard hats and the orange vests. Terrible job, but it really paid well. I did that 5 days a week one summer, and worked the DQ job on weekends and evenings.
 
I was 16 and was hired as a meatcutter in a grocery store.You are supposed to be 18 to run a meat slicer or a bandsaw but oh well,the owner was a lawyer,he wasn't worried.I was literally cutting the cheese for a woman and got my right index finger a little too close to the blade on the slicer.Long story short they sewed the tip of my finger back on so it could fall back off a couple of weeks later.Still a bit lopsided on the tip and i bled like a stuck hog.
 
My first job was working in a warehouse full of fertilizers basically ground up fish and some stuff the guys in the warehouse told me was powdered urine , it sure smelled like it. I was the go-fer I did everything from clean the bathrooms to wash trucks. I was 13-14 and It was a summer job.
Congratulations on your first job. A Uncle of mine who was very well off financially told me to save 10 cents from every dollar I ever earned and I would be able to retire at 40 . well I never listened so I am still working .
 
Thanks for the chance, I never turn down a stockman!
My first job was as an assistant greenskeeper at a golf course owned by Hale Irwin's father in law, who worked with my dad (attorneys).
It was 95°+ nearly every day that summer. I worked from 7 am to 3:30 pm with just a half hour for lunch, and made $1.50 an hour before taxes.
But gas was only 38¢ a gallon, and a Big Mac, fries and Coke was just over a buck.
 
Thank you for the opportunity.

My first part time job was as a life guard at a community pool and I also worked for awhile as a DJ (night shift at a local radio station), but my first real job was as a blacktop spreader for a road crew. This was one summer while in college at UNO (University of New Orleans). Man. Talk about hot! Not only did we have to deal with the heat and humidity of a Southern Louisiana summer, but the added heat of the tar and blacktop was unbelievable. I guess the good part was that you didn't have to worry about bathroom breaks because every drop of water that you drank came back out as sweat.

I have never been so miserable in my life. When I see those poor guys and gals working road crews my heart goes out to them. That was a truly horrible job. And the pay sucked. All that for minimum wage.

Trust me. Busing tables (I did that for a while, too) is heaven compared to working a road crew. ;)
 
In 1967 at the age of 16, I shined shoes.
25 cents for shoes, 50 cents for boots or leather golf shoes.
On a Saturday, I might make $20.

45 years later, I retired as an telecommunications engineer.
Shining shoes can teach you humility.

Don't include me in the drawing. Give someone else a chance at a fine knife.
Thanks.
 
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I'm going to take a pass on the contest, since I have so many knives already.

Detassling corn was my first job. Yeah, I'm from the midwest originally. :o
Seed corn is developed by mixing two different kinds of corn together. Pulling the tassles of the 'female' rows prevents them from pollinating themselves. So you walk, or when possible ride in a basket hanging from a tractor arm, down the rows of the cornfield pulling off every single tassel.
Guess what happens when you miss a tassel? Yep, hop down out of the basket, pull the missed tassel, and catch back up to the tractor again.
And guess what happens when you don't get a firm grip and the torn corn leaves slide across your hand? Left more than a few drops of blood out in those fields.
Get soaked wet first thing in the morning from the dew covering the corn leaves and stalks. And stay that way all day on account of the miserable heat and humidity. Even if you didn't have to wade through water sitting in a low section.
Not sure how old I was - I think you had to be 13 or 14 to get hired.
Work was seasonal, sometimes only a couple of weeks each year. Bus picked us kids up in town an hour before sunrise so we could be in the field as soon as the sun was up, and dropped us back off in time for supper.
Minimum wage, of course, which I believe was about $3 an hour back then.
 
When I was 16 I spent 7:00am-7:30pm bagging 25 kilogram bags of alfalfa cubes and loading them into rail cars by hand, for $8.50/hour. I was a farm boy, so getting paid to work as hard as I would have anyways was a great thing. Plus out working not so gentlemanly adults was fun too. But I still hate farming dust, maybe its part if the reason I'm a massage therapist today. Fewer ungentlemanly coworkers, and a heck of a lot less dust!!

Thanks for the chance!! Congrats on the job, the best advice that I recieved about working was "you don't have to like it, you just have to do it!" It's saved me through a lot of long, demeaning days!
 
Not an entry, thank you.

I grew up in NYC and my first job, at around 14, was tarring roofs. My father was a Building Superintendent and it was pretty common in his circle for all the Super's kids to spend the summers re-tarring each others' roofs.

Hot, smelly, and dirty work with rags tied to sticks for a mop and plastic bags tied over our shoes.

But even to this day, I love the smell of hot tar...
 
Havn't been able to find a job yet this summer, but i've been searching high and low for one. Every place I go it's the same story.

"Oh you're such a nice young man! We'd love to have you here."

"Cool, thank you sir/ma'am! When can I start"

"Oh we actually don't have any positions open right now, sorry"

:(

This past summer I wanted nothing more than a paying job. But now that school has started, I must focus on that.

Maybe next summer i'll be able to find something.

I mean, I do occasionally help my father out with construction or his barbeque contest hobby, and that pays a bit, and I enjoy that.

Working hard, earning cash, and buying somethng I enjoy= greatest thing ever. :)

P.S.- awesome GAW, LeatherMan! I would love another Schrade Stockman!

~Chris
 
I was a teacher's assistant for an elementary summer school class, for two summers. Then I got a job as a carpenter's apprentice. That was a fun job. One of the odd things is that the guy I worked for was left handed, so I learned to operate many power tools left handed. i still use my wormdrive Skil saw left handed....

Thanks for the chance. Stockmans are nice. the other day I couldn't decide which knife to EDC for the day so i asked my kid (15 year old boy). He chose me a Case stockman with jigged bone handle for me.

Ric
 
My first job at 14 or 15? was stuffing newspapers for a suburban Chicago news agency. We would start about 8 pm and work until we mated all the advertising & funny pages into the main papers then bundle the stacks for the delivery guys. The suites all had a small front office, long narrow warehouse and a single loading dock and there were about 20 in a row all a part of a single building. A band used to store their gear in the next suite but we never new anything about them other than our radios went off when they fired up the amps. They would step out to have a ciggy now and then with us and were pretty cool dudes. Turns out it was STYX just before they released The Grand Illusion.

A few years back we had our annual festival and Dennis DeYoung's band was playing. (It might have been the best show I've ever seen and it was in a neighborhood park that is a 5 minute walk from home) After the show I had a chance to say hello and asked him if he remembers getting free newspapers from the paper stuffers in Westmont and he did!

Thanks for the chance and congrats on the first job!
 
And if you carried a pocket knife while on the job, let's hear about that, also.



Not an entry.

First commercial job was working in a lumber yard one summer in college. It was an industrial yard. They sold to factories and other lumber yards. They had received a bad shipment of veneer from Samoa and needed some unskilled labor to sort through it and find any good sheets which could be salvaged. I'm sure I carried a pocket knife, but I don't remember what it was. And I don't remember how much an hour they paid me. It was more than forty years ago, after all.
 
Not an entry

My first full time job I was 19 I was a diesil truck mechanic in Greenpoint Brooklyn NYC, when I had just immigrated from England
 
Not an entry, but I am indeed enjoying this thread.

Cut grass starting at nine or so, but did have taxes taken out. So, my first "real job" was working at a Christmas tree lot during the season. This was around '67, so I think at that time I was using a 4" Boker stockman most of the time. That knife rarely left my pocket for years as it was the only other knife I owned besides my Scout knife. I was considered "handy" to the guy that ran the lot because I could cut off the nylon netting from around the new arrivals without borrowing his knife, and I could cut off a twig or two that might refine the shape of the trees to make them sell better.

Even though I was a kid, I felt like a real old timer on that job. When things were slow due to cold weather or off days, we used to make a fire in a cut down 55 gallon drum and sit around it and talk about everything under the moon and stars. Me, I thought I was on the courthouse steps in some John Wayne movie and I speculated about life while whittling away on the green branch trimmings. There was an older fella that was in charge of the lot (and cash) and he used to sit in his overalls, bundled in well worn, dirty coat that used to tell us a lot of stories.

We never knew which ones to believe and which ones not to, but I had as much fun listening to them as he did telling them.

Robert
 
Great giveaway, but Not an entry from me.

My first real job was working as a barman in a pub directly opposite the millennium stadium in Cardiff. This was during a time when the Wembley stadium was being rebuilt and all the big games came to Cardiff.

Good luck to all participants

Paul
 
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