Tell me about your first job WINNER PICKED

deskil said:
Not an entry.

Mowed grass, at age 10, for $2 a yard ($3 with trimming). Saved up $26 and bought a Benjamin pump air rifle (.177 cal.). Then helped an older boy, at age 12, with his paper route for $2 a day, seven days a week. Then hauled hay for $.02 a bale, at age 14. Graduated to driving a tractor pulling a hay rake for $1 an hour in the second summer. All cash jobs. But my first paycheck was from working part time at a Western Auto store ($1.65 an hour) for Mr. Summerhill (a W. C. Fields clone), at age 16 .
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What era was this awesome recap!
 
I grew up in rural Alaska, all of my work was under the table pay, bucked hay, split and stacked cord wood, worked on a two man saw mill, drove tractors, trucks, busted concrete by hand. I wasn't the strongest or fastest but I would outlast everyone I worked with.

I learned some important lessons, hydraulics are dangerous, 4' saws are dangerous, 12"x12"x16' green beams are heavy and carrying them by yourself can be dangerous, always test your brakes and check your oil.

First real job was as an emergency firefighter with the division of forestry, my first fire started as a 36 hour day, I hit overtime on my second day all day swinging my Pulaski, dragging hose etc. after that day I knew what tired was, it's when your muscles jerk, you can barely swallow water and rocky ground feels like floating when you lie down.

Not an entry, just fun reading.
 
Thanks for the chance, my first job was a ranch hand sun up to sundown.....mainly worked the squeeze chutes, cutting horns, tails, and testes, tagging and giving vaccinations one right after another I was 15 and worked there for 3 years I'm 35 now and to this day sometimes I hear cows mooing before I go to bed.

Btw we'd use old case yellow trappers, for the castratation part...I never really remember having to do anything but strop em on old heavy leather strips they were absolute razors.
 
I worked as a student worker at a Sheriff's Department, initially doing data entry, but eventually branching out into things varying from menial things like shredding and filing to things like background checking people and doing crime analysis.
 
I gonna give it a shot.
although my first job was pretty easy compared to some of these guys

at about 16 i answered an add in the paper. A local agricultural professor had reached an age where he still wanted a garden but was getting to where he could not maintain it. So i would spend like 10-15 hours a week weeding, watering, and occasionally trimming a small garden and an even smaller greenhouse. It was a great job for a high school kid. I think i was paid $5/hour completely under the table. But i got to make my own schedule, come when i wanted and leave when i was ready ..just as long as the work got done. I did that job for about 2 years, it was just a summer job, bought me my pizza/soda.

The first, what i would call REAL job was working in the dining hall in college. full time classes, part time work (for about 4-5 hours a nights for 6 nights). It was ok, alot of busing tables, refilling soda machines and general clean up. It was was an ok job, got to work and get to know alot of different people of different backgrounds and cultures (we had a girl from india and a girl from hong kong working there and i became friends with) we also had a vietnam vet and a very VERY openly homosexual guy which was rather new to me. So it that way it was a good job,meetingand getting to learn about new and different people.

I had alot of physical jobs as a kid/teenager but they were more like projects rather than jobs. Friends father paid a bunch of us kids to level the backyard so he could build a volleyball court for his daughters who played. same friends father hired me to demo an entire floor of his office building (the demo was fun, the clean up took me like 2 months on my own) and that payed for my drivers licence fees AND my prom (tux and corsage etc etc) but they werent jobs so to speak.
 
I'm 15 now and got my first real job (one where I had to fill out paperwork and had taxes) this past Summer doing corn detasseling. Corn detasseling varies from about 3-5 weeks depending on when the corn was planted in the Spring and how It's grown up until the beginning week of July. You get up at 5 in the morning every morning (unless you have the day off) and pack your lunch. You hop on the bus at 5:45 and it takes you to whatever field you're detasseling that day. My dad lives within' 10 minutes of the school which is where we got picked up at, so I walked in the morning. When you get to the field you leave your lunch on the bus and line up one person per row of corn. You line up in "blocks". A "block" is 4 female rows of corn separated by 2 male rows of corn (the male number can vary). You walk down the female rows and pick the tassel. The tassel is the yellow thing sticking out of the top, but It's almost never yellow. It's the same color as the rest of the corn. The particular guy I worked for (cool guy) didn't use a tractor, so you walked the entire field. In the morning, at about 7 o'clock, you're walking in the corn. Before you reach half-way through the field your completely soaked in water because of the dew. We also worked if it rained. I was often the farthest one ahead, so every once in awhile my foremen would yell at me (in a nice tone) to back-pick the other guys I was working with. Back-picking is picking the rows that the guys you're working with. It's to help them catch-up to you. Once you get to the end of the field you turn right around and go back. Depending on the temperature, which was above 80 degrees every day, you would dry up at around 9-11 o'clock. After you do a "round", which is up and down the field once, we usually did another one or two depending on the size of the field before we had lunch. The longest field we did was a mile long one way. That was a pain to do! That's what we did, all day, every day. We also had to watch out for Christmas trees, sprigues, ankle biters and hangers. Christmas trees are tassels that have been pulled half-way out of the corn stalk or farther and are REALLY easy to see. If you miss a Christmas tree, well....you get the point. Sprigues are tassels that have been cut as far down into the corn stalk and they are EXTREMELY hard to get out of the tassel. They will slow you down the most. Oh yeah, before we go into the field, the female corn has been cut down to size (often taller than me as I'm only 5'3") and that's what can cause sprigues if the corn is cut down to small. Ankle biters are little corn stalks that are near your ankles. They're not hard to miss, but when you're looking up all the time, you're bound to miss a couple here and there. Hangers are tassels that have been pulled out of the stalk, but got hung up in the leaves. You just knock them down and you're good. If you're a really good detasseler you get put on clean-up crew. This last year was my first year and I got put on clean-up crew (Woot!). Clean-up crew is about 20 selected kids that go through the fields again and pick any tassels that have been missed. We worked longer hours (often 7-8). We also often went through the fields a 3rd and a 4th time just to make sure. We went through a mile long field 4 different times and that sucked! Doing corn detasseling this last Summer gave me a very good work ethic and I'm proud of myself. I don't say that like I don't work or anything, but with a generation like mine that doesn't get off their ass, I'm happy. I made minimum wage, which is $7.25 in Michigan. I worked a total of 114.5 hours through the course of a month and made about $720, enough to buy me a Wicked Edge Pro Pack I :D. Thanks for the chance!
 
I got my work permit at age 14 and stocked shelves at the local Foodland. Asked my boss if I could bring in my pellet gun to shoot the rats in the back. These were some big honkin rats that came up from the creek behind the place. He didn't like me mentioning the rats at all and was on his sh!tlist after that! I lasted a few more months before moving onto dishwashing at a local eatery. No rats there, just roaches. Fun, fun and more fun!
Congrats and good luck with your job.

Thanks for the chance.
 
Not an entry , I sold cigarettes at 12 or 13 thats how I saved money for my first switchblade, around this time I started making knives from old files . :)

Sergey.
 
Not an enty.

My first job where I clocked in each day was as a carpenter's helper in a factory the summer between my Sophmore and Junior years of high school at age 15. I cleared about $50 a week and was so proud to be making money. From that summer forward, my parents never paid for my clothing, shoes, or tuition. Bought a rifle at the end of the summer. This pride is what is lacking with many kids today. They only look at the money and how "hard" they have to work. Some summers I worked two factory jobs (2 shifts) to pay for college. It was a wonderful and busy time and my Dad was very proud of me.
 
not an entry

my 1st on the books real job was when i was 13. I worked as a paint specialist at a ben moore store about 3 blocks from my house. it was perfect, i worked 5 days a week. tues-fri 2-6:30 and sat 11-5

i used to show up just in time to put 400 gallons of paint away a truck dropped off. then i would take a break and go dust and restock the shelves. after i would rotate old paint cans to the front and in between this i would assist customers and mix paint. one time i added the colorant gr (gray) to 5 gallons of an off white paint for a customer. at this time we were still doing it by hand. and after i shook the cans i realized gr was green and not gray which was coded GY..... that was a 160$ mistake. and at my age i was very scared lol. but my boss was the mayor of the town and she was really nice. then i would vacume and sweep and walk home
 
:cool: My first job worth mentioning did require me to use a knife. As a high school senior in the San Francisco Bay Area (Marin County), I worked weekends and after school at a local natural science museum. I cleaned animal cages, cleaned the exhibit areas and occasionally gave talks and tours to elementary school visitors. The museum helped rehabilitate injured animals and some exotic pets that were unwanted. Among the animals I fed and cared for were coyotes, a puma, golden eagle, owls, sparrow hawks and other animals. Among the animals I had to care for were a boa constrictor and an anaconda (both were about 6 feet long) and some rattlesnakes. It was educational for me to see the snakes killing and eating rats and mice - a practical education in field biology. During the summer after graduation, I worked fulltime and was able to put away money for college.

I did find plenty of uses for a pocketknife - it was a stockman similar to the one shown. I wish I had my original, but that was lost in one of many relocations. Showing my age a bit, I was paid the minimum for the area at the time - $1.50 per hour. Of course, gasoline was $0.50 per gallon.
Faiaoga
 
My first job was a counselor in training (CIT) for the San Diego Council BSA. It paid a whopping 20 bucks a week, with my first paycheck I bought a (then high tech) gerber LST pocket knife. We would bribe the cook to rent us movies from the video store, I swear she would pick the worst movies she could find (movie night consisted of The Toxic waste avenger and basket case)..
 
Not an entry, but my first job was when I was around 15 at the local hobby shop. My main roll other than serving the customers was in the paint shop masking up and spraying the lexan bodies for the slot cars (putting my model airplane skills to use). Most of the best sellers were based off the aussie v8s - moffat, brock and the like. Made 50$ a week and a pie every day for lunch.

Out the back in the warehouse was a giant wooden slot car track. Every Tuesday evening was the race night where the boss's son and myself were the 'company team' so to speak. We got to use all the latest motors, tires, gears, chassis etc to with the aim of flogging the customers to entice them to buy more go fast bits. Makes me wonder if there are still big wooden slot tracks around. Good times those.

Matt
 
My father was a uranium miner and made really good money until uranium was not needed so much. When the mines shut down there were many men after the same low paying jobs. My dad did finally land a job but it only paid $7.00 at a sawmill. That don't do a whole lot for a family of 7. Times got lean. The summer I was 12 I was determined not to go to school wearing the cloths my old brothers had worn the previous years. I found a lawnmower at a yard sale for $20.00. I check compression and fire and was sure I could make it run.

I asked my father for a loan, he said that I would have to treat it like a bank loan. We made a contract with an interest rate and payments. I paid the loan back in three day. After 6 weeks I had a new mower that was a rear bagger I paid cash for. I pushed that mower al over knocking on doors. I had to replace the wheels twice that summer, but I road a new bike to school wear brand new Levi's 501 jeans. The next summer a guy that had a landscapeing business offered me work 3 days a week. I kept my best yards and worked for him all summer.

Every day started by getting dressed and putting my Camillus saw cut Barlow in my pocket.

Thanks for the chance.

Chris
 
My first job was delivering newspapers, a paper-boy they call it here. I started aged 11, doing a paper round after school. Even though I was a big lad, it was a struggle to carry the sack of 70 newspapers, plus magazines, and halfway round I'd pick up another sack the same size. It took about 2 hours to deliver the papers, walking 2 or 3 miles. I did that evening round 6 days a week for the grand sum of 50p (about $1). Later, I added a Sunday morning round.

When I left school at 16, I became an apprentice motor vehicle technician for the local council, which was a grand title for apprentice mechanic. I worked on the lorries, cars, and vans that made up the council's fleet, and on plant of all types. It was a hard, dirty, dangerous job, and the pay was £18 (around $30) for a 40 hour week.

Not an entry, that's a lovely knife, but I've been the recipient of great deal of generosity recently :)
 
My first job was working for production metal shop at the age of 16, the first few months was checking and sorting parts up to my elbows in cutting oil. The set up guy saw some potential and started training me to set up Davenport automatic screw machines. I remember it well, there where a few adults there that where not happy with a kid doing set up. Before that I worked for my Dad in construction, carrying shingles, plywood ect but never really made a wage.
 
My first job actually paying taxes was finishing concrete at the age of 14 but if you count the very first time i picked up a trowel i was 4 years old. Concrete is hard work but ive always believed that hard work is good for the soul.

Now at the age of 30, i still finish concrete and used that experience to vastly furthur myself in the field. I was running crews of grown men by 18 years old and trusted with tens of thousands of dollars worth of work, now i own a business with my father.

And concrete is still very hard work
 
My first job is still my job. I have been a plumber since I was 17. I only had stockman knives with broken tips that my dad gave me until I went to work as an apprentice. I was at a hardware store one day and bought an "industrial" lock back knife for work. It cost $11. I thought being "industrial" meant that it was a "professionals" knife. My master carried a yellow case trapper and he literally cut everything with it.

To do plumbing work, a good knife is essential! I saw my master ream out a hole he drilled in a fiberglass tub with his Case knife. It worked fine. I later tried another tub with my knife and the blade actually bent! He laughed at me and said to get a "real" knife. Later, when we were at another hardware store, I was looking at the Case knifes in the display. I asked to look at my masters knife and it was a large two blade knife which i found out later was a Trapper. My father had always just carried medium stockman knives so this was a new thing for me.

In the display there were two trappers. A purple one and a red pocketworn one. I asked my boss which one to get and he said he would get the purple. It was $32!!!! I only made $5.15 / hr. then. That was a LOT of money for a knife! I went ahead and bought the purple trapper. i didn't want to carry it but he convinced me to since it was a tool of the trade. Later that same year, he lost his trapper and I bought him the red one for Christmas.

I still have that knife, and used it for many years but now it sits in a display as a sentiment to my first (and only) real job and my first "real" knife. I have bought several Case trappers since then and I never do plumbing work without one in my pocket but that one is my favorite. My boss eventually lost his red bone trapper after carrying it for 10 years and I bought him another in blue bone. He carried that knife everyday until he died in 2010. He was buried with the knife still in his pants pocket. He also had a snuff can in his shirt pocket.

I think of him everyday. He was a great man and a wonderful person to work for. He was like a second dad to me and I have since become a Master myself and now I have an apprentice. The day after his first job with me I gave him a Case trapper as a gift because he did such a good job. I also told him to NEVER do any plumbing without it!

Thanks for reading. Sorry so long.

Paul
 
I mowed lawns for a couple of years before getting my first job at 16. I worked at the call center for the QVC Home Shopping Network. I answered the phone and took orders, and of course had to try and up sell all the time, which I hated. ( I am not the salesperson type.) It was a sissy job compared to most of you guys but it paid pretty well.

Thanks for the GAW!
 
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