First Job.

[Victor Pross]

Get a job!

My first job was ushering for a movie theatre. I was sixteen and had to wear one of those awful uniforms that are more embarrassing than a Century 21 Real-estate Jacket being found at the Salvation Army—this repulsive purple blazer.

But the job was ideal in one respect: I’m a movie junkie. And I got to see dozens of free movies during my employ. (Okay, a second benefit was flirting with the candy girls and free samplings of candy given--if a girl liked you). :turned:

I was eventually fired. Yep, I assumed the position of movie critic turning prospective customers away from films that I thought were truly horrible. I must have thought I was Roger Ebert. :turned:

What was your first job?

Edited February 27, 2007 by Victor Pross

[Chris Grieb]

I helped pick up bales of hay on my aunt's farm a couple of summers. I wished dishes at a tourist camp in Alaska just before my senior year in high school.

[CNA]

Damn, my very first job...Yikes. LOL Well, my first "official" job with taxes being taken out was at Subway as a sandwich girl. But before that, believe it or not, was manual labor doing construction. :shocked: Yeah, not afraid to get dirty or to break a nail.

[Kat]

My very first job was walking an old man's dog twice a day for fifty cents a pop. My first real job was working at Dunkin' Donuts when I was 16 and I stayed there for over two years. I was the best damn donut finisher ever and made creations that looked like banana splits and hot dogs out of donuts. Yum!

Kat

[BAMF]

Damn, Victor, and I was gonna make a thread asking everybody what their current profession is. Of course, I would have the same answer for both threads.

My job that I currently have is at a property management company. I hate to bitch about it 'cause it really is a good job for a 17-year-old, but it can be a pain in the ass. I'm a receptionist on Saturdays. I answer the phones (which now seems like it's not part of my job 'cause I do so many other things), filing, various other things for my boss and her two assistants! I also come in during the week sometimes (especially during the summer) and help everybody in the office out with their crap.

I also have the pleasure of doing minutes. My boss goes to Board meetings all the time for her different properties and they record them on tape. Then I listen to them (sometimes 3-4 hours long!) and summarize them! How fun.

P.S. Ange, I always thought that doing construction would be ridiculously cool. I think I might try it at some point, though I don't know if I could stand the summer heat here.

P.S.S. Victor, one of my friends works at both a movie theater AND a Blockbuster. Jealous?

[Laure]

My very first job was as a corn detasseler in central Illinois.

Info

[Brant Gaede]

My first job was keeping my brother from eating mothballs.

Seriously, I jumped from skyscraper to skyscraper with a parachute saving young women from bad guys. They would reward me!

Paperboy.

--Brant

[Rich Engle]

Bagging groceries. They made me join the union.

[Mikee]

Chris!

"I helped pick up bales of hay on my aunt's farm a couple of summers."

Me too! My Uncle's dairy farm in Idaho. Learned to drive a tractor and use the manure spreader (yuck). I hated getting up in the wee hours to help turn the water. My Uncle just grabbed the blankets on the way by and just pulled. Damn.

Bucking hay makes you strong. My first early workouts. The wet bales on the ends of the rows weighed as much as I did.

[ginny]

I can't resist answering this post - I loved my very first job. I was about six years old. My father was stationed in France and we lived in a little Village. I had the maddest crush on our neightbor, the village butcher. Once I learned the rudiments of numbers in the first grade (French schools really teach), I insisted on working in his shop after school. Once they were convinced I could could make proper change and read the scale properly to weigh the meats, they actually let me serve customers.

Did I get paid? You bet. The best ham and sausages you ever ate. Actually, I helped raise the damned pigs (call it multitasking).

As for the butcher. Fickle bastard. Did not reciprocate my crush.

[Rich Engle]

I don't think it's too much hijacking...thinking about additionally opening up the "worst job" category. I was thinking of a few.

1. When I was 18, I quit my cushy music store job to join a band in Florida, a band that fell apart the same week I got there. When I got back to OH, couldn't get my gig back, and jobs were scarce. Even back then I had professional fighting experience, so I went for a security guard job. I ended up working strike detail at a lawnmower plant, night shift. In between running Detex rounds, this involved pulling strikers off the fence and tussling with them. Nice. It finally came to an end one night...I was sitting in my car in front of the fence and drifted off for a minute. They snuck up to my car and detonated an M100 firecracker on my roof.

2. Right after, I had to get temp work (I finally got back into the music biz not long after). The first job was 8 straight peeling stickers off of reconditioned Polaroid cameras. The second one was working in a warehouse where trains came in. Another guy and I had to pull frames holding Ford tractor motors off the box cars, and then modify the frames to accomodate a PCV valve by using a belt grinder. That one, I just went to lunch and never came back.

Those were the worst, though like most people I've put up with plenty.

Edited February 26, 2007 by Rich Engle

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

My first job was a newspaper route and it lasted about 3 months. I lived in a trailer park in Fairfax County in Virgina (near Alexandria) and built the route up from about 2 customers when I took it on to close to a 100 in a very short time, but my manager ripped off all my bonuses and prizes and disappeared. I called the paper and they did not even have me on file, nor anyone with the name of the manager.

I was too young to investigate further (I was about 10 or 11) and I simply stopped. I remember going around with a long face and telling my customers that they would no longer get their paper. That was a nasty thing to do to a kid who was poor.

btw - I just looked up the name of the paper, Washington News. I had a terrible time finding it on Google, then I discovered that it had been sold to Washington Star in 1973. Then I came across the Wikipedia entry The Washington Daily News. This jumped out at me in the article:

The newspaper's masthead had "The News" printed in large, bold letters, with "Washington Daily" printed in small letters between them, over a rendering of the U.S. Capitol dome.

Graaaaaack!!! That was way too graphic. The emotional memories came flooding in and bile formed at the back of my throat. I admit to taking pleasure just now in reading that the damn thing no longer exists. The way they did business, they deserved to go under. I even like the fact that the Star went under. My residual feeling is that the memory of that disgusting organization needed to be razed to the intellectual ground level. Someday they should bomb the rubble.

Michael

[reason.on]

My very first job was as a corn detasseler in central Illinois.

Info

Where in central IL? I spent most of my childhood in a small town right outside of Peoria, and have lots of family in central IL.

RCR

PS-my first real job, apart from mowing lawns and occasionally baby-sitting, was working the front-desk and concession-stand at the local swimming pool, later on I became a life-guard and coach.

Edited February 26, 2007 by R. Christian Ross

[Chris Grieb]

Mikee; My aunt's farm was in the Willamette Valley near Salem. My aunt would now be called a liberated women who before moving to the farm had been a policewomen in Pasadena, California. The farm was actually owned by my Grandmother. It had been in family when I worked on over a century. We did the baling at her farm and a cousin's farm.

[Laure]

...

Where in central IL? I spent most of my childhood in a small town right outside of Peoria, and have lots of family in central IL.

...

I grew up in Pekin; the detasseling was near either Morton or Tremont, I can't remember... What town are you from, RCR?

[Barbara Branden]

My first job was working as a receptionist-typist for Woman's Day magazine in New York. I kept my sanity only because I soon was moved to the editorial department. But even that was less than satisfying, since it was my considered opinion, despite the frenetic activity of the ladies in hats, that it didn't matter one bit whether the magazine ever was publshed or not.

When I was told that my salary was to be $50 a week, I was thrilled. In the 50's, this was a respectable starting salary, on which I could live quite nicely. But when I received my first check, I was ready to march on Washington: with withheld taxes, it came to a bit over $41. Had there been any question of my commitment to capitalism, it was solidified then.

Barbara

[Victor Pross]

My first job was working as a receptionist-typist for Woman's Day magazine in New York. I kept my sanity only because I soon was moved to the editorial department. But even that was less than satisfying, since it was my considered opinion, despite the frenetic activity of the ladies in hats, that it didn't matter one bit whether the magazine ever was publshed or not.

When I was told that my salary was to be $50 a week, I was thrilled. In the 50's, this was a respectable starting salary, on which I could live quite nicely. But when I received my first check, I was ready to march on Washington: with withheld taxes, it came to a bit over $41. Had there been any question of my commitment to capitalism, it was solidified then.

Barbara

Barbara,

Was your first job here in Canada? As it is now, current taxes in Canada are truely a horror. you are very fortunate to not have to pay Canadian taxes—in any decade.

I’m not sure if it’s true, but I understand we are one of the highest taxed countries in the free world. Looking at the taxes I pay, and the taxes sapped from people I know, who are living pay-check to pay-check, it’s something else looking at the depleted look on their faces whenever they receive a pay-stub, especially when they have worked over time. The more they work, the more is taken on that week's pay-check. Some cast their gaze downward and mutter, “It’s not worth it.”

As you may know, I plan on moving to the states.

-Victor

Edited February 27, 2007 by Victor Pross

[Judith]

First job: dental assistant.

I did the works: seated patients, developed X-rays, cleaned instruments, ran the autoclave, prepared filling and cleaning materials, assisted at chairside procedures, cleaned up afterwards, answered the phone and made appointments, sent out bills and appointment reminders, opened correspondence, filed patient records, called patients to remind them that they had an apppointment the next day -- you name it.

I was twelve years old.

Judith

[Brant Gaede]

I was ripped off as a paperboy twice by the same paper, "The Arizona Daily Star." The same paper that fired my Father as a reporter over 60 years ago, albeit with cause. Now known as "Arizona Daily Star" I continue to exact my revenge against the bastards. Every year when my subscription expires they send me a renewal notice for $165, which I ignore. Not wanting to shrink their subscriber base they keep delivering the damn thing. After a month of a free paper they send me an invoice which I send back to them with "Cancel" written on it. Two more weeks of free paper and it stops. I will now wait until someone tries to sell me a subscription at the local Safeway for $100 plus a five or ten dollar coupon. Heh, heh.

At this rate I figure I'll have back what they owed me as a kid in about 20 more years! (Includes punitive damages!)

Don't mess with the best, you'll die like the rest! :devil: :devil: :devil: :devil: :devil:

--Brant

[Chris Grieb]

Brant; Wasn't Dan's Quayle's father-in-law the publisher of the Arizona Star? I noticed at least two of you have told stories about being ripped off as paper boys. I've heard kids here in DC complain about the same thing.

[Brant Gaede]

Brant; Wasn't Dan's Quayle's father-in-law the publisher of the Arizona Star? I noticed at least two of you have told stories about being ripped off as paper boys. I've heard kids here in DC complain about the same thing.

I'm not that young. I was a paperboy in 1958 and 1960.

--Brant

[Chris Grieb]

I thought that Quayle had a Pulliam family connection.

[reason.on]

...

Where in central IL? I spent most of my childhood in a small town right outside of Peoria, and have lots of family in central IL.

...

I grew up in Pekin; the detasseling was near either Morton or Tremont, I can't remember... What town are you from, RCR?

Small world...I lived in Morton, the pumpkin capital of the world, until I was 12 (my father worked as an attorney at the Keystone plant in Pekin), then we moved to the suburbs of St. Louis. I was fortunate enough to have left Morton just before I reached detasseling age--and was spared the traditional central IL experience; my cousins in Decatur, were not so lucky. Btw, Ellen Stuttle also lived in central IL as a youngster...Peoria, if I recall correctly.

RCR

[Brant Gaede]

I thought that Quayle had a Pulliam family connection.

I believe he did.

--Brant

[Wrighty]

Victor -

Taxes! Over here the word tax is always preceeded by another word and its not always "income". These others fall under the derogatory term "stealth"....every government puts the "steal" into "stealth".....some European countries are worse than others. UK is one of them!

First job was dishwashing at a local holiday camp. I was 17 - boarding school had robbed me of being a paperboy.....but somehow that was worse because at school there were always things that you were press-ganged into doing and for no financial reward either. Money....very important motivator.......