Your first job

My first real "job" (other than yardwork and such as a kid) was at the pizza parlor making pizzas. It wasn't so bad except the day we were unloading supplies into the walk-in, which included these huge jars of salad dressing. We had the bright idea that my buddy would take them out of the box and toss them to me in the cooler. All was going well until I didn't keep up. It was like in the movies where the bank robbers have that color bomb in their bag...all of the sudden *BAM*. We spend half the night cleaning ranch dressing off of every single inch of the walk-in cooler.

My most unusual job was my few days in "professional baseball". I once got invited to a professional try out camp, which I thought was pretty cool. There were about 150 guys there about 50 of which were pitchers. I was a catcher. It soon dawned on my that they weren't particularly interested in me, they just didn't want all those pitchers standing around with no one to throw to. It wasn't so bad though, I got to stay all day (about half the guys got cut after the first 10 minutes), and they fed us that lasted the afternoon. I later got to do the same thing at other tryouts, this time knowing ahead of time I wasn't a prospect, just a guy willing to don the tools of ignorance. I think I made $16 for a full day.

 

Still sounds like a darn cool experience.

 

Linn County....grass seed capital of the world!!!!

 

That's right; right in the middle of it in Shedd, Oregon! Morgan Century Farms, established 1847.

 

I worked at my father’s Esso service station for a couple of years before I was old enough to get a work permit...which, in North Carolina, is fourteen years old. As soon as I got my permit, I landed my first non-family job. I became a proud bus boy at Captain Bill’s Waterfront Restaurant, in Morehead City, NC. I earned the minimum wage, and all the fried bluefish I could eat. Which was a lot.

AF

 

I was a gardener for my uncle's neighbor. His wife had Parkinson's and he was just getting to the age where he couldn't do it all himself. Basically, I took back the guy's backyard from nature, fixed his front walk, did all the manual labor that he needed to have done and couldn't do himself.

 

My first paid job after finishing apprenticeship has been boilermaker / pipe fitter at a shipyard.

 

I discharged at Ft Campbell, Ky and spent my last two weeks in the Army processing out and playing
baseball with guys from all over the country, many of whom were angling for the Minors. Service baseball
catches pro scout interest and seeing a scout or two sitting bleacher was fairly common. A couple of guys
were hit on, got invited to try out somewhere that spring. I caught and the pitchers would go Bob Gibson
or Koufax if a scout seemed looking. Surprised no one got fatally beaned by a hick hayseed hurler.

 

Golly,

My first job was being paid 20 dollars for a weekends work at the family business when I was 12. I made it putting together different components of promotional products. I got there early and was offered either two cents per product or twenty bucks for the weekend. I thought two cents was too low, so I opted for 20 bucks. The weekend after that, I made 17 dollars and that was 2 cents per item. Some weekends, it was a matter of, "We're short on money so you won't get paid", it was a family business. We sold it when I was 33 and I walked away with a fair chunk of change in my bank account.

Another job I had when I left the family business was working in a pizza shop, where a customer would come in and ask about a special. I was told to tell people the best deal was X, while it actually made a lot more sense to buy Y. There was a 10 dollar special for a 4 topping large pizza, and the boss told me that I wasn't to tell anybody about the special, she didn't make much money.

That was the worst job I'd ever had. I had to sit there all day waiting to deliver pizzas, work for free in the back of the shop assembling boxes and I even got called in on my days off to be told, "There's a delivery, you should be thankful for having the opportunity to come in and make three dollars".

The boss there wasn't much of a leader. She would come in once a day to pick up the money and pay the employees in cash, under the table. Once in a while she'd refuse to pay me (claiming I hadn't assembled enough boxes - for free), so eventually I told her very politely that I wasn't making the kind of money I thought I would and I'd like to quit. Her response was that I was irresponsible for quitting and she needed me to work the next day. So I less than politely told her that I quit and wasn't going to work the next day. Often I made less than five dollars a day, and this was in 2018.

C.

 

First job straight out of high school was working on a loading dock at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago for the summer. Made good money for college.

 

I worked as a volunteer counselor at the Chicago Boy's Club - Lawndale Branch till I was 16, then was hired part-time after school and during the summer.

 

My dad was a baseball player, and played in the Army, including at Ft. Campbell while he was with the 101st. He said baseball in the service was a BIG deal. He was a pitcher, and a darn good one, so there was a certain celebrity that came with that among the fellas, and especially among the commanding officers, as the base team was a source of great pride and braggadocio.

 

In the United States Army boxing rules the roost as the most manly sport; beer is the wine of life;
and stud poker the game of barracks choice gamble.
At night after training/fatigue/chow a ring is set up and the gloves come out. Battalion smokers,
Division matches, and, of course, behind barracks session where a master sergeant strips off his shirt
and takes three malcontents on single handedly all at once without any rank showing. Or, the first sergeant
waves an Andy Jackson at morning formation, offering a bounty for a boxing lesson given to a "sorry ass
bastard" who needs a reminder.

Baseball is a close second. A diamond appears as if by magic and baseball strikes like lightning.
Kilroy is all over the world. Even Viet Cong turncoats-Kit Carsons-learned baseball.

 

I got a job as a "Carpet Cutter" working for "Crazy King Konsell" who was known as "The Carpet King of Milwaukee". It was my job to locate, measure, cut, roll and tape the selected carpet lengths chosen by the customers. Now in case folks aren't familiar with carpet, the rolls are "crazy" heavy, the underside is VERY rough, and the edges can be sharp. So needless to say that it wasn't uncommon to get home with my hands and arms covered with countless scrapes, scratches, and cuts... Yet since I was still an underage HS student, I only got paid... $3.50 an hour