What was the first job you ever had, and how old were you when you started?

I worked at Taco Bell at a shopping mall food court right when they announced their 59, 79, & 99 cent menus. All summer it was a 30–60 person mob of people in front of the TB and 2–3 people at all the other counters.

I got a job at a movie theater when I was nineteen. I received survivors benifits until then from the murder of my father. I had zero experience and only got hired because I knew most of the people that worked there.

After a year of tearing tickets and cleaning the theaters I was made a projectionist. Another year later and I was the head projectionist and an assistant manager. A year after that I was responsible for fixing all the projectors in southern Oregon. About two weeks later I got pissed off and sent a scathing e-mail to my boss.

I ended up at Intel for twice as much a month later.

My first job was at palm harbor homes where my father use to work. I was a file clerk making only $6 an hour. It only lasted a month. I was 17 at the time.

Not counting mowing lawns in the neighbourhood, my own little business when I was 13, my first official ‘job’ was driving the Dicky Dee Ice Cream bike in my town. I was 15 then.

I was a slave -counsellor at a girls’ camp in CT. I had a bunk of obstreperous 13 year-olds (I was 19 so you can imagine the discipline problem) taught tennis and other preposterous sports like archery. The owners made me roll the tennis courts. And paid me $200 for eight weeks.

When I graduated from college, I got a wonderful position doing Astronomical Research at the Harvard Observatory. Sputnik had been launched the year before and the US gov’t was throwing money at anyone with skills in the field, even me w. my pathetic BA in Astronomy.

from the ages 14–16, every summer, I worked at my aunt and uncles vegetable farm. All the workers there were aunts, uncles , and grandparents, and 90% of our customers had to of been over the age of 65, so i after a while I started acting like an “older” person, and learned so much from everyone. I also had the opportunity to work with my great grandmother, which was an unforgettable experience. Now the farm is closing down, and its sad, but was the best first job… Ever

Wowza.. That is cool gail. Makes my jobs seem really boring. I did work for APT and we made parts for the power supplies in the International Space Station. Kinda scary knowing that you can’t mess up. Normally our stuff went into welders and I can’t say that we were very strict about quality control.

And I think I just violated the NDA I had to sign.

@johnp: nothing like a BA in Liberal Arts. After I moved from Boston to NYC, I taught French to 3d and 4th graders, again on the basis of no teaching experience. Then on to Philadelphia where I became the Director of College Placement at an independent day school.

My training for that job – being able to read, write, speak in public, use common sense, practice therapy w/o a license, (I even gave advice on Financial Aid because I had kept the family check book and balanced our yearly budget) and observe my own two kids and my three step-sons.

i was 15 when I started working at a community ballpark in the concession stand. we sold hot dogs, nachos, candy and all that crap they say is not good for you. we were always struggling to pass health inspections and the people buying the food were high class.

The first time Mom hired a babysitter for my little sister, I was six. My sister screamed every time the babysitter touched her, so I spent the entire night holding the baby in a rocking chair. From that point on, I was the built in babysitter until I left for college. Mom would also loan me out to her friends to babysit (usually for $1/hour). I knew at 14 that I would never have kids of my own – I’d done my time.

First outside the home job was McDonalds at 15.

I was a paperboy when I was 12.

I was 14, I got a job in tv production for a city channel. Had it for 4 years.

I started babysitting at 12, and my first paycheck job was at 18 working at McDonalds… I made the best french fries (back when they were really, really bad for you).

I think I was twelve of thirteen and spent a Summer attempting to caddy at the nearest country club. It was a miserable Summer. The final straw was listening to a multi-millionaire complain because he bought me a candy bar after someone else ok the party bought me a pop. How messesd up is that? The next year I started at a dog kennel. I kept that job until I graduated highschool. Needless to say, I am not a “dog person.”

I was a dietary aide at a nursing home at 16 years old. It was a lot of fun cause I loved the people I worked with. I had a lot of downtime so I sat on my ass most of the time. That’s the life

At 15 or so, I worked at a neighborhood pharmacy and I delivered prescriptions to people in their apartments in the neighborhood. This was in the Bronx around 1964 or 65.
Imagine that in those days, the pharmacist would take the prescription from you, then fill the prescription an hour or two later. A lot of those medicines were liquids that had to be prepared or compunded and measured and poured into bottles manually. Their job was not almost 100% counting pills and inserting them into vials as is done in pharmacies nowadays.

Pay? Tips only. Usually a dime, a quarter if I was lucky, from the lady who got the prescription, I knew almost everyone on the block and the surrounding ones so they sort of had to treat me nicely cause they knew me and my mother and grandparents who had lived on that block for close to 30 years.

Can you imagine doing that now? Giving a bottle of pills or capsules to a 15 year old and expecting him to deliver the package intact?

Job: Macintosh Computer Technician
Age: 16
Pay: $6.25 p/h
Rate Charged: $90 p/h

Talk about a ripoff.

My first “real” job was at a video rental store my freshman year in college. I was there about a month before the manager was fired for sexual harassment. I only worked days so they made me an assistant manager, mainly because they trusted me to do the bank deposit. I then learned that nobody, literally nobody, rents movies during the day. I quit after a couple months out of sheer boredom.

pumping gas at a family full service gas station, 13 years old, paid less than a dollar an hour. also had to check the oil, wash the windows, check the tire air pressure. I thought it was a great job.