OT: We all started somewhere- Your first job

Telemarketing job

I got my first job when I was 14 working for a telemarketing company in Omaha, NE. I had just moved to North Omaha for HS and my mother refused to buy me "name-brand" clothes, so I was like, "Fine, I'll make my own money and get the clothes I want myself."

This was like 1999-2000 and it was inbound calls mostly for infomercials where we had to follow a set script. I was paid $8/hr but got $3 for each up sell and probably averaged $12-14/hr (really good money for a HS kid at the time). Ronco Rotisserie, Kidsbop, AOL were some of the products sold.

I currently work for the company that wrote my first paycheck. Yikes.  But My first job out of HS  was working for a meat company that no longer exists. Met a Grand Rapids Owl hockey player there who showed me how to cook smokie links in the glue machine. Burned my ass when a steaming hot caustic cleaning tank overflowed just as I was turning off another.  Yeah, good times.

A warehouse job at a store called Best Products in Flint. Don't know if they have them any more. The first floor was a showroom; the second was the warehouse. When a customer would purchase an item, the sales order would come up by pneumatic tube. We'd get the item, and send it down by conveyor. If it was a small item, we'd first put it in a bigger cardboard box, so that it wouldn't go tumbling down the conveyor - except sometimes we'd forget on purpose, just for shits & giggles. I once sent a Procter Silex iron flying down the ramp, nearly taking the head off a sales girl who picked the wrong moment to look up the conveyor.

Good times.

Made sandwiches at schlotzski's in traverse city for hall of fame coach Jim Ooley. I actually still work in a fast food restaurant in Chicago. Fortunately, I own this one, and hopefully several more before I'm done.

This reminds me of the weekly car thread a little. 

Manball should do this once a week for awhile(off season only of course). 

-Job with the most fun

-Craziest job

-Job with the best bennies(hot co-workers, etc)

etc    

First job was making pizza at Cottage Inn at 16 years old. Also mowed lawns in the neighborhood starting around 12 years

The Exit Restaurant in Birch Run as a dishwasher, started there when I was 15. Hated the job but managed to save enough money to fix up a couple of cars and have some $ for the weekends. Reminds me of why I went to college.

When I was 17 I tutored kids. It was great - had flexible hours and made great money.

Started out as a fluffer. But that got old real quick.

Started as a paper boy at age 12. Delivered papers everyday for 5 years then got a job working in the kitchen of a restaurant at 17. Made good money for a 12 year old!

Was working maintenance on U of M North Campus and helping out some grad students with data entry as a summer job between high school & college. Was decent except for that time I poured a half gallon of mercury on my foot.....

I enjoyed it. Just sucked when you didn't get a Loop though

I was 14 and too young to legally scoop ice cream (I know right?) so I made waffle cones all day for 8 hours a day. For some reason scooping ice cream wasnt okay but using the waffle maker was definitely fine. I still have scars from the burns i received that summer. 

worked at the local Texan Restaurant in Midland Mi, made $2.95 an hour. When I left there and joined the Navy out of High School I was making $3.95 an hour. Yikes.

First entrepreneurial venture: mowing lawns in the neighborhood.

First formal employment: painting crew at my high school over the summer.

First retail job: Grooveyard records in Ann Arbor.

First office job: paid internship at a consulting firm.

 

My first formal job was as a hostess at International House of Pancakes. I ended up working there as a server through high school and some of college. More than 20 years later, I would still love to eat breakfast foods for all three meals in a day! 

operating the batting cages and driving the mobile target around picking up balls. you havent lived until you've seen a rocket coming off an oversized/flex combo at your face from 25 yds.

And nothing but assholes and elbows. Believe we had about  15 employess. Driver would greet the owner of car and drive it to the steam station, steam man would hit it all over and then this is where me and three others, just after it was attached to rotating chain, would jump in. One person, one corner of interior, windshield, dash, doors, anything in your 1/4. About 15 second per car. Then the vacuum people, 1/4 of carpet, right on through to drying, same way, 1/4 of exterior apiece. 12 hour days and we hit the 700+ on many Saturdays.

About three days before I could go home and not fall asleep immediately.

Go kart track. At the end of the race, we halted the kids after the finish line and then brought them in one by one to a garaged area where they'd park and get out. Lots of them would unbuckle their seat belts while waiting to come in (even though we'd tell them not to). Problem is, though, that lots of kids get the brake and gas confused and would hit the barrier or a car in front of them at full speed. Saw a few broken noses when their head would hit the wheels, and I'm surprised the place never got sued. Great job, though.

Landscaping. Just put those 6 summers to use today on the yard. Was easier at 17.

Detasseling. Cruising miles of corn ripping the male genitalia off everything in sight.

I was 15 years old working with plants watering and planting flowers etc. Place that I worked at was special needs school kids with disabilities and then year later worked in the work shop where I got paid not much since most of the work wasn't hourly so it was $20 or $30 dollars.

Worked for Sportservice as a ballpark vendor at Riverfront. Peanuts, popcorn, Coke. If you were high seller on the night on your product you got ice cream the next night; high seller on ice cream got to push the ice cream cart. I hit the jackpot once and got the cart for a Sunday doubleheader when the temperature was in the high 90s. Made about $200 in commission on the day, about $25-30/hr--that was a lot of money for a kid in 1977. (A typical night was more like $15-20 for about three hours of work.)

Great, great job for a teenager. A lot of stairs, which was good because I was running x-country at the time. Saw every home game, got to be part of the show. Boss was a mobster stereotype that seemed like he'd stepped right out of the Godfather...which was funny, in retrospect, when we found out a while later who owned the company. Wouldn't surprise me in the least to find out they were using us to launder small bills. They treated us great, though, as long as you worked. It was straight commission, and if you didn't average enough to pull minimum wage they fired you. That didn't happen to anyone that put in any effort at all.

My first job in my career path was working as a Mortgage Loan Officer in Columbus, Ohio. My boss, the owner of the company, was a former Buckeye defensive lineman. After a month I received my first commission check for only $1400 and my paycheck BOUNCED. No joke, it returned NSF. Long story short, I quit and had to sue the company. It took eight months but I finally got paid.