As in under 18, legally employed and paying taxes and all that.
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I worked making sandwiches and burritos. I never had a burrito or understood anything beyond a baloney sandwich. So this was a great experience is learning sauces and pickles.
My more fulfilling job was helping at an after school program. It set me on the path of being a teacher. Which I then quit and became a office monkey because I got paid way better.
Bag boy at grocery store, cashier at McDonald’s
Farming.
Same, nothing like being In the mow stacking 3000 bales of hay mid Aug
I started working as a cook at 14
I walked to the restaurant close to my house, told the first person I saw “I want a job, but I don’t want to work with people”. They stuck me in the kitchen and taught me everything. Did that for 14 years.
Lifeguard at 16
It’s kinda odd, because in a lot of ways it’s still the most serious job I’ve ever had.
Also the least paying job I ever had. But when it was slow I was basically getting paid to do homework or do laps, and you were so bored you’d actually do it. $60 paychecks felt like such a luxury for something that fit nicely between school and sports.
Idk adjusted for inflation I was making $20/hour lifeguarding in 1999. I’ve worked for less since. And worked a lot harder for it.
How often did you actually have to step in?
Had to jump in and put a kid back on a wall during a lesson, closest I had to doing an actual save. Also had to call 911 once, but it was for someone out of the pool. This was over a three year period, but it was a pretty small pool.
But doing lessons there were countless times where you’re righting kids floundering or helping people back to the wall, but you’re already in the water and it was very hands on. Or you’re a second guard and sitting on the wall observing the lesson/keeping an eye on the rest of the pool. The lowest level of swimmers especially, you’re probably having to make a few assists a class.
Surprisingly never had to do anything at a birthday party, but they were the worst simply because you’d just get a lot of wildcards you don’t know and there’d be a lot to watch. The vast majority of our time was spent watching over regulars so it was pretty relaxed with regards to having to feel out the swimming ability new faces all the time.
Waitress at 14 in my family’s restaurant. Worked for dry cleaners at 17.
I was a teenager back in the 80’s.
My very first job was a paper route and I absolutely hated it.
Second job was at a nursery/garden center, that also had a pool center. This job I didn’t mind so much. I learned a lot about landscaping and plants in general. I actually became knowledgeable enough that at the age of 17 I designed several landscapes, even one large job that was the HQ for a Japanese car company. Fast forward 20 years and my wife and I buy a house and my wife has always dreamed of having a yard with tons of landscaping. So I dusted off my skills and built multiple beds across our property. Today we have a yard that is mostly very mature beds which bloom continuously throughout the growing season.
I worked at an amusement park running a few different rides. Paid alright for the late 90s, but could work outrageous hours if you wanted. Physical and simple work in the hot midwestern humidity. Met a boy with the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen, and the rest is history.
awwwww ❤️
Most money I made as a teen was in doing my own hustles, like pirating music and movies to burn to disc and selling them because I was one of the few people in my school to have a PC, with internet and a DVD burner.
I also did door to door sales for some company from the back of a magazine I subscribed to when I was 11 or 12. You earned cash or points to redeem for shit like video game consoles or bikes. I’m not entitely sure how legit it was, thinking about it now. 🤔
My first truly legit job, paying income tax and all that shit at 17, was, ugh… CutCo Knives. Vector Marketing. Great fucking knives; terrible company to work for and do business with.
I worked at a truck wash. I would wash tractor trailers with a power washer, scrub the the tractors with a regular old wash mitt for a car and wash trailers with a brush of similar size as at a coin op car wash except with a handle l long enough to reach the top of the trailer while standing on the ground.
A group of 5 people would wash an entire truck in 15 to 20 minutes. My shift during school started on a Friday at around 5pm and would run till 11pm but usually ended up being midnight. Saturday was 3 till 11pm but again we were generally working till midnight and Sunday varried but we stopped accepting new trucks at 4pm. During the summer my shift started at 3pm and could run till 3am even though we closed at 11pm. There were many times we had 10 trucks in line at 11pm with two trucks in the wash bays during the summer and were turning new trucks away and leaving a couple parked till the morning to get washed.
During slower times we would take in degreaser jobs where we would use a pressure steamer to remove the grease from the entire truck so it could go in for some major work and the mechanic shop workers didn’t have to clean it off of deal with it. Degreasing trucks sucks…
Corn detasseling, wine grape picking, lawn care, call center for a survey company, data analytics for a different survey company, coffee shop, restaurant host/wait staff, tree trimming, aide at a school for kids with medical needs, tier 1 IT phone support, stocking shelves over night shift in a grocery store.
That’s roughly in order, starting with corn detasseling at age 13 and ending when I went to college. There were a couple others, very short lived that I don’t count if I quit before training was complete. And some others highly seasonal, like a Christmas tree farm that hired me to make wreaths for a week straight before christmas a few years in a row.
I had a paper route. I hated it. They kept assigning me random houses that were several miles outside my zone.
My paper route is part of my origin story. There was a house with an absurdly steep driveway and no steps. Iced over one day, physically couldnt get up it. Tried for about 10 minutes getting run ups and kept sliding back down in the road and getting scraped up. Ended up leaving it on the car. Got back to the shop an hour later and they’d already phoned to complain and got a refund and I got a bollocking.
Unbridled hatred.
- bailing hay/straw in the summer for a neighbor from
- working at a fast food place
- working in retail at a farm store
- working at a movie theater
All before I turned 18 starting at 13. At first for the money, then to be out of a tough home situation as much as possible.
I counted stuff. Worked in a paper products warehouse doing daily inventory counts. It was kind of awesome since I got to walk around, BS with some friends that had other jobs in the warehouse, and developed boss-level skills with the number pad that I still apply today. After working the summer there, I was pretty glad my first couple applications in food service got rejected.
Babysitting, McDonalds, collectibile card store, florist, night club, painter.
