My little town finally opened a new library and when I was in 6th grade I was hired as a "Page" - for 60 cents an hour, 9 hours a week after school or Saturdays I worked at the check-out counter, put books away, helped patrons, prepped new books for circulation and watered the plants. Before that I made 50 cents an hour baby sitting.

Maire

My family lived in a small town in Michigan when I was in the 7th grade. I got paid one summer to registrate kids who got flouride treatments on their teeth. This was in the 60's. My teeth are strong because of the treatments...

I mowed neighbors lawns, but my first job with an official paycheck was lifeguarding.

I babysat, then I worked at the concession stand for the Calgary Stampede and Stampede Wrestling in the Big Four Building and Stampede Corral.🤠

The last year of high school I worked evenings for the Calgary Herald newspaper taking classified ads over the telephone.

I babysat from the age of 11. My first "real" job was as a drink girl at the fast food place, the Arctic Circle. I hated that job, made drinks and cleaned the bathrooms. The first time I worked there or close to it, the manager who was a high school kid too looked me up and down and said, "they sure don't make them like they used to". I quit after a month.

I baby sat beginning at 11. Then one summer (I think I was 16, I drove to work) I was hired along with about 4 others to teach swimming at our natatorium. I could swim well, we didn't have anything like a swim team for girls, no teaching experience....They assigned me 5 yr olds! Somehow it worked out. I still remember one little boy so clearly - he was so afraid of the water first day he was trembling. I don't remember how many weeks a session was, but end of it, he could jump off the pool side and swim to me ;)

My next job was clerking in the forestry department at Weyerhaeuser. Afternoons while I attended morning classes at our junior college. They hired me in summer and I couldn't begin until I had turned 18 in September, classes had begun by then.

I grew up in NYC. Babysat at age 10. Once I got working papers at 14, got a part time job at the local library, just like Maire. Went there straight from school worked 2 hrs each day and weekends. I made &65.00 a month!

Jane

My first job (out of university) was also at a library. I moved from Houston to Austin when I graduated and got a job at the UT Main Library, cataloguing a Slavic literature collection. I got the job because I could read Russian. I lived about three blocks from campus, and so I walked to work. The job was only part time, and I worked from 5-10 pm Monday through Thursday, but I made enough to pay my rent and buy food with still some spending money leftover.

I did not have a car, but every other Friday I would hitchhike to Houston for the week-end to visit friends and take advantage of the nightlife, which was much better in Houston than in Austin in the early 1970s. I could return to Austin either Sunday or Monday and still have time to go to work by 5pm on Monday. I only lasted in Austin for about eight months and then moved to San Francisco, where I lived for 12 years.

I worked in the medical records department of a large medical group. Back when it was an actual chart. Not all on computers like it is now. We pulled the charts for the next days appointments, then re-filed them the next day. Most of my friends were working at fast food places, making minimum wage ($3.35), and I was making $4.15. I LOVED that job.

My first job In school summer holidays was in a factory hand winding surgical sutures onto cards. At Christmas many of us were taken on to deliver the increased mail.

Frist paid job: Baby sitting $.50 an hour. Every Friday/Saturday night during Jr. High. Then I got a one time pay job running off a catalogue on a mimeograph machine. But what most would call my first 'employed' job was as a short order cook for Baskinrobbins. I was just 16 and worked 40 hrs a week all that summer, making the lunch special for mostly construction workers. They tipped well if the food was good. It really really ticked me off when the waitresses would wave the bills at me and say "thank you". Keep your thanks; share your tips!! They were paid the same $2.20 and hour I was, but when home with sooo much more. To this day I am not keen on tips.

My first real paycheck job was as a part time custodian/janitor at age 16.

Babysitting, 50 cents an hour, mostly for one family just about every Friday or Saturday night during high school. Those people sure went out a lot! The 2 little girls were nice and went to bed reasonable well so mostly I enjoyed watching late night tv (in color!). My first real paycheck was right after high school graduation, a summer temp clerk-typist job with the federal government. Those were different times.

Insurance company, pulling claimants' files for the adjusters. And refiling them. All day long. In those days, we even had to work overtime. Led to a career in insurance brokerage. I'm in my second career, I hope to retire from in a decade.

Subway when I was 15. I hated it. Well, the job itself,which was making sandwiches wasn't bad but the customers were terrible. My first day I got cussed out by a behemoth of a shrew. She wanted her pickles cut into 4 pieces, which was fine with me. But she spotted 2 pieces of pickles that had not been completely cut through and absolutely showered me with vulgarity. I learned all kinds of new insults that day.... This was the first but not the last such incident.

The worst people in the world are hungry and picky. I feel sorry for anyone who has to make food in front of the customer. You meet the worst of the worst of the WORST of society that way. Really people, if its that serious, make your own sandwich at home....

I was made a manager at 17 while I was still in high school, but at age 18 recognized that I did NOT want to make a living like that, went to a temp service and asked them to find me night shift industrial work. I wanted to clock in, work,clock out and forget about work. And I am so happy I did. I worked at a few places before finding the job I have now, which I have been at for 12 years and hope to be able to retire from.

I baby-sat & had two houses I cleaned on the weekends for $20ea. Took me 3-4 hours ea. I also had a paper route. 125 papers, one hour an evening, then had to collect $.

Story: The one house I cleaned was for a geometry teacher, Betty. I asked her if she would be willing to show me how to work a geometry problem I was stuck on, just "one". She agreed, then refused to pay me for cleaning her house. She said that geometry teachers made more than house cleaners, we were NOT friends and THIS was a lesson for me. I said, "I thought we were friends. She told me ALL about her mother, all about her personnel life. Showed me a fountain she had made & how she'd wired it. I brought THIS up" She said she talked while I worked and it didn't interrupt my working to clean her house. I didn't show up the following week. After three weeks, she finally called me, said she was going to have to fire me. I said, "I already quit, you didn't pay me." The other house I cleaned was Betty's friend, I stopped showing up there, in case NOT PAYING was contagious. :0) The two ladies talked...Betty was told by her friend she'd ripped off a kid and been extremely rude. She didn't agree. She begged me to come back, so I came over. She tried giving me old clothes she no longer wore. ☺ We parted ways.

Camp counselor in a nursery school that was right across from where I lived.

Nicole, that is just so shocking to me. What a horrible person.

When I was in high school, I worked at the Malt Shop. I started out 75 cents an hour, washing dishes and clearing tables. Got a raise to 1.25 and worked the grill, took orders and the cash register. With the money I made there, I was able to buy my clothes and a horse and feed my three horses.

Nicole, what a horrible way to be treated. I am glad you didn't go back.

I started babysitting at 11. I hated babysitting. At 15 I lived in central Illinois and got a summer job corn detasseling. I did that for 2 summers. You had to get up at dawn and work in the hot Midwest summer. I would come home dead tired, take a shower, eat something, then go to bed. It was the most grueling job I have ever worked. My HS senior year I got a part time job as a checkout clerk at Osco drug store.

I applied for a part-time job at my then local Kmart while I high school. The manager put me in the automotive department even though I knew really nothing about cars. I hated it, but lasted three months before putting in my resignation. The manager told me how disappointed he was, because “pretty young girls are the best customer magnets in this department”. Ugh!!!

My first 'real' job, with a paycheck, was as a carhop. Paycheck wasn't much, but tips were pretty good.

Rusty

My first job was babysitting as well for that same $.50 an hour. Some people would try and double up with two sets of kids for that but other people always paid me extra. the first real job was in a central warehouse for a major department store chain. I got $i.72 an hour to check incoming merchandise against orders and distribute for 9 stores. There were a bunch of us doing that. I was fastest in the building. The whole place was a system they sold and we had delegations of people from all over looking at how it worked so we lived statistics and counts. We were not allowed to make mistakes. Sort of weird place. I was hired by mistake as I was too young. I was making some college money.

Yes my first job was babysitting. I didn't even know dog walking was a thing then or that would have been my first job and my last job. Although in between and during I would have loved to have been at university studying whatever they would let me. :-). As soon as I can I will be going and taking classes. Probably forever.

Big Star Groceries the day I turned 16.

I was a 14 year old "hick" country girl. I washed dishes in a soda fountain in a drug store. One day when some employees did not come to work they told me to wait tables. When someone left me a tip I chased them down to give them the money that they left. No one had ever explained tips to me.

I did some babysitting work in high school, and also had a great paying job being a "reader" to an elderly woman who was losing her sight. She was a former school teacher and missed being able to read, so she paid me a fabulous hourly wage to read books and articles to her for 90 minutes a few days a week after school. (This was back in the dark ages, AKA, the 1980s - before there were smart phones and software apps that now do this for free). She liked my voice and my diction, she paid me very well. I loved that job, it seemed so easy for so much money (to a high school kid....)

My first real job, that generated a W-2, was working in a pet store. I never knew I was going to get bit by so many creatures.... :)

My first paycheck producing job was as a 4-H secretary for the State of CT. I used to take the train to work every day. The people I worked with were wonderful. Out of all the jobs I've held since, this one was for me the best.

I worked in a bakery.

Wow, HU..853, that brought up a memory for me. I was about 12 and it wasn't a real job, I was just helping my sister who worked in a tiny cafe. She asked me to bring back the dirty dishes, and there was a pile of change on the table. Didn't know what to do so I left it there. We must have had a similar upbringing, I'd never seen a tip before either!

I worked as a secretary to an Account Exec during the summer while I was in high school. I was well paid and made more money than my friends who were working at cafeterias or sitting for children, so my business background served me well from an early age.

Like many others, I babysat. Hated it.

My first real job was walking beans. For the non-rural reader, that consisted of getting up at dawn and joining a crew of others to walk up and down the rows of soybean fields with a garden hoe on your shoulder. The hoe was for chopping weeds. This was prior to the widespread use of Roundup and all the other herbicides common today. We usually quit at noon cause it was too hot.

After babysitting for 4-ish years (50-75 cenrs an hour,) i got a job at the newly opened Montgomery Ward Buffeteria, which I kept through part of college in the summers. My boss turned into my friend and we are friends to this day. I also had short stints weeding, cleaning a neighbor’s house (yuk,) and one day of picking strawberries—hard work. I generally really liked my job at Monkey Ward.

At 14 I started working tobacco, but only 1/2 days due to my age. Worked full days the next two summers. The season would start with field work in the hot sun stringing the plants; tying the plant, reaching overhead to tie the string, bending down to tie the next plant, in rows as far as you could see. Then when all the fields were strung, you'd start back at the first field and wind the strings around each plant - by then the nets were installed. This was repeated over and over as the plants grew until harvest when the boys would pick and haul them to the barns. The girls there would sew them onto laths with big machines, runners would hand each up to those placing them in the rafters. Funny for somebody working 3 years with tobacco, I've never had a cigarette or other tobacco product.

After my senior year of high school, I was a lifeguard at a large pool. There were always two lifegaurds on duty, one on a stand in the deep end and another in the shallow end. One day, I — 5’5” and 105 soaking wet — was assigned to the deep end and I looked to see who was assigned to the shallow end. That lifeguard was 6’4” and actually ended up playing center in the NFL for 10 years. I was a strong swimmer, but so was he. I just have to wonder what the manager making the assignments was thinking.

Working as a helper to an older woman - cleaning, ironing, any other tasks she needed twice a week, as she recovered from surgery. It was only a temporary job that lasted 4 weeks or so. Next job was at the concession stand at the local movie theater. Pay (iirc) was $.75/hr, and I could watch the movie for free after the stand closed (meaning, the end of the movie!)

"My first real job was walking beans. For the non-rural reader,...."

That sounds like hard work. Especially if it was too hot at noon to continue, I'll bet it wasn't very comfortable in the late morning either.

If the "beans" you're referring to is soybeans, I suspect most rural readers also wouldn't know what your phrase meant. Because soybean cultivation is limited to a small portion of the US. Most "rural" areas don't have soybean fields nearby.