What Was Your First Job....And How Much Did It Suck?

[THUNDER HANDS]

Mine...

I worked maintenence at a public pool near my house the summer after I graduated high school. I was in charge of cleaning the men's locker room, landscaping and general stuff like that.

I hated it. Got paid $5.50 p/hr - which is not nearly enough to be thisclose to old man ass and their shriveled up little dingdongs.

I have to admit though, I did have a crush on a lifeguard, which made the day go by a little easier.

You?

[demnan]

1. Answered phones for an electric company

and it was ok. Part time and all the electricans were pretty cool about stuff. Even learned to do a little payroll.

My second job was working as a grill cook in a college cafeteria and that sucked big time.

[maxanne]

2. counselor

at a summer camp on the beach in Plum Island,MA. I loved it! It didn't pay much, but we were at the beach - and one cook had homemade Italian wine, and the other had some good weed. Got me away from the family for a few weeks.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

3. I was a kitchen worker at a summer camp.

The camp had over 100 people. They sold the job to me on the basis of what fun I would have, being 14. The chef never showed. I had to do everything in the kitchen for about 3 days, a minimum of 18 hours a day.

I lasted 3 days, and had a reasonable equivalent of a nervous breakdown. I went home.

[GOPisEvil]

4. I was a camp counselor at a Boy Scout Camp.

I taught life saving and helped out with the Mile Swim...I was paid $60/week plus room and board. It was a GREAT summer! I worked there 3 more summers after that! :-)

[thom1102]

10. Me too!!

First two years as an unpaid CIT (counselor in training, for those not in the know), then 2 more years unpaid. The best job I ever had. I taught small boat sailing, canoeing, rowing, worked in the camp store (after 2nd degree sunburn ended my waterfront career) and was part of the team that provided entertainment after the meals (lead various skits, songs, announcements, etc). I was often voted Favorite Counselor by the campers and was a model scout. Too bad scouting turned into such a homophobic entity, because I think it was the best thing that ever happened to me, and would love to give back to them.

[GOPisEvil]

15. Oh yeah! I was a CIT, too!

I worked in the kitchen! :puke:

I'm with you on Scouting...too bad it's become evil. I learned a whole hell of a lot, and would love to give back too.

I got one these, too:

[thom1102]

20. I only made it to Star...

After that I just kinda stayed in it to work at camp.

[kmla]

5. I detassled corn...

For all of the city folk - this is where crews go through the corn fields pulling the tassles off of the female corn plants (yes, there are male and female corn plants) so that their ears are pollenated only by the pollen from a male plant. You know that silk stuff that is in the top of the ear of corn? That is what catches the pollen.

Anyway - this job is done in the middle of the summer for approximately 3-4 weeks. It typically is 10-12 hours a day, in all kinds of weather except lightening. Paid decent money for the time($2.20 an hour in 1977 dollars - righteous bucks!).

It was hot, sweaty, and dirty. I pretty much hated it. Got a great tan, though.

[THUNDER HANDS]

7. OH MY GOD

You molested corn stalks?

:evilgrin:

[kmla]

9. Not molested.

Just say that they were all "spayed"...

:evilgrin:

[trotsky]

30. Fellow former detassler here.

Terrible job. But as you say, great pay when you're a kid. I did it in the early 80s, netting usually between $400 and $600 for the season. Serious bucks!

Here's the "what was I thinking" part: I did it for 3 summers!

[CO Liberal]

6. Caddy At A Private Country Club

The Spring Brook Country Club, outside Morristown, NJ. They had a strict dress code - no one (golfers OR caddies) were allowed to wear shorts on the course. Long pants only. Not very comfortable during the summer in New Jersey (95 degrees, 95% humidity).

I lasted about a month, then got a job working in a small clothing store in Morristown (Allan's Mens & Boys Wear, which closed in the '80s).

[madrchsod]

8. washing dishes

at a nursing home 1.50 hr.but the cook made sure every month we had a cookout at his house-he`d take the best cuts of beef for himself,give the owner second best..nothing like a three inch slab of beef and a falstaff to wash it down.....

[geebensis]

11. Bagging Groceries

Best part was hauling the returnable bottles to the back room. A lot of people left the caps on their bottles, and sometimes there would be prizes under the caps. On a typicle day I'd score 75 cents or so -- which represented a 5% bonus for a 5 hour shift.

Add in a couple dollars in tips helping old ladies load their bags in their cars, and I was fat with cash.

mm

[GOPisEvil]

12. Bagging groceries was my second job

I worked on a military base, for tips only. I made out like a bandit! :bounce:

[underpants]

24. Bagging groceries at a Winn-Dixie

Hey we got all the singles beers and hid then behind the store and drank them on a weekend.

Note-avoid skunk Tuborgs

[eyesroll]

13. Another day-camp counselor here...

Only my camp was a cult.
Since I don't want to get sued, I will call it "Summer Day Camp."

Every morning, and every afternoon, we would have "Summerama," whereby all 1,500 kids (not kidding) would meet by the "Summerama" stage and sing songs such as this:
Leader: "From sea to sea"
Campers:"From sea to sea!"
Leader: "Summer Day Camp is for me!"
Campers: "Summer Day Camp is for me!"

We had an extrordinarily talented music director, and everyone could tell how nuts this sort of thing made him. Even when he played "Mony, Mony," there had to be a Camp Chat in place of the normal obscene chant:
"Here she comes now, singing Mony, Mony..."
"Hey! Hey, what? Summer Camp! Number ONE!"

This was one of those rich-kid camps that they paid thousands of dollars to attend (as a "volunteer" junior counselor, I think I made $100 a week as a "stipend," but I was 14 and dumb). There were NBA and MLB players' kids there. Very frightening place.

[Kamika]

14. cleaning childrens playgrounds

When i was 14 or so.

Had to go up at 5.30

And take orders from some social misfit who called me the "china girl". Not to mention what he called the black / mexican children.

he drove us (bunch of summer job kids) to different playgrounds where we had to cut grass, paint the fence etc..

The horror

This went on for 3 weeks. And then to hear mom say she didnt want to let me do this but it was good so i know how it was to work.

The only thing i learnt was how to get out from work.

One day when i just couldnt stand it i went to the social misfit.. held my fingers to my eye like somethings wrong and said something like "my contact has got stuck behind my eye i need to get it fixed can i go home" and he was like oh sure..


Do i need to mention i dont have contacts or glasses

[arwalden]

16. Busboy At A Seafood Restaurant....

Yuk!
Phew!

Few things worse than coming home smelling like seafood leftovers. It lasted all of 2 weeks.

-- Allen

[curse10]

17. I worked at a movie theater

I started out doing concessions, moved to the box office, then worked as a projectionist. I did that for three years. It wasn't awful, but the pay was. 4.25 an hour. Ick.

[MiltonLeBerle]

18. Micky D's Supper Club.

My first job was at McDonald's- I was 14, and had to alter my birth certificate to say that I was 16. I lasted several months, but when the manager put me on close-up and open-up back-to-back a couple of times, I quit.(close-up meant getting out between 12-1a.m., open-up meant getting there at 4am.)

My second job was MUCH better- Costume character at an amusement park.

[ronnykmarshall]

26. Read my posting about McD's.

I had this one manager that was a nazi. One night (a school night) he called me and wanted me to come in. It was 8:30 at night and this shithead wanted me to work until 11:30. Which is against the law. When I said no, he was shocked and said "Let me get this straight, you're telling me you're not coming in?" DUH????

Another time I was "do the lot" aka cleaning up the shit the parking lot and Adolf goose stepped his burger pushing ass outside to give me a little "pep talk" ..... "you know that at some stores (they called those dumps 'stores') the employees would run around the lot to help make their store #1!" :puke:

[MiltonLeBerle]

32. I once worked part-time at a Zayre store-

I was the "assistant to the assistant-manager"...basically I was the "fix-it" guy- repairing stuff and such that they didn't want to pay union scale for, I guess. (not that I'm a scab- I didn't know better, I was 18-19, it was part-time, and I'm handy with tools). One of the jobs I had was to make the men's room "inhospitable" to homosexual "encounters". Which entailed removing the doors from the stalls, and plating over the "glory holes".
Anyway- One day I was in a motorcycle accident, broke my collar bone and shoulder blade and ended up spending a couple days in the hospital. on the morning of the first day, the Zayre assistant manager called me in the hospital to see if I would be able to make it into work that afternoon- he had called my house, and my mom told him where I was- no "howya doin'?" or "Are you OK?", just wanted to know if i could make it in- and sounded irritated when I told him I wouldn't be able to.
I didn't go back to work at the Zayre store.

[ronnykmarshall]

33. Sounds like a real classy guy.

[SiobhanClancy]

19. Receptionist at Planned Parenthood

I was a 19 year old student,and one of my tasks was filling out an initial intake questionnaire for the clients. I had to ask people some very intimate and personal questions,and I could barely bring myself to do it. It was even worse when the some of the clients were hostile,or simply didn't know the answers to questions such as "How many pregnancies have you had?" Needless to say,I was very poorly suited to the job and left after a couple of weeks.

[newyawker99]

43. Congrats SiobhanClancy!! 400 posts

:toast:

[SiobhanClancy]

45. Why,thanks

it's sweet of you to notice:)

[Drifter]

21. Asses and Elbows ...

I worked on my fathers farm. 25 greenhouses, truck farm approx. 100 acres. The bulk of my time (especially in the summer) was spent picking tomatoes (among other produce). Asses and Elbows ... this is what you see when someone is busy picking (harvesting) vegetables.

It is the sole reason, I am a software engineer today (too much work).

Farmers don't retire ... they die.

Cheers
Drifter

[NightTrain]

22. Dishwasher

At 17, I worked on Saturdays and Sundays washing dishes at a restaurant in Manchester, Connecticut. I was paid the minimum wage of $3.37 an hour.

Along with washing the dishes, my job also entailed cleaning out the grease trap (talk about a nasty stench!) and staying on my feet for the entire 8-10 hour shift. When I left the place after a day's work, I was sweat-covered and stank to high heaven.

I quit after only a month.

[ronnykmarshall]

23. Jack in the Box

It sucked, but not that bad. We lived in a small town (Atascadero, CA) at the time and I worked with my crazy ass brother and serveral of my friends from school.

Now when my parents divorced and we moved back to Bakersfield I got a job at McDonald's .... I hated that place. I swear they hired former Nazi prison guards as managers.

[thom1102]

27. Drool...

I miss Crack in a Box. We don't have them here on the east coast, and when I was living in San Diego, I used to eat there a lot. I miss In-N-Out Burger more, though. I am going to San Diego this fall, so I will have to have a West Coast Only Fast Food day where I hit Crack in a Box, In-n-Out, and my favorite taco stand (for all you SD people out there, it's Santana's, the little pink drive thru barn on Rosecrans in Point Loma... Order the California Burrito (1lb carne asada burrito stuffed with french fries) or the Tecate Quesadilla, hold the sour cream... I swear you'll never eat any other kind of food again!!) all in one day.

[ronnykmarshall]

29. In and Out !

They have the best burgers! The only fast food place I like.

[wickerwoman]

25. Youth soccer referee

I was 14 or 15 and refereed games for 6-12 year olds. Nothing like going through the fragile stage of adolescence with hundreds of adults screaming at you for hours every weekend. It paid 7 or 8 dollars an hour but that was nowhere near compensation for the abuse I took from out of control parents.
Twelve years later there's two incidents that can still make me cringe with embarrasment. The worst was:
A nine year old kid who apparently felt he'd been fouled wheeled around a called me a bitch loud enough for the entire park to hear. I should have red-carded his ass but I was in shock and then his mother ran onto the pitch screaming "You don't call the ref a bitch to her face!!!" The coach pulled the kid and I figured the incident was over and I could talk to him afterwards without having to card him. Then the coach put the kid back in in the fourth half and the kid was pissed off and started fouling every member of the other team in sight daring me to card him. Every time I blew the whistle on this kid's blantant fouls that entire side of the field would start screaming about my "biased" calls. I made it through the entire match but left in tears and it still functions as the equivalent of showing up to school naked in my psyche.
The lesson is: parents- don't force your kids to work jobs they hate and aren't able to handle and lay the hell off referees, especially underage ones for bloody youth soccer.

[TrogL]

28. school bookstore

Sorting and bagging up books for the next school year, then carrying them to the classrooms.

An elevator would have helped.

[Aristus]

31. Delivering the morning newspaper.

I actually loved it. I'm an early riser, so getting up at 4:30 am to run my route was no problem. My house was on my route, so it wasn't like I had to scoot across town to do my job. My route was big enough to make some good money, but not so big that it took forever. And most of my customers were very kind and on time with the payment. It didn't suck at all.

My mother decided that if I were getting up and delivering my papers on time, then I didn't need a curfew at night. At age 14, I had no curfew. Cool!

[RetroLounge]

34. Hmmm, let see. Legal Job? Any job.

At 14 I worked for a friends Dad in his Trophy Factory. Got paid to work all day, and some days we got free tickets to walk to Wrigley Field and see the Cubs play.

At 15 I lied about my age and worked at a Ponderosa Restaurant. Lets just say the suckage factor was high, and I have NEVER eaten at a Ponderosa again, and I suggest you don't either (Mouse Guillotine in the kitchen, anyone?)

At 16 I got my first "legal" job as a stock boy at a Minnesota Fabrics. It was okay.

On weekends as a teen, I worked with my 2 brothers for my Dad installing Aluminum Siding and roofing. Hard work, but it was okay. And he bought me lunch every day too.

[Nikia]

35. I delivered papers in sort of a bad neighborhood

I only made about half as much as I was suppose to because some people had trouble paying. I had to show people how to write checks. Several people were confrontational when I tried to collect. Others pretended that they weren't home. One couple was always fighting when ever I tried to collect and I overheard the husband say that he was going to "beat the shit out of whoever kept on ringing his door bell." I was a fourteen year old girl who felt rather scared whenever I had to collect. I don't recommend paper delivery for young teens if they have to collect. If customers have to send payments in, it is alright but I think that young people can be taken advantage of in this way.

[geniph]

36. Telephone solicitor

I didn't last very long. People with phone phobia don't make good telephone salespeople. :eyes:

I think the salary was $1.60/hour. I remember I was excited about moving to a company that paid $2.00/hour - I underlined that number on the notepad I took to the interview, 'cause I was thinking, WOW, that's like forty cents more than minimum wage! WOOOHOOOO, lookitme!

[mitchum]

37. Dairy Queen across the street from Bob Jones University...

where I learned the fine arts of the saliva garnish and the ketchup pentagram at 14

[m_h_lovecraft]

38. Dog washer

$5/hr
Multiple Chow bites
Wet clumps of hair in drains
Anal glands
Lost someone's prize cat in the dryer

[5thGenDemocrat]

39. My very first job did

Washing dishes at Swan Valley Country Club. I was 15 or 16 and kept the job three days.
My SECOND job, which I landed almost immediately after leaving SVCC, was at Holland Shell Service, 2310 E. Holland, Saginaw. Some of the guys I worked with there (1972-73) are still my buddies today. Paul was just in town from Tulsa, OK last month and made time to stop by.
John
From Holland Shell I went into the Army -- but that's another story.

[anti_shrub]

40. I worked at the local convenience store...

Paid minimum wage, which was fine by me, but if you've ever seen Clerks then I was the real life Dante Hicks. I never had anyone die in the bathroom, but that's only because ours was employees only.

[JohnKleeb]

41. Just finished it today actually

and I liked it. I did office work for Dulles Tower, technically I worked for the FAA.

[Mr. McD]

42. I worked at a car wash.

It sucked so bad I joined the Army and went to Vietnam to improve my life.:spank:

[Deja Q]

44. Burger King

They paid me initially less than minimum wage and never properly compensated me back when they realized their mistake.

Oh well.

I should have nicked their Simpsons dolls they were selling at the time. Best toys they've ever ever had... (so this was 1991...)

[Droopy]

46. Dish washer

That was my main job duty but I also had to mop the ktchen floor at the end of the shift. It was for a cafeteria in a corporate learning center. It paid $4/hour. I worked part time in the evenings after school. That was in 1988 and I was sixteen. It wasn't too bad. I worked with an old man we called Gibby. He was alright.