Your first ever job

Picking tomatoes. We lived in the country. I found it really hard on my back so the next summer I switched to detasseling corn. The work was just as hard but at least you got to stand up (and in my case, reach up...way up...)

Tai Chi, I can see how it would be difficult work. It's a far cry from standing over a fry-olator, serving the next million...

I'd've taken detassling corn any day.

Working as a page in the town library. I made an astonishing 90 cents an hour, but when they saw my potential, they raised it to a dollar an hour. It seemed like all the money in the world to me at the time.

Chick-Fil-A - cashier then cook...I loved being in the back making the chicken salad. I hated being up front. I would have dreams of never ending lines of people ordering over and over again. It was horrid.

I got my work permit when I was 14 years old...thought it was great.

Independent movie theater. "Would you like golden topping on your popcorn?" We weren't allowed to call it butter because it wasn't.

Great movies and good co-workers. Lovely job -- except for the customers.

customers suck (and I am one!)

My first paying job was shining my father's shoes. I got a quarter for every pair. I the liked the work because I got a little buzz from the shoe polish, and I always liked presenting the spanking shiny shoes to my father.

Mowing. I mowed more lawns than Ellen DeGeneres.

http://www.able2know.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1318078#1318078

Except for babysitting, walking on Commonwealth Avenue, wearing a sandwich board sign and passing out flyers.

At a florist over the Easter season.

I worked in a kitchen at a nursing home. I would set tables in the dining room, bring food (by dietary need) to the residents and clean up. I also got to make some of the deserts, cut up cakes, and place in dishes.

I got to know many of the residents - some were pains in the neck and others were lots of fun.

My first job was at the Marriott's restaurant at exit 8A on the New Jersey turnpike. My older sister (who has a brain like a computer, is quick, efficient and a fabulous waitress) got me the job. I had to wear this white polyester pant suit with a green apron and white crepe soled nursing shoes. I had to wear my hair in a hairnet.

I sucked so bad at it. I got yelled at for always making the ice-cream cones too big and talking too much to the customers. I hated the uniform and went home with dried ice-cream caked up to my elbows, but the final straw was when I accidentally got the milk machine stuck on and couldn't turn it off and I was grabbing pitchers to try to catch all the milk and the boss found me laughing hysterically about it with another worker.
(I guess he wanted me to cry or something). Anyway - he didn't have the heart to fire me directly, but he told my sister, 'We thought we were getting someone else like you - you guys certainly aren't very much alike, are you- you're sure she's your sister?'

I hated it anyway, and I didn't want to negatively influence my sister's future with the company - so I quit and went to work at a clothing store- that worked out much better for me.

Copying/sl. modifying a part of another of my posts on this -

the first real job was taking x-rays. No kidding. And I had just turned sixteen. And this was a pretty good hospital.

It turned out that they did something like the old shoe fit fluorographs - only a few will remember these. When you went to try on Buster Brown shoes, you went and stood with your feet in a slot in a machine and it x-rayed them. Well, those were photofluorographs, and they were used similarly in hospitals to xray inpatients to see if they had tb.

Small xrays, they were, about 3 x 3 inches. I took them of patients after school and on weekends at this particular hospital ($26.82 a week), and then... a couple of years later, was hired by a med student guy to also do a survey re the results and patients' charts re whether or not they caught cases of tb.
Fascinating... I spent more time in med records than my paid hours since it was so interesting...

but no, they caught no tb in 10,000 photofluorographs and I worked myself out of a job. [Those photofluorographs gave 500 x the rads of a single 14 x 17 xray, I was told. Not sure if that's true. But I haven't heard or read about them ever again.]

However, they shunted me up to admissions (or was it cashier's, I forget). Eventually to Reservations (bed assigning).

I found a sort of home in that place - a fairly busy hospital but with a good group atmosphere among us, high and low on the totem poles of staffing.

I waitressed at a Marriott when I was 19. The best part about it was most touring musicians and movie stars would stay there. I caught a glimpse of Jerry Garcia (he wasn't much taller than me), Kris Kristoferson (he isn't much taller than me), Dave Brubeck, etc. Otherwise, it was all standard operational procedure-- pretty dull, unfun and extremely demanding.

The sandwich board reminds me-- I used to do a paper route with a friend when I was in 8th grade. And I sold seeds from a catalogue.

played assorted dates with my mother's band. I was 11.

I packed combs into display cases, in a plastics factory.

I was only there for 2 weeks - but for some people it was their life work.

I was in a summer program my last two years of high school and we did much of nothing outside of just showing up for the most part. And we got paid for that. Crazy.