What was your first paid job as a teenager (or earlier perhaps)?

I think my first job was at a frozen yogurt place. It was not fun. I was already pretty far along in losing my hearing and it was one of those extra-custom places (but before they figured out the whole letting the customer do it part). So it wasn't just vanilla or chocolate, it was half vanilla, half chocolate, with walnuts and M&Ms and strawberries on top. A lot of things for me to mess up if I didn't understand, in other words.

I did OK-ish (not great, not terrible), but the brain power needed for such a stupid undertaking was immense, and I'd crash for hours afterwards.

And that's not even going into rude customers, annoying co-workers, and all the standard indignities of that kind of a job.

Plus the hearing issue (and the fact that I needed to marshal my resources to understand customers) meant that I didn't have the chance to engage with my co-workers at all, which is usually the saving grace in these kinds of jobs. (My next job, at an indie movie theater, was just as indignity-ridden and almost as tricky communication-wise but the co-workers were awesome and I liked it much more.)

I worked there one summer.

Well, apart from babysitting, in 1979, I had a job walking up and down Commonwealth Avenue wearing a sandwich board sign.

I started early. My mother couldn't afford to buy clothes for all 7 kids, so when I was 8 and my sister 9, we'd make cookies and peppermint candies and sell them in the neighbourhood. I think I also had the first garage sale. When I was 9, I started babysitting outside the home. At around the same time, my sister and I started selling Regal (used to be called Name-On) which had a slew of household gadgets in it. When I was 15 I got a summer job (and then part-time during school) working as a cook/waitress in a cafe. I've always loved working and earning money.

When my daughter was 12, we signed her up for the Babysitter Club where she got training and babysitting jobs.

If we're counting babysitting that was my first job too, starting at about 12. (My kid's getting training this summer, she's so excited! She's already done a lot of mother's-helper type stuff and there are two kindergarteners who can't wait for her to become a proper babysitter.)

I mowed lawns when I was 10.

then when I was 12 I could get a newspaper route.

I did that off and on until I was in my twenties as a supplement.

when I was 15 I lied about my age and worked bagging groceries. I drove to work, so they gave it no mind...

I babysat from the time I was twelve - all through highschool- even after I turned sixteen and got a 'real' job.

My first 'real' minimum wage paying job was at a Marriott's restaurant on the New Jersey turnpike. I worked weekend days there prepping and serving food. It was okay except for going home at the end of the day with dried ice-cream all up my arms and smelling like grease.
I only worked there for one summer and then I got a job at Loehmann's (ladies clothing store) and I worked there after school and weekends for two years until I went away to college. That was alot easier and I got a 20% discount on clothes too.

I shoveled horse stables and groomed several horses daily in the summer. I had this job each day at 7 to about 12 noon, then I had baseball practice or a game in the Juniors.

When I was 16 I then had a job for the ****** Family of Reading PA, where My cousin and I cleaned up the felts on the card tables and polished the wood on the roulette and crap surfaces and polished the wood bars to a high sheen. We both worked there that summer until the place was raided and we lost our jobs due to an unexpected closure.

In senior high school I worked as an illustrator for an archtectural firm where I did renderings of building plans. (Theres where I made the most money, cause I could work very fast and accurately). I then was a self employed artist who did airbrush work on cars and bikes. (Thats when I tied up with a bad crowd), but it essentially paid my initial year of college

I worked as a file clerk at a publishing house. I liked having money, and I hated having to get up early. (Some things never change.) I was very diligent--and fast. The following spring, I got a call to come back. Nice to be remembered.

The summer after that I already had my first full-time job.

I too had a paper route at 12 but it lasted only (or maybe less) then 4 months. At 13 I started to work as a dishwasher at the private steak restaurant, the Oregon Club which was about a half mile down the street where I lived.

I was a such a terrible brat as I remember sighing and huffing when I was interrupted while reading to make a salad or clean the dishes. Still, I worked there for 4 and a half years until I graduated high school.

Still haven't tasted a better steak in my life then when I worked there. The free dinner every night I worked there was absolutely awesome! Steak cooked raw rare on the hot coals of the cast iron stove.

Really HIGH QUALITY aged steak most of the days, baked fish or hamburgers made of ground tenderloin scraps on Friday, and spaghetti on the Saturdays I occasionally worked there. Plus plenty of really spicy mushroom soup as well.

when I was in high school, I worked at the shrine temple.

awesome food every night after we closed. on fine linen.

after I was trusted, I moved to doing food in the back bar.

shriners never get raided...

Farmerman, I like the way you self redacted part of the name of the company/locale where you worked. Gives it a bit of backroom gravitas to it.

and avoids lawsuits...

My restaurant had great and simple food but the dining room where I only ate a small handful of times was kind of a dark 1950's dive diner with leather booths, brown paneled walls, and very sparse decorations.

I worked in the kitchen of a nursing home (besides prior babysitting stints). It was part time after school or on weekends/summers full day.

It was kind of fun. Especially the supper shift as it was mostly young high schoolers like me. The night cook was a college student studying cooking so it was mostly a young crowd other than this older woman (she was as old as the residents) - but she was so sweet you had to love her too.

During the day - there were some grumpy older adults working - but we could get them laughing and give them a hard time.

I also enjoyed talking with the residents that came down to the dining room - many were very sharp, while others didn't have a clue who they were and where they were - they were enjoyable to talk with and help out.

It was a fantastic experience - even though the work itself could be dull.

The dishwashing machine in the cafeteria of Suffolk Downs was a
conveyer-belt kind of thing. The dirty dishes were put into racks,
given a pre-rinse, then sent through the machine. When they came
out through the curtain of canvas strips at the other end, some poor
soul got a face full of steam and fingers full of pain as he unracked
them. In the summer of '59, that poor soul was me.

My first real job was working at a small town grocery store stocking shelves and bagging groceries.

This was while I was in Grades 11 to 12.

was a total slacker throughout my teens.
earned first paycheck at age 20 -- for a photograph in an article about ultimate frisbee for Games magazine.
they were owned by playboy at the time, and i thought it was verra cool that the stub had a silhouette of the bunny ear logo...

I babysat from the age of 11 - 15 when I got my first job-job at Dunkin' Donuts. I worked there for just over a year. I still don't eat donuts.

From there I went to McDonald's for a short stint until a job I'd applied to at the university library opened up. I shelved books and did general circulation tasks. I worked there during my senior year in hs and all through college, mostly working for the university archivist.

Ha, in my teens I sold those velvet paintings of Elvis and the Roadrunner etc (for a whole $6) ha ha ... And flowers outside of the liquor stores! - Forgot about that. Boy, that takes me back.