- Monday, September 19, 2011
- Katie Burke
- We Asked / You Answered
- Comments
Do you remember your very first job? For the September edition of our Update newsletter, we asked broadcasting and ministry friends to share their stories. Take a look and tell us your first (or most memorable) job!
Comments
First job? How about jobs?
Family tradition, my brothers and I all had paper routes ... for me, the first job delivering the Phoenix Gazzette after school (later 'graduated' to the morning paper, the Arizona Republic).
By the way, didn't use a car to deliver - I was only 12 (except on bad-weather days when mom would drive the route with me). Nope - we used the old bicycle with those canvas bags swung over the handle bars. And "somewhere in the yard/driveway" wasn't good enough for most - it had to be on the porch. Plus, I also had to "collect," door-to-door, if I was going to pay the paper bill and get my "salary."
But, here's the odd job ... at the same time, on weekends ... I delivered Avon.
You've heard of the Avon Lady? I ws the Avon Boy. On Saturday mornings, I rode my bike over to a nearby mobile home park where the "Avon Lady" lived.
She had a dozen or so orders all bagged up and ready to go. I'd make my rounds, deliverying and collecting the money - then, return to the Avon Lady to split the spoils.
Don't recall the exact pay ... but, certain I spent a good portion of it on "pop & candy" or pinball games at the Green Gables bowling alley.
My first job was working as a ranch hand while I was in high school. We stretched barbed-wire fences all over a 1200 acre ranch. We used post-hole diggers to dig through the hard, granite-filled soil to set the main posts. Then we used a post driver to set the metal posts and a winch to stretch the barbed wire taut. It was hard work in the Texas summer heat...and all for $1.50 an hour. We also hauled hay. We got a nickel for every bale of hay we loaded up onto a trailer.
My first job, at age 16, for $1.25 an hour was to wash cars and trucks the old fashioned way--with rags, hand-held hoses, lots of scrubbing. The service station had a contract with a local gasoline tanker truck company for weekly washing of their nasty fleet. Walking around on top of those things, especially when the temperature hovered around 32 degrees, was more dangerous than I thought at the time. I won't do it again for less than $2.00 an hour.
Selling Grit newspapers at 10yrs old. 32yrs later I'm still in communications. Interesting (to me).
Besides years of babysitting, my first real job was the "salad girl" at a small family-owned Italian restaurant in Gainesville, FL. On Friday and Saturday nights I'd wheel around a little cart and serve the salads after waiters took orders. $2 per hour and rarely any tips. It was less than minimum wage but at 15 I was quite happy with a few extra dollars in my pocket, seeing as how 16 was the required age for employment everywhere else. And the bonus: a free meal once a week. Their lasagna and garlic bread was the best even if compensation was lacking!
When I was 5 years old we lived in Santa Rosa, and I worked beside my mom ‘picking prunes.’ My mom did give me the $ I earned, (it went in my piggy bank) it was by volume, not by hour. Can’t tell you what it was!
Mine was shining shoes in a barbershop for 10 cents a pair. I shined shoes after school and Saturdays. The only problem was I would spend my profits often before getting home as there was a drug store with a soda fountain across the street. Ice cream cones and comic books, anyone???
My first "real" job was at the Del Monte Peach Cannery in town. I removed the flawed peaches from off the lye belt. I was garbed in white dress, white shoes, hair net, white paper hat, and plastic gloves -- just lovely. No air conditioning, just fans. It was hot and sticky, but had nice union wages. :0)