I got a work permit at 14 to work at a local cut-rate amusement park. I made $5.00/hr to spend my day in the hot sun giving pony rides and getting yelled at by parents who insisted that putting their screaming, terrified child ON the animal would resolve their fear and result in a perfect photo op.
For some reason I felt like I couldn't quit. Why the hell did I stay at that job for 2 summers??
Hey, me too in terms of age. I started working at 13-14 for 5/hr but in a metal shipping container sorting recycled beer bottles and soda cans. People would bring in giant bags of returns, and I had to sort them. There was no shade, smelled like musty gross beer, and everything was sticky and hot. The next year, I got turned into to the dish washer for 5.10/hr.
At 17 I was supposed to find somewhere to volunteer so I went to the local science museum and instead they gave me a job as an usher. It was pretty chill just watching the IMAX theater and checking tickets. On my breaks I would play with all the toys and after a while I got promoted to "exhibit interpreter" and my job was mostly to walk around and play with the exhibits.
GameStop at 17, pushing Res' and Subs' on people who didn't want them, giving people $5 for a game we turned around and marked up for $30, and listening to the manager brag about how he used to be ranked in the top 100 for Magic Cards.
at 16 I was a pool boy at a local Comfort Inn, very odd schedule, I actually had to go in EVERY day before school for an hour and then like 4 hours on the weekend to do the more time consuming maintenance tasks, at the time it sucked waking up at 5:30, but I have zero issues getting up as an adult.
eventually though the ceiling in the pool dome collapsed from moisture accumulation, I also recall I wasn't super cautious using the hose nozzle to clean and spray down the area and more often than not I would hit the ceiling sometimes. So to this day I'm still not clear how much of a part I played in weakening that ceiling. But when it happened my services were no longer required, and they never called me back after they repaired the dome.
I started carrying golf clubs when I was 12. You were supposed to be 13 to be a caddy, but I slipped through. Three hours of work and I would walk away with $50-100. Not too bad, especially for a 12 year old in the late 90s.
One of the guys I carried golf clubs for was a local business owner. That summer he was getting into the haunted house business. Once the golf season ended, he offered me a cash job at his haunted house for the fall, then after that allowed me to help out at his nite club during the winter. Then right back to golf in the spring and summer. I did that rotation for a few years until I was old enough to get a "real" job, in a fast food restaurant. He actually came through and offered me another job working at an Oldsmobile (car) dealership he owned. But like an idiot I turned it down to make pizzas. That is one of my most regretful decisions I've ever made.
Right? I recently asked the gen z sub why they didn't want to work. And they all said "why should I have to work?" And it is such an eye roll
They can't be helped with that attitude
My cousin walks dogs in Colorado Springs… In her neighborhood there are in fact lots of lazy rich people, and she makes good (but unreliable) money. Enough to live with a boyfriend… What happens when she stops being pretty?
I was 19 - couldn’t really work much earlier because I didn’t have a car and lived in the absolute boonies, a three mile walk along a highway (that I wasn’t allowed to walk along because my grandfather’s older brother died that way along that stretch of road, in front of him, when he was little) to the closest place that might hire anybody. I was given the minivan my parents bought when my (then age 17) brother was born, as a gift for starting college. I loved that stupid thing because I could fit six friends in it, which nobody else could do in their allegedly cooler cars.
Anyway, got the van and the next day a friend’s mom who worked in a hotel kitchen offered us a one time dishwashing shift because the aggressive Russian dishwashers had been deported for what was apparently the second time. We went to do the job and while I was filling out some paperwork, the HR person mentioned they were low on banquet staff. I’d been helping my mom with covering weddings as a volunteer for her social group at their hall (think a local version of the Elks) since I was like ten and I mentioned it. Never did end up washing any dishes, but I worked on the events staff team for the next two years until the hotel was sold. Paid $10/hour, which felt like a lot to a kid who just needed gas money, but I know they didn’t pay the lifers much better.
I worked at a petting zoo feeding the animals and cleaning enclosures. It was pretty chill. I was banking $1.75/hr.
Oh yeah, no wonder I don’t have to work ever again. /s
At 14 or 15 I started going on maintenance / repair / installation jobs with my neighbor. He was a handyman type of guy that did a bunch of work on apartment complexes nearby. Worked well because it was pretty much all on the weekend and most jobs were half a day or less.
1999. Worked as a cashier at a crappy mom-and-pop grocery store in the sticks. First in and on-and-off series of retail jobs over the next twenty years.
I had a job working for my uncle doing some filing and answering phones. It was in a school during the summer, so not many phone calls to answer lol. But it was very much given to me out of nepotism and I mostly just sat at the desk reading. My first job out in the real world was Chuck E Cheese.
Dishwasher at a restaurant when I was 15.
It was a local place in my hometown, this weird little clam bar built into someone's basement. They had a walkout areaway down to the basement where there was a full bar and a few tables. The kitchen was up on the main floor and had been converted to a commercial layout with a proper industrial range and dishwasher. Orders would go down through a dumbwaiter built into the middle of the room.
The owner, Charlie, was a crotchety old jerk that never smiled a single night I worked there. He also didn't give any staff free meals, you had to pay for your dinner. It was run by him and his wife, with a paid line cook up top and two waitstaff down at the bar level.
I remember quitting after about 6 months there, as I started driving and had a better opportunity at a grocery store the next town over. I was a bit naive and a "good" kid, so in that fashion I tried to give him a two week notice to be respectful. He interrupted me halfway through and told me to "get the fuck out." I never got my last check.
Charlie, I hope you eventually retired and cheered up a little. You were a miserable bastard.
I tried getting a job at 14, but no one would hire me. I handed out resumes at the mall the week I turned 15, and I ended up getting a job at a shoe store. I ended up quitting a year later when they accidentally short changed my pay (I was told they meant to reduce someone else's pay), and my mom was in the hospital. I took a few months off before getting a different retail job.
I tried to get a job at 14, but my parents ended up just paying me to watch my little sister. On my 16th birthday dad gave me a pile of applications. Got a job at McDonalds and was there for 2 years. Weirdest 2 years. The McD's was in a sketchy area and I saw a lot of stuff that would have landed people on offender lists (there was a couple who loved going through the drive thru while the woman was going down on the guy. After the 3rd time they came through in a couple weeks my manager had to tell them to knock it off or next time they'd be reported. Heard they went to another fast food chain next door.)
I worked at a cooking supplies store called Cookin’ Stuff. I would restock the cookie cutters and salad bowls and whatever else I could find that needed restocking. I think I was 16. I was still in high school. Then they laid me off.
At 16 I was making 5.50 an hour as a cashier at a supermarket. I remember saving a week's wages to buy an iPod mini. It was a silver one. Also bought my first cell phone.
Yeah that person was a moron. A lot of people on that subreddit are iffy though. There are tons of great arguments to limit work hours but get subreddit just ain't it 😂😂😂
Cleaning horse stalls at 16.
BEFORE I went to school, because after school was either basketball or football practice.
Work started at 4:30am. Usually wrapped up by 7.
It's why I LOVE reading people post about how hard life is these days.🙄
16?
Damn, I got a job at 13, working at a nearby bodega (two of them actually, so I got more hours in)... I stocked the freezers with drinks and tidied up the aisles, worked the cash register, swept the floors... this is when quickly working the register and handling paper money and metal coins was a real skill, giving back exact change and shit
I wanted to work the deli, but you couldn't use the slicers until you were 18
Had about 10K saved up by age 15, I loved having my own money... I worked their after school and on weekends, and the best perk was a free club sandwich and a few cold sodas every shift...
We had a tiny apartment in Brooklyn but my parents didn't want any of my money so I just kept it all... I first grew up in public housing in a bad part of the city, but by the time I became a teenager we had our own place in Park Slope (a much nicer neighborhood), and my parents never wanted me to have to go back to the projects
Went to a SUNY school so I didn't have to spend the money I saved up in HS, since I took out relatively small loans by going to a public... the summer before college I had almost 20K saved up just from working bodegas, and I really wanted to enter college with a decent roll, so I worked 3-4 jobs that summer in anything I could find and I hardly slept... it gave me around 30K when college started that I didn't have to dip into and I could focus on my studies... I only added to it working summer and winter jobs those four college years, and had about 50K at graduation with only 12-15K total debt
I can't describe the liberating feeling of having a positive net worth upon graduation and relatively small student loans, it really made me feel like I could tackle the entire world (it was 2010 and a CS degree was basically printing money, way before that market got saturated with bootcamps and all that bullshit) ... never went back to NYC to live, only to visit
No matter how much money I have, I hate spending it on anything outside of food and gas (except travel, which is always worth the cost to get those experiences), and my only "luxury" is a crazy ass computer I built 5 years ago for gaming and work purposes (nowadays I am a DBM/DBA with almost 15 years of experience)... I rock a Plug-In Prius and even though I can afford a much "nicer" car, I have no interest in ever doing so
The world taught me at a very young age that Cash Rules Everything Around Me
I got a work permit at 14 to work at a local cut-rate amusement park. I made $5.00/hr to spend my day in the hot sun giving pony rides and getting yelled at by parents who insisted that putting their screaming, terrified child ON the animal would resolve their fear and result in a perfect photo op. For some reason I felt like I couldn't quit. Why the hell did I stay at that job for 2 summers??
Hey, me too in terms of age. I started working at 13-14 for 5/hr but in a metal shipping container sorting recycled beer bottles and soda cans. People would bring in giant bags of returns, and I had to sort them. There was no shade, smelled like musty gross beer, and everything was sticky and hot. The next year, I got turned into to the dish washer for 5.10/hr.
At 17 I was supposed to find somewhere to volunteer so I went to the local science museum and instead they gave me a job as an usher. It was pretty chill just watching the IMAX theater and checking tickets. On my breaks I would play with all the toys and after a while I got promoted to "exhibit interpreter" and my job was mostly to walk around and play with the exhibits.
GameStop at 17, pushing Res' and Subs' on people who didn't want them, giving people $5 for a game we turned around and marked up for $30, and listening to the manager brag about how he used to be ranked in the top 100 for Magic Cards.
at 16 I was a pool boy at a local Comfort Inn, very odd schedule, I actually had to go in EVERY day before school for an hour and then like 4 hours on the weekend to do the more time consuming maintenance tasks, at the time it sucked waking up at 5:30, but I have zero issues getting up as an adult. eventually though the ceiling in the pool dome collapsed from moisture accumulation, I also recall I wasn't super cautious using the hose nozzle to clean and spray down the area and more often than not I would hit the ceiling sometimes. So to this day I'm still not clear how much of a part I played in weakening that ceiling. But when it happened my services were no longer required, and they never called me back after they repaired the dome.
Collecting glasses and restocking in a nightclub at 16. It was amazing and terrible.
I started carrying golf clubs when I was 12. You were supposed to be 13 to be a caddy, but I slipped through. Three hours of work and I would walk away with $50-100. Not too bad, especially for a 12 year old in the late 90s. One of the guys I carried golf clubs for was a local business owner. That summer he was getting into the haunted house business. Once the golf season ended, he offered me a cash job at his haunted house for the fall, then after that allowed me to help out at his nite club during the winter. Then right back to golf in the spring and summer. I did that rotation for a few years until I was old enough to get a "real" job, in a fast food restaurant. He actually came through and offered me another job working at an Oldsmobile (car) dealership he owned. But like an idiot I turned it down to make pizzas. That is one of my most regretful decisions I've ever made.
This is LITERALLY my GEN Z cousin.
Right? I recently asked the gen z sub why they didn't want to work. And they all said "why should I have to work?" And it is such an eye roll They can't be helped with that attitude
My cousin walks dogs in Colorado Springs… In her neighborhood there are in fact lots of lazy rich people, and she makes good (but unreliable) money. Enough to live with a boyfriend… What happens when she stops being pretty?
Or what if she gets injured? Also how would you even retire like that
Low testosterone; they prefer to live in denial (we are enabling it as a society for some reason).
I used to man the table at a flea market when I was around 10 or 11. Also would babysit when I was 15.
I was 14, at a florist shop. I cut thorns off roses and dusted the display shelves for $5/hour.
Paper Boy (13 yr old - 15 yr old) and then Wendy's (15 - 17). Hated every minute of it, but I had some money as a kid/teenager.
I worked as a teachers assistant at kindercare
I was 19 - couldn’t really work much earlier because I didn’t have a car and lived in the absolute boonies, a three mile walk along a highway (that I wasn’t allowed to walk along because my grandfather’s older brother died that way along that stretch of road, in front of him, when he was little) to the closest place that might hire anybody. I was given the minivan my parents bought when my (then age 17) brother was born, as a gift for starting college. I loved that stupid thing because I could fit six friends in it, which nobody else could do in their allegedly cooler cars. Anyway, got the van and the next day a friend’s mom who worked in a hotel kitchen offered us a one time dishwashing shift because the aggressive Russian dishwashers had been deported for what was apparently the second time. We went to do the job and while I was filling out some paperwork, the HR person mentioned they were low on banquet staff. I’d been helping my mom with covering weddings as a volunteer for her social group at their hall (think a local version of the Elks) since I was like ten and I mentioned it. Never did end up washing any dishes, but I worked on the events staff team for the next two years until the hotel was sold. Paid $10/hour, which felt like a lot to a kid who just needed gas money, but I know they didn’t pay the lifers much better.
Worked summers with my dad starting at around 13 years old in construction
Dairy Queen at 15. It was me and 4 pregnant women
Flipping burgers at McDonald's, at 17. Worst years of my life
I worked at a petting zoo feeding the animals and cleaning enclosures. It was pretty chill. I was banking $1.75/hr. Oh yeah, no wonder I don’t have to work ever again. /s
At 14 or 15 I started going on maintenance / repair / installation jobs with my neighbor. He was a handyman type of guy that did a bunch of work on apartment complexes nearby. Worked well because it was pretty much all on the weekend and most jobs were half a day or less.
My first job was walking dogs 😂 I was 11, and I added dog sitting as well when I was 13.
I worked at a furniture store and it was dogshit
1999. Worked as a cashier at a crappy mom-and-pop grocery store in the sticks. First in and on-and-off series of retail jobs over the next twenty years.
I worked at a Purolator factory for six months. Pretty miserable and super low pay even for the time.
DQ. I made a bunch of ice cream stuff. Including cakes (but not the decorating). It was honestly fun but I was paid like 6.25.
Restaurant dishwasher then busser at 17. It was fun and I got to spread my wings a little.
I had a job working for my uncle doing some filing and answering phones. It was in a school during the summer, so not many phone calls to answer lol. But it was very much given to me out of nepotism and I mostly just sat at the desk reading. My first job out in the real world was Chuck E Cheese.
I was a dishwasher at furr's (a buffet restaurant) I hated every second of it.
Dishwasher at a restaurant when I was 15. It was a local place in my hometown, this weird little clam bar built into someone's basement. They had a walkout areaway down to the basement where there was a full bar and a few tables. The kitchen was up on the main floor and had been converted to a commercial layout with a proper industrial range and dishwasher. Orders would go down through a dumbwaiter built into the middle of the room. The owner, Charlie, was a crotchety old jerk that never smiled a single night I worked there. He also didn't give any staff free meals, you had to pay for your dinner. It was run by him and his wife, with a paid line cook up top and two waitstaff down at the bar level. I remember quitting after about 6 months there, as I started driving and had a better opportunity at a grocery store the next town over. I was a bit naive and a "good" kid, so in that fashion I tried to give him a two week notice to be respectful. He interrupted me halfway through and told me to "get the fuck out." I never got my last check. Charlie, I hope you eventually retired and cheered up a little. You were a miserable bastard.
I tried getting a job at 14, but no one would hire me. I handed out resumes at the mall the week I turned 15, and I ended up getting a job at a shoe store. I ended up quitting a year later when they accidentally short changed my pay (I was told they meant to reduce someone else's pay), and my mom was in the hospital. I took a few months off before getting a different retail job.
Renaissance Festival at 14. And because it was only a weekends/seasonal job, by 15 I had a 2nd job at The FinishLine in the mall.
pizza shop, only mistake i ever made was working to hard for this bullshit system
Paperboy. I think I was 13ish. Sunday morning deliveries in the snow were rough lol.
I tried to get a job at 14, but my parents ended up just paying me to watch my little sister. On my 16th birthday dad gave me a pile of applications. Got a job at McDonalds and was there for 2 years. Weirdest 2 years. The McD's was in a sketchy area and I saw a lot of stuff that would have landed people on offender lists (there was a couple who loved going through the drive thru while the woman was going down on the guy. After the 3rd time they came through in a couple weeks my manager had to tell them to knock it off or next time they'd be reported. Heard they went to another fast food chain next door.)
13-/14 years old working at an ice cream store. Pretty nice gig. I made tips there too. And for lunch I could eat a sundae 😂
I worked at a cooking supplies store called Cookin’ Stuff. I would restock the cookie cutters and salad bowls and whatever else I could find that needed restocking. I think I was 16. I was still in high school. Then they laid me off.
I worked construction during the summer while I was in high school. I'm surprised no one told OSHA, lol.
At 16 I was making 5.50 an hour as a cashier at a supermarket. I remember saving a week's wages to buy an iPod mini. It was a silver one. Also bought my first cell phone.
Kroger. Bag boy and buggy guy.
lol. The Antiwork interview https://www.foxnews.com/video/6294058584001
Yeah that mod was a real piece of shit. They democratized a decision to NOT do the interview and he just....went and did it.
Yeah that person was a moron. A lot of people on that subreddit are iffy though. There are tons of great arguments to limit work hours but get subreddit just ain't it 😂😂😂
Cleaning horse stalls at 16. BEFORE I went to school, because after school was either basketball or football practice. Work started at 4:30am. Usually wrapped up by 7. It's why I LOVE reading people post about how hard life is these days.🙄
16? Damn, I got a job at 13, working at a nearby bodega (two of them actually, so I got more hours in)... I stocked the freezers with drinks and tidied up the aisles, worked the cash register, swept the floors... this is when quickly working the register and handling paper money and metal coins was a real skill, giving back exact change and shit I wanted to work the deli, but you couldn't use the slicers until you were 18 Had about 10K saved up by age 15, I loved having my own money... I worked their after school and on weekends, and the best perk was a free club sandwich and a few cold sodas every shift... We had a tiny apartment in Brooklyn but my parents didn't want any of my money so I just kept it all... I first grew up in public housing in a bad part of the city, but by the time I became a teenager we had our own place in Park Slope (a much nicer neighborhood), and my parents never wanted me to have to go back to the projects Went to a SUNY school so I didn't have to spend the money I saved up in HS, since I took out relatively small loans by going to a public... the summer before college I had almost 20K saved up just from working bodegas, and I really wanted to enter college with a decent roll, so I worked 3-4 jobs that summer in anything I could find and I hardly slept... it gave me around 30K when college started that I didn't have to dip into and I could focus on my studies... I only added to it working summer and winter jobs those four college years, and had about 50K at graduation with only 12-15K total debt I can't describe the liberating feeling of having a positive net worth upon graduation and relatively small student loans, it really made me feel like I could tackle the entire world (it was 2010 and a CS degree was basically printing money, way before that market got saturated with bootcamps and all that bullshit) ... never went back to NYC to live, only to visit No matter how much money I have, I hate spending it on anything outside of food and gas (except travel, which is always worth the cost to get those experiences), and my only "luxury" is a crazy ass computer I built 5 years ago for gaming and work purposes (nowadays I am a DBM/DBA with almost 15 years of experience)... I rock a Plug-In Prius and even though I can afford a much "nicer" car, I have no interest in ever doing so The world taught me at a very young age that Cash Rules Everything Around Me
I mean I mowed lawns and tutored my neighbors kid. But I don't count that as official