<p>I was the mate on a Lake Ontario charter fishing boat. In busy times we would do two six-hour trips a day. The captain paid me $20/trip, but I made much more in tips. I think the fisherman felt sorry for the poor girl who had to touch fish…little did they know that I have been baiting hooks and releasing fish since I was five years old!</p>
<p>The days were long and cold…I left my house at 4:15 am and would get home at 9:15 pm…only to turn around and do it again the next day.</p>
<p>Worked as a page in the library all through high school. Did the college cafeteria thing during school. Worked in various offices as fill-ins for college summer jobs–most interesting one was out on the docks of Newark.</p>
<p>Worked various temp jobs after graduation (80s recession). Most memorable one was testing life jackets in a wave tank.</p>
<p>Started babysitting for 50cents an hour when I was 11. By middle school/highschool I made 75 cents and the nice people paid $1/hr. My brothers had paper routes and sometimes they’d give me a doughnut or some candy for helping.
First job at 16 was in a restaurant kitchen. After a few weeks, I naively told the manager not to bother training me on carryout–because I’d just applied for another job and probably wouldn’t be there much longer. He swore at me and made me punch out immediately. I cried–I couldn’t believe I got FIRED from my first job. I got a check for 11 cents–which I still have. (I think the pay was about 2.65/hr)
Good thing I got the other job–as a switchboard operator/receptionist at a car dealer. Clean and climate controlled–but the sleazy salesmen harassed me. I also worked as a secretary for a company that sold industrial parts. (I went to high school part time/worked 42 hrs/wk my senior year).
In college I worked in the dining hall–mostly checking IDs, serving food, and washing dishes. My college sold the slop from the disposals to hog farms so we had to be careful not to put any non-food items down the disposal. Summers I worked at an amusement park–one year on rides and two years sweeping up trash(mostly cigarette butts and sometimes vomit. . .)for 2.90-3.15/hr. I enjoyed sweeping more than any job, but it was hard on my hands and wrists. Hours were long–up to 80 a week. At the beginning of the season they were short staffed. We worked 40 days straight, 10-13 hours shifts, without a single day off. It seemed like a prison camp. I’d fall into bed exhausted at night and be sorry to wake up and do it again the next morning. If it was cold, every morning before the park opened, we had to ride the roller coasters for 1/2hr or so to warm up the tracks. (We did get paid to do this.) The dorms were gross with no heat or air conditioning. In spite of all that, I have very fond memories of that job and still keep in touch with a few co-workers. I never again experienced that kind of camaraderie at any job. I worked some temp. jobs the summer after college. I actually got a raise (from $3something to $5.00/hr) because I knew shorthand! Mostly I worked for a construction company in an unfinished office building. It was creepy and dangerous and I was the only female there. I had to take the bus downtown and walk several blocks to the building–got harassed every day by construction workers. Ugh. Definitely not a job I’d want my D to have</p>
<p>The summer job I held right before college was at a carboard box making company. My dad, brother, uncle and aunt worked there so ithought I would be a shoe in for the laminator job. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that easy to get a job there…My dad came home one afternoon and told me that the foreman didn’t want a girl to work the floor- the job was too hard. Really? I was bummed but went looking for another job to get some money for college.</p>
<p>The next weekend my Dad drags me to the company picnic… yep same company that didn’t want me… Dad told me to just talk to the Foreman- first impressions and everything. I was too stubborn and wouldn’t do it. But opportunity came knocking at my door- they had a dunk tank and low and behold… the forman was sitting in the tank waiting for someone to dunk him. ;)</p>
<p>Against my brother’s advice, I paid my $1, stood at the line for the men and not the girls and dunked the foreman all three times. 
Made my day and the rest of the picnic really enjoyable.</p>
<p>My dad asked me later if I had talked with the Foreman. I told him not in a conventional manner but yeah, I gave him my point of view about his opinion. I told my dad what I had done, he just about bust a gut- along with all the other guys who found out that ChuckleDad’s little girl dunked the big bad foreman.</p>
<p>A few hours later, the Foreman comes up to my dad and tells him - hey ChuckleDad, bring your daughter to work on Monday. She has a job.</p>
<p>That was one of the better moments when my temper worked in my favor. Not many of those :)</p>
<p>As far as the job was concerned, I had to take long pieces of single wide cardboard about 40x80 inches, run them through a glue press (think elmers) and stick about 10 sheets together for the Miller Lite company. Place these sets in a giant press so the glue could set and then put them on a pallet. Repeat ad naseum. Add glue as required. Two weeks before college started an idiot co worker came up behind me and thought I was clear of the press. I wasn’t- the tip of my right thumb caught between the sliding part of the press and broke my thumb- about half way into the nail part. I could see the bone on the inside- wierd and kinda cool at the same time! I ended up pulling the thumbnail off and getting a splint for two months. Boy was it hell taking all the writing tests for college. The good part- that thumbnail is the only one that I like now- it grew back straighter and better.</p>
<p>I think I made about $4 an hour for that. Boy does my son have it easy.</p>
<p>I was a Roy Rogers (fast food) cashier in 1980. By itself, that’s not so bad. The dreadful part was greeting every customer with “Howdy pardner. Will you be eatin’ in the dining room, or takin’ this on the saddle?” </p>
<p>Yes, really.</p>
<p>I worked at a stadium for a Major League baseball team for the concessions company.</p>
<p>I started as a cashier at a vending location. Armed guards would show up at the end of the game to escort us to a counting room, where we would have to sort (by denomination, all bills face up with the heads pointed in the same direction), count, and bundle the money. It wasn’t unusual to have to count $20,000 for the night, in mostly small bills. This was the mid 70’s.</p>
<p>I worked my way into the warehouse, which was a day job. Unloading trucks, moving stuff around the stadium, etc. The worst was loading the freezers, which were kept at -30 degrees Fahrenheit. The blowers were so strong there was an actual wind chill effect. We kept winter coats there for when we needed to go in the freezers. Got to drive a fork lift now and then, which was fun.</p>
<p>By my last year I was doing inventories, and figuring out how much stuff to order, and then ordering it. It was kind of fun to call up the hot dog company and order 2000 cases of hot dogs, or call the beer distributor and order 7000 cases and 500 kegs of beer for the weekend. Coke by the tractor-trailer (5 gallon post-mix tanks, which weighed about 80 pounds a piece - fun moving those around), french fries by the ton.</p>
<p>Lots of characters, too.</p>
<p>It was a pretty cool job.</p>
<p>My first regular job was putting names on Santa hats and stockings in glitter at a Woolworth.</p>
<p>My first job, summer after 11th grade, was at a Kentucky Fried Chicken. Horrid job. Poor training, cranky customers, mean cooks. You had to work very fast and efficiently or no one liked working with you, but the training was bad so unless you had already worked in a restaurant, it was difficult. I smelled like fried chicken all summer, had no appetite at all, and lost weight. I got a job at the mall by fall and never worked with food again (or ate at KFC either). </p>
<p>I was at my 40th high school reunion last month, and there were four women standing there at one time who had all had our first jobs at that same KFC.</p>
<p>bookiemom, I worked at a Kentucky Fried Chicken in high school too! Horrible job! I think I lasted six weeks. Have never eaten there since.</p>
<p>One of my friends from the KFC group of four dropped the store telephone in the big pot of gravy! I wonder if she remembers that.</p>
<p>My D was a server at a cute 40s diner chain restaurant on high school and did very well there. She was much more efficient around food than I was!</p>
<p>Started scooping ice cream at Howard Johnson’s down the road from my house when I was 15. At one point we had to memorize the 28 flavors…:o Also had to take a test on how to make a Banana Royal- three scoops of ice cream and a lot of toppings and whipped cream that had to be made precisely by the book!</p>
<p>The owner was very meticulous about cleanliness and a very militant manager. The most disgusting thing I remember was the frozen clam strips that came in a milk carton. One day the very large sweaty cook with a drinking problem dropped them on the floor, picked them up, and threw them in the fryolator. :eek: …Ahh, the good old days.
Howard Johnson actually put me through college.</p>
<p>Also worked as “Putter Butter”. (Was a disney type character at an Alpine Themed miniature Golf Course.) Putter-golf, Butter-Goat.
Job was to keep kids entertained. The head weighed about 30 pounds, and the outfit was very hot during those summer nights.</p>
<p>Okay, Doug Betsy wins for the worst job yet.</p>
<p>My first job was working as housekeeper for four young nuns who taught at our high school. Mostly it was cleaning, doing laundry, making their lunch (they always had hot dogs and beer in the frig). This was in the early seventies so they were mostly wearing short habits, but they still wore their full habit for formal occasions. A couple times I had to help to iron these habits, including the veil and the wimple. The cool part was that these were CSC nuns, so their wimple included what we always called the Paper Plate (I can’t remember the real name). As I remember we would take a long shaped strip of very heavily starched white material and roll it through a heated metal gadget that would pleat the whole thing. When Sister would put it on it would look like she had looking through a paper plate. Loved that job.</p>
<p>Mowing lawns
Painting propane tanks at homes
Carpenter’s helper
Tar melter in factory (nasty)
Various jobs making M&Ms
Waiter at Ho-Jos
Car Wash Driver
Retail
Cashier for Penn Railroad at Penn Station NYC
That was all between 12 and 20 or so.</p>
<p>I worked one summer as a telemarketer for Muscular Dystrophy. We had to cold call people, using a reverse directory, and ask them to solicit their neighbors for donations. If they agreed to do it, we would then send them a kit. We had to fill out “call sheets”, which listed our calls and what the response was. I was so bad at this job. I took it personally when people slammed the phone down on me. Once it got close to the end of the summer, I just put down anyone’s name on my call sheet, especially if they were mean to me. I’m sure in the mid 70s, there were lots of people who wondered why they were being sent Muscular Dystrophy solicitation kits. I didn’t care because by that time, I had quit.</p>
<p>lol–paper plate nuns! </p>
<p>Putter Butter gets my vote.</p>
<p>On the flip side, the coolest part-time school job I know was held by a woman I know at work. She was a college student at SUNY Plattsburg. And she and many of her friends got temporary jobs at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, NY. Her job was to sell drinks at the ice arena. She said they served beer on hockey days and wine on figure skating days. </p>
<p>The coolest thing was that she was on duty selling beer during the “Miracle on Ice” when the US hockey team of college kids defeated the mighty Soviet team and went on to win the gold medal. She said part way through the second half when the US was leading everyone stopped selling (no one was buying anyway) and just watched the rest of the game.</p>
<p>My s worked at KFC for a year and a half (starting summer after soph yr of HS). I did volunteer work in HS (during the year and in the summer) with emotionally disturbed kids through a community MH center. Quite rewarding, actually. Then I worked for 4 summers as a camp counselor at a day camp (also drove a large van/small bus to pick up/drop off the kids). It was pretty fun.</p>