S20 has bagged groceries, lifeguarded, and is now a bus boy. He likes it and goes out sometimes afterwards with the chefs and servers and is amazed at their late-night life style.
in HS/college I proof-read at a weekly newspaper, worked in the library, pharmacy/gift store clerk, cafeteria for 1 week, college newspaper, lifeguarded and taught lessons. Spent two summer working at lakes where we had a big robbery, and then murder suspects camping there. The FBI came and knew my name. That was freaky/cool and I thought I was living on the edge!
Me: started as a cashier at the local drug store. Left to waitress at a summer resort in the Catskills - awesome job for a kid! Then various retail jobs while in college.
S17 - umpire for youth baseball in town. Boy, was that a cash cow!!! $40/game, under the table, games never ran longer than 2.5 hours. He was a coach favorite so banked almost $1k the spring of junior year!!!
Then he helped park cars/clean tables etc at the local winery - fun and paid great but not that many hours as it was mostly weekend. Good for the school schedule though. Now he’s been working with a landscaper in the summers when he’s home from school. He loves it - hard work, but again all cash and he’s learning great skills.
D21 is looking for her first real paying job now…kind of hard where we live but she’s hoping for retail where she can spend her earnings faster than she makes them!
Best
Worked at a USIS library in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. I helped put up exhibits for visiting artists. (They mostly came preassembled from headquarters) and also did lettering for signs we put in the window with happy news events and human interest stories. I loved the job, but I got paid peanuts - it was way less than minimum wage.
Shelving library books in college - loved it very zen.
Translating a French book about indigenous housing in Senegal for one of my professors. It wasn’t alot of work - mostly captions, but fun job and nice to put my gap year knowledge to use!
Helping people pack up for a move. I kind of liked this one.
Worst
Babysitting - hated it and I was lousy at it.
I’m really a dinosaur—minimum wage when I had my first job (grocery store cashier) was $1.60! I worked on Saturdays. I only did babysitting for one family–thinking back, it was a strange situation. The parents went out once a month on Saturday night to “do the town” —their words. The husband picked me up at 8:30pm; the two kids were asleep when I got there. The parents were always dressed up when they went out. They said it was OK to go to sleep. They usually got home at 4-5 am. The wife would drive me home and I got $30 and a $2-5 dollar tip, which was a fortune compared to my cashier job! I think the only reason my Mom let me do this job was that the wife was an immigrant from the same country as my Mom and Dad.
My kids did babysitting, driving kids to after-school activities, hostess/waitress, gymnastics coach (helping in a class of younger students), and working as a server for a catering company.