• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

What was your first job for pay?/where did you work while in college?

Lifeguard, 16, $3.15/hour. Learned I really, really liked girls.
 
LadyDeac03 said:
Yikes. Yeah, ours was a community association/membership pool (not country club or anything like that, but not public). I guess parents and babysitters were pretty responsible (although I'm sure plenty of kids were left alone more than they should've been), but I would bet lifeguards had to jump in no more than 2-4 times a summer. At least to the best of my memory.
Click to expand...

Deacfreak07 said:
Probably had a bunch of white kids at your pool
Click to expand...

My first job besides babysitting was also life guarding, starting at age 15 I think. Similar place to LadyDeac's, a private neighborhood pool that required membership. The majority of the kids who were there a lot were also on the swim team. I guarded for 2 or 3 summers and never had to jump in. I think I only saw one other guard do a rescue, and that was during a day when a local elementary school (that also pulled from the lower income/more diverse apartment complexes in the area) rented it out. That was definitely the most black kids the pool ever saw.

I don't remember how much I was paid. I learned that being friends with your boss can get you out of a lot of tasks. One of my good friends was the manager and she'd often give another guard my shift or more often my cleaning duties so I could be in the guard office with her.
 
Office assistant in the compliance office of Sun City Summerlin (Las Vegas), summer before senior year of HS in 2001. I made BANK at $8.00/hr having to respond to CC&R/HOA violations reported by residents. I'd have to go drive around the community in a golf cart and take a picture of the violation, usually an awning that wasn't the right color, or solar screens that hadn't been approved. Then I'd send a form letter. Then I'd wait for the phone to ring with an invariably angry resident asking who reported him (we responded only to resident complaints, never to things we noticed ourselves).

I learned that some people don't age with grace and really are miserable, vindictive pieces of shit all the time. But also the value of having a good boss versus a bad one.
 
high school:
- lifeguard at my neighborhood's pool $7/hour
- violin teacher $30/hour (yeahboii)
while at wake:
- interned at a casting agency in wilmywood (unpaid, 40 hours a week slave. it was fun though and i'm in a couple of random shows/movies because of it)
- interned in london's major tourism website (40 hours a week, unpaid slave again)
right after wake:
- interned for budweiser marketing agency (paid, but barely nothing and it was only a few hours a week)
- worked at banana republic- paid minimum wage + sick discount = i worked for clothing
- interned for big ad agency, finally paid a decent amount. career finally took off from there and i didn't have to be a professional intern anymore.
 
Last edited:
What was it? After babysitting since the age of 11 for ~$5/hr, Grocery Store cashier. Started Easter Weekend, which was crazy (Easter weekend is the 3rd biggest food-buying weekend of the year, after Thanksgiving and Christmas).
How old were you? 15
How much did you make? I want to say $8/hr? Somewhere around there?
How long did it last? Through the Christmas break of my Sophomore year at Wake. I worked xmas break and summer after my freshman year, then Xmas break of soph. year, then left.
What did you learn from it, if anything? I learned that I'm really good at memorizing produce codes, that tons of seemingly healthy parents (eg: country club moms) buy the most crappy, processed food for their kids and that infuriates me, that I have little patience for people who, when it's really busy, stand there and watch the food pile up at the end of the belt rather than helping bag their own stuff, and that it's really fun to close on a Friday or Saturday night when your favorite banker (aka the guy you have a crush on) is the one behind the customer service desk because you basically get to hang out all night since no country club moms come to the grocery store after 8:30pm. I also realized how competitive I can be- I think my "item scans per minute" record stood for like 3 years after I left.
 
1st regular job was in a tobacco field. Took out 2 barns before daybreak then put in till the barns were full. 6 or 7 bucks a day. Most kids worked in tobacco around here.
 
silk said:
1st regular job was in a tobacco field. Took out 2 barns before daybreak then put in till the barns were full. 6 or 7 bucks a day. Most kids worked in tobacco around here.
Click to expand...

Where'd you grow up? In Stokes county that wasn't a job...that was a family obligation. :)
 
My best friend's dad owned a small construction company so at 15 I started working with them after school and on Saturdays and full time 6 days a week during the summer. Worked with them until I graduated high school. Started out at $10 an hour and was making $15 when I left. Cash, tax free.
 
mebanedeac said:
What was it?
How old were you?
How much did you make?
How long did it last?
What did you learn from it, if anything?
Click to expand...

I grew up on a farm so I was helping with all kinds of farm stuff from an early age. Mostly without formal pay other than an allowance.

Had some odd jobs, but first job with a W-2 was country club lifeguard when I was 17-19 during the summer. Made about 8/hour I think. Many days the only customers were the golf pro's 4 kids.

Learned that making money is good, and learned how to play a mean game of solitaire.
 
side note: I worked with iCheat's fiance at the grocery store (he was NOT my crush).
 
Washed Dishes and bussed Tables at Dockside Seafood
$4.25 hour....thought i was the SHIT when they gave me a $.25 raise after 6 months
I was there over a year
I learned that i didn't want to bus tables for the rest of my life, which some people seemed to be doing. I also learned that having a make out session with a hot older girl is not a good idea when you are 15 and her boyfriend is way older, way bigger, and has done time....:rulz:
 
one of my most frustrating work moments of all time actually came when i was working at banana. i made over $250,000 in sales for the store, yet when yearly raises came around (yep, i worked there in some capacity for over a year) i only got a quarter more an hour. like 25 cents quarter. not 25% raise. an extra 25 cents. which equated out to about $1.25 more a day. luckily i got my job in raleigh which paid enough for me to quit working retail finally soon after that.
 
My first regular paying job was as a bag boy at Ingles Grocery Store in my home town. I started the summer after high school when I was 17. I got $5.50 an hour and worked there during summer and winter breaks from Wake. The manager always held a spot for me. I had some fun times there racing the pallet jacks around and some other stuff.
 
On my 13th birthday my baseball coach, who had a dairy farm, asked if I'd be able to help out on the farm. It was the one day every 2 years they baled the hay and brought it in and stacked it in the barn. Before that day my friends and I used to bench press occassionally and see what we could do, and I think I could bench 95. A week later after being part of a 3 man crew moving 2,000 bales of hay I could bench 135. Ended up staying on at the farm for the rest of the summer, $5.15/hr I think. I had 7 different jobs by the time I was 21. farm, 2 golf courses, 3 restaurants, and pizza hut on campus.
 
Oh yeah, I learned that customers are usually idiots, people are assholes, and I learned how to goof off without getting caught.
 
RacerDeac said:
Where'd you grow up? In Stokes county that wasn't a job...that was a family obligation. :)
Click to expand...

Robeson County.

Kids worked on family farms and didn't start going to school in the fall till the crops were in. Many missed the first couple weeks of September.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top