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

[RubbinsRacin]

busboy at redneck country club at 15. got to play golf, made like 2 bucks an hour plus tips but the tips were sweet and worked out to a couple hundred bucks every paycheck which was rich for a kid. Also life guarded there in the summers and would work dining room at night. eventually decided to work in the kitchen when I got sick of waiting on people. Learned that I liked beer and partying cause the older bartenders would hook up me and my friends. would drive the really hammered redneck members home at the end of the night. learned I did not want to work in restaurants or jobs where you work when other people are off...nights/weekends. Met some good peeps from all walks of life, made some great memories, and really loved it. They burned it down about the time I left to attend wake and built a fancier club.

 

[truifh0]

I was working in a factory for a textile company palletizing boxes and loading trucks for around $7.00 an hour from what I remember. I was 16 years old and my dad was the CFO of the company. It lasted 3 months over the summer and I learned that it was a good idea to do well in school and go to college so I didn't get stuck in a job like that for the rest of my life. I also learned that while I didn't want to do a job like that ever again, I did really enjoy the people I worked with and saw first hand their importance to the organization as a whole.

 

[ConnorEl]

Paper route. 12 years old. Not a lot of money (can't recall exactly), but it seemed like a lot at the time. Worst part was having to go door to door collecting the money for the subscriptions every month. That and beating off the wild dogs with a sawed off broom handle that I carried on my bike.

Did it for a few years.

What did I learn? Work = money. If you want it done right, do it yourself.

 

[GardenStateDeac]

Not including babysitting, lawn work, and such...

What was it? Kitchen prep in a catering place/deli
How old were you? 14
How much did you make? $5.15 per hour to start
How long did it last? Until I was 21 (worked some summers/breaks during college)
What did you learn from it, if anything? How to cook (worked my way up to actually cooking things), dealing with people (coworkers, irate customers, etc.)

 

[deacdiggler]

What was it? Baskin Robbins scooper
How old were you? 14
How much did you make? $2.50/hour (1986) up to $3/hr
How long did it last? couple of years
What did you learn from it, if anything?

money good, FICA bad, ice cream AWESOME

 

[ChrisL68]

I did the afternoon route too, on my bike. I didn't count it because I was thinking jobs you had to go to and clock in etc. I did the WS Journal in the mornings and the Sentinel in the afternoons. Hated it. Getting up early every morning and sit on my front porch rolling newspapers, and then having to split from the neighborhood kids in the afternoon shooting hoops or catching salamanders or smoking butts or whatever to go roll more papers and deliver them. I lasted about a month. awful

My first clock in job was a busboy at Kabuto at 16.

HS and Early college jobs included:

Kabuto (Busboy and Dishwasher)
Phone surveys at MARC. (Time would literally stand still at this job)
Swensen's Ice Cream Parlor (Dishwasher and Cook)
Delivering for The Philly Connection in Atl
Western Temporary Agency (Jobs included sorting advertising mailers in a warehouse/Working at a sawmill/construction gopher/loading in a brick mill/loading mattresses in a mattress factory/working in the United dairy factory sealing ice cream boxes)

Don't remember what I made. Whatever min wage was at the time.

 

[Fayettenam]

Lonestar Steakhouse. 5.15 (?)/hour. Whatever minimum wage was in 1999. I was 16. It was the year before I was heading to Wake. I told them a couple times I was only a summer employee because I was heading to Wake after graduation. Everyone assumed I was talking about Wake Tech, so the boss tried to convince me to stay by upping my pay to 6/hour and giving me a brochure for Fayetteville Tech.

Working in a restaurant was one of my favorite experiences. It made me appreciate an education.

 

[mebanedeac]

Did anyone return after college to work for your original employer?

 

[DeaconCav06]

Did anyone return after college to work for your original employer?

I did. But not by choice. In college, I worked for a moving company for at least part of three of the four summers including a few weeks prior to the start of law school. I was deferred from starting my job and needed cash after law school. Deferral shifted to rescission and I ended up working for the moving company from August through mid February.

Pretty humbling experience to go from making BigLaw money one summer doing nothing to earning $12/hr doing manual labor.

 

[Sgt Hulka]

What was it? Dishwasher at a Howard Johnson's restaurant
How old were you? 15
How much did you make? ~$3/hr...can't remember exactly
How long did it last? one summer
What did you learn from it, if anything? Taxes suck, saving/investing is a habit, I never get a clean glass when I'm drinking beer (don't want to make work for the dishwashers when it is unnecessary.)

 

[RubbinsRacin]

also delivered pizza for a couple stints. great for tips and I loved being in my car the whole time, jamming tunes doing the squeef. getting a glimpse at weirdos and hammered kids and various peeps who ordered shitty pizza

 

[mebanedeac]

A different twist on the question: what jobs did you work during college? Were they just summer jobs or did you work during the school year?



The reason for this thread: it is fascinating to learn how people began their work lives and progressed to places of relative success; also, it is good to remember.

 

[ChicdeaC]

A different twist on the question: what jobs did you work during college? Were they just summer jobs or did you work during the school year?



The reason for this thread: it is fascinating to learn how people began their work lives and progressed to places of relative success; also, it is good to remember.

First summer - I was a receptionist and Research assistant at a Women's Health Center (just summer)
Second Summer- Research Assistant at Yale Medical School (just summer)
Third Summer - Student researcher at Wake (this is when I went to Galapagos the second time) This was only paid during the summer, I got credit during the school year for it, but the research I did that summer lead to my first first author paper (in oecologia)
Summer right after college I was a nanny (just summer)

 

[DeacHoops]

A different twist on the question: what jobs did you work during college? Were they just summer jobs or did you work during the school year?



The reason for this thread: it is fascinating to learn how people began their work lives and progressed to places of relative success; also, it is good to remember.

i tutored in student athlete services during the school year. tutored for accounting 111. during the summers, i taught in an elementary school summer program.

 

[WRS]

Summer after my sophomore year I had an internship with a community bank doing a variety of things including special assets (yay repossessing horse trailers). Summer after my junior year I had an internship with a tech startup technical working with the marketing team but basically studying the inner workings of a startup company and playing lots of foosball. Actually a great learning experience.

 

[19deac92]

A different twist on the question: what jobs did you work during college? Were they just summer jobs or did you work during the school year?



The reason for this thread: it is fascinating to learn how people began their work lives and progressed to places of relative success; also, it is good to remember.

Again, good questions. I just worked Summer jobs. Having the benefit of an ROTC scholarship, I was fortunate that I did not need to work during the school year.

First Summer -- After completing Airborne School at Fort Benning immediately after the conclusion of my freshman year, I worked at Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, VA (near where I lived and where I had worked the previous two Summers) as a magician in a small magic shop there

Second Summer -- I worked for the Stanly County, NC School Maintenance Department painting schools (my parents had moved to Albemarle, NC during my sophomore year at Wake after my Dad retired from the Army)

Third Summer -- most of the Summer was consumed by completing Air Assault School at Fort Rucker, Alabama (2 weeks) and ROTC Advanced Camp (5 weeks) at Fort Lewis, Washington, but I painted schools again for the County during the time that I was home

Summer after graduation -- Painted schools with the Stanly County Maintenance Department before leaving to start law school pursuant to an Army educational delay

 

[ImTheCaptain]

A different twist on the question: what jobs did you work during college? Were they just summer jobs or did you work during the school year?



The reason for this thread: it is fascinating to learn how people began their work lives and progressed to places of relative success; also, it is good to remember.

I was an RTA soph/jr years, if that counts; I worked during the summer in the family business selling insurance.

 

[ChicdeaC]

During the school years I worked in the office of research and sponsored programs doing budgeting and mail merges and helping with grant applications, etc.

 

[DeacHawk]

A different twist on the question: what jobs did you work during college? Were they just summer jobs or did you work during the school year?



The reason for this thread: it is fascinating to learn how people began their work lives and progressed to places of relative success; also, it is good to remember.

First Summer: lifeguard back home in NJ
Second Summer: sporting goods store in W-S
Third Summer: sporting goods store in W-S and in the ITC (computer lab and movie watching rooms) in the library at Wake
after graduation: Forsyth Country Club

sophomore school year i worked in Carswell where you rent out cameras and stuff
junior and senior year I worked in the ITC in the library

 

[RacerDeac]

A different twist on the question: what jobs did you work during college? Were they just summer jobs or did you work during the school year?

First summer: Worked for a local community bank in a rotating internship. Spent time as a teller (hated the lady who owned a "nail salon" and brought in over 10K cash at 4:58 PM, for which multiple people had to stay late to sort/count/file Federal reports), in mortgage, in commercial lending, wealth management, and construction loans. Having grown up in construction, the construction loan department sent me out into the field to check on the status of homes under construction for fund disbursement. Felt like a lot of power at the time, determining whether thousands of dollars went out the door or not.

Second summer: Worked an unpaid internship for Marcus Smith at Lowes Motor Speedway in their marketing/business development department. We handled everything from rental/upfit of the corporate luxury suites to the contracts for "sponsorship" on the side of the jet dry trucks to putting up sponsor banners on the infield chain-link fences. After the race we worked with a vendor to count every millisecond that a sponsor's logo appeared on the TV broadcast. I was able to earn a little money by working "marketing" at the Wednesday night Legends races and at the newly opened dirt track...i.e. I shot T-shirts into the stands from an air cannon. Best part of the job was getting the drive the school buses used in the celebrity races on Wednesday night back down a mile long gravel road. You'd be amazed just how sideways you can get a school bus. That was the summer that the pedestrian bridge fell after the race...I remember working till about 6 AM the next morning, mostly answering phones and helping people find information they needed in the aftermath of everything.

Third summer: Worked for a real estate development firm and did some construction on the side IIRC.

Fourth summer: I put in a small effort at making a career out of sports car racing, so I spent most of the summer putting together marketing proposals, traveling to the track to race, etc. Eventually realized that while talented, I was years and major $$ behind the kids who had been doing this since they were 10-12. I think I also went ahead and got my class work for my real estate broker's license out of the way that summer, because I thought I might get into commercial real estate after graduation.