Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What did you make when you started your first job out of college or high school?

This

I was suppose to make 50 cents and hour, but I worked from sun up to dusk five days a week and they gave me a $20 bill.

I guess my real first job other than farm work was working as a stable boy at a thoroughbred horse ranch. Pay was $125 a week in 1971.
I loved that job. Hard work and cleaning the stalls sucked but I got to groom the horses and exercise them. They had trotters too. Cool horses.

$288 per month as an E1 Private Marine in 1972. Was making $1.25 per hour in a filling station six months prior to my enlistment, after flunking our of college my first semester.
$1041 per month as an O1E 2ndLt Marine in 1980 after graduating from college.

Started my 5-year Electrical Apprenticeship in the IBEW in June 1995. Made $6.35/Hr which was 35% of Journeyman scale. That was quite a pay cut from the $16/Hr I was making. But I saw it as a short term sacrifice.

Local 360 Plumbers & Gasfitters

I don’t really have any complaints. Of course, I’ve always worked steady with contractors so I really haven’t had a lot of dealings with them. I leave them alone ... they leave me alone type of relationship. Lol. Once I finished my apprenticeship & schooling I really haven’t been involved much with it. Not necessarily the right attitude but life is busy and I always had other priorities.

$3.20 per hour, 1979 minimum wage raking asphalt on a paving crew.... lucky if we got a full 40hr week.

First real job was driving 18 wheeler.... making minimum wage, and I think it was $1.65/hr. If I put in 100 hrs/wk, I could bring home a little over $200.

Quit that job to work lead tongs on drilling rig. Working 7 8's and making around $4.50/hr, bringing home over $600 every 2 weeks. Working 56 hrs/wk instead of 100 was like a vacation every day. Had money to spend and time to spend it.

570.00 something
E-1 1983

Prior to that I worked 2 winters bucking logs in the loading yard with my 2 uncles up in Maine.
Even made it up to the "exhaulted" postion of grappel skidder operator. LOL!!!
Weekends and school breaks $75 bucks a day.
Skip a day of school if got a decent notice.
(Usually a drunk hungover crew member call in)
Pretty good money for partying with in high school and some gun buys.

Retired from unca suga in 08.
Retired from civilian world jobs in 15
Last job was roustabout/slinger for 3 years GOM and The Black Sea
Last year on the Black Sea I made 129k.
28 on 28 off 12 hr shifts
Paid off alot of bills on that job and tucked away alot to set myself up to say Im done.
My checking account grows each unca suga payday.
Wife is a big wig at a daycare ( empty nest syndrome)
She dont have to work, she just like being around kids.

I'm waiting on some of that Social Security fun and gun money when I turn 62
Want that schitt sooner than later.
Get hit by a fugging asteriod at 63 65 67 or whatever the fugg the max age is and never collect a cent.
Fugg that. .....

Im 56.....

Fresh out of high school in 1968 went to work for a mason contractor. Two bucks an hour IIRC. We got paid with a personalized check that had a picture of a mason putting up a block wall on the front of the check. After a few of those bounced we had trouble cashing them in local businesses that did check cashing. After awhile all they had to see was that picture on the check and they wouldn't touch it. Or else the boss would sometimes vanish on Friday afternoon ( payday ) and his wife would tell us he had the check book with him. That lasted from June to September when I got a job at a local Chevy dealer. Don't recall the starting pay there but it was great getting paid every Friday and being able to cash the check easily.

$1.85 ph. 1975, Christmas tree farm.

After high school, E-2 pay in 2004. After college, I made about $50k in 2014.

And here I thought it paid $96.78 per week . . . .

First ( legal real job). Sears.I Realize I'm a little younger than some and older than a few too, but for me, that first one I'll never forget. When I went through the interview and all that jazz the secretary was filling out my hire papers and I watched her write $4. 80 starting hourly pay. I had a side hustle at 16 but still. Watching what a complete stranger write down what they thought I was worth at 16 is something I'll never forget. Busted my ass worse than anything my dad and uncles made me do(my dad and uncles would stop once and a while) growing up. I'm thankful. Stacking washers, dryers, and refrigerators solo at 5 am. Good [bleep].

First real job in 1961 was $260 a month doing sales in an Industrial Hardware sales. In high school it was $1.25 per hour unloading box car loads of sheet rock and bricks off of a flatbed train car. Remember all by hand and brick tongs, no forklifts. I also did demo work with a jack hammer in the basement of old military quarters at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas.

1968 i made .95 busing tables.

It was a fun time.

But the first big money job was prep cook for a rib joint.

Made almost 300.00 a week back in 1972.

Fn spoiled rotten azz kids. I've had a about 3 kids stop in the past year in front of my house with a busted bicycle problem. I've fixed them and showed them how to, but all the while thinking where the hell is dad or a diy mom? I do my tiny part in the world .

1964. Went to work in a paint warehouse. 1.50 an hour. Hasbeen

$150/wk as a field engineer for a construction company in Charleston, SC. Then a little raise in the Army for four years. Came out and was making $16,000/yr in 1977. Hit the jackpot and went to Iran with Fluor on an oil refinery at about $48K a year. Just before the Ayatollah came back. Everyone scooted then.

$1256 a month in 1987. It seemed like a lot then.