Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire How much did you make at your first real job?

Mid 70's gathering chicken eggs for the neighbor for 2 bucks an hour. Then the big time hit, my other neighbor started raising rabbits and hired me to butcher them up paying me 65 cents a rabbit, I got to where I could do 13 an hour. at 13 years old I was making 8.45 an hour. I was swimming in money.

Went from minimum wage $1.65, IIRC, to $6.35. Thought I was rich.

1989 I was 13 yo and making $4.50 an hour and getting 4 hours a week at my second job.

I was laid off for the slow fall and winter months but my boss swung by my house with a $100 Christmas bonus!

I stayed with the company until I was 25 or so and my last Christmas bonus was well above $2k.

Great guys to work for and wouldn't change it for the world.

$1.60 per hour.

First job other than mowing lawns or throwing newspapers was bussing tables for $1.20 an hour.

That was 1973.

Spent it all on .22LR and 12ga shotshells.

The first thing I got paid for was cutting yards for $2 a pop. That’s how I paid for my first Model 700 at $101.89.

In the summer of ‘68 and ‘69 I worked as a “lot boy/gofor” at an auto dealership. Detailing used cars, cranking all of them first thing in the morning, delivering cars, etc was my specialty. 😊 I was pulling down a whole $1.10 an hour (minimum wage) and the accountant just about had a fit when I finished with more than 40 hours one week which meant I got an hour of overtime.

A few years later as an Ensign starting flight school with a new bride, it seems like I was getting about $485 and we were RICH. I think a 2 bedroom, furnished apartment was about $175/month.

Around 1976, summer job on a ranch. $10/day plus room and board.

Early on I thought I wanted a job, turns out all I really wanted was a paycheck.

Shortly after that, I realized that if i"d rather be doing something else, it was a job.

Never had a real job.

Always have been "gainfully un-employed".

ya!


GWB

Dunno what qualifies as a "real" job. Mowed grass, delivered papers for starters. Made a little jingle spearfishing. Then I hit the big time. $98/month, room and board included. Army basic training was a hoot.

1995

4.25 an hour

Started out digging drain tile with a shovel, new construction. 5 bucks an hour, around ‘85 or ‘86. Should have made college seem attractive, but it didn’t. I was 12 or 13 at the time, and 5 bucks was a sight better than minimum wage flipping burgers.

Got a paper route in the sixth grade. The customers paid 7 cents for each paper. I got 2 cents of that.

Washing dishes in a local bbq joint for 3.35 hr.

I don't remember what I made in total, but I know I worked a lot of hours at minimum wage.

It was good instruction to pick up a trade Unskilled labor on a construction site gets treated like the bottom end.

4.25/hr working at Little Caesar’s pizza.
Man we had some good times after the doors closed

1974 ,driving a school bus ,1.65 an hour plus it got me to class on time.

Save for the US Army, I've been self employed all my life.

I payed $1,500 in taxes in 1959.

$2.40 an hour in the Automotive/Sporting Goods section at Grand Central/Fred Meyer 1985. They could've made a series about the people and what went on there. Best job I ever had.

Entitled

10/4 on a real job.


Managed to scrounge up a lawn-mower and a broom @ 10 years old. Mowed yards.

At 15, worked after school in a Dr's office scubbing floors and plunging toilets for "sewer rats".

At 16 loaded trucks for $1.25 an hour.

At 17 was scaffold builder for $5 hour in the Houston area chemical plants on shutdowns

In between I sold vegetables from our truck patch out of a surf van, cut firewood and sold it on the side of the road,

At 19 for a while I painted addresses on curbs in new neighborhoods. Quit that and sold Fuller Brush for a while.

Waited tables and bar-tended between, 1971-1976.

1976-1985 would be the closest thing to a real job, Took over an industrail suppy/Job shop biz. Went broke an lost my house and cars.

Wholesaled cars, delivered pizzas, sold life insurance, had a paper route, sold bag phones, used cars between 1985 & 1989.

Licensed Real estate broker and Commercial RE Appraiser between 1989 & 2008.

Pretty much been a slum lord since then,

Ya!

GWB