# Your first job?



## nicko (Oct 5, 2001)

Thought it would be fun to hear from everyone what was your very first job you ever held?

Me? 

I was a busboy at my Aunt and Uncles Italian restaurant Barones.


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## jim berman (Oct 28, 1999)

When I was 6, I worked in my dad's scrap metal yard. I would sort aluminum and tin. Then I graduated up to sorting #1 and #2 copper and I was allowed to try chewing tobacco. I had to wait until I was 8 to use the 2-ton metal sheers. Amazing I actually survived childhood.


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## shimmer (Jan 26, 2001)

The first job I had was teaching piano lessons. I would go to kids houses after school (still only a kids myself!) and their parents would pay me $10 every half hour to teach them how to play the piano. It never failed, I always got the overachiever students who would have been great if they had time to practice. One family had horses and all the kids were in dance AND ran the family farm in addition to taking piano lessons. It was crazy. 

To this day, although I do many other piano-related jobs, I refuse to teach lessons. Too many bad experiences.

~~Shimmer~~


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## momoreg (Mar 4, 2000)

Sounds like a fun thread so far...

I was an Avon lady from age 14 through high school. I made a consistent salary doing that, with very little work. After all, with 100 girls in my grade, there was always someone looking for cosmetics. I simultaneously worked in a home for elderly women, cooking, serving, and cleaning. The food was pretty basic: Tuna salad, for lunch, and cake cubes or jello for dessert. It became a bit depressing when I realized how quick the turnover was. It seemed every time I got to know one of the ladies, she'd pass on. So I got a job cooking at Roy Rogers. Much better.:chef:


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## chrose (Nov 20, 2000)

Let's see....first job of any sort helping my father (an Electrical Engineer) doing small drafting jobs. First outside job, bowling alley porter (friend of the family owned it) first job on my own, "refueling technician" (gas pump jockey!)
first food related job...hard to remember, but I think it was the lunch counter at Swensons Ice Cream Parlor.
As a side note, I'm back to the first job I ever had. Electrical designer/draftsman, but not for my father this time!


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## phoebe (Jul 3, 2002)

When I was 15 or 16 I wrapped presents for shipping for the old Broadway Department Store, and I answered the "request line" for a local rock and roll station. We were supposed to talley the top requested songs each hour for the DJ to play. But if The Monkeys won (which they did quite often), the DJ on my shift would ask for the next song down the list until we reached one that wasn't the Monkeys.


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## suzanne (May 26, 2001)

You mean, besides babysitting? I worked in the mail order department of a publishing company, noting orders in a big ledger, and passing the papers along to the fulfillment department. This was in 1964, way before computers were introduced to do stuff like that. I felt so grown up (I was 15)! And I learned so much USA geography, especially which cities had lots of universities and colleges (Ohio was REALLY big for that!).


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## mezzaluna (Aug 29, 2000)

Besides babysitting, my first paid job was doing secretarial work for my dad's insurance office (mostly filing and writing checks). One summer I was paid to do all the cooking, cleaning, laundry and some kid-supervision at home when I was a teenager, but I didn't get my first "real" job until I worked for the dorm food service in college. I could have had a job at a family friend's restaurant in high school, but my dad solidly refused on the grounds that men would pinch my behind....  I did eventually cook and wait tables at a small restaurant while in college.


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## isa (Apr 4, 2000)

Selling fudge and making the pink spun sugar candy in an amusement park. When my shift ended, all I wanted was to bite into a lemon.


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## katew (Feb 22, 2002)

I worked at a summer camp kitchen in Maine.


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## coolj (Dec 12, 2000)

Well the restaurant that I work at is the only "real" job that I've ever had. I started out as a busboy, then a couple of months in I also started covering the dishes as well. I did that for 4 years then I moved into the kitchen and I've been there 5 years.


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## peachcreek (Sep 21, 2001)

I was an announcer on the local 1000 watt AM radio station. I have been told I have looks that were made for radio!


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## coolj (Dec 12, 2000)

Good headline LOL


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## svadhisthana (May 6, 2001)

Another Avon Lady checking in! (if you don't count babysitting which I always hated unless it was for an actual infant) The fact that it was "my own business" was enough to impress my first real employer to hire me at a party supply store.


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## shawtycat (Feb 6, 2002)

Other than babysitting, I ran a photo processing business out of my highschool photography class.....but my first real job (where I got a specified paycheck and didnt have to charge anyone) was as the assistant to the managing photo editor at a stock photo company.

My first restaurant job was busgirl.


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## eds77k5 (Jun 13, 2002)

delievered newspapers, picking apples and pears, i think it goes down hill from there


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## katbalou (Nov 21, 2001)

waitress in a dive bar. that's where i starting learning about the sick, warped people who worked in the service industry and figured i fit right in!  :beer: :smoking: :lol:


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## fpz (Jul 31, 2002)

I got my first job at 18 at a popular resturant in Chicago. I was planning on being there 6 months, like many guys I went to school had heard or knew was industry standard. Pfft...

I was there 6 1/2 years, went from prep cook to Sous in that time, and now in my first Exec job.


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## coolj (Dec 12, 2000)

Hey welcome FPZ, great signature, but the old adage is 'if it's brown it's done, if it's black you're done'


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## shawtycat (Feb 6, 2002)

My cousin is still fighting with that.....she really does think its the latter.


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## fpz (Jul 31, 2002)

heh, with some people, "if it's black it's done" isn't an accident, it's a daily routine.


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## culinarian247 (Jan 21, 2002)

Prepping chickens in my grandparent's coop. And yes, the head *DOES* "move" after being severed.


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## risa (May 11, 2001)

Aside from babysitting, busperson/dishwasher/food prep for a pizza and ribs restaurant in a town with a population of approx 3,500. I still think they had the best pizza sauce and potato wedges. The sauce was a secret recipe and only the owner had the full recipe. It was so long ago that I don't even remember what it tasted like; I only remember that it tasted great.


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## chefclaycollins (Jul 27, 2002)

My first job was washing dishes at 16 years old, and I've never worked in any other field. Cooking is the best and I hope that I never have to do anything else!


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## rachel (Oct 27, 2001)

My first 'real' job was between school and University one summer when i was 17 and worked as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant. I was the only non-Chinese person there, I fell in love with one of the chefs and was constantly asked which part of China i came from by customers who thought that they were very funny.
i was also completely illegaly employed and used to come home with bundles (very small bundles) of cash, much to my Father's amusement who thought he'd best leave me in blissful ignorance as to my official employment status.


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