Ask Lemmy

I started working as a cook at 14

I walked to the restaurant close to my house, told the first person I saw "I want a job, but I don't want to work with people". They stuck me in the kitchen and taught me everything. Did that for 14 years.

Lied about my age to work in a grocery store, which was funny as they gave me keys to an Audi stick-shift and told me to do donut runs every morning. I didn't even have a license. I did learn fast and mastered a stick, as well as saw my manager fuck my classmates.

Lifeguard at 16

It's kinda odd, because in a lot of ways it's still the most serious job I've ever had.

Also the least paying job I ever had. But when it was slow I was basically getting paid to do homework or do laps, and you were so bored you'd actually do it. $60 paychecks felt like such a luxury for something that fit nicely between school and sports.

I fought criminals in hand-to-hand combat and lived in the sewers. We all survived on pizza and had deadly weapons and training. Also banged a reporter.

I have a really odd history of jobs... First job was installing multi million dollar home theater systems, then did a summer renovating a house(paint, refinish floors, install kitchen appliances, built 3 closets, moved a wall, replaced all windows and doors) , did 4 years as a corporate network administrator, 10 years laser welding medical devices, 4 years as a manufacturing technician, 2.5 years as a software engineer...yeah it's an interesting resume...

Repairs in a PC repair shop in the 2000's. Loved it. Was paid in pc parts which was just fine for me.

Left school at 16, got an apprenticeship as a electronics technician.

I worked at an amusement park running a few different rides. Paid alright for the late 90s, but could work outrageous hours if you wanted. Physical and simple work in the hot midwestern humidity. Met a boy with the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen, and the rest is history.

Scooping ice cream and making milkshakes, baby!

I was a teenager back in the 80's.

My very first job was a paper route and I absolutely hated it.

Second job was at a nursery/garden center, that also had a pool center. This job I didn't mind so much. I learned a lot about landscaping and plants in general. I actually became knowledgeable enough that at the age of 17 I designed several landscapes, even one large job that was the HQ for a Japanese car company. Fast forward 20 years and my wife and I buy a house and my wife has always dreamed of having a yard with tons of landscaping. So I dusted off my skills and built multiple beds across our property. Today we have a yard that is mostly very mature beds which bloom continuously throughout the growing season.

every teenager should work in the fields (agriculture) at least once. i did picking fruit. 10/10 would recommend. touch grass, vibe with plants

Well, it wasn't quite legal since I was paid in cash under the table, but my first job was washing dishes at a restaurant when I was 16. First job I actually paid taxes for, didn't get one of those until I was 20.

Oh yeah.

I had a paper route for a while. I did a bunch of temp/odd/periodic construction work as a laborer. It seemed like there was no end to those gigs. For a number of them I just showed up at the job site and asked if they needed anything done.

I did like those when I was in High School. I would work for a few weeks to get some cash and then not work for a while.

I worked pretty much work every summer starting in the 6th grade and once I had a car I worked all types of restaurant jobs after school.

I worked at Dairy Queen and mowing lawns during high school. Also some odd jobs here and there like roofing.

Farming.

I mowed lawns as a younger teen and worked at a local pizza place at 16.

As a side note, I remember coming to the realization that I actually had some money after a few weeks of mowing lawns. I was fortunate enough that my parents covered living expenses, so my pay could all be spending money for me. I of course knew that working = pay, but the first couple times you have a couple hundred bucks in your pocket that you can spend as you please is a liberating feeling.

• mowing my parents lawn
• Christmas tree lot - salesman
• Best Buy - cashier
• Best Buy - Customer service

Telemarketing selling newspaper subscriptions. Pumping gas (I'm old). Counter clerk at a dry cleaners. Grocery store bagger and cashier. Telemarketing again selling cable TV movie channels.

• Spent a summer landscaping
• Worked in a restaurant for two years (host, bus, dish, kitchen, server)
• Refereed football / soccer from 12 until my late twenties. That was the real moneymaker in late high school and university. I’d do high school and adult league matches 4 days a week and then youth tournaments on the weekends. A couple of winters I did indoor, but that was harder to get games

Worked in a chemist as a cashier and then a few years working in a pub

Worked at a local pizza place my junior and senior years of high school.

I worked in restaurants in varying positions, to this day I wish I still worked in them.

Did a few things. Farm hand during certain parts of the school year starting at 13ish (yes that is legal). Restaurant work in the summers. Shoveling snow for a landscaping company.

My first job was in the furniture dept at Big Lots.

No. I'm not sure if my parents would have had any objections to it, but they never suggested it. And it never occurred to me. That's something I really regret. I think it would have helped me a lot. I think I will encourage my daughter to when she gets to be of age. My wife has worked since she was 16, and she is so much better at money management than me. She handles our budgeting.

Grocery store from 17 to 18 and then I quit to go to college and then worked valet during the summers. Even in 2014 I made enough money during the summer to support living during the college year. Not tuition, of course, but food and stuff.

I washed dishes at various restaurants.

I miss everything about it besides being too tall to use the sinks comfortably

I did work experience after school for a few years. Didn't get paid or anything like that, but I did get an enormous amount of credits. My last year of highschool I only had to take two classes per day, cause I had enough credits that everything else was technically optional and I jumped at the chance to have more free time.

All I had to do was stay after school for an hour and help the custodians.

Was wonderful.

Corn detasseling, wine grape picking, lawn care, call center for a survey company, data analytics for a different survey company, coffee shop, restaurant host/wait staff, tree trimming, aide at a school for kids with medical needs, tier 1 IT phone support, stocking shelves over night shift in a grocery store.

That's roughly in order, starting with corn detasseling at age 13 and ending when I went to college. There were a couple others, very short lived that I don't count if I quit before training was complete. And some others highly seasonal, like a Christmas tree farm that hired me to make wreaths for a week straight before christmas a few years in a row.

Most money I made as a teen was in doing my own hustles, like pirating music and movies to burn to disc and selling them because I was one of the few people in my school to have a PC, with internet and a DVD burner.

I also did door to door sales for some company from the back of a magazine I subscribed to when I was 11 or 12. You earned cash or points to redeem for shit like video game consoles or bikes. I'm not entitely sure how legit it was, thinking about it now. 🤔

My first truly legit job, paying income tax and all that shit at 17, was, ugh... CutCo Knives. Vector Marketing. Great fucking knives; terrible company to work for and do business with.

Babysitting, McDonalds, collectibile card store, florist, night club, painter.

I counted stuff. Worked in a paper products warehouse doing daily inventory counts. It was kind of awesome since I got to walk around, BS with some friends that had other jobs in the warehouse, and developed boss-level skills with the number pad that I still apply today. After working the summer there, I was pretty glad my first couple applications in food service got rejected.

I had a paper route. I hated it. They kept assigning me random houses that were several miles outside my zone.

Before and after school daycare

Junior camp counselor

Delivering papers

Babysitting

I did some work at construction sites and worked at a place that imports plants and flowers. Just few weeks during the summer.

I started writing and selling software at the age of 13.

Software dev, started at nearly-15.

It was the mid-90s and I knew how to press buttons on the computer, so I worked besides school and all that. Actually made a decent hourly salary, I think I was allowed to do up to 10 hours a week.

I worked at a truck wash. I would wash tractor trailers with a power washer, scrub the the tractors with a regular old wash mitt for a car and wash trailers with a brush of similar size as at a coin op car wash except with a handle l long enough to reach the top of the trailer while standing on the ground.

A group of 5 people would wash an entire truck in 15 to 20 minutes. My shift during school started on a Friday at around 5pm and would run till 11pm but usually ended up being midnight. Saturday was 3 till 11pm but again we were generally working till midnight and Sunday varried but we stopped accepting new trucks at 4pm. During the summer my shift started at 3pm and could run till 3am even though we closed at 11pm. There were many times we had 10 trucks in line at 11pm with two trucks in the wash bays during the summer and were turning new trucks away and leaving a couple parked till the morning to get washed.

During slower times we would take in degreaser jobs where we would use a pressure steamer to remove the grease from the entire truck so it could go in for some major work and the mechanic shop workers didn't have to clean it off of deal with it. Degreasing trucks sucks....

Waitress at 14 in my family's restaurant. Worked for dry cleaners at 17.

• bailing hay/straw in the summer for a neighbor from
• working at a fast food place
• working in retail at a farm store
• working at a movie theater

All before I turned 18 starting at 13. At first for the money, then to be out of a tough home situation as much as possible.