Did you work as a teenager, if so what was your job?

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

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.

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.

Scooping ice cream and making milkshakes, baby!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Farming.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

• 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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

I washed dishes at various restaurants.

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

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

when i was 15 i spent one summer working at a summer camp making and serving icetea

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Paperboy, busboy, winch driver.

Sports coach. Teaching 8-11 year olds gymnastics.

In my town it was common to start to work at the harvest of the wine grapes at 14.

Night shift manufacturing. Made more than minimum wage, but hoo boy was my sleep scheduled FUCKED that summer whenever I tried to do things with friends or family.

No one would hire me, so no

receptionist at the rectory of the local church. (And that job is still on my social security record. I think I made, like, $100 bucks total.)

Delivering newspapers at 13, worked in a record store from 15.

Yeah, started at 13. A paper route, and stocking shelves.

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.

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

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

I worked making sandwiches and burritos. I never had a burrito or understood anything beyond a baloney sandwich. So this was a great experience is learning sauces and pickles.

My more fulfilling job was helping at an after school program. It set me on the path of being a teacher. Which I then quit and became a office monkey because I got paid way better.

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….

• 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.

Lived in a place just rural enough to not have any businesses other than a tiny supermarket, and just urban enough to not really have many orchards, much less farms. Typical shitty planning that required everyone to have a vehicle to get anywhere important. So before I got a car it was pretty much shovelling snow in the winter and mowing lawns in the summer.

Paper route at 10 years old until I was 14 or so. I bought a PS2 and my first computer with that money.

Then I worked part time at a pizza joint until I was 19, just as a cook. I sometimes did opening shifts on weekends but not often. By Grade 11 / 17 years old I only attended high school until lunch break for my last two years there (I exploited a few specific classes, had 52 out of 100 credits in my first year alone) and then started work by noon and working until 7pm. A lot of my friends worked there too so they’d do 4pm - 7pm after school, just the supper rush.

I worked as a bagger at a grocery store, started at $5.65 per hour.

Got a job at 16 selling games in the mall at Software Etc. I loved that job.

My “I was 18 and stupid” job was back of the house at a southern style fried chicken resturant in the heart of the american bible belt. While Hate Chicken will close on sundays and Colonel Fried does not give a shit, my franchise did the worst possible sale on sundays. If you came in with a local church bulletin postmarked for that day, we took 10% off your order. Now you would think this would be good for business and you are unfortunatly correct.

The problem was that everyone else that worked there was attending said services except for ~4 of us. I worked back of the house behind hot friers and ovens most, if not all, sunday mornings. The amount dead foul that has passed my hands, its an actual work of god that im not a vegitarian.

I worked in a local butchers shop when I was 13, for an hour after school every day. I fucking hated it. I had to clean the knives and cutting boards, then sweep up. On Saturdays I had to do all that, plus disassemble and clean this big mincing machine. I got shit money. That was 35 years ago and I can still smell it.🤣

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I did back in the 70’s. I worked at Firestone tires after school and weekends for about 5 years. I changed tires (swapped old for new) and did on car wheel balancing. Towards the end I would fill in for peops who were sick etc at different locations. Had a blast.

Once I was 13 and I got my work permit, I changed busses after school and went to my dad’s computer store after work. Learned how to build PCs back when Intel’s 286 recently came out.

With computers these days a kid would be lucky to get a retail job at a Best Buy.

14, grocery store stocker. My boss still works there, pretty awkward when I see him. He’s been having the same day for 26 years and I’ve been off adventuring. He’s only about 5 years older than me, seemed like a lot at the time.

I went to college from 11-15. When I graduated my parents gave me a bit of time then said that I had the choice of getting a job or going back to school.

I started working at a convenience store. So far it’s worked out for me but realistically I should have kept going.

babysitting, library page, the high school bookstore, janitorial off season help. I specifically tried to avoid fast food which was the easiest to get. In the aughts as an adult I was talking to an undergrad and said something about. You know a typical high school job or teenage job or such. He was like what. I was like you know the minimum wage work that is easy to get. He was like no those jobs are not easy to get and he was not able to work a job all through high school. What a wake up call that was for me on how things were going. That whole period in the aughts was when I realized we just were not trying with the environment and the economy was just rediculous, and more and more violence was ruling things.

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I worked in a gourmet bakery/cellar/sushi restaurant, it was in probaly the most expensive mall in the continent, i was 15. The only part i liked was that sometimes the expensive products got close to the date of sale so they were put into the staff break room, so i got to eat some really good cheese, yogurts and exotic fruits for free, made me forget the staff break room was probaly inspired by the trenches of WWI.

worked at Dunkin donuts making coffee and whatnot for people when I was 16. kinda insane to be as young as I am and able to say “I made the federal minimum wage of $7.25 at my first job” but it paid enough to cover (almost) all the weed I could smoke so I was happy 😁

Shoe sales at a long gone sports and adventure store called GI Joes

Started a web dev side hustle with some friends, back around 98 or so. We were dumb and didn’t charge enough, but we were still making 3x what fast food roles were paying at the time so we thought we were smart.

Mowed lawns a few times at 12 and then got a job at 14 to glue boxes together in a lottle factory. Both were paid under the table work. I boight a lot of video games.

No regrets.

After School and Camp Counselor at 17. I did not pay taxes as I was part of a program for underaged kids (I also barely made money). Legally the place I worked at could not hire anyone under 18, so they would hire companies that were set up to do so.