Labor Day 2016- What was your first paying job?

Discussion in 'Sun City Phoenix (Original), West & Grand - Arizon' started by aggie, Sep 5, 2016.

  1. aggie

    aggie Well-Known Member

    In addition to the usual babysitting and housekeeping jobs many kids start out with, I can remember the thrill of my first paycheck. I was fortunate to live next door to a couple that owned their own company and they started me out on my career of office jobs. I took the bus from high school and they drove me home after work.

    I remember doing keypunch on cards for the gigantic computer system, handwritten bookkeeping, and learning to drink coffee on breaks!
     
  2. GCotten

    GCotten Member

    I think my first real job was in early 60's (summer time)when I was 14 in OK working for a roofing contractor. My job was to carry the bundles of shingles up a latter (no conveyor belts used)and place on the roof ridges. Had to do about 30 squares a day (100 bundles). Then when the shingles had been installed I had to go back with a bucket of tar to "stick" the bottom side of the shingles down (no sticky strips back then). I actually got good pay at a buck an hour. That job was better than "going on harvest" like what most of the guys did. It got ever body in shape for the fall football season.
     
  3. J_and_V

    J_and_V Member

    Gary...
    You win, that sounds like a tough task. Hardest physical job I did was setting tobacco, but it wasn't a paid job (family farm)

    My first paying job was at "The Silver Grove Dairy Bar". It was open from Easter weekend to Labor Day. It was a cinder block building across from the railroad tracks. 2 walk up windows, and it was THE place to see and be seen on summer nights after the softball games. I made $.75/hour and all the ice cream and greasy fries I could eat.
    I have a younger cousin who cried when I left that job (after 3 seasons). She couldn't understand how I could leave the best job in the world
     
  4. Frozen Tootsies

    Frozen Tootsies New Member

    Mine was bo-ring. Kind of. Except for babysitting gigs during HS, my first real job was the summer after I graduated from HS. A summer clerk-typist job, GS-2, at the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center in suburban Houston. IIRC, about $2/hour. Actually, that summer I worked in an admin office (personnel) in an old barracks building at Ellington AFB, because the MSC was too big for its buildings and they offloaded several offices to space at Ellington. I typed a lot of two page single spaced letters to draft boards requesting draft exemptions for young NASA engineers (this was 1966). On an electric typewriter. Can't remember if it was a Selectric. Those were the days. No word processors. Carbon paper. Erasers. I can't remember if white-out was a thing yet. The personnel office would get letters from all kinds of people who thought they'd be great astronauts. Many of them were, well, astro-nutz. One of them sent a picture of herself standing in her yard holding her pet cat. She must have been 60 (which to me of course was oooollld!).

    I ended up working as a summer clerk-typist at NASA four summers, and was a NASA MSC employee at the time of the first moon landing in 1969. I worked in a different office each time, and when I worked in the engineering groups, I was typing words that weren't even in a dictionary yet. It was kinda cool being at the cutting edge, though I was too young and stupid to fully appreciate it. One year I worked in the group that was responsible for the small engines on the lunar module that governed its movements (not the main takeoff/landing thrusters). We had to answer EACH phone call: "Auxiliary Propulsion Unit. How may I help you?" And the head of that group drove a cherry Edsel. I kid you not.

    The jobs weren't a precursor to a career in engineering/science/math. Sadly, I don't have great inherent math/science aptitudes. But I appreciate those who do!

    I have two employee appreciation certificates from the summer of 1969. How many college kids ended up with certificates which include the term "extraterrestrial exploration"?


    Good times. :peaceful:
     
  5. Cynthia

    Cynthia Well-Known Member

    :cool: cool
     
  6. pegmih

    pegmih Well-Known Member

    My family was very wealthy so I did not have to work. Ha! Ha!
    Actually I was working for an oil company when I married my husband.
    He insisted I quit which I did. Back in those days wives usually did not work.
    Eventually, when kids were all in school, I went to work as a librarian in an elementary school.
    Didn't retire until I was very, very old and moved to SC.
    My life story & I'm sticking to it!
     
  7. Cynthia

    Cynthia Well-Known Member

    My first job, 16 years old, was a nurse's aide in a convalescent hospital. Cleanest place I've ever seen and hardest (physical) job I've ever had. It was back breaking old school. Those great generation nurses ran a tight ship. I started at 6 am on the dot, 40 hours a week. Been working full time since (but not as a nurses aid), with one break for the Peace Corps. Two more years to go then.......wheeeee.
     

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