How old were you when you got your first job ?

52 comments

• twentyfive

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  5 years ago

  Paper route when I was 11
• GoVikings

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  5 years ago

  16 it was at summerfest. its a music festival that comes to milwaukee, wisconsin every summer i worked grounds crew
• ime

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  5 years ago

  Started shoveling driveways when I was eleven, and cutting lawns. 12 i would bag up ice for the corner store, and do other random jobs for the store owner.
• TheeOSU

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  5 years ago

  I was probably 11 or 12 when an older kid down the street that I used to hang around with asked me to help him sell door to door magazine subscriptions. I don't recall the exact arrangement but basically I would get a percentage of any subscriptions I helped him sell. I sold some subscriptions but ended up never getting paid so that was the end of my participation in that endeavor so I started my own mowing lawns during the summer and shoveling sidewalks during the winter. I graduated to working at a service station pumping gas when I reached 16 and started driving.
• shadowcat

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  5 years ago

  Started at 10 delivering newspapers on my bike. 2 weeks before my 16th birthday, I had saved enough to buy my first car and pay for the insurance on it. I was never unemployed until I retired at at 68. 4 years in the USAF followed by 42 years with the same company.
• CC99

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  5 years ago

  I was 16, got a job as a cashier at a clothing store.
• s275ironman

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  5 years ago

  I was 16 when I got my first job, which was bagging groceries and pushing carts.
• doctorevil

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  5 years ago

  Not counting cutting lawns, 14 when I got a job bagging at a grocery store. Except for very brief periods that probably don’t total 3 months, have been continuously employed since then for over 45 years.
• 501traveler

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  5 years ago

  It was a paper route at 14. Always had chores on the farm we lived on before that like collecting chicken eggs, feeding cows, but they werent paid.
• Liwet

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  5 years ago

  My first real job was at 18, when I worked at Toys 'R' Us. So glad they went out of business.
• Huntsman

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  5 years ago

  10. Bailing hay.
• Papi_Chulo

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  5 years ago

  6rh grade Pimp
• PhredJohnson

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  5 years ago

  “Real” job with an employer: 15 as life guard
• Warrior15

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  5 years ago

  ^^ Don't they teach that in the Miami schools ?
• Warrior15

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  5 years ago

  That was for Papi ?
• Papi_Chulo

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  5 years ago

  First "job" around 13 or 14 - handed out flyers with a friend Around 15 worked summer jobs with local government offices which I think was a program for low-income youths. 16+ worked at McDonald's then a couple of stores as stockboy or bagger.
• Papi_Chulo

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  5 years ago

  @Warrior I went to a rough elementary school - you had to do what you had to do to survive
• IceyLoco

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  5 years ago

  10, weeding people's yards for $2 an hour during the summers.
• Corvus

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  5 years ago

  I started at 16 as a piano player in a whore house and am still looking for a better job than that. Until then the benefits are great.
• Jascoi

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  5 years ago

  ha! after the Navy I worked in a factory for a little bit and then worked out another factory a little bit and then went to school for a little bit and then got married and started driving a truck a little bit and finally retired for over a year and a half now. ( just a little bit...)
• twentyfive

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  5 years ago

  @Corvus so you're really Ray Charles ; )
• Jascoi

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  5 years ago

  oh yeah. before I got in the Navy i delivered newspapers it as a teenager and then worked in a factory a little bit.
• Papi_Chulo

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  5 years ago

  In the future I may do like flagooner and look into the field of strip club bathroom attendant technology
• flagooner

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  5 years ago

  I never did write my article on that.
• FishHawk

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  5 years ago

  I was approximately 11 or 12 when I worked for a family friend on his farm doing odd jobs for money and so I could ride his horses.
• Clubber

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  5 years ago

  12, Selling CHRISTMAS trees.
• pensionking

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  5 years ago

  Paper route at age 10 until 15. Worked at family business at 17 through all of college. Fulltime job 3 weeks after college graduation nonstop ever since. Still going . . . Fucking gen z. I have a 24 year old nephew living with my brother still with no job and never had one through college. Still can't find "work". Everything "beneath him.
• ATACdawg

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  5 years ago

  Mowed the neighbor's lawn starting at 10 right through high school. At 12, I was able to work in my family's Dairy Queens, which I did until I went to college.
• bang69

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  5 years ago

  11. grass cutting
• Cristobal

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  5 years ago

  I was 17 when I was hired as an assistant wedding photographer.
• Nidan111

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  5 years ago

  Age 11 for my first full real job as a paper route carrier. Then clearing land with chainsaw at age 16, then grave digger at age 18 ... loved that job 18 playing with backhoes, dump trucks and DYNAMITE!!!
• goldmongerATL

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  5 years ago

  I was 12. She was 15. It was in her parent's basement. She was a spitter but at 12 I'll take it.
• Papi_Chulo

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  5 years ago

  LOL
• NJBalla

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  5 years ago

  amazed it took so many replies for someone like @goldmonger to make the obvious joke.
• Longball300

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  5 years ago

  Delivering newspapers at 8 and occasional grass and snow.....but, I don't consider those a "job". A true 8 hour workday....painting houses at 13.
• Uprightcitizen

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  5 years ago

  Had a neighborhood lawn mowing business at like 12 to 14. Busboy at a country club at 15...
• steeldog65

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  5 years ago

  10, mowing yards and shoveling drives. 14, walking beans and detassling corn, 16 bailing hay, working at a fast food place.
• twentyfive

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  5 years ago

  Damn there’s a lot of farm boys on here ;)
• Muddy

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  5 years ago

  I was 4 in a sweat shop. By kindergarten I would yell at the other kids how soft they were in a self righteous manner.
• Dolfan

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  5 years ago

  I did the lawn work, car washing thing at around 10. Dishwasher/busboy around 12-13 I think, young enough to have to lie about my age but big enough to get away with it. What I consider my first real job, which required a real interview and things wasn't until I was 16.
• reverendhornibastard

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  5 years ago

  12 - newspaper delivery I also hawked magazines on the sidewalk in front of my grandpa’s store when I was about 5 or 6 years old but I don’t count that as a real job because I think my grandpa just put me out there on the sidewalk because it was “cute.”
• steeldog65

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  5 years ago

  Ohhhhh, at 17 I worked for a hog farmer. Outside of smelling like a pig for an entire summer, the worst thing was when the slab broke and the young piglets rolled down into the containment and we had to jump into waist deep liquid pig shit and pulled the piglets out as they squirmed and bit you and tried to swim away from you. Bending down and getting liquid pig shit over you from head to toe. I vomited 3 times during that particular incident wading through my vomit on top of the shit. Worst moment of my life, every job has been better since.
• whodey

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  5 years ago

  I started cutting tobacco, loading hay bales and mucking stalls at the farm across the street when I was 12. I was so glad to turn 15 so I could get a nice "easy" and "well paying" job at McDonalds.
• goldmongerATL

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  5 years ago

  When I was seven years old I started hustling in New York's garment district. I would keep an eye out for scraps of fabric that might be useful to someone. Sometimes I got them for free and sometimes I would buy them for a quarter. I was a little kid, so I got the sympathy of the fabric merchants. No matter what I paid I would always work to sell it for a little more. Always make a profit. After a while I had customers depending on me. I recruited other kids to search out things to sell. The business grew and grew. Later I found a run down office where we could set up shop. As the business grew I was able to become a legitimate competitor to the biggest suppliers. Eventually I bought a warehouse. Then I bought a second warehouse across town. I had built the business that I had dreamed of since I was a little boy. Then I turned eight.
• orionsmith

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  5 years ago

  My father would buy these slum houses and put the family to work fixing them up. We were the work crew. I remember at only a few years old I was given a hammer to nails in the plywood floor boards. As I got older I was given more dangerous jobs like climbing up metal ladders near power lines to paint the sides of a new rental house. My father was all about safety. He said to be careful and keep the ladder off the power line. I did get paid for painting. I didn't really have a choice as far as the work went until I started cutting grass. I made as much as 3 or $4 an hour pushing a push mower through thick tall grass.
• DandyDan

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  5 years ago

  When I was a kid, I and my brother were something like the substitute paperboys. 4 different kids our age would have one of us sub for them. Eventually, I wound up with a route of my own when one of those kids thought he could handle 2 routes, but couldn't. I did that for 2 months and decided I couldn't handle it. I think all the kids on our street except my brother (who had his own route) and the one who eventually played D-III basketball had that route.
• Papi_Chulo

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  5 years ago

  So far steeldog for the win with that piglets story
• Countryman5434

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  5 years ago

  Grew up on a farm had chores at 5 years old. First paying job was helping my neigbor put up hay and cut and hang tobacco.
• Countryman5434

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  5 years ago

  First tax paying job was bagging groceries at 14 mom signed a work permit
• crazyjoe

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  5 years ago

  I started working for money at 11. I worked my ass off before that and continue to do so
• BGSD3100

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  5 years ago

  13 paper route
• MackTruck

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  5 years ago

  I started driving trucks when I was 9 years old