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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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…

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.

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

• 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.

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

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.

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

Paperboy, busboy, winch driver.

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.

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.