candy dealer

paper route

lawn mowing

waiter

tennis instructor

painter

that pretty much covers it thru college!

12 yrs old making pizza dough at my families pizza place on Long Island. You gotta start at the bottom!

Aside from babysitting and mowing lawns for cash, my first actual job was working in the dishroom of a top-tier prep school. I also happened to be a student at the school and endured no end of comments and insults, but I wasn't getting cash in the mail every week or living on daddy's Amex card.

On the positive side, I learned almost every vulgar expression in the Spanish language.

Perhaps the worst experience in my first on-the-books-job: "Who the hell is FICA and why are they taking MY money?!?!"

I got paid to dress up as a giant blue and white cat, and pass out suckers to little kids at a chain of hair cutting places.

No lie, pinky swear.

#42 So you're saying Long Island is "the bottom"?

Followed older brothers footsteps and had paper route in Seattle. Also did some lawn mowing.

Moved to a farm outside of Auburn, Wa. and we had a small dairy and also did custom hay mowing and baling. My dad drove truck at night so my older brother and I did all the dairy and hay work. We sold the cows when my brother finished high school and I did the hay work for one more year and also worked part time at J.C. Penny's my Sr. year. And that was my first real job outside the home.

Worked as an Aprentice on the painting crew that painted the 59th Street Bridge in NYC. We put on the last coat of red-lead paint just before all of the lead paint regulations went into effect. The paint thinner was benzine at that time.

Worked there for three summers. Learned a lot about life and knew what I did not want to paint bridges for the rest of my days. Hard work, very heavy paint, can home filthy every day.

Good times.

Eric

After mowing lawns and (briefly) taking over my brothers paper route, I worked at KFC for $1.45/hr. The stories you hear are all true...except the fried rat, I never saw that. But plenty of chicken that hit the floor ended up in the oven for sale.

Stuff like that happens in every restaurant...