Here she is. The Troublemaker. This dog has cost more time and money the past week than … well, than I don’t know what. 3 nights at the vets last week, an ultrasound today, plenty of $, and the upshot is that she’ll probably live forever after all this. Jeesh. (Yes, she’s feeling just fine now, for those of you who are feeling sorry for her. I won’t give you the laundry list of issues, but I know you’ll ask so the answer is she’s going to be fine.) Troublemaker.
Sneak Up list, right? It’s going to be a big one this week, and then we’ll have two to three weeks without a Sneak Up. 🙁 I don’t know if I’m actually capable of not doing a Sneak Up for 3 weeks, but WH is entirely capable of it and thinks it’s a marvelous idea. We will be leaving on vacation next week and gone the week of the Fourth of July as well – thus, no new products to go up. However, Sarah-the-housesitter will be here taking care of Zoe and The Troublemaker and bringing in boxes of yarn every day as it arrives, and Susan-the-Awesome-Assistant will be here packing your orders and getting them out to you while we’re gone. So you can still find plenty of fun things to satisfy your yarn cravings. Indeed, you may look at this week’s list and think spreading it out over 3 weeks is a good idea. Why three weeks if we’re only going to be gone for 2? Because the week we get back, WH will have to put some extra time in on his regular job to catch up from vacation, in addition to doing a lot of photography on all of the things that arrived while we were gone. So I’m guessing the next Sneak Up will be the week of July 16th. Of course earlier if it works. And I’ll be re-stocking some of the regular stuff as it comes in between now and then. (Shhh – did you see that we have ALL of the colors of Crystal Palace Panda Cotton in at one time? I’m sure it’s a fluke, and I’m sure we’ll sell out of something soon, but for a few minutes, they’re all here. And there is a lot of it.)
So on this week’s list for Sneaking Up….
For sure: The Knittery, Fleece Artist Sea Wool, Fiesta Boomerang, Chewy Spaghetti, Seacoast Merino, Duets, and Dream in Color. Also, more Kitchener Stitchmarkers, more Counting Bracelets, and more Loopy/Louise/Bart stitchmarkers. I have sock photos of Fiesta, Duets, and Dream in Color to share with you on Wednesday. I have loved knitting with each of them.
For maybe: Posh, Spritely Goods, and Scarlet Fleece (depending on how many photos WH can get done.)
New things coming in between now and when we do our next Sneak Up: The Plucky Knitter (from one of our very own Loopy Groupies!), Urban GypZ (with a cool twisted yarn base), Wollmeise (an indie dyer all the way from Germany and we’re so excited to get her beautiful yarn here), new fabrics in Mrs. Kwitty bags and needleholders, the Maruca Designs fall fabrics (oooohhhh), plus our regular monthly indie-dyer orders and a few other surprises. Lots of boxes to come home to after vacation to look forward to.
So – the contest for the month – tell me about your first job. It’s summertime and many of us had our very first jobs during the summer, right? (Besides babysitting, which I did often, too.) My first summer job was a Disaster with a capital D. I was 14 and I signed up to de-tassle corn. (I lived in Iowa. Everyone de-tassled corn in Iowa in junior high or high school. It was “good money”.) You dressed in long sleeves and long pants so that the cornstalk leaves wouldn’t cut your arms and legs, you walked down the rows of stalks that had grown over your head, and you plucked the tops off of the stalks and tossed them behind you as you went along. When you pulled the tassles out, you frequently got a shower of bugs on you. The aisles held in all of the heat and humidity that the summer had to offer. And it was downright awful. After an hour, my shoulders ached, my shirt was filled with bugs (ok – maybe I exaggerate a bit – but not much) and I was feeling nauseous from all the heat and humidity. So I quit. My very first job, and I got paid for a whopping hour of time. There – now don’t you feel better about YOUR first job? What was it? (Nobody quits after an hour. Your experience had to have been better!) Leave it in the comments and I’ll use the random number generator to pick a Loopy Loot winner this Friday.
Sheri Ihavestuckwithalltherestofmyjobsandworkedhardsincethen-ifonlytoprovethatIcould. 🙂
P.S. Email me if you have Q2 hats/mitts to mail and I will send you my addresss. I don’t want to list it on the blog!
When I was 16, I had a friend who had this “dream” job. She was all hot and bothered to get me on board, which should have been my first clue. Great money (I think I made $4/hour), great hours (6-10 p.m.), and all I had to do was talk on the phone. I went to King Carpet and was given a sales pitch to get the company’s reps into peoples’ homes so they could sell them carpeting. Then we had to cold call people from the phone book. Most of us spent the time calling our friends, making crank calls (Is Prince Albert in the can?), and ordering pizza. I managed to make one appointment and got chewed out the next day by the owner, since it appears I had made the appointment with the 14 year-old son of the family. I think I lasted four days. I hate phone solicitors, so I preferred to think of myself as doing the public a service by not actually calling them.
my first non-babysitting job was a bit unusual. I worked for a coolant recycling company. We would go into machine shops, remove the coolant from the machines, then run it through a pasteurizing centrifuge while the coolant tanks were cleaned, then refill the machines. Good for the environment; hideous work.
I got to clean tanks. Coolant tanks in machine shops are full of metal chips, which promote fungal and bacterial growth of gargantuan proportions. This process was aided by the machinists who ran the mills etc, as they would often chew tobacco and spit into the coolant tanks or throw other junk in there (sunflower seeds were a favorite, as i recall). I would shovel those suckers out then scrub them with an industrial-strength detergent. The chemicals would rot out the toes of my steel-toed boots; every day when I came home from work i had to shower twice, once with Dawn detergent and then with standard soap.
This job was so disgusting that the crew was mostly felons who could not get any other job, and me, the sweet high-schooler child of the owner’s wife’s friend. It paid extremely well, though; I made four times what my classmates did. And it’s left me with an abiding love of desk jobs 🙂
Oooh, my first job was terrible! I was working at a small grocery store, and the owners were miserable, awful people. You didn’t get a break unless you worked 8 hours… Everyone smoked in the back of the store (this was only about 10 years ago, so that was so not allowed…), they didn’t pay you for your entire shift…. All of my other jobs have been so much better.
My first job, other than babysitting, was the summer after my first year in college. I lived overseas during high school and so I couldn’t work there. While I was in college my parents moved back to Oklahoma, where I had gone to junior high school. So that summer was pretty fun, as I was reconnecting with a bunch of old friends.
Anyway, I was a bank teller. I loved it. Something about the exactness of it all appealed to me. Plus, it was Oklahoma in the summer, so being inside a nice cool air-conditioned bank was a major bonus. And of course, the hours were easy. Oh yeah, and there was a guy working at the bank that I had had a crush on since I was 13! Yep, that was a sweet job. Everytime I go inside a bank, I have this desire to ask if they need more tellers! 🙂
First job, huh? that’s actually tough! Of course, there was the babysitting, but we won’t count that. And if that doesn’t count, we shouldn’t count teaching piano lessons, either, because that was practically babysitting. hee hee
So, my first job was painting! We have good friends at our church that are contractors/builders. After school/Saturdays/summers, I learned to paint. I think I was 15 when I started. The first house I did was actually their house, and his wife worked with me. She did all the cutting at the ceiling, because she didn’t trust me with the paintbrush, 😉 So I did the rolling. I remember learning to find a balance between too little and too much paint on the roller. I remember having it engrained in my head that I should use up and down strokes, not a bunch of different angles. I did a decent job, if I do say so myself! Of course, I did hit the ceiling once. And they didn’t fix it. Nope… they placed their sofa right there, and for YEARS would sit there and look up and see that little bit of cameo on the white ceiling, and laugh about it.
From that point on, I did a lot of painting. Apartments, new houses, porches, cellar stairs. I loved it. The only thing that got old was the color — Cameo White. Always cameo white. By the time we got our first house, I was DETERMINED to have COLOR on my walls! In fact, I had our friend help me paint my kitchen when we moved in — a nice deep paprika red. I remember teasing him about it when he picked up the paintbrush — saying I couldn’t believe he was actually painting a color other than cameo!! He turned to me and said, “Its cameo red…”
My first real job, (other than working at a strawberry patch pulling weeds) was working at the first Culver’s restaurant. I worked in the very first store on the very first day they were open. I remember getting my driver’s license and then going immediately to the job interview. The inside of the store wasn’t finished yet, so the interview was conducted in the parking lot. I made a lot of friends there and it was a awesome place to work.
My first job (way back in 1973) was working the counter at the local drive-in burger joint. This was before the major fast food vendors discovered Mount Vernon, MO. I made 50 cents an hour and was thrilled to get it! It was a great way to get dates, as the high school boys cruised the circular drive out in front multiple times a night. If someone was interested, they would offer to come pick us up when we got off work. Also, our boss was a huge supporter of the local youth, so he always brought in adult reinforcement workers (usually his wife and sister) to cover Friday night athletic events and things like homecoming, prom, etc. so us girls wouldn’t have to choose between fun and work. All in all, it was a pretty pleasant experience, even though the pay was lousy.
My first job was working as a page at the local library. It was a super job (no fast food involved) plus I met my husband there ( he was another page and we worked together often)!!!! 🙂
My first job . . . I was 13 and played music for a summer figure skating program. I got $3.00 an hour, which my mother kept. During my breaks (also then known as “patch” or school figures) she fed me quarters for video games (Frogger, Pac Man, Pole Position) and said that made it even. I never did figure out if it was even, but as long as I had an endless supply of quarters I was happy. It was harder than it sounds – balancing the delicate needs of skaters, pros and parents, sticking to the rules without making enemies. There’s nothing like an angry skating mother to liven things up. I had them come raging into the booth, arms flailing and shouting over some percieved slight to their darling. You just move verrrry slowly, explain yourself verrrry calmly, and hope they don’t lunge for your throat.
My first summer job, besides babysitting, was working in a factory on an assembly line. I was 14 and my dad was the artist for a company that made
Christmas stickers and tags. I had to sit on a stool, next to a really loud and hot machine, in the stifling heat of an unairconditioned building, and punch out stickers as they came down the line. Then I had to place them in a little container and send them on to the shrink-wrap machine. It was mindnumbing! I think I ruined my neck turning it so much to look at the clock.
My first job was not a success. I was 17 and just about to start my final year in high school. I was looking for a job because I thought it would “look good” on my college applications.
So I printed up a CV and went around to the shops in the local mall. I tried to work at a bookstore, filled in a couple applications and nothing. A friend of mine was working in a small fashion boutique for “women of a certain age” as the store owner called it as a stock girl. Chucking boxes and unpacking things and steaming them and dusting and general dogsbodying around the shop. They were looking to take on a second dogsbody and I happened to be at the right place at the right time (right place meaning chatting with my friend at the store counter). So I started right then (after going home to put on some slightly less nice clothes) and I worked there doing all manner of things throughout the busy holiday season until February 2nd of the next year. That day (in addition to being groundhog day) there was a really big earthquake in our little neck of the woods (the Seattle/Bellevue area of Washington state). Later in the day, after the earthquake, I got called down to the school office because the newly appointed finance manager of the shop where I worked had called me to lay me off. At school. On the day of a big earthquake. When I had a horrible horrible math test that morning. (Incidentally that math test caused me to be outside in the middle of the courtyard when the earthquake hit, which may or may not have been better than in the gymnasium with the rest of the school where they were certain the inexpertly fitted light fixtures would fall and crush people). That was highly upsetting to me. To be fair to them they did hardly any trade outside the holiday season and they didn’t really need me anymore (they had let my friend go long ago). But it wasn’t the best first job ever.
Still, not the worst. Quite cushy compared to topping de-tassling corn. But not the best job ever. 🙂
My first job was as an evening receptionist for my church. Another kid and I would split the days and putting together the bullentins (about 500, always with something that needed to be stapled!).
My first job was as a lifeguard and swim instructor at our city pool. Growing up, I was a pool rat. I was there every day. As soon as I was old enough to take the course, I became a certified lifeguard and swim instructor. How cool that I got paid to be at the pool every day! During high school I worked at the indoor pool year round and the outdoor pool in the summer as well. I continued to work at the pool when I went away to college, coming home for two summers to work as pool manager. At the University, I lifeguarded and taught swimming lessons, and eventually even taught some classes for the college. It was far from glamourous much of the time – cleaning up icky things, dealing with unhappy people, taking care of injuries, fishing out little kids that parents didn’t watch. I was able to pay my way through college doing it, though. And I loved it. I loved it so much I did it from the time I was 15 until I was 28!! 🙂
My first job: an aunt who worked in New York had a friend who got me a two-week stint at a big magazine while I was visiting. (I think my aunt did this mainly so she wouldn’t have to take me to work with HER.) I basically glued photographs onto pieces of cardboard all day. This is when I wasn’t being sent out for coffee and sandwiches, or picking up the mail. It was pretty darn exciting for a teenager from a small town, and I even got a paycheck!
(By the way, I think you did pretty well lasting as long as you did at your first job. I’d have been out of there in two minutes. Bugs! Ick!)
Sorry to hear about the Troublemaker (she looks pretty healthy in the picture!) and glad you get to take a vacation! Enjoy!
A shirt full of bugs? I would have quit, too. My first job was picking potatoes–just take your description of everyone de-tassling corn and substitute picking potatoes and the word “Idaho” and it’s the same thing. It was actually fun, though, because WE GOT OUT OF SCHOOL TO DO IT!!!! Potato harvest vacation. Now it’s more mechanised and not done by child labor, they don’t have that holiday any more. It was cool, and the dirt smelled good, and sometimes you could smell a hint of snow on the air. I met lots of people from other schools in the fields, including my sister’s future husband (she was probably 8 at the time).
I was one of the ever glamorus Subway Sandwich Artists during highschool. It wasn’t too bad, the owners were/are still way overbearing and gossipy, but it was the local hangout, so I spent all my work time with my friends.
My first job, other than babysitting, was pinch-hitting for a friend with a paper route one summer when she was away for a month or so. It’s only a noteworthy first job because I grew up in New York City, and there just aren’t that many of us City kids who have had suburban, door-to-door paper routes.
My second job, and the first non-babysitting job at which I got paid by the hour, was as an intern at the New-York Historical Society (yes, the hyphen belongs there . . . long story) for a Summer Institute on Teaching the Constitution for high school teachers. Not the most fascinating job, but my history teacher was running it and she hadn’t had time to grade papers (and I wanted my paper back!) and so I offered to help out.
no corn here…it was strawberry picking for me. It was especially nasty if it was rainy (as it can be here in the Pactific NW). We’d get paid in cash for each flat picked…which was around 90 cents. So, at the end of the day, the pockets in our jeans were bulging with coins, we were dirty and our hands and clothes were stained with strawberries. That didn’t matter because we would still stop at the dime store to buy candy! After picking strawberries 3 summers, I couldn’t stand to eat them for many years. It was a relief that I finally started liking them and enjoying them again.
I also grew up in Iowa and detassled. You forgot to mention that when you start inthe morning the corn is full of dew so a few steps into the field and you were soaking wet and COLD all morning but by noon it was over 90 and you sweat the rest of the day. Luckily for me our team was chosen to work the test plot – hand polenating the seed corn. We got our lunch under a shade tree then! Other jobs were cleaning out hog confinement sheds with a power washer (read jet sprayed poop) and walking beans pulling weeds (before the days of Round Up).
Glad the pup is feeling better and that you’re going on a much deserved vacation! Yay for you! So excited about the sneak-up! 🙂
My first job was also working with corn. I grew up in Western Massachusetts and worked on William’s Farm packing corn. The cutest guy ever, the owners son, would go cut the corn on his tractor and they’d bring it in on huge wagons. The sides of the wagons would fold down and we’d draw up a basket or bag and pack them by the bushel. I worked there every summer for three years. The best part was in August when it was all humid at 5 am and someone would wing moldy corn at your head. Better than caffeine I tell you. 🙂
During the summer, I was an umpire for T-ball. I played slow-pitch softball from First grade on up through high school, so by the time I made it to my teens I could get paid to umpire for the little kid games. That was so fun.
The rest of the year I sold bras, girdles, panties, and nightgowns for a local department store. I was taught how to measure and fit a person, and although I was never asked, certain coworkers were asked by guys to be measured. (While there are many justifiable reasons for men to want girdles etc, it’s a little skeevy to ask a woman in the department store to come into the back fitting rooms and measure them.)
Detassling sound awful! I’m so glad I didn’t have to do that.
Heh. My first job. I worked in the checking department of a bank. This was, ahem, many years ago, before computers and digital processing took over, so my job was to manually file all the checks that had been processed. We had giant file cabinets, and I’d sit with stacks of thousands of checks, individually filing them into each account. Talk about a snore of a job. Not to mention one rife with paper cuts.
Okay, I too was a 14 year-old detassler in Iowa… I made it for the entire 3 week program. By the end of the first week there were so many kids that quit I got seniority and was allowed to be the supervisor ( Walk behind a group of 4 other kids and only have to pull the things they missed, and shout every time you had to pick one!! ) Also a group of us got pulled off of one field to work another and we had to ride in the back of a van listening to “yellow submarine” on a loop for 30 minute. We all start to talk about how we were in a horror film and when the van stopped we would be killed in the field. I worked from 5:00 am to 1:00pm … which to a kid in summer is some sort of torture, but I was proud of my day. It gave me war stories to tell my family at the end of the day. I was such a grown-up 🙂
Detasseling was my first job. Only I’m one of those people who refuses to quit. Yep, I detassled corn for 10 straight days with big highschool boys and the crustiest detassling managers you’ve ever seen. While I lived in a small town at the time, I definitely lean toward “city girl” – oh and I’m short. 5’2″ so when we got to the tall fields I had to jump to detassle every single corn stalk. Our managers ran a very tight ship and they would check every row – if you left a certain number of tassles, then they’d announce it to the entire crew and dock your pay. So I worked 10 hour days for 10 days straight until the crew was through their assigned fields. I made good money that year, but my mom was so worried about me. Every night I would come home and barely be awake through dinner (not attractive when you’re 16) and she would say “Honey, I love you. You don’t have to do this. You’ve been doing a great job and you can just stay home tomorrow.” I love my mom.
My next job that I took that summer was decorating cakes at a bakery around the corner from my house. I stood in front of a huge mixer and made frosting for a few weeks. ahhh, the sweet life! Sigh. I can still decorate cakes to this day, but don’t ask me to go near a field of corn!
i worked in a hardware store in our small town. i ran the register, stocked the shelves, mixed paint, cut keys… i learned so much in that year that has been valuable to me in life. everyone in the world should work for a year in a hardware store. unlike most retail stores, the majority of the people were regulars and they were so friendly and appreciative. 🙂
My first job was as a telemarketer when I was 17. I spent the entire summer trying to sell portrait package to people. I quit at the end of the summer not having sold a single picture. I still haven’t figured out why they just didn’t fire me. 🙂
My first job was as an inventory taker. I did it in the summers and had to meet in the parking lot of a restaurant at 3-4 AM and go in a big van with the other people to a store before they opened. Sometimes drug stores, sometimes grocery stores or price clubs etc. I had a little machine that hung across me and I had to punch in the prices an amounts of the items on each shelf of the aisles. There were teams of us and we eventually got to have favorite types of aisles to do. We all loved the aisles like where the spices were because they were easy to count. But the canned goods were a pain because they usually werne’t lined up so nicely. It actually paid well and since it started so early in the AM, I was able to get home in plently of time to still enjoy the entire summer day.
My first job was the summer I was 15 years old. I had to get a special work permit from the Juvenile Court because I was under 16. I worked in the Clerk’s Office at the Ciruit Court in Arlington, Virginia. Filing, typing (this was pre-pc, of course), and other general office work. Back in those days, minimum wage was $1.65 or so! Boy, did I ever work for that money.
I continued that job through the rest of high school and through college and part of graduate school. They loved me and I loved them, and they let me work whenever I had some vacation. In the last couple of years I worked there, they even gave me a week’s paid vacation in the summer. I loved those ladies and the highest compliment one paid me once was when her son got married. (I was 17 or 18 at the time.) She said that she loved her new daughter-in-law, but she wished her son would wait until I was old enough and marry me. 🙂
Ironically, this fits with what you said about “The Troublemaker” – I’m so glad she’s okay!
I’m happy to say I LOVED my first job! Besides babysitting, my first job was working at a veterinary hospital as a kennel cleaner, helping techs and receptionist. I was 13 and really thought I wanted to be a veterinarian when I grew up. However the more I experienced, the more I realized that I could not be the one to do surgery – not that it made me queasy, but because I didn’t want to be the one to cut them open – I just couldn’t do it. Since then I’ve worked on and off for various veterinary hospitals all over Colorado for about 10 years total until I realized the hard way that the pay wasn’t good, the benefits weren’t good and there was really no future unless you were an owner and/or the veterinarian. Now I’m in a boring industry and my true love is still the vet hospitals. Maybe when I win the lotto I can go back to it!
Vickie
My first job at 14 was mowing the lawn and cleaning the church by my house…..and let me tell ya…there was alot of lawn……I got paid $5…….we didn’t belong to this church at first (we are Polish and belonged to the Polish Church)…my father was an usher at this church, my oldest son was baptized there…we attend Christmas Eve Mass there every year…..and when my Dad passed away 17 years ago the parish priest at this church was at our sides – and at that time we weren’t parishoners…we have a beautiful stained glass window that we donated in memory of my Dad…so what goes around, comes around….that $5 an hour job was priceless…
Have a Great Trip……Blogless Diane
My first job was as a cashier at Water Country… New England’s Largest Waterpark. 🙂
It seems that everyone who grew up in the Northeast area has heard the poorly produced commercials. Either way, it was a great job at 16…working with everyone my own age, barefoot, and always getting my hours juggled so I was somehow working more then the alloted legal amount for a 16yr old for $4.00 an hour (in 1995)
My first job was at fifteen, at Dunkin Donuts. Anyone need a large regular? (said in a hardcore Boston accent) I could never get that donut smell out of my clothes. Or hair. Or car.
My first summer job was as a filer in the office where my mother worked. It was horrible. I hated filing, I STILL hate filing – and to make it worse, I’m actually really BAD at it! I have to sing the alphabet song in my head and I always put files back a few places from where they should actually be.
I don’t think I sucked too badly at that office, but it was only for a few weeks and it was awful.
I may have had the coooooolest first job ever. Before I went to college, I would help my dad with administrative stuff in his office, but I don’t remember getting paid, and it didn’t much matter. But, when I was in college, my first real paycheck, I got a job with some patients of my father who had an exotic animal center a few minutes away from where we lived. My real job there was administrative stuff and getting their website built. But, the fun part was being able to play with all of the animals. They had everything from a Nile Monitor Lizard (not so cuddly) to Fennec Foxes (very cuddly) and I even got to help them raise a baby Wallaby (extremely cuddly). Joeys need a lot of attention and can die if they are not constantly being held close to a mother, so when the owners were busy, they would give him to me to babysit and give him a bottle etc. while I typed stuff and did my job.
Oh they had bugs there too – like scorpions, tarantullas, and Madagascar hissing cockroaches. But I was able to stay far away from them.
I really can’t specify my first job but they are both related..
(when I wasn’t baby sitting)
1) I taught flute and clarinet to kids a few years younger than me while in jr high and high school (in high school I added bassoon).
2) I was a Jr Counselor at a music “camp” .. I was paid I think $500 for the summer and added in as many extras as I could (music librarian, running coach, etc)
As a young teenager I did the usual babysitting, berry picking, and helping out in my mother’s office where I learned requisite secretarial skills, but my first real job was the summer I got out of high school as an actuary in an insurance company in Seattle – a time to use all my math, as well. Earned $140 a month, as I recall.
My first job was picking and selling black-eyed peas and beans for the family farm. I did this every year from the time I was about 11 – 12 until I went to college. My dad had the silly idea that if you kept kids busy they didn’t have time to get into trouble.
Like Sheri’s corn, peas ripen in the hottest part of the summer – the hotter it gets the better the peas like it. They don’t bloom until the temperature hits 90. The plants only get about knee high so you have to do your picking bent over – my back hurts just thinking about it. Beans like to hide at the bottom of the plants so you have to lift every plant to find the beans. The plants are itchy so shorts are out. And as an added bonus, pea plants attract wasps and fire ants – if the wasps don’t sting you, the ants will. The most fun part of the pea picking adventure is when you step in an ant hill and have to strip there in the pea field to get the ants off your legs. I promise that if you get enough ants biting at the same time, you will not care who can sees your unmentionables.
I think I made about $8 a bushel for peas, $12 a bushel for beans because beans took twice as long to pick. I think the best price now is about $25 a bushel.
My first job? think orange /yellow and brown polyester, and about 5,000 degrees, during closing time clean up.
Yes- it’s true. I worked at “Hardees” the summer I turned 16. It’s where I learned hand’s on… NEVER to mix bleach with floor cleaner. (ammonia) (I was trying to cut the GREASE on the kitchen loor- faster so I could get out of there and get out of that UNIFORM!)
Lets’ just say: 2 cleaning products is not always better than one. Although- haveing a name tag with my name on it- was pretty cool;)
My first job was working for my dad. He’s a biologist, and when I was 12 (-ish) he “hired” me to write up cards for his personal library. Dad had a stack of reprint scientific articles about 3 feet high, and he wanted them all catalogued on index cards that he kept in a drawer. Ah, the years before technology. Anyway, I had to write the article title, author and journal information on a 3×5 card while sitting in a squashy chair in his musty university office. He paid me 5 cents a card, an amount I insist – to this very day – was a total exploitation of my child and daughter status.
My first real job was helping out at the county library. I was a regular fixture there for most of my youth. When I got to high school, they added some room to the building, and they needed help moving and sorting books. Since I knew everything there almost as well as the librarian did :), I got asked to help.
Working with books and getting paid for it. I was in heaven.
The summer after high school I tried to get my first job. I hadn’t been able to work previous summers because we spent them at a remote cabin in northern Manitoba. I couldn’t even get an interview at *McDonalds*… and they were hiring at the time! Sheesh. I ended up not working that summer either. However, the next summer I *was* able to get a job. I had gotten a scholarship from Manitoba Hydro (our power company), and they offer summer jobs first to their scholarship winners. I spent the summer doing tech support: installing software, and getting computers to do what they were supposed to do. I got paid $12.01/hour… not bad for my first job ever!
My very first job was working in the snack bar of the bowling alley where my family bowled. The job was great becasue I could actually get homework done once the rush was over. It wasn’t too hard for work and the customers knew me from around the lanes. Of course after closing time, they would turn on the lanes and let us bowl for free. This was the best perk of the job. Of course I think minium wage was like 3.10 an hour and come pay day I thought I was rich!
I’m another library girl! And like Ruth, it made me want to become a librarian – I just haven’t gotten there yet! (I’m a teacher… dreaming of getting my master’s in library science.)
I TAKE IT Back!!! My first job was when I was 6. I went to a neighbor’s and fed her cat and changed the litter. (see what happens after you hit submit? 😉 )
I was 15 when I got my first job. I was an assistant for the Easter Bunny at the mall. Mostly I got to try and make young kids smile, take pictures, put the pictures in the little paper frames, and run the cash register. It was exhausting, especially close to the holiday (I did the same thing around Christmas as one of Santa’s helpers). I did get to go to the smoothie stand I liked all the time, though.
One shift I actually got to BE the Easter Bunny. My mom decided to use that shift (it was only a couple hours – those costumes are HOT!) to bring the whole family for a picture with the Easter Bunny (I’m not sure when the last time we had done that was). My littlest sister was only a few months old at the time, so I remember being really nervous about holding her with my paws (though I never did come close to dropping anyone, so I’m not sure why I was worried)! So there’s a picture in my parents’ house of my four sisters with the Easter Bunny, where I appear missing, but I’m actually the bunny!
i was a dishwasher for my first job. the guy who had the job before me worked the morning of his first day, left for lunch and never came back. i stayed for about a year.
it was in a health food store that had a deli/sandwich cafe, and on the weekends the dishes would be piled 5ft high. i washed the enormous piles of dishes by hand, swept and mopped the kitchen – the baker’s side was particularly nasty because the dough would stick to the floor, bleached and cleaned all the cutting boards, took out the 100+ pounds of trash which usually dripped down my apron (yech) and sometimes had to clean the chicken rotisserie, which was my least favorite thing to do.
this is probably crazy, but i still like washing dishes by hand at home. i guess it’s my ocd temperament, but it makes me feel better to come home and clean up a pile of dishes, leaving the counter empty and the sink bright.
one thing i have to say though, is that after having worked in a couple of health food stores, the quality of the food they make in the cafes is no different than what you get at a regular restaurant. sysco provides bulk food for everyone it seems, so unless it says specifically “organic” or “free-range” or whatever, don’t be fooled into thinking it’s worth paying more for.
My first job was as a page at the library, I had that job all through high school. Did not make much money but it paid for my car insurance.
Glad the 4 footed child is feelling better. Hope that it wasn’t serious
Lucky me, I actually didn’t have my first job until I was a freshman in college. I was employed to play light classical piano pieces at one of the cafeterias at the student union during lunch time. At $20/hour and being a poor college student, I jumped at the chance. Bad news: taking the job meant I had to regularly skip my chemistry class (which, being a freshman, I was definitely not taking seriously enough to begin with). But, what the heck? $20/hour! Suffice it to say that my chemistry grades soon took even a deeper plunge, prompting a “if-you-don’t-raise-that-grade-soon-that-scholarship-will-be-revoked” letter from school to my parents which marked the end of my professional lunchtime pianist career!
I really hope I can catch this sneak up this time around!! I “need” some of that yarn from the Knittery!! Anyway, my first job was as a dishwasher at our local (small town) hospital. My mom works in the physical therapy department and found out that they needed assistance for a part-time dishwasher. Not the most exciting work, but I actually became quite good at the routine required. I started working there when I was 14 and worked there on and off through my sophomore year of college – by then it was only during summer breaks. And, I was even promoted to dietary assistant and weekend cook during summers. So, I acquired a strong work ethic at a young age and have worked hard ever since… : )
My first job was a cashier at Pic Pac grocery store, back in the dark ages when you had to manually enter the numbers using those key button things. No scanners back then! The eternal laughable story is what a dutiful employee I was when ringing up green onions. The sale ad said 4 for $1 so that is what I charged. 4 onions for $1. Of course it meant 4 *bundles* for $1. Lucky for me the older gentleman customer who pointed out my error was very kind and the store manager got a good laugh out of it too. I stayed at that job until I went to college. Hopefully improving. :>)