Yesterday as I went through the checkout lane at my local grocery store, Happy Foods, I asked the young cashier, who’d just started work there a few weeks earlier, whether this was her first job. When she answered in the affirmative, I said “Tomorrow you’re not going to do something you will do a year from tomorrow: submit a tax return.” I quickly polled the people working there or standing in line nearby. Everybody over 50 had started working at age 16 or earlier and nobody under 30 had started working until they were 18 or even later.
I filed my first tax return when I was 14 years old. My earnings weren’t much. Just a few hundred dollars although that was a lot more money then than it is now. My dad checked it—I think he wanted to make sure I wasn’t taking myself as a deduction. By the time I had graduated from high school every one of my peers that I knew had worked at a job. A few had worked full time all through high school.
I think that’s an enormous difference in life experience between then and now. Then jobs, at least entry level jobs, were plentiful and it was expected that most kids, not just those from working class families but those from middle class and even upper middle class families would work. Now, at least in part because there are adults trying to earn livings from the jobs that kids used to do part time, most kids don’t start working until later in life. I think that gives you a different perspective.
My dad, a rich kid by the standards of the times (essentially, the 1920s) was a batboy for the St. Louis Browns. Not exactly a job but it did have a certain level of responsibility. And he’d been delivering meals to the inmates in the city jail and the people who worked at City Hall since he was six. My mom worked from babyhood. I still have the first tattered dollar she ever earned and her first contract. She was billed as “Baby Colleen”.
That is an interesting ‘generational’ observation, regarding the start-times of when people had their first job. Does baby-sitting count, as I was 11 when first working that gig?
When I was a kid I couldn’t wait to earn my own money, as our family didn’t have much to hand off on extras. So, I was one to do any and all odd jobs, including the non-female ones, of mowing lawns to have some spending money.
I detasseled corn starting at about 14; that was about 4-6 weeks in the summer with 10 hour days; paid slightly more than minimum wage. That was one of the few significant jobs a kid could probably find before 16. (I think all of my partners that didn’t grow up on a farm detasseled corn) My understanding is that new corn hybrids and better machines are eliminating the need for row-walkers.
Technology, destroying jobs.
I think I was 11 or 12 when I first started babysitting. One of the people I babysat for was here. Unusual for a guy, I actually could babysit for infants. As the oldest with multiple siblings, I’d been changing diapers since I was six and was quite used to looking after very young children.
I wasn’t counting that. Never filed a return for that. Really didn’t earn enough doing it to do so.
As I think I’ve mentioned before, in my lawn-mowing-for-pay days I mowed about eight acres once a week for four or five months a year. That starts to add up.
That at least used to be fairly commonplace in your neck of the woods, PD. I think that both my nephew and niece who lived in Des Moines did that as kids. Their dad works for Pioneer Hybrids which may not be a coincidence.
I mowed about eight acres once a week for four or five months a year.
I was never in that league, Dave. Front and back laws were my specialty.
My 16th birthday was a landmark occasion for me, as I was able to get a driver’s license (although I had been driving my boyfriend’s truck from 15 on), and I also applied and got my first minimum wage, part time job working as an aide in a nursing home. I was the youngest (white) employee, and soon was considered kind of a surrogate grand daughter by many of the residents. I learned a lot there — especially how emotionally and physically neglected people were in these facilites. Often I would pick flowers from our yard and take it to those seemingly abandoned by their families. It was both sad and touching at the same time.
I was lucky, and resourceful. Started bussing tables in high school. Yech. First college break I answered an ad in a newspaper for a company called “DCI.” Turns out that was Durr-Clay Investments. They made stills. That is, they made distillation equipment to recover solvent from paint production for the paint industry. 6 man operation. At the end of the interview Jan Clay looked at me and said “I like your looks and your attitude, when can you start?” I said “tomorrow.”
I worked every summer, every spring break, every Christmas break yada yada until I graduated. I started turning bolts and screws on the stills assembly. Then the electronics. Then installing them in the field. By time I was graduating I was making as much as graduating engineers. I told Jan I was going to take a job as an engineer in a steel mill. His response was “you dicked me.” “We brought you along; think you could run this place one day. We taught you how to make things happen.”
I was hurt at the time, and questioned my thought process. He was right. And maybe I “dicked him.” But I was in want of a bigger world, and also an entrepreneur for life. I was off to Chicago and all that ensued. But thank you for life Jan Clay.
I have spoken about my professor Reinhardt Schuman here before. Put these two experiences together and you understand me.
Get your shit together, take your chances and go for it. And stop your bitching…….
I got a job when I was 11 that seems almost medieval now: I sold newspapers on a corner. I did that for a couple of years. I think I made a penny or two on every paper I sold (for 20 cents as I recall – highpoint: Sold a paper to Marlon Brando, once — tooled in tee shirt and Tbird). I also had a morning newspaper route, by bicycle. I got up and went to the distribution center at around 4:30 AM, got my newspapers, and off I went. Did an afternoon route for a while, too. Seems like another world. Worked in supermarkets bagging groceries later in my early teens. Then off the Marines.
I started work full time at 16 with a draft card as my fake ID. King of the doll aisle at Toys R Us.
I’d love to get my son to work a hard, nasty job, but the truth is he’s got too many prospects including working for me and his mother. I may have better luck on that with our daughter.
I never entirely trust a person who hasn’t performed some low-status job involving sweating, physical discomfort and lousy pay. I sit on panels sometimes with people who are doing my job three years after graduating from Brown or Swarthmore. Then I see a cater waiter or a janitor standing off to the side and feel that guy is more my “brother” than the writer beside me.
I’m curious how many of you are planning to retire from work at some point. My plan is to die with my final deadline just met. “Here’s the book. . . urgh. . . my chest.”
I may change my mind as inevitable illness and old age take a toll, but to me retirement and death are linked. Work is life and life is work.
I have no plans to retire. If my business dries up, I’ll do whatever I can find.
That may come earlier than I’d like. My ideal circumstances are billing at about the level I did in 2011. Last year my billing fell by about 30%. Unless things change soon this year it will fall by 30% again.
My kids are too young to work, but my loose impression from their peers’ older siblings is that a lot of them seem to be too busy with activities to work. My oldest likes to take classes at the zoo; looking ahead I noticed that when she’s of high school age the classes look a lot like working at the zoo (feeding and cleaning), but I will get to pay for the privilege.
I’m already retired.
I’m curious how many of you are planning to retire from work at some point. My plan is to die with my final deadline just met. “Here’s the book. . . urgh. . . my chest.â€
That was humorously written…
I’ve never thought about retirement. When you’re self-employed you just keep on doing what you’re doing if you enjoy doing it. My husband and I have never been ones to sit on our hands. Nor do we have any great desire to languish on the deck chairs of some cruise ship, during our supposed ‘golden years.’ However, eventually, when I have more time, I do want to join a hospice program in N. CA.
@michael, I have not given retirement much thought. My firm does not have a mandatory retirement policy, though the big ones do — usually around 70, but sometimes 65. I am one of those Gen-Xers who believe that because they follow the Boomers, their retirements are precarious, so I need to expect to slog it out as long as I’ve the opportunity. I suspect I can’t continue this type of job past 70.
Does that sound like it has possibilities for the plot of a Stephen King novel to anybody but me? I mean Michael as the sales associate in the toy aisle at Toys R Us.
“Then off the Marines.”
I have family who are career Army. And a friend who was a Navy Seal.
New found respect for sam. And that’s no bull.
.
My son probably wont work until he is 18. Right now he is focusing on his swimming…and we are good with that as he has a good shot a sports scholarship which would save us far more money than a crappy dead end job at 16 could bring in. And considering he trains 5-6 times a week now (HS swimming has more meets) and will train 7-8 times a week during the summer and he keeps very good grades I’m quite fine with it.
Worked grandparents farm during summers in early teens. Paper route at 14. (Just recently found the passbook I used for saving money from those days) Stock boy (Woolworth’s) 16. Navy 17. Additional part-time job while in Navy 19 or 20, cant remember. While I had planned to work forever, getting the sleep cycles back to normal after taking call is getting harder. I used to work 24 hours, sleep for an hour or two after coming home, then sleep a normal night and be good. Now it takes a couple of days to feel normal.
My daughter worked part-time in high school, but not my son. He is the academically gifted one so we didnt push him to work. Not sure that was the right thing to do.
Steve
I grew up on my Dad’s construction sites and, after my parents divorced, would help him on the weekends since he often had stuff to do on saturdays. I learned young that roofing is probably one of the hardest jobs there is. I also learned I didn’t want to follow in my Dad’s footsteps – I saw the frustrations he had dealing with subs, but looking back I realized I never got to see many good sides of the work. My first “real” job was around 16 for TJ Maxx. I ended up staying with them until I went to college three years later. One of the continuing benefits of that job is that I’m very good at folding towels and clothes, not to mention it was instrumental in losing my virginity.
I never really knew what I wanted to do though. Halfway through my second senior year in college I gave up and enlisted in the Navy. Probably the best decision of my life next to having the balls to pursue my wife for that first date.
Like PD, I’m a Gen-Xer who grew up with low expectations regarding retirement, so we’ll see when/if I retire.
Dave:
I did occasionally hang a doll. And I recall once that a buddy and I decided to improve the anatomical accuracy of some Barbie dolls. . .
Hey, I was making a buck sixty an hour and working 70 hour weeks during the Christmas rush. And wearing a candy-striped smock. I needed some kind of outlet.
“I’m curious how many of you are planning to retire from work at some point. My plan is to die with my final deadline just met. “Here’s the book. . . urgh. . . my chest.†”
Let’s hope that doesn’t happen. Anyway…..never, in the classical sense. I will just decide that the usual grind is no longer economical or satisfying, and then do what amounts to charity work bringing along young but inexperienced entrepreneurs. Illinois Institute of Technology, where I got my Masters in Engineering, and Chicago, my business school, both have programs to take fresh young minds filled with ideas, but clouded in mush, from A to Z. I can make a difference in those environments. I can help. That is what I will do. But perhaps, unfortunately, mostly in Arizona or Florida.
“And I recall once that a buddy and I decided to improve the anatomical accuracy of some Barbie dolls. . .”
Even inquiring minds don’t want to know………..