Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 40 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
My First Job . . .
I enjoyed Donald Trump’s trolling Kamala Harris by working a brief stint at a McDonald’s restaurant to challenge her claim that she once worked at a McDonald’s franchise – a claim that only recently appeared on her resume, and a claim that she will not substantiate.
The topic of first jobs has probably come up here at Ricochet before, but Donald Trump’s stint at a McDonald’s provides a fun launching point for readdressing the topic.
Many Americans began their working lives at fast-food restaurants or in similar low-wage, low-skill jobs. Some years ago I heard a claim that one in ten American workers had worked at a McDonald’s, often as their first paid job.
My first paid job was in fast food, but not McDonald’s. It was during my first year of college, at a Tastee-Freeze franchise in Orange County, California. The establishment served soft-serve ice cream and an assortment of hot fast-food and had only outdoor seating. Parents of a church friend (a friend with whom I still get together on occasion, so he can vouch for the fact that I did work there) owned it, so many of the employees were youth from our church. My friend’s mother ran the Tastee-Feeze while his father ran their stand-alone cafeteria-style restaurant across the street. Yes, I can tell you exactly where it was and I can pinpoint the exact location on Google Maps. The building still stands, though new owners have changed the restaurant format and the name.
In the Tastee-Freeze, when I was there in 1974, the staff girls tended to work the ice cream side, and the staff guys (like me) worked the cooked fast-food side. (In hindsight, I have suspicions that this was in part an effort to reduce on-premise hanky-panky among the youthful staff by keeping the boys and girls mostly apart.) Each side (ice cream and fast food) had its own ordering window. On the fast-food side, we had a wider menu than a typical McDonald’s of the day. We had a griddle for cooking hamburger patties and for warming pastrami portions (and toasting buns), and a deep-fat frier for onion rings, French fries, fish sticks, and other items.
Side note – when I did work the ice cream side, my least favorite order was a banana split. A banana split took a long time because it required a lot of labor – peel and cut the banana, arrange the banana halves in the dish, deposit the three piles of ice cream in the split banana, scoop three different toppings on the ice cream piles, apply the nut and whipped cream toppings, and then crown each pile of topped ice cream with a maraschino cherry. A real pain to assemble.
As I was completing law school and looking for a job as an attorney I included that Tastee-Freeze job on my resume. Several people told me I should not do so, since the job did not pertain directly to the law career I wanted. But, I found that entry prompted a number of interesting “ice breaker” conversations with the senior hiring partners at large law firms who were interviewing me. They often recalled their first job flipping burgers or washing dishes or performing some other low-skill labor.
By the time I retired from the paid labor force in 2018 as a senior attorney, I too had risen to a position of economic power and success. I was on the executive payroll of a Fortune 200 company (complete with bonuses, deferred compensation, stock options, etc. totaling well into six figures). I controlled a departmental budget of tens of millions of dollars per year. But it all began forty-five years earlier with cooking burgers and fries, mopping floors, and emptying trash at a fast-food establishment. Learning that there were jobs to do, even if I did not “feel like it,” that I needed to be there at a particular time because there were customers who expected someone to be present to prepare their food, that there were sometimes hidden benefits in the most distasteful jobs (the owner let me keep a $20 bill that remained unclaimed several days after I found it while tidying up around the outside trash dumpster), that customers who were sometimes difficult and maybe even unreasonable still needed to be dealt with as they paid the bills, that cash flow, inventory, and waste had to be managed, that standards of cleanliness and consistency of product preparation and service needed to be maintained, and so forth.
Few of us stay in such fast-food or other “minimum wage” jobs for long, as we learn a lot during those stints at low-wage labor that we parlay into “bigger and better” work. Minimum wage jobs are often a critical and personally valuable first step into the world of paid labor.
Let’s hear it for those “first jobs”!
Published in Culture
A law colleague of mine got his start in the paid labor force literally digging ditches with a hand shovel for a utilities company. He said he did have to reassure one of his high school teachers who saw him digging that he had not given up on school but was in fact earning money to pay for college.
I had a paper route in junior high and high school and also mowed lawns with my brother. My first paycheck job was two summers at Pizza Hut during college.
Similar to Adam Carolla, as expressed in his book title “Not Taco Bell Material”, I also applied at Wal Mart and a few other places that summer before Pizza Hut took a chance on me. Therefore, I’m not Wal Mart material.
I enjoyed Yer post, Tabby.
Wow. I’m gonna hafta sit down for a sec.
The summer after I turned 16 I started my first paid job working at the same JC Penney that my dad had worked at when he met my mom and then when I was born (although he had long moved on). I don’t know whether dad’s influence with former co-workers helped me get the job, but it surely didn’t hurt it as there were still plenty of long timers around who remembered him from his time working in the auto center and then as a customer.
I worked in the men’s clothing are and generally enjoyed the job. At that time associates like me were expected to not only ring up the customers, but to know the products we had, what was available in the catalog, have some idea of what folks could find in other departments, but also to size and fit folks, mark clothes for alterations, and keep the area tidy and well stocked. For a shy guy like myself it forced me to not only handle the folks that came to me, but go seek out customers to see if I could be helpful. I still look back on it with some fondness since I could have the pride of knowing our offerings and make knowledgeable suggestions to help out our customers. It wasn’t the highest paying job I could’ve had in high-school, but it was out of the weather and in a comfortable place, with good co-workers, and with usually pretty good customers not far from where I lived.
Same here, from age 11 to 16. It was in the country, so a lot of riding around unpaved roads on my bike with the papers in the baskets on the back wheel. But Sunday was the worst, the papers were too heavy for the bike, so I had to walk with one of those newspaper bags over my shoulder and had to get it done real early in time for Sunday Mass.
One problem was collecting each week from some customers who obviously didn’t have a lot of money. I still remember the cost — $.57 a week, 7 cents Mon-Sat and 15 cents Sunday.
I made $4.20 each week and it went right into a savings account at my dad’s credit union.
Hi school flipping burgers at the pool.
Jr. Hi school, paper routes (2), about $20/week
Elementary school lawn mowing (we had a power mower!)
At age 16 / High School my first job was at Sears – started in the infants department (sales), but was moved to switchboard operator, overs & shorts (Departmental cash register overages or shortages – I had to track them down. Found one employee who was stealing from the til, most were just mistakes.), and then evening personnel office clerk. Once I turned 18, I was able to get my own Sears credit card because I was still working there. When I married at age 19 they refused to add my husband to the account because he was still in school (although he had a part time job), and I had quit because we moved. I didn’t shop at a Sears store for 30 years after that.
I started out around age 9 or so, working for my Dad in the family-owned grocery store, where my initial duties were sorting the beer and pop bottles (returned for their deposits) into the respective brand cases for pickup by the distributors.
Later, he added to my duties the afternoon chore of counting out and setting in sorted piles the newspapers that the local paperboys would be delivering that afternoon. As I grew older, I started marking prices, stocking shelves, and boxing/bagging groceries for shoppers. I think I had started out at 5 cents an hour, got a raise to 10 cents.
By high school, I was paid $2/hour but had to save half. My Dad explained my wages from the store were a write-off for the business so it helped him out by paying me more than the other boys, coupled with the required savings for school expenses. The summer before I started college, I worked a 30-hour week, he paid me $4/hr., and I had to save most of it for college expenses, as I did not qualify for any financial aid. Had plenty of spending money, though.
After my first year of college, I yearned to work elsewhere, and so took a job as a bench carpenter at a place making pre-fab cedar sheds and small outbuildings. Hard work, long days, great experience. Minimum wage job paid $1.70/hr. I learned a lot! Including, I did not want to do blue collar work like this fulltime for a career. But it set me up for later years when, as a homeowner, I had the skills to perform a fair amount of our own maintenance and repairs, and even enjoy it.
When I was in seventh grade my dad set up a business for me and my older brother: _____Bros. Sign Co. We manufactured name badges, desk name plates, and other small indoor signs using a New Hermes pantograph machine in our basement. We expanded and moved to a storefront downtown and I worked full time there the year after high school graduation. I was the only employee and made $40 per week. Free room and board, though.
Paper route from age 11 to 14, I think. The first real job was lifeguard. Got to scrub the toilets, but that wasn’t as bad as dealing with country club moms who think their barely-able-to-swim six year-old should be allowed to go off the diving board. I tell you, though, that little girl worked so hard to finish her 50m swim to qualify, I let her do it, and spent every second she was in that diving well on my toes. It all worked out.
We didn’t have umbrellas for the guard chair, and I happened to have about a four foot wide sombrero. It added a little flavor to the pool environment, and parents took photos of their kids with me. Good fun. Probably could have thrown that thing as a lifesaving device. I believe my rate was $3.65/hr in 1990. Girlfriend was leaving for college and I needed money to cover the long distance charges. Made a little more subbing at the other country club toward the end of the season.
Excellent post, FST. We are the sum of our experiences, IF we choose to learn from them.
Wasn’t my first job, but in college I worked at an up-scale deli in NW DC. People could order some very weird stuff. But there was only one I refused to make. Someone ordered:
bratwurst and cream cheese on French bread with ketchup.
I couldn’t do it. It’s almost 50 years now and it still gives me the shivers.
I tried a solo law practice when our daughter was in middle school. Sometimes I’d bring her to the office for some tasks (such as large copying jobs). She kept asking how much I was going to pay her. I responded that she got to sleep in her own room under the roof in our house and to eat the dinner her mother cooked. :-)
The solo law practice was a business failure, and I abandoned it after three years, but I did learn a lot about running a business that became valuable in my subsequent job.
I was impressed that during this time our son (who was then in elementary school) learned a surprising amount about business by osmosis, as I kept having to explain to him why we couldn’t do things he wanted or get stuff he wanted because 1) I hadn’t found enough work to stay busy and generate revenue, or 2) I had done work but hadn’t finished the project so I couldn’t bill it to the client yet, or 3) I had billed for the work but the client hadn’t paid yet, or 4) I was having trouble collecting money due from a client. By the time he got to high school he was far more familiar with economic reality than were any of his classmates.
Between 12 and 14 years of age I did anything people were willing to pay me to do. The meager allowance our parents could afford didn’t go far. I usually did yard work and a short stint of several days helping a local farmer bail hay and load it into his barn where I learned to drive a tractor. The summer before my freshman year my older brother was entering his senior year. He had a car, a girlfriend and a good paying hourly job in a machine shop behind our house. He introduced me to two wealthy people who lived in local lake homes that he’d previously done yardwork for, which is how many of us young guys got summer work. That was my source of income during the summer of 68.
The fall of my freshman year, a high school friend got me in at the fiberglass insulation plant his dad worked at in a nearby small town. The plant was notorious for being smelly and nowhere near OSHA compliant. I’m certain it was illegal for me and several of us 14 year old boys to work there, but money was money we worked around 15 – 18 hours a week in the evening packing fiberglass insulation into large bags and loading them onto a semi-trailer. It was dirty, and smelly. There was no safety gear. I’d arrive home late in the evening and my mother made me come into the back door and go directly into the basement to take off my work clothes and wash them in a separate load in the washer while I showered in our basement because I smelled of sulfur.
I turned 15 in early 1969, and shortly after landed a job working legally in one of the two grocery stores in town. Every high school kid working there, me included, had an older sibling who’d worked there previously. Work ethic ran strong along family lines. I worked there till just before high school graduation. Among my siblings and the kids I grew up with, having a job was just something you did. If you still lived at home after high school graduation, you started paying a portion of your earnings to your parents as room and board. I’d never heard the term work ethic back then, but it was instilled in us early.
Worth the repeat.
The availability of legitimate work opportunities for kids in their early teens until adulthood has shrunk, because of all the ridiculous minor-employment reg’s coupled with minimum wage policies. Kids are not worth the minimum wage until they have acquired some experience, and have learned good habits, like showing up on time, properly attired, and ready to serve the business’ customers. This is an area ripe for change.
High school. I was the person at the golf driving range who drove the Jeep that collected the balls and was also the prime target. Because of the topography of the place, we also had to occasionally get out of the Jeep wearing helmets, and that made us an even bigger target. Not complaining, it was a fantastic experience at age 19.
At age 16, I got my first job wiping hubcaps dry at Jet Car Wash in Raleigh . . .
Unfortunately the political winds seem to be pushing for greater regulation and an ever-higher minimum wage that will restrict first rung job opportunities even further.
got mine at 15 – working at a cemetery – mainly lawncare/landscaping
I was doing an observation in a high school class a few years ago. They had a local businessman as a guest speaker. He said there were two things they look for in new employees. 1. Can you show up on time? 2. Can you show up sober?
Pretty low bar these days.
It used to be possible to cover a semester of college tuition or more with a summer job. Slots largely designed for young people seemed like part of the economic firmament. Minimum wage not keeping up? Changes in employment law or the culture?
On the MD Eastern shore, young people or unemployed adults or those needing a second-income could go to work in the big chicken processing facilities (e.g.,Perdue). I am told that Central American migrants have taken all those jobs–they have no upward mobility or opportunity to leave so unlike the locals who may come and go, they are permanent which the employers like. And they likely cost less. I continue to be surprised that black politicians don’t focus more on the disappearance of entry-level jobs as small businesses are driven out of the cities and migrants grab many of the remaining slots. The culture of work is vital.
Paper route aged 12-15. Age 16, unloading trucks and delivering supplies from the storeroom of a local hospital. Got me interested in medicine, so it was an important job for me.
You could say my first job was picking prunes, but I only lasted a day, so let’s move on.
So my first real, lasting job, was church janitor at the Wikiup Evangelical Free Church. I had to sweep, vacuum, and set up the chairs for Sunday worship. There were always some that complained about the job I did, because, well, I was a 15-year-old doing my first job. But I was a whole lot cheaper than a janitorial service. (I did this job for I believe four years. At 16, I also worked at McDonalds.)
Love this about triggering memories from the senior partners.
My first job was during the vacations from boarding school in England when I worked backstage in the NAAFI of our British Army base in Minden in West Germany unloading trucks, stocking shelves, sweeping up, etc. The Navy, Army, and Air Force Institutes is the British equivalent of the US’s Army & Air Force Exchange Service that runs PXs. Menial work with rare contact with customers but an opportunity to get out of the house, work, and at the end of the day have a beer (minimum age for that beverage was 16, I think) and play pinball with my friend Simon who died young. Good times.
I had my first job at 15, during the summer, as a counter girl at a dry cleaning shop. It meant handling cash, friendliness to customer and some tasks that went with the business. I was especially proud that they trusted me enough to let me close up the store in the evening.
My first job doesn’t exist anymore – I worked at Musicland, a mall music retailer. When I started at 16, we had LPs, cassettes, and these new-fangled CDs which were $30 each! We thought our CD customers were the wealthy elite – and I guess they were at the time. I worked there through high school and my first year of college. It was a super cool mall job and, out of the scenes of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, I met and dated the guy who worked at the sporting goods store across the courtyard from me. To this day, I have an encyclopedic knowledge of the popular music from those years. (You definitely want me on your team for 80s music triva!) Teenagers from all over the city would congregate at the store so it was very social job. I got to hear all the new releases before they were released and we would get the first notice of acts coming to town. I earned a whopping $3.35 an hour. I worked through 3 different manager regimes: the first one was good and she got promoted to corporate; the second got fired for doing lines of cocaine in the bathroom on the regular and the third got fired for stealing inventory and re-selling it at 100% personal profit. I learned that “adults” didn’t always act that way and that the music business was..well…a business – that preyed on consumers buying into their cool factor by association, but it was really nothing but $$$ to them.
That doesn’t just sound like a job–but an adventure!
Child labor on a detasseling crew (1980?). I want to say it was $2.85/hr…but that doesn’t line up with the minimum wage steps I see in my searches. (Maybe news of such things hadn’t reached rural Nebraska yet. Pony Express and all…)
Local small town kids ranging from 12 to 18 were dropped off in front of the courthouse before 5:30 am with a sack lunch, loaded on a bus, and working in the wet, cold field by 6:00. It then turned very hot and humid by about 10:00. A couple of cups of water from a community cooler/dispenser (no water bottles back then…just paper cups/cones) kept us alive until midafternoon. (On good days they mixed Gatorade powder in the water…so special.) Then dropped off back at the courthouse. (Note: Miles from the nearest bathroom all day long.)
Cannot image such a thing in these new, improved, modern days.
I remember from my high school friends that being entrusted with closing was a big deal – a real sign that the owner or manager trusted the employee.
I also remember a friend (a girl) who even while still in high school demonstrated such competence that she was made an assistant manager at the McDonald’s at which she worked. She told me the most stressful part of the job was taking the money from the lunch rush (all cash in those days) the two blocks to the bank for deposit.