Your 1st paycheck?Follow

When I was 14 I worked as a drummer in local clubs - my 1st payed employment.

I worked Friday, Saturday & Sunday nights, and earned £40 a week.

I've just searched here, and found that £40 back then (1976) is equivalent to about £250 to £330 at 2007 value. That's about £30 an hour.

So I was earning about £300 a week while still at Jr High school. Never realised.

Of course, a combination of supporting my older brother through medical school and then paying my way through universities, (and booze and gurlies) meant that it all got spended, but sheesh.

After I became successful in music I got closer to 'the music business' and further away from music, so I walked. After that my earnings went back to mundane average levels.

What was your 1st paycheck?

I was 15 and worked as a chambermaid in a hotel. I think I made minimum wage--which in the mid-to late 80s was around 4.25 an hour--and I worked about 16 hours a week.

Before that, my parents owned a convenience store and I started to do stuff, like stack shelves, run errands and label products from the time I was six or seven years old. It was a good deal for my mom b/c she could pay me in candy and I enjoyed it because I spent time with my mom (who worked alot--she only had a half day off a week) and I enjoyed using the label maker.



Edited, Mar 2nd 2009 4:53pm by Annabella

I was paid $7.50 an hour, had to perform far outside my listed duties, and came home every day covered in glitter.

$5.15 an hour, 30+ a week the day I turned 16. Worked my *** off for 10 straight years and now I'm a well paid slacker. In fact, I took a 30 minute nap at my desk an hour ago.

I was a paperboy for the Orange County Register when I was 10. I have no idea what I got paid; I didn't have an hourly wage or anything.

My first job was as a night clerk at a 7-11, on Friday and Saturday nights. I was paid a shiny new nickel every fortnight. But you could live good for a month on a nickel in those days.

I'll be damned. Depending on the index you use, my 4.25 in 1986 dollars equals anywhere from 7.31 to 13.58 an hour. Probably most accurate would be the unskilled wage indicator at 8.41. My 16 hours would have netted me 134.00 a week or so. Even more so, I had two jobs my junior and senior year, probably putting me at around 30 hours a week (I maintained a straight A average and still participated in alot of activities, otherwise I wouldn't have been allowed to work that much) at 5.00 an hour--Pat's Pizza and Dairy Queen. It would be 9.32 in 2009 dollars (from 1988) and I would have made 279.30 a week. All went to funding my sojourns to the Old Port in Portland to go hang out with the cool kids at Green Mountain coffee and college application stuff--though my school kicked in some funding for that.
Also, helping my mom since she wasn't making that much more than I was at the time but was supporting the three of us.

Edited, Mar 2nd 2009 6:29pm by Annabella

See?

What I'm sayin'


What seemed like a pittance back in the day was actually often a cushy deal

My first was a part-time job at Mickey Dee's the summer I was 16. 16 hours a week at something like $4.50, I ended up spending about five years overall servicing the Fry-O-Lator. Most of those first checks went to, as I recall, movie rentals, Magic:The Gathering cards and towards my first car (at 18).

Concession stands at the Augusta National when I was 16. Minimum wage, but a beautiful view of the 13th hole that could not have a dollar value attached to it.

My first job was a week-long stint calling alumni of my high school and soliciting them for donations. I think it paid $5.25/hour, and we only did it for 3 hours each night. There's a good chance that I called Smash, and an even greater chance that he sarcastically blew me off and hung up, as most people did.

Edit: Actually, my real first job was in 2nd grade, when I learned how to make origami Chinese throwing stars. All the other kids in the class wanted one, so I charged them 35 cents per star, which happened to be as much as a carton of milk cost in the school cafeteria. I even put a sign on my desk at one point advertising them. My teacher was amused and let me keep the sign up for a week, but she had to shut my operation down when some parents called in complaining that their kids were spending all their milk money on not-so-aerodynamic paper throwing stars.

Edited, Mar 2nd 2009 8:18pm by kylen

My first paycheck was 23 pounds and 50new pence. I was a Thatcher YOP victim!

Worth 91 pounds and 23p now.

I hated Thatcher then, and I hate her even more now.

I made good since then tho.......

Edited, Mar 3rd 2009 2:31am by paulsol

I started working at an ice cream store when I was 14, for around $1.50/hour. It was a long time ago. Probably worked around 20 hours a week during the school year. More than that over the summer.