What was your 1st paid job (employment) in life

[OneMadMan]

I was thinking today about my 1st job, how much it paid, and how long I lasted doing it.. Which gave me this idea about a new topic.

So i thought short and sweet would be the way to go... in the following format:

• Your age and the Job description
• How much you earnt
• How long you lasted
• What job do you have now, like it? Hate it?

So without further adieu, I will pull the starter gun trigger....

13, Delivering letter box junk mail.
$10 per thousand catalogues.
Lasted about 6 months, then went to the deli on my brand spankers BMX I just bought from Kmart, and played Moon Cresta for half a day!!



Current job: Driving a 14 pallet tautliner truck delivering general freight.
I love it.


Cheers,

One Mad Man

[Trevor 57]

Your age and the Job description - 15y 11m, shark boat fishing in Bass Straight (1st 'full time' job after school, I don't count school jobs)
How much you earnt - can't remember, but it was good, depended on catch
How long you lasted - 2 x 10 day trips, I get horribly motion sick
What job do you have now, like it? Hate it? Retired - LOVE IT!!!!!!!

The job after that disaster was as a roof tiler labourer, 1973, and paid $35 per week

[simon varley]

14 years old. School holiday building laborer. Dad was in the business so a mate took me on. The rest of the crew must have been ****ing themselves how weak and crap I was. Can't remember the rates, but I do remember it was pretty good.

went to uni, got a Mech Eng degree. Spent 10 years in aerospace. 25 plus years working for Ford. Took a VSP and early retirement at 58 last May

[prydey]

17 yrs old. Assistant in a printing factory. $4.70/hr

30yrs later I'm still there. Only job I've ever had. Did my apprenticeship and became a qualified printer. Now print supervisor.

[lra]

About 14, Checkout boy at local grocery store / supermarket, packing customers purchases into a box for them, and carrying it to their cars on Saturday mornings.
Customer service in the good ole daze.

Paid maybe 10/- (ten shillings, forgotten ) enough to go 'the pictures' and have 1/- worth of chips and a milkshake at interval.

Can't remember how long I lasted, fair while.
First real job > Bank Johnny for 12 months, then RAAF.

Retired > do shopping, mow lawn, keep yard tidy, polish cars, complain about the weather, make plans for tomorrow.

[Interceptor]

14, labourer at a commercial fower centre, the kind that ssupplies bunches of flowers to supermarkets, it had its ups & downs, cant remember what it paid, I think £5.68/hr, lasted a couple of years till we moved back to Australia
Now? Contract maintenance & sercicing, mostly to a rental fleet but whatever someone wants to pay me to do in the automotive world is fine by me. Dont mnd it, set my own hours, but the airconditioning could be better.

[ford71V8]

Straight from Yr12 into Elec Apprenticeship.
So crappy apprentice wage...maybe $110 a week?
Hated that horrible itchy shit in roofspaces, so beelined into defence. Did an Industrial design Adv Dip and enjoyed working in R&D for couple of decades. Made another fork in the road and now Drafting fulltime in AV industry.
I wonder whats next?
Regular afternoon beers on the porch sounds good.

[Itsme]

1972 aged 16, working school holidays as a Labourer packing 60kg's meat packages in refrigerated containers at BJ Ahearnes in Northcote Melbourne, working 12 hour days, pay packet for week was $116 or more if working o/t.
It was very good money since I was earning more than my five older brothers who were in the trades, I think the average wage for adults was about $70 per week.
It was hard yakka for that money, following year electrical apprenticeship 1st year $16, omg.

PS: have had three career changes in my working life, that is a story another day.

[whitelion65]

Paper run; Sunday papers $5
Then wrapping and organising; Sat and Sun, $10.
Then add on community paper delivery; maybe another 6 or 7$
Then clothing retail @ around $14
Then NSW Public Sector, whilst doing Uni; 1985 started on $11,423
Wow!
Then meandered on through science and back to the public sector.
Recently gardening, and back to PS again…
Bring on retirement!

[Tonz]

age 8 getting paid 2 shillings mowing auntys lawn, at 14 sold my business over 60 lawns on my books, 2 push mowers some old 2 stroke mower and 2 trailers that hooked behind push bikes plus 6x4 trailer that dad would park in street X while my staff mowed the whole street and took away the clippings
age 11 started converting grass clippings and vegie waste from green grocer into compost and selling bags @5 shillings.
Turned 15 started in a corner grocery store, wage ??, worked my way up through 4 shops training to be manager.
1975 started as assist manager of new supermarket, took off for Australia late '76 after getting bosses wife preggie.

Various jobs in Aus doing everything from courier deliveries, fruit picking etc etc
Last 3 jobs/businesses .... Hannaford grain cleaning, owner pet crematorium, camp manager

retirement is good, never get anything done but theres always tomorrow.

[LG17]

The canteen at the Exhibition Speedway every Sat night probably 1959/1960.
Absolutely no idea of money (way too long ago) and I enjoyed it.

[ford71V8]

Originally Posted by Tonz

......., took off for Australia late '76 after getting bosses wife preggie..

Haha, Pardon?!

And did she come with? 😄

[Tonz]

I was used as a toy but hey free shag ging then things went pear shaped.

[ford71V8]

Yeah thats fairly Pearshaped

[EBSXR6]

17yrs 3 months.
Jan 1979 First year Apprentice Photo Engraver and Platemaker.
Net base was $55 per week but after a few weeks got some overtime.
Evolved with Technology, worked for a few employers over the years finished up last year.

[kcodezd]

Fifteen and a half earning a buck thirty in the hand for 40 hours a week.
Straightening wire and then bending it again. Worked for a mob that made baskets etc out of wire. Turned to glass processing 3 and half years later and been there ever since.

[Captain Stubing]

Started off in a trailer hire mob... working out why their car connections didn't work with the trailer at age 17. Pizza joints wouldn't accept me as a delivery driver.
Did that on my weekends while at High School, then got drafted into the police academy.

Almost 12 months of domestic crap and such, then got into the Radio Electronic Branch. Using my imagination to wire up motorbike helmets, undercover cars, new car fit outs.
Then I went west to learn about country life in Longreach for a few years.

I spent 5 years driving taxis, finish work Friday at 4pm, pick up a taxi to drive till 4am, then do the same on Saturday. It helped with Child Support.

Since then the bulk of my 40 year career is in Crime Scene Examination. I'm now in charge of a Crime Scene Facility, and proud of my job and what we achieve. I even got a 7 day junket to Adelaide to use my skills in Operation Ironside in Adelaide (Google that!)... they have some funny suburb names, and it was weird to receive cash in an envelope from the AFP.
I've been fairly guarded about my occupation, but it's not something I want to bow away from, and I have no reason to hide from. I have retirement planned at 315 days away, at age 59, and I don't do tickets.

[Crazy Dazz]

Thirteen years old, selling "Daily News" newspapers, for 2.5 cents each

[smoo]

17 years old 2005 car groomer after school and on Saturdays at the Holden dealer. $12/hr.

18 years old first full time job joined the Navy Jan 2006. Basic training was $23k per year.
Come out of 14 weeks basic about $3k richer. A lot of coin for an 18 year old.

Some guys went out and financed turbo Jap cars straight away.
I got a Falcon instead. My old man’s mate ran cabs and the first of his AUs were coming up to their age limit of 7 years. So the old man bought 3 off him, one for me, himself and his sister. $3k each. Bargains.

[Citroënbender]

Some good tales here! I worked as a liquor storehand, before OH&S really existed. Back when many trucks were hand loaded with kegs and cartons and you rode a pallet on the fork to get fancy stuff from three levels up on the racks. $200/wk-ish if you did some OT.

Currently workshop roustabout, a job that blends adult childcare and disaster management into one. With a couple of garden/landscaping side gigs.

[b0son]

First proper job was straight out of uni, research scientist for around $47k in early 2000's. Stuck with that for around 3 years before realising it was a mug's game. Permanent positions were basically non-existent and had to grovel for funding every other year. I reckon if students were made aware of the realities of being a professional scientist in Aus, the pool of cheap labour would dry up quicker than a nana's clunge.

[PepeLePew]

First job casual $1.40 an hour a general do it all on a rice/sheep farm in Coleambally in early 80's, now sporting a fat dormant hydatid cyst in later life not sure if from my time there. Theres a value add.

First full time trainee shipping agent in Hedland / Dampier /Karratha bout 18 months 12K a year, then Adelaide into IT at 16.5K a year and haven't left while the pay packet has swollen somewhat. Sometime i wish i'd had more sense of adventure. IT is boring while suitably challenging to keep my neurons pumping.

[uranium_death]

Finished school at 19.
Bumb labourer at a cabinet business.
$9.29 per hour
Was only there to fill in time before I started Uni. I didn't finish Uni (4.5 years spent).
Went to TAFE and just did business/admin, as I had no idea what to do with myself.
I still don't know what to do with myself.

2010, started work for a coffee business - customer service to start. Eventually became the tech support guy and freight guy.

Got made redundant last year. Was great, because the small business was eaten up by a multinational, and the corporate-****sucking really became quite apparent. I am not one of those people, and I didn't like the people around me much anymore. All of the people I worked with and cared about had moved on. I was the last one remaining from the "old days". I had invested too much time to relinquish that payout. It came last year - and I was 10 days from walking out anyway as I was not happy. Paid poorly despite being the only person that knew how our machines worked. I never had formal training. I learned it myself and asked questions of those who knew better. A lot of questions regarding certain manager's integrity doesn't help.

Now in service co-ordination in another small business, managing a small group of tradies in filling their day productively, and dealing with incoming things. Lots of paperwork, but it keeps me going. The owners are bloody good people. That's why I'm here and the main reason why I'll stay.

I don't love work, or life, but I push on.

[DFB FGXR6]

I'm sure most will already know this, but my first employment came from cutting grass on weekends. I'm extremely grateful that my parents bought me tools for my birthday's, a lawn mower for my 15th and a line trimmer the following year. I then worked off the purchase of a Stihl leaf blower at my fathers factory, cleaning the carpark and mowing the lawns out front.

The Ryobi trimmer is long gone, but I still have the mower and the blower.



After finishing high school at the end of 2004, I then went into part time study in 2005, Certificate III in ornamental horticulture. In 2006, I followed with Cert IV and would have continued to Diploma, but they couldn't get the numbers to run the coarse and I didn't want to go out of town for that. Over 2004/2005, I was stringing together employment by building up my gardening business and via a couple of days per week at the nursery I did work experience with as part of the Cert II Horticulture coarse I completed while still at high school.

In early 2005, I landed a job maintaining the lawns of three large properties owned by the same family, one of the richest in the country, you have probably eaten fast food at one of their chain stores. This was a bit of a baptism of fire as I was suddenly dealing with a very different type of customer and meant learning on the fly bill out and present myself. I worked for them until the end of 2020. The patriarch of the family drove me insane during the Covid period with unrealistic demands and ignorance to what I was actually doing for them, I just couldn't take it anymore.

At the nursery, I got more and more hours. Along with my business, I was working 6-days a week, and often up working 15 - 20 days in a row. Dropping the client above was a reprieve to a more balanced working life. However, after 20 years with the nursery, the only employment outside of what I created for myself, I decided I needed a change and handed my notice. In the end, I just couldn't deal with the stress any longer.

[T3rminator]

Age 8. Contractor - washing the dishes and putting the rubbish out each night. 50c a week.

Now in the tech risk and security industry earning slightly more.

[rare ss]

15yr old, Brick paving Labourer $40 cash a day, did that till I was 18 or so was earning $150 a day in the end, retired to get an apprenticeship earning $5.25 an hr (1998)

Having the Plant Mechanic trade is great, I've been earning 6 figures since Tradesman, been off the tools in various office roles for 15 plus years but still have the tools in the shed as my insurance policy

[jimbo51]

14 years old delivering newspapers weekday and Saturday evenings – remembering the timber frame and the hessian pannier bags between your legs. Hard to pedal on Saturday as the evening Herald was huge. Don’t recall the pay but the odd pilfered magazine was a bonus.

Then grocery boy like Ira on Saturday mornings. I’m still pedantic about packing the groceries as efficiently as possible when I shop.

Many casual jobs followed, intermingled with tertiary studies but generally involving delivery driving in utes.

Finally the first full time job – engineering department at Kenworth Bayswater in 1974. Started on $5000 pa and left 3 years later on $10,300 to go driving interstate – in KW’s of course. After another 3 years and swapped the truck for a desk.

Continued in various aspects of road transport ever since – admin, IT, logistics analysis . Been transitioning to retirement since 2007 and almost there.

[Rallye Sport]

First job at 13 was selling pies at the footy. Best thing I could have done at that age, lost my inhibitions spruiking and yelling "Hot pies! Bovells pies!' toughened me up dealing with drunk idiots and wisened me up dealing with the scammers.
Pay was free entry to the game, twenty bucks cash and all the pies I could eat. In the last quarter when no one was buying I'd bribe the attendant in the third tier stand with a pie or two and watch the end of the game from the best seats in the ground.

Started an apprenticeship in Horticulture at 15, the trade has been good to me, it helped me travel the country picking up farm work along the way. Settled down working in fine gardens, went back and studied Turf management, Land management and Plant pathology, moved to Sports turf, golf, cricket and tennis.
After a body breakdown and subsequent rehab and recovery last year I've landed in Biosecurity. Its given me a new lease on my working life and I'm once again looking forward to going to work every day.

[Syndrome]

Does getting paid by your father for doing chores count?

Delivering the Dandenong Journal.

[prktkljokr]

In the 80's aged 15 selling newspapers for Direct street sales in Perth ( The actual newspaper printer ), on a good week I could make more than my Father, many weeks I made $300 doing the Daily News during the week and Weekend News on the Saturday, bought a bike with my first weeks earnings $116 and had change left over .

They used to have 3 editions with varying rates of what you made, the paper was .25c

1st edition you made .09c, the mid day edition you made .12c and the late edition you made the whole .25c, tips used to be great, the guys in the pub used to give you a $2 note for a paper, sold a hell of a lot of papers over the 2 years I did it.

Became a panel beater at my fathers panel shop (long gone), now parts manager at a large panel shop.