Paper route at 10 years old until I was 14 or so. I bought a PS2 and my first computer with that money.

Then I worked part time at a pizza joint until I was 19, just as a cook. I sometimes did opening shifts on weekends but not often. By Grade 11 / 17 years old I only attended high school until lunch break for my last two years there (I exploited a few specific classes, had 52 out of 100 credits in my first year alone) and then started work by noon and working until 7pm. A lot of my friends worked there too so they’d do 4pm - 7pm after school, just the supper rush.

I worked at an amusement park running a few different rides. Paid alright for the late 90s, but could work outrageous hours if you wanted. Physical and simple work in the hot midwestern humidity. Met a boy with the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen, and the rest is history.

Besides the obvious (for girls) babysitting to start with, my first job was working as a carhop one summer but it didn’t last long because I was a year younger than legal, I think you had to be 14 and I was 13. Which they obviously must have known, so apparently they got called out on it and we had to quit. One summer I worked at an industrial-scale chicken/egg farm, which was horrible. Then I worked at a fast food fish place throughout high school, both cooking and serving, until 17 when I graduated. Then I moved away from home and worked in a laundry. Then at 19 I got an office job.

I had a paper route. I hated it. They kept assigning me random houses that were several miles outside my zone.

I was a teenager back in the 80’s.

My very first job was a paper route and I absolutely hated it.

Second job was at a nursery/garden center, that also had a pool center. This job I didn’t mind so much. I learned a lot about landscaping and plants in general. I actually became knowledgeable enough that at the age of 17 I designed several landscapes, even one large job that was the HQ for a Japanese car company. Fast forward 20 years and my wife and I buy a house and my wife has always dreamed of having a yard with tons of landscaping. So I dusted off my skills and built multiple beds across our property. Today we have a yard that is mostly very mature beds which bloom continuously throughout the growing season.

I counted stuff. Worked in a paper products warehouse doing daily inventory counts. It was kind of awesome since I got to walk around, BS with some friends that had other jobs in the warehouse, and developed boss-level skills with the number pad that I still apply today. After working the summer there, I was pretty glad my first couple applications in food service got rejected.

every teenager should work in the fields (agriculture) at least once. i did picking fruit. 10/10 would recommend. touch grass, vibe with plants

Babysitting, McDonalds, collectibile card store, florist, night club, painter.

• bailing hay/straw in the summer for a neighbor from
• working at a fast food place
• working in retail at a farm store
• working at a movie theater

All before I turned 18 starting at 13. At first for the money, then to be out of a tough home situation as much as possible.

Waitress at 14 in my family’s restaurant. Worked for dry cleaners at 17.

I started working as a cook at 14

I walked to the restaurant close to my house, told the first person I saw “I want a job, but I don’t want to work with people”. They stuck me in the kitchen and taught me everything. Did that for 14 years.

Lied about my age to work in a grocery store, which was funny as they gave me keys to an Audi stick-shift and told me to do donut runs every morning. I didn’t even have a license. I did learn fast and mastered a stick, as well as saw my manager fuck my classmates.

I worked at a truck wash. I would wash tractor trailers with a power washer, scrub the the tractors with a regular old wash mitt for a car and wash trailers with a brush of similar size as at a coin op car wash except with a handle l long enough to reach the top of the trailer while standing on the ground.

A group of 5 people would wash an entire truck in 15 to 20 minutes. My shift during school started on a Friday at around 5pm and would run till 11pm but usually ended up being midnight. Saturday was 3 till 11pm but again we were generally working till midnight and Sunday varried but we stopped accepting new trucks at 4pm. During the summer my shift started at 3pm and could run till 3am even though we closed at 11pm. There were many times we had 10 trucks in line at 11pm with two trucks in the wash bays during the summer and were turning new trucks away and leaving a couple parked till the morning to get washed.

During slower times we would take in degreaser jobs where we would use a pressure steamer to remove the grease from the entire truck so it could go in for some major work and the mechanic shop workers didn’t have to clean it off of deal with it. Degreasing trucks sucks…

Most money I made as a teen was in doing my own hustles, like pirating music and movies to burn to disc and selling them because I was one of the few people in my school to have a PC, with internet and a DVD burner.

I also did door to door sales for some company from the back of a magazine I subscribed to when I was 11 or 12. You earned cash or points to redeem for shit like video game consoles or bikes. I’m not entitely sure how legit it was, thinking about it now. 🤔

My first truly legit job, paying income tax and all that shit at 17, was, ugh… CutCo Knives. Vector Marketing. Great fucking knives; terrible company to work for and do business with.

I washed dishes at various restaurants.

I miss everything about it besides being too tall to use the sinks comfortably