I drove my great-niece to her first job interview the other day. They say to dress for the job you want, not the job you have, but right now B doesn’t have any square clothing.
Well, she does have a couple of skirts and a chic black-and-white dress, but the interview is for a very casual food retailer.
“I don’t want to overdress,” she said, deciding to stick with jeans.
Besides, right now the job she wants is at Hot Topic, where you can dress in all sorts of expressive ways. But she’s not yet old enough to get hired there.
Having reviewed the potential interview questions on the company’s website didn’t make her any less nervous, especially since she’s a bit shy. But she tiptoed in bravely with her fluorescent lime-green hair, septum piercing, “Prudhoe Bay Alaska” sweatshirt and white face mask.
Ten minutes later she was back out, with a fistful of paperwork. Apparently the interview went something like this:
What school do you attend?
How far away do you live?
You’re hired.
The same worker shortage that’s bedeviling the rest of the country has affected Anchorage as well. Target is advertising jobs for $15 an hour to start, and a local supermarket is offering $20. So I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me that they didn’t drill her with questions like, “What’s your greatest weakness?” and “Why should I hire you?” (Both were on that list.) They were just glad to get her.
While I won’t publish her salary because that’s her business, I will say that it’s more than half of what I was earning per hour in my last print journalism job. Thanks to inflation, it won’t go nearly as far.
First job, big plans
It’s not a job that B wants to do for the rest of her life, but every first job is a start. At her age she can work a maximum of 23 hours a week during the school year, and I expect she’ll take all the hours she can get. B plans to save most of her earnings to pay for trade school after graduation.
The girl’s got her lime-green head on straight. In fact, she’s miffed that she’s not already a high-school senior: The University of Alaska Anchorage is currently offering up to $18,000 worth of free tuition to people interested in the trades. As I noted, jobs are going begging.
Despite the sophistication of her eye makeup and her dry, wry wit, I have a hard time believing she’s old enough to work. Seems like just yesterday she was ordering up at Café Awesome. Now she’s making plans for cosmetology school, or maybe culinary arts, and possibly a trip to Paris.
Oh, and a Roth IRA. Definitely one of those, once I told her that contributing even $1,100 a year (from her Alaska Permanent Fund dividend) would add up to a decent amount of change by age 65. And that’s assuming she didn’t save another dime from any other job.
I offered to match whatever I could, at least for a while. Pretty sure she’s going to take me up on it, because when she told her mom she got the job she said she wanted to use some of her PFD for a Roth. One of the things I’ve told her is that early savers are better off due to the magic of compound interest. It will stand her in good stead if, heaven forbid, she’s unemployed for a spell later on. Or if she wants to take a year off to apprentice at a Parisian patisserie.
Readers: What was your first “real” job, i.e., one that was regulated by some law or another and that took out money for taxes? Mine was picking tomatoes.
Related reading:
- What do we want to be? A few thoughts on labor
- College is optional. Education is not
- Labor Day musings
I worked at a Holiday Inn as a waitress in the coffee shop. I was paid fifty cents an hour plus tips, which amounted to around 10 dollars a day if we were busy. If not, I made 6 to 7. During the summer I worked 8 hours a day for 6 days a week and really hustled. During the school year I worked whenever I could, but I played in the symphony and that came first.
Later, in college, I worked as a long-distance operator at the phone company and thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I worked 5 days a week on 4 hour shifts, but I also got all the hours I could. Sundays paid time and a half and holidays double time. Being single, I could work for people with families who wanted to be there for unwrapping presents and eating turkey.
Waitressing taught me how to hustle, and working for Bell Telephone taught me the importance of not only being there on time and ready but also handling difficult people tactfully. I ended my career as a teacher, thankful for those first jobs.
Holiday Inn, Jet Chef as a waitress one summer before college. Everything before that was cash jobs, no taxes deducted or paid. Worked for pennies per hour, and very few tips. People kept quitting, or not showing up for work. Management did nothing to resolve the situation. Men had all the (better paying) jobs at the second onsite restaurant. Never, ever, worked as a waitress again in my life.
Started at age 13 working at a peach shed, grading peaches. Which means taking out the too soft, too green, too small, and especially, the rotten fruit. Because it was agricultural work, even kids that young could legally work. Got paid with checks, paid taxes, social security, etc. Worked at various peach sheds in my area every summer until I graduated high school. I’m 64 and I can still smell the odor of rotten peaches! I never eat peaches or peach flavored foods. Unfortunately, this opportunity no longer exists for kids these days. Most peach orchards have been plowed under and land sold for housing developments.
Retail in a local department store at age 16. I started at $2.10 an hour and then got a raise to $2.35, which was a huge increase! I blew through all of my money on clothes (I did get 20% off) and really didn’t start aggressively saving for retirement until 30. But I caught up with myself and retired at 56.
My first job was picking and packing tomatoes for an uncle; we didn’t pay taxes, because he paid us in cash. We worked from 6 a.m. to noon, and got $5 and two 6 1/2-ounce Coca-Colas per shift.
The first taxpaying job was as a waitress. Our boss stole our tips charged on credit cards and smoked our cigarettes without permission (this was a LONG time ago). Thank goodness I never had to do either of those jobs again, and as soon as I worked somewhere with an IRA, I started maxing it out. Retired at 59 1/2 and it’s the best job I ever had!
Funny about dressing well for interviews. About 15 years ago I interviewed for a job in a hospital. I wore a suit, of course. The person in human resources LOVED ME. She sent me down to see the supervisor in the department I was applying. The supervisor looked me over and clearly did not like I was wearing a suit. I didn’t get the job.
K-mart checker and occasional sub-sandwich maker. Minimum wage was $3.25, but I think we started at $3.50ish. Time and 1/2 on Sundays and holidays. Paid vacation even for part time. We became the nations biggest retailer (over Sears) while I worked there. Poor K-mart, it didn’t last! Made me want to work hard in high-school and go to college, but it was a good job.
My first real job in high school circa 1969 was as a cashier in a local family owned grocery store. I made $1.10 an hour . In addition to being a cashier since it was a small store everyone pitched in as needed. They taught me to work in produce and in the meat department. I put up stock and ran the press that printed the sales sheets. I put up signs in the windows and really anything. I loved that job and appreciated all they taught me. When I went off to a state college I was able to get a similar job in another family owned grocery . They started me on the weekends but as soon as they learned I could do multiple tasks they helped me work around my college classes and I got a raise to $1.65 an hour and worked what amounted to full time. At that time in my life I was basically on my own and supporting myself so that job was everything to me. Looking back on it I am amazed (and also proud) that I was able to support myself AND pay for college with no debt by being smart with money and being a hard worker It makes me sad that today college costs are so high that kids cannot in most cases do rhat and end up with so much debt
My first job was at Burger Queen! Yes, there was such a place! They were based in Winter Haven FL and spread to the Tampa Bay area in the late 70’s. My big Sister worked there, so I got a job there as soon as I turned 16. It was my only stint in fast food, though I did enjoy we got a free meal every shift over 4 hours – and taking home leftover burgers and fried chicken if you worked until closing, that was going to get tossed out at the end of shift.
My first job was at a clothing boutique in Memphis for minimum wage which was $1.90/hr. I started out buttoning clothing, fastening belts, and turning all clothing the same way on hangers and folding sweaters on tables. I was 17. Soon, I was selling lots of clothing and making a good commission plue minimum wage. I didn’t work there long and quit. I had learned I did not like commission work because you were expected to sell clothes no matter how it looked on a woman. Pushing for a sale, knowing the woman was not dressed her best was frustrating.
My next job was two jobs–Sears and TG&Y. From Sears I learned I had no right to say “no” to anyone. I had to call management for that. At TG&Y I learned how to do everything in the store–cutting window shades, making keys, putting away and finding lay-a-way, laying out counters, cutting glass for separators on counters, checking in stock and reporting shortages to manager, running the register. Finally, the manager said my drawer was so accurate that he wanted me to work in the office. Stupid me turned that down.
After I married, I worked at both stores on holidays, earning a bit for gifts. The beauty of working at these two places was no matter what city we lived in, I could find a store, Sears or TG&Y, in that city. Consequently, I only had to show up to get a job. They did not have to train me for a six week stint.
I went to school in the midst of working and having babies. Then, after I graduated, I never went back to those first jobs.
My first job was Mcdonald’s and my starting pay at the time was $5.25. Started my senior year of high school and worked there for two years I also made life long friends working that job. It taught me a lot
My first job was at Andy’s (a Wendy’s knock-off).. Double knit polyester uniforms and man did they hold onto that burger grease stench:) I learned slipping & falling in the walk-in fridge with a jug of pickled okra in one hand and spice apple rings in the other was very BAD.
The combined smells must have been horrific. Wow.
Candace, I have a slip-and-fall story from my first job, too. I worked the soda fountain, beer tap, and salad bar at a Shakey’s Pizza Parlor in my home state. (Note: I was still only 17, but I adjusted my age up by a year on my Home State driver’s license, which was pretty easy to alter in those days.) Minimum wage in those Jurassic days was $1.65/hr. Anyway, we were having a quiet night at Shakey’s when apparently everyone who had just attended a concert by the Carpenters decided to have a post-concert pizza. I was racing around the corner from the cold room with a fresh bowl of salad greens for the salad bar when I slipped and fell. The salad hit the ceiling and I hit the floor. I just lay in the mess laughing hysterically till two of my co-workers hauled me to my feet and insisted I get on with the job.
I worked minding a neighbor’s watermelon stand the summer I was 10 years old (52 years ago) and seem to remember getting all of 50 cents a week and all the cracked watermelon I could eat. I do still like watermelon.
The real job after that was working at a burger restaurant after high school full-time for two years between high school and college, making $3.30 an hour, and then on weekends during college for two years. After that I had on-campus jobs that paid much less, but I could sit down doing them and had weekends free to study. It was tough, but the combination of work, savings, and scholarships put me through school without taking out loans.
My first job was at the Sizzler on Northern Lights Blvd in Anchorage. It’s not there anymore. I was 14, so it was 1983. I was continuously sexually harrassed by the middle aged manager. Ugh, such a creep. I lasted two weeks. Was too mortified to tell my parents why I quit.
I didn’t get another job until I was 17. Was able to move out and live on my own in the first year making $7 per hr working as a secretary. Thanks to my typing class teacher in high school.
Ick. I’m glad you got out of there.
And yeah, typing…My mom taught us all to type the way she had been taught, i.e., page after page of finger exercises and keyboard memorization. But it worked: In the sixth grade I was paid to type term papers for a teacher who was taking night classes. Certainly it’s helped me as a newspaper reporter and a freelancer. I only wish I’d let Mom teach me shorthand; I refused on the grounds that I would then have to become a secretary. Little did I know how useful that would have been as a reporter, when people talked too fast…
Yes, that would have been useful. Shorthand still seems like a mystery to me. My former mother in law used it throughout her career into at least the early the 90’s.
Thanks for your kind reply, and wonderful writing.
I appreciate your reading. Are you still in Anchorage?
No, in Denver now. Moved away after high school.
I went back 4 years ago for a reunion. Lots of growth, but my old stomping grounds were still similar – Turnagain, West High area, etc. Still have friends up there.
My parents and bro/sis moved there from TX several years before I was born and lived all over the state – Fairbanks, Anchorage, Juneau, where I was born, then back to Anchorage. My dad was the Highway Commissioner when Wally Hickel was governor. Vintage Alaska…
My first job as a high school senior in 1965 was as a church organist. I got paid $5 a service and felt very rich with that. Plus it was one of the most fun and satisfying jobs ever. Before that I had baby sat and fed baby calves for my granddad who was a dairy farmer. Playing the organ was fun and I learned a lot about dealing with other people, which was helpful for a very shy teenager.
My first real, paying job was as a clerk typist working for the US Army in a civil service capacity. I saved most of my money to buy a car and a computer. All through college, I typed other people’s papers for them. I was also a writing tutor at my college’s writing center. My first job ever was as a Red Cross volunteer in the Red Cross Field Office at a military base.
My first job in 1972 was banquet waitress. I got $1.07 an hour plus tips. The tips were pretty good- about $20-25 per shift.
I worked part time in a cafe washing dishes then moving up to work behind the counter! A whopping $8.50 per hour.
My first FT journalism job paid me … I think $16.50?