SEVEN FOR YOU â—½ TIPS
That First Job
Our Panel of Women
The image is of my mom and me. She worked there as well as my Dad. We always had a big Halloween festival for the clients who lived there. – Cathy
​
In my senior year of high school I was in a program that included a half day of school and a half day at a job off campus. I worked at a daycare center at a nearby church. It was great spending the afternoons with four year olds and I also loved getting a paycheck, even though it was small. Minimum wage was $1.90 per hour in those days. Sometimes my friend and I would go out for pizza before I headed to work. That friend and I still meet for lunch. - Gina
​
Free popcorn, free soda, and free movies! These are just a few of the perks from my first job working at the local movie theater. From age fifteen until graduating college, I popped the popcorn (resulting in arm burns!), poured the drinks (sticky floors), and when promoted to
What was your first job? It’s a good icebreaker question for gatherings and so interesting to hear the answers. What made someone pick that job and did they like it? We asked our panel of women to share their first jobs. I think it’s a fun read. Hope you do, as well.
​
I was 15 when I went to work with my dad at Travis State School. I volunteered there every summer and on the holidays.
​
I was hired to work there at age 17. My first paid job. I was a lifeguard, Special Olympics coach, and recreational therapist. I was going to college at Texas State and worked three jobs to pay for my tuition and apartment.
​
I learned how to fully love someone, to care so much that you are willing to risk everything for them. So many names and faces of those I taught and cared for are still in my memory.
​
This first job became my lifelong career; it shaped me in ways that I am forever grateful for.
box office, I sold the tickets (and since this was THE theater for teens on dates, I became privy to who’s dating whom…). The building was grand with a gigantic glistening chandelier hanging above the curved staircase. We worked late nights (till that last movie let out around 2:00 a.m.) and lots of double shifts! We handled large amounts of money and had to balance the registers each evening. This is where I learned to always face dollar bills the same direction and count back correct change for each customer (with no computer to tell us the amount). The theater fell victim to “progress” years ago when it was torn down. - Jennifer
I started babysitting when I was nine years old but my first official job at a business was in a bowling alley. I was eleven and was hired to work in the nursery. I would walk to the bowling alley, and someone picked me up because it was nighttime. I loved this job because it made me feel like I was really helping the parents. I had been there about two months when the lady in charge quit abruptly. This bowling alley was in a rough area of a port town on the coast of Texas, and she didn’t feel she was getting paid what she should. I understood because most days we would have about 25 kids and babies. It was so wild, but my paycheck made it worth it.
The night the lady over me quit, the bowling alley manager came in and told me I was now in charge! I was stunned because I was only eleven and we took kids up to nine years old. And also, because the parents didn’t mind leaving their kids with me. I tried my best but I only lasted two weeks in this position. There were two nine-year-old boys that gave me such a hard time that I felt the paycheck wasn’t worth it. So, even though I learned a lot, I ended up quitting my first official job. – Carole
​
I worked at my best friend’s family’s restaurant for my first job. She and I were both only 14 at the time, but there were plenty of tasks for a young person to take on around the restaurant. I bused tables, restocked the salad bar, made garlic bread, and learned how to cope with an aspiring model /Valley Girl as my manager. She was a nice waitress to work alongside until she got promoted.
At the tender age of 17, I got asked to the prom by a boy I had a huge crush on (cue adolescent shrieks of joy)! Everything was great for a week or so until he found out that one of the popular girls in THE school clique had a crush on him (I was not part of that crowd). He rescinded his prom invitation and took Student Body V.P. Barbie instead (cue crushed teenager slow jam).
​
I was devastated. And I had to work in the dining room outside of the safety of the kitchen. Valley Girl pulled me into the back office and demanded to know what was wrong. I told her my woeful tale of prom-less devastation and humiliation. She feigned concern, but I was no fool. I steeled myself against her disapproval of my bummer-to-the-max gloomy face, as if the frowning girl with the high, bouncy brunette ponytail and bangs cleaning tables would hurt business. Like, as if! (Gag me with a spoon already! Fur sure…) I had to work the rest of the weekend with a fake smile plastered on my face, like some sort of Stepford Teen—a skill that still comes in handy from time to time. – Angela
My first job was at an independent pizza joint named Peddler's Pizza in Kilgore, TX. It was built in an old gas station and was very popular. It offered buy 1 pizza, get 2 pizzas free on Monday nights, and I'm pretty sure the ENTIRE town ate pizza from Peddler's Pizza on Monday nights. It was non-stop busy for hours on end. I could do all of the jobs, but they preferred to keep me in the back because I tended not to deal with rude people very well! One customer called and was quite disrespectful over the phone about the quality of his pizza.
I told him, "Sir, there are other pizza places in town."....it turned out to be a wealthy business owner in town and he was not happy with me. I never felt badly about my response though, because he was so rude. So, that relieved me of phone duty. I can still remember the smell of that raw pizza dough and remember that 7 oz of cheese goes on that pizza! (They only sold one size of pizza.) Also: I made $4.35 an hour....that would've been in about 1991-92ish. It was a fun job, working with my friends and making pizzas to feed hungry people. - Laura
​My first paying job besides babysitting was at McDonald's near Fashion Fair Mall in Fresno. I loved that job in so many ways...especially how flexible they were with all my band and choir dates throughout the school year. I was 16 and worked there for more than two years. No drive thru back then, but behind the store, there was a drive-in movie theater. When I would go outside at night to dump the garbage, I would linger a little to see what movie was playing. Most interesting story was the summer we had a cricket invasion in Fresno. Found a cricket floating on a hash brown when I brought it up out of the oil. My manager said "it's just a little extra protein" HAHA! Gross, but also funny to this day. A couple of days later when I was working fries, I had to go down to the walk-in freezer and stepped on at least 10 crickets on the stairs. And the next Sunday morning, I opened a register when we had a couple of buses come and we were super busy, and a cricket hopped out onto the counter. Had to place an aluminum ash tray over it (remember those?), and it slowly moved across the counter until I could swipe it onto the floor and squish it when the rush died down. Good times! - Glenna
​
My first job was at a women's clothing store in downtown Austin in the credit department, on the third floor of an old building. The store was called Yarings. The wall had about eight phones we answered from the other stores around town. There were card files where we wrote down purchases and determined if the buyer could use their credit or not. (I actually enjoyed saying no. What is wrong with me!?) It was a fun job, as I worked with a couple of friends there, too. And I enjoyed going downtown. That old building is still there and is part of the cool vibe in downtown Austin, and well...credit cards have replaced card files and wall phones! – Marcy (Sse photo at top of the page)
​
I loved Yarings! That was my first credit card. Did Marcy have something to do with that? I worked across the street at Austin National Bank at the time, but that was not my first job.
My first job was at Lone Star Paper Company at the age of 15. They were a wholesale paper company that sold paper throughout Texas and my job was to file the paper invoices. I was a file clerk. No computers back then! They would sell big rolls of beautiful quality gift wrap to stores like Joske’s and maybe even Yarings! I think that is the reason that to this day, I am kind of a gift wrap snob! – Anita
In my senior year of high school I was in a program that included a half day of school and a half day at a job off campus. I worked at a daycare center at a nearby church. It was great spending the afternoons with four year olds and I also loved getting a paycheck, even though it was small. Minimum wage was $1.90 per hour in those days. Sometimes my friend and I would go out for pizza before I headed to work. That friend and I still meet for lunch. – Gina
​
My first job was when I was 14, growing up in Hawaii. It was a summer job at a preschool, where I worked as a teacher’s aide for a classroom of 4-year-olds. As the seventh of eleven children, and having become an aunt at just eight years old, I’d already had quite a bit of experience being around little ones, which definitely helped. I spent my days helping with story time, lunch, and playtime, and even joined the kids on field trips. It was a lot of responsibility for someone who was still basically a kid myself, but I loved being part of their little world.
​
One memory that really stands out is a field trip we took to a botanical garden. I remember feeling so nervous trying to keep track of all the kids, making sure no one wandered off. It felt like a big responsibility at the time, but also a moment where I realized I could handle more than I thought. And of course, I’ll never forget the feeling of receiving my very first paycheck. It made all the hard work feel real and so very rewarding. - Christina
My first job was working at Texas Instruments the summer right after high school. I was staying in Lubbock with my cousin and she, my aunt, and I all got hired. The job was working on circuit boards for electronics. Things were very different back then and computers and circuit boards (if I'm using the right terminology) weren't very advanced. The job was connecting a tiny wire from one spot to another on the chip or whatever it was. We had to look through a microscope at the wires and press a button that soldered the wire, then rotated the button to connect it to the next spot, and then press to solder again. It was kind of satisfying and fun! I think was paid $1.60 per hour. - Dina
