What did your first job and first paycheck feel like?

14 comments

1. It was 238$ for an entire week so I felt like an idiot.

2. Football coach

   Felt good cuz it was 3 months late so it was a fat one

3. Like a WICKED night at the pub

4. Painful and the amount not worth the pain.

5. Overwhelming and underwhelming

6. Super fun job, super disappointing pay check.

   Camp counselor for my local BSA summer camp, I think my weekly earning were ~$215. Housed on site in tents with electricity, food provided. 1 night off a week, and a 24hr break between camp weeks.

7. A lot of work at a grocery store for very little money. Felt like shit.

8. It was a dishwasher at an extremely busy restaurant. The heat, steam, and rotting food made me throw up on the way home… first shift was 10 hours. Minimum wage was $3.35 an hour. My entire first month’s pay did not cover cleaning the seats of my girlfriend’s sister’s car (She gave me a ride home that first night).

9. FIRST paycheck as a teen, it was a bit of pocket money. In the late 80’s I was making a couple of hundred a week from my various part time jobs (still in high school). Joined the military right out of high school, and those paychecks sucked. I made more as a high school student.

10. Lots of sweat, not enough money.

11. Work was not bad but the pay and hours were bad. I think I was capped at 20hrs per week and pay was low so my take home was not much more than $100/week. Gas was almost $4/gal so that money didnt go far

12. I was 12. I made $150 a month for doing something i loved. It was kind of like getting paid for going to day camp during the summer.

13. I had like $400 in my checking account and I had no idea what to do with my newfound wealth.

    So I went and bought World of Warcraft.

14. Worked with computers. I was 15 and it would have been almost $1,800 in 2022 dollars ($15 an hour in 1995).

    At the time, great. In retrospect, awful. I think it was too much money for me to be making at the time and it threw off my expectations on what my time was worth for quite a while.

    I was able to walk into a store a buy a PlayStation, controllers and a bunch of games. No problem. And it was like that for a couple months. I wasn’t a full time employee, but a contracted temp.

    The next job I had after that was about 3 years later for minimum wage, which was like closer to $5 an hour.