Okay, Killzoners, let’s be up front with each other…and have some fun while we’re at it.
Be it paper delivery, fast food shenanigans, kiddo-sitting, or shoveling out your neighbor’s chicken coop . . . what was your first paying billet (or J.O.B.)?
I like to think of my first job as the First Draft of My Life.
Remember these?
I was the advanced age of fourteen when I was hired in my mother’s office. I worked after school three days a week, filing real estate cards—way before the digital age—and answering the black dial phone. Not exciting, but I could start buying my own clothes!
We won’t talk about the other job I had . . . intermittently dog-sitting for our neighbor’s twin St. Bernards . . . actually, I don’t know to this day who was sitting who. (Whom?)
Two of them!
Your turn—what was your first experience with a paycheck (and, dare I say, taxes?)
And, second question: How has that first paying job influenced your writing–such as plot, character development, etc.?
First job was as a pepper picker. Guessing I was around 15-ish, not sure.
I don’t know that anything about that influenced my writing but it is one of the things that causes me to give thanks for all the many things we take for granted–indoor plumbing, hot and cold running water, and yes, the ability to go grab our produce at the grocery store.
Worked in my dad’s office in his shipping department. Moved up to secretary (that’s what we were called then) a couple of years later.
Junior in high school. Maybe sophomore. Usher at the Varsity Theater, St. Louis. 1979. I learned a lot. The Varsity had started showing an incredibly bad musical, but at midnight on the weekends. Tim Curry had made an appearance that summer. Yes, I worked about 250 showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Checked people at the door and confiscated booze if you tried to bring it in. I stood between the crowd and the screen for parts of the film. That also meant standing a few feet in front of 6′ tall speakers. I have never gotten “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” quite loud enough since.
There were other movies as well. At 17 I carded people going to an X rated movie. I was almost arrested when detectives showed up to check out “Emanuelle”. They left laughing. My little brother got a lot closer. “Caligula” did qualify as obscene.
Going to go pop some popcorn now.
My first job was as a paper delivery boy for the “Community Press,” when I was eight years old, a “free” newspaper. Collecting option subscription fees was a challenge for young me. My other first job at the time was helping my dad clean a pet store early Saturday mornings. I liked that one better, because I got to see puppies 🙂
My first regularly paying job – outside of home – was for an “airline farmer” friend of Dad’s when I was thirteen.
He flew for Eastern Airlines, but had a medium sized farm with four horses, a beef steer, dogs, a catfish pond, and two kids.
First and foremost I mucked out the stables and fed said livestock. Additionally I cut grass, fed the catfish and checked the trap, dug fencepost holes and other general scut labor, and chased his young’ns around as needed, five days a week, eight hours a day for the stately sum of $4.00 a day plus lunch when Ms. Pat fed her kids anyway.
I did this for two summers… no taxes… and no child labor laws…
Of course, there were the home jobs that paid twenty-five cents a pair to shine Dad’s shoes, and fifty cents a week to change out the revisions issued to his flight manuals… things he, too, didn’t want to do…
How did it impact my writing? Well, I learned to “multitask” – pay attention to details and new things while doing something relatively “mindless” – and how to shovel, shall we say, “stuff…” 😁