What was your first job?

[mbw]

Age 12-Mowing yards in the neighborhood at $1.00 per yard.

Age 14- Lifeguard at the Country Club at $1.25 per hour and lunch.

Age 15- Pulling a chain, rocking a rod, and driving stakes for a Civil Engineer, surveyor. I think it was for $1.50 per hour. Hardest job I ever had!

[SATX-Scrub]

1980 - HEB at $3.10 an hour after school as a 'Courtesy Clerk'.

1981 - HEB at $3.50 an hour after school as the General Merchandise 'Asst Manager'. I came to realize that Asst Manager is the guy that fronts all the merchandise in the GM department and mops up after school for $3.50 an hour.

I wish I still worked there, funnest job I ever had!

[Carry-a-Kimber]

My first paid job was when I turned 14 at Angelo Burger Company here in San Angelo. I worked there 40 hours a week until the day I graduated 4 years later and went off to boot camp.

Sounds like Angelo Burger Company needs to brush up on the federal labor laws.

I must be missing something here. What labor laws? In Texas I believe you can work in some occupations when you are 14.

http://www.twc.state.tx.us/ui/lablaw/cllsum.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I guess you did miss it, it's right there in the link you posted. It has nothing to do with working at 14 but the amount of hours a 14-15 y/o is permitted to work without a federal hardship waiver.

Federal Law:
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) a child 14 or 15 years of age may not work during school hours, may not work more than three hours on a school day or 18 hours during a school week, and may not work more than eight hours on a non-school day or 40 hours during a non-school week. Furthermore, a child 14 or 15 years of age may work only between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. during the school year. Between June 1 and Labor Day, a child may work between the hours of 7 a.m. and 9 p.m.

[74novaman]

Federal Law:
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) a child 14 or 15 years of age may not work during school hours, may not work more than three hours on a school day or 18 hours during a school week, and may not work more than eight hours on a non-school day or 40 hours during a non-school week. Furthermore, a child 14 or 15 years of age may work only between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. during the school year. Between June 1 and Labor Day, a child may work between the hours of 7 a.m. and 9 p.m.

Meh. As long as the kid is showing up to school, passing his classes and isn't being FORCED to work 40 hours a week....if they want to do it, I don't think the feds should have any say in the matter.

[snatchel]

I wasn't being forced to work or slave away, I worked because I wanted to. Also maintained a 3.5 GPA through high school, FTR. Government needs to stay out of personal family business.

[74novaman]

I wasn't being forced to work or slave away, I worked because I wanted to. Also maintained a 3.5 GPA through high school, FTR. Government needs to stay out of personal family business.

Other than replacing the bit in bold with "almost everything but national defense", I agree 100%.

[urnoodle]

Looking back technically my first job was as a lifeguard at the public pool when I was 9 or 10. There was a really large kiddie pool there and my sister and I would take turns being the lifeguard on the weekends. Since the law prevented us from being paid, it was referred to as volunteer work. We were compensated by having private access to the pools after hours for training.

[RPB]

Labor laws:

I still have my tax returns I filed when I was 12 years old.

Technically, I bought my bicycle, bought my bike racks, plastic bags, string/rubber bands and newspapers which a "distributor" dropped at my house each day, and I went door to door and "collected" $ each month (hopefully). I suppose I was self-employed at 12, but I filed.

[WildBill]

Labor laws:

I still have my tax returns I filed when I was 12 years old.

Technically, I bought my bicycle, bought my bike racks, plastic bags, string/rubber bands and newspapers which a "distributor" dropped at my house each day, and I went door to door and "collected" $ each month (hopefully). I suppose I was self-employed at 12, but I filed.

If you filed today you would probably get a "tax credit" refund.

[talltex]

Federal Law:
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) a child 14 or 15 years of age may not work during school hours, may not work more than three hours on a school day or 18 hours during a school week, and may not work more than eight hours on a non-school day or 40 hours during a non-school week. Furthermore, a child 14 or 15 years of age may work only between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. during the school year. Between June 1 and Labor Day, a child may work between the hours of 7 a.m. and 9 p.m.

Meh. As long as the kid is showing up to school, passing his classes and isn't being FORCED to work 40 hours a week....if they want to do it, I don't think the feds should have any say in the matter.

I don't think was any kind of FLSA when I started working, and if there was, nobody knew or cared...you could do whatever you were big enough to handle. First thing I did to earn money outside of family was picking up pecans "on the halves" along the river...work 5 or 6 hours and the landowner would weigh your sacks out on his scale and pay you on the spot. I could pick up 20lbs and make about $2.00 ...seemed like a lot of money to a 10 year old back in the mid 60's. Between then and high school graduation, I worked: hauling hay, doing lube/oil/filter and tire changing at a gas station, busboy/dishwasher at a restaurant, construction helper on a new motel, loading semi trucks with frozen turkeys at an Armour Turkey Plant, and shoveling concrete for a sewer treatment plant construction project. I could handle all but the restaraunt job...I lasted about two weeks there, and I understood the phrase "I'd rather go out and dig ditches".

[RPBrown]

Selling donuts in the afternoon/evenings for 25 cents an hour.

[The Annoyed Man]

Federal Law:
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) a child 14 or 15 years of age may not work during school hours, may not work more than three hours on a school day or 18 hours during a school week, and may not work more than eight hours on a non-school day or 40 hours during a non-school week. Furthermore, a child 14 or 15 years of age may work only between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. during the school year. Between June 1 and Labor Day, a child may work between the hours of 7 a.m. and 9 p.m.

Meh. As long as the kid is showing up to school, passing his classes and isn't being FORCED to work 40 hours a week....if they want to do it, I don't think the feds should have any say in the matter.

I understand where the federal law originally comes from: the need to protect little kids from being sent down to work in coal mines because they can fit in the tunnels better than adults, or sacrificing the health of their little bodies to the gods of industry in other ways. There was a time and an age when federal intervention in child labor like that made perfect sense. But, society has evolved, and in all likelihood Americans would never again allow their children to be put to essentially slave labor at high risk with terminal health complications like black lung disease.

However, the pendulum has swung entirely too far in the other direction, and you now have an administration which has publicly, overtly, and as a matter of policy, put the wishes of federal employee unions ahead of the interests of federal taxpayers, and industrial employee unions ahead of the "evil capitalists" which make those jobs possible in the first place.

Really, federal child labor laws exist to prevent children from being forced against their will to go to work for cruel and exploitive industries. But if a kid in high school wants to work to help his family out, keeping them off the public dole while working for a humane employer, that kid's personal industry and work ethic ought to be commended and encouraged, and his employer ought to be affirmed for his contribution to the health and stability of his community, and not castigated for violating some federal law written for a different age and enforced by faceless bureacrats whom the taxpayers will pay more money in 10 years than that poor kid will earn in his lifetime.

Family is everything.

Honestly, I regret my upbringing in some ways. My parents both made decent money as college professors—better money than some of the other parents of the kids I grew up with in our neighborhood. But it wasn't only that, it was also the sort of arrogance they communicated to my brothers and me about what they thought of the careers of the other parents in our neighborhoods. In fact, since most of those parents didn't have a "profession" (i.e. professor, doctor, lawyer, grand poobah), my parents looked down at them. Also, my parents were amond the few liberal democrats in what was back then a mostly conservative republican town.

Harris, the father of Chuck who lived across the street from me and who was one of my constant play companions, operated a giant shovel in a rock quarry in Irwindale, a neighboring town. Harris took Chuck and me and my brothers down into the quarry once to show us this giant machine he operated. I remember that the shovel was so big that it could hold four pickup trucks in two stacks of two each inside the shovel, and as a boy of 10 or 12, I was mightily impressed.

Both Harris and my dad were WW2 combat veterans. I don't remember if Harris was WIA, but my dad was. Harris was in the Army in the ETO, and my dad in the Marines in the Pacific. Both men had a lot in common, but they couldn't have been further apart if they tried. One of the difference between the two families was that my parents enourage the three of us (more or less unsuccessfuly as it turned out) along the path of a career in academia, while Harris and his wife enourage Chuck to get a good paying job. The last I saw Chuck, he was the owner of a pretty successful general contracting business, making a bunch more money than my parents ever made, while my brothers and I didn't get the entrepreneurial bug until much later in life and have struggled harder later in life because of it.

My parents gave us a fair amount of weekly chores to do around the house and in the yard, and they gave us an allowance. The amount of the allowance was not tied to the amount of work we did, and whether or not it was granted to us was dependent upon our obedience, and not on the amount or quality of work we did. We were discouraged from finding jobs to supplement our allowance so that our school work wouldn't suffer. (In my own case, that was a pointless exercise as I was an indifferent student unless I had a teacher who knew how to appeal to my interest.) And, to add insult to injury, we were required to bank our allowance, and punished if we spent any of it. So the lesson learned was that work is overrated, money is meaningless because you can't use it, and the reward of money is disconnected from the amount of effort put in to obtain it.

Chuck, on the other hand, was encouraged to find jobs and make money, which he did with a gusto. No, he did not end up as a professor, but he did have plenty of money to spend....or save or do whatever he wanted to with it. He understood from early on that the amount of money he had at any given time was directly proportional to two things: how hard he worked for it; and whether or not he was a good steward of it. He did successfully graduate from the same high school as I did, a year behind me, where he had been an average student. If I recall correctly, he attended the local JC for two years and got his AA.

I encouraged my own son to have and hold jobs, so long as he kept his grades at an acceptable level, and today he is doing by far much better much earlier in life than I did. He's 22 now, and currently earning what it took me until 38 years old to earn, and already has a firmer understanding of what he wants out of life and his career track than I ever did.

So long as children aren't being exploited in some cruel or dangerous manner, there is nothing wrong with them wanting to work as hard as they want to, and earn as much money as they can, so long as they successfully fulfill their other obligations to school and family. That should be encouraged, not discouraged, and, as always.....

....the federal government be hanged.

[Carry-a-Kimber]

So if you are a good person or you feel certain laws aren't important or are outdated, they don't have to be acknowledged. I see.

[Syntyr]

Wow where to begin...

Jobs starting at age 9 working for the family or myself:
Selling peaches from the family's tree
Mowing grass
Baling hay
Acting as a weight standing on the disc pak behind our tractor so that it would break the hard soil (Mom nearly killed me when she found out about this)
Cleaning pools

First jobs working for The Man:
Selling Newspapers
Landscaping
Hauling sides of beef from freezer to truck for a slaughterhouse
Driving a truck to deliver firewood
Dinner cook for Grandy's country kitchen
Residential framing new house contruction
Fixing video game machines for Tilt

After these I got my act in gear and graduated college and got an IT job. Still managing computers to this day...