Supermarket bagger.

My parents didn't want me working while I was still in school so my first job was after high school graduation. A friend of my father had a used car sales lot and needed a car washer. I worked for him for the first week as a washer. Each day I would go to the lot and find the dirtiest, dustiest cars, and bring them to the wash bay where I would clean them inside and out. The second week, he decided to put me to pulling weeds at a new lot he was moving to that was RIGHT NEXT to the local teen hangout. There I was...stinky, dirty, and pulling weeds in a field where all my high school friends could see me. This was too much for a young girl who had image issues to being with, so I quit and went to work as a waitress. I was two weeks into my new job before I had the nerve to tell my parents I had quit the first job.

I was a 'page' at the local library. Had to put books back on shelves, check out customers, and generally do all of the grunt work like search the basement stacks, etc. Very dry, very boring.

I just got home from my first paying job: nine weeks as Handicraft Area Director at Camp Wolfeboro. Yep, a gal working at a Boy Scout camp, how odd.
I am planning on going back next Summer (but not as an area director or in handicraft. hoping for shooting sports), but Summer after that my father wants me to get a real job.
I don't want to be an area director again because of all the people yelling at me. The commissioners yelling (Well, not yelling. Grumping, mabey.) at me to finish signing bluecards or finish the inventory, etc. The scoutmasters yelling at me because Billy Scout didn't finish his merit badge because he never showed up and apparently it's my fault because I din't leave twenty other scouts to go chase him down. *grrrr*
One good thing about it though, I'm now dating the Trailhead Area Director. :-D

Dairy Queen, east Richardson TX. I lasted a whole month before I freaked on a lunch crush and walked out on a full grill. All this !@#$ for $1.00hour? The funny story is the parfaits from hell: the DQ machine was a soft-serve 'ice cream' (mellorine) dispenser. What you did at close was to move the dip tube from the mellorine mix to a bucket of soapy water in order to clean the machine. 5 minutes before close a car pulls up in the drive-thru and orders parfaits. Someone (me?) pulled the dip tube from the soap and put in the mix. Parfaits were served. The couple returned a bit later to inform us that the parfaits tasted of soap...

Soon after I got a job fixing teevees...

Darms' story reminds me of one from an early job of mine. I was waiting tables at a restaurant, and some people came in asking for mixed drinks - daquiris, I think. The bartender was off somewhere, so I checked in the book, and carefully made them myself. Looked beautiful, foamed up very nicely.
Well, so they should have, because I had used dish soap instead of the lemon juice. (to be fair, they were kept in the same sort of bottle - the bartender knew which was which, and never thought anyone else would need them.)

Good one, reminds me of the crepes suzette on one lady's dress when I slipped in the water leaking through the roof of the little old house in which the restaurant was located.
Whipped cream all over the place, I offered to pay for it, but she refused and the table gave me a nice tip!

I also slipped on the high heels I had to purchase for a cocktail waitress job in a fancy French place. I had to wear this checkered dress halfway up my backside which was very revealing and then, I had no idea of what drinks were made of, as I don't drink nor did anyone in my family growing up. All I knew was that some martinis had olives and some had onions, as I love the olives in those drinks!
I lasted one night, as I hit a grout in the tile with my heel and spilled a big glass of kir all over the floor...what a horrible memory.

The second job I had was also in food service, here in the Ozarks. In our little mountain town, the main gathering place for both locals and tourists was the Basin Park Coffee shop, [ the Basin Hotel was built into the side of the mountain.] The very back of the restaurant
opened up into a cave and this is where we stored the slightly perishable stuff, with a big walk in refrigerator in the middle for eggs,milk and so forth. I had to be there every morning at five am to start my duties as back up cook. My boss was Brother James - a Franciscan monk who lived in community on the edge of town. He was gracious enough to go back in there ahead of me every morning to make sure there were no rats or racoons [ or worse] back there. The cave had a small opening way in back which hadn't been explored in years, and so it was wise to keep an eye on it. The occasional bat came through but for the most part, we had no problems. And yes, this was along time ago, when the local health department was a lot more ...em...folksy than it is now. Nobody had ever been poisoned and the food was terrific. 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' the local officials probably thought back in those days. Currently that kind of set up would make the health guy's eyes roll back in his head.

Speaking of crepes suzette, my first job title (besides babysitter) was Crepe Cooker. I cooked crepes in the dining room at the Beverly Hills Magic Pan (later I worked at the Denver one, too). I wore an authentic Swiss dirndl and wore my hair in braids pinned up on my head. Cooking crepes was easy after the first few days (not to mention boring) but clusters of old ladies used to watch me and whisper stuff like "Do you think she's French?" and "Oh my, that looks so difficult." Later I learned how to "assemble" dessert crepes.

Here's a recipe for "Crepes Chantilly":

1) Spread a fresh crepe with apricot jam.
2) Slice one banana and let it steep for a minute in 2 tablespoons brown sugar and a little sweet vermouth.
3) Put the banana slices in a line down the middle of the crepe.
4) Cover the line of banana with a line of whipped cream.
5) Fold the crepe around the filling (like a blanket around a baby).
6) Dust crepe with powdered sugar.
7) Decorate with a dollop of whipped cream, mint leaves, toasted slivered almonds and two banana slices.

Yum!
Robyn

My first job was packing zucchinis (courgettes). I was 13 years old. It was then that I discovered the meaning of "Less is More", as I worked next to a woman who literally bathed in the perfume "Joy", allegedly the 'most expensive perfume in the world'. If anyone knows the scent, it is incredibly powerful and cloying. I can, to this day, pick this scent in a crowded room, and it still makes me nauseous.