re: What were your lowest paid jobs as a kid

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Hauling hay. I think two of us got .04 cents a bale. A 12 hour day might get a guy $20

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My brother had a buddy in high school that lived on a farm, they recruited us once to load hay bales. Worked from sun up to sun down, had a short lunch break where they gave us a ham sandwich and a coke, no chips. When we were finally done his dad handed my brother $15 and told us to split it

There’s a scene in Napoleon Dynamite after he works at a chicken farm that hits so hard, plays out the same way.

ETA: This was around 89,90

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When we were finally done his dad handed my brother $15 and told us to split it

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Hauling hay sucks so bad because after you spend all day in the field throwing bales, you have to unload them in the barn before you quit. There really isnt a respite.

$4.25 working the concession stand at the tiny movie theater there in Baker

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no chips!?!?!? no fricking chips???

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Definitely would have helped offset the $.63 per hour I got paid

Other than babysitting up to that point (usually $20 for a couple of hours), $6.50 an hour working as a concession stand worker at a roller skating rink at 14 years old. Would make .50 more on the hour when working as DJ.

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Including the year these jobs were worked would probably be a good idea.

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Yep. These boomers complain about making 3.00 an hour back in the 90s but 3 bucks an hour back then is like 80 bucks an hour now

$3.50 per hour cash at an Ace Hardware store.

Made good money cutting grass in the neighborhood. $10 for a "regular" lot, $15 for a corner. All this was in 1988

minimum wage $5.15/hr at T. Baker Smith probing pipeline first summer after first year of college in 2002.

Had to be at work for 5:30am, most days lasted until 5PM, sometimes longer. Did all the shite work as the new guy. Some crews were ok, most were terrible to work with. Got stuck with one for the majority of the time and the jackass crew chief would smoke in the truck with the windows up. two old dudes who could not physically do the work but knew what needed to be done, so i was the one doing all of the physical work every day in that crew. Thought I was goign to die one day out in the marsh. Got stuck in a storm and couldn't get back to the landing before it started storming. Rained so hard we couldn't see anymore so we just parked the boat in the middle of the marsh and waited it out, getting soaked with the wind blown rain and watching lightning hit all around us constantly while we sat in an aluminum deck barge boat. I remember sitting in the boat thinking this is how i'm goign to die, with these two arse hats in the middle of the marsh and getting struck by lightning. I actually contemplated getting out of the boat and just standing up in the water away from the boat, as I thought for sure our lightning rod boat was going to get hit.


Did a 2 week job in Venice. Worked 14 straight days. Clock started at 3:30AM when we woke up, drove the barge boat out to where we were working for 6am and all we had to do was watch a pipeline get put in place. We litearlly sat in the boat all day doing absolutely nothing and maybe had to take 1 GPS reading a day. Just on a boat with two old dudes i can't stand, and absolutely nothing to do. Wasn't allowed to fish from the boat either, not that it matter b/c wouldn't have caught anything anyway with all the work being done nearby muddying up the water. We could leave the site at 6pm when the work stopped, which didn't have us back to the shitty arse trailer we were staying in until 8PM. 16 hour working days for 14 straight days making $6.00/hr. Plenty of overtime obviously, but just an icredibly shitty job and that I could not stand doing.
Get back home late Sunday night after this shitty 2 week long job, and back up and at 'em the next day at 5:30 for the beginning of another regular shitty week.

I do'nt recall how much money I made that summer, but it wasn't enough for what I did. Had I had a different crew, maybe it would have been more tolerable, but the 2 guys I was with the majority of the time is what made it the worst job ever. Most inconsiderate and uneducated people i've ever been around.

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grocery store job in high school - $3.35 an hour

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This

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and that pungent smell of the fresh cut hay fermenting up in that 150 degree barn

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The only thing that made it worth it occasionally was the farmers daughter bringing you tea around lunchtime.

Summer girlfriends were a big thing back in those days.