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What was your first paying job?


Darryl

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How did you earn your first dollar? Fast food? Pamphlet delivery? Retail?


Did you learn anything from it that you still find useful today?

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  • squeekums-the-elf

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  • Sincerely

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VeritasVinumArte

Checkout Chick.... they had just replaced manual number input for prices with scanning at the supermarket where I worked. $3.25 per hour with $1.25 taken out for Union fees. I was 14yrs 9m.


I learned not to like Unions :ninja: . Repeatedly screwed over by Unions which were mandatory membership and even ones which I wasn’t a member of.

Edited by VeritasVinumArte
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I got my first job at David Jones while at school. I thought it was great and still have really fond memories of it.

Edited by Tiara
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Sorting Chico Roll bags into 10's and then into boxes of 1000. I used to do it at home after school when I was around 11 or 12. I think I got about 50 cents or a $1 per 1000.


If you ate Chico Rolls in the 1970's it was my slag on the top of the bag, as that was the way I separated them. A lick of the finger and a count of 10 and repeat for the next few hours while watching TV.


Obviously there was no such thing as a concern around hygiene in the early 1970's :lol:

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Year 9, cashier/all-rounder at a service station. I learned how to do jobs quickly and efficiently. And also how to sneak chips from the bain-marie and make toasted chicken satay sandwiches for my one free meal a shift. The cashier skills I learned there (eftpos, counting money, customer service etc) all helped in future jobs throughout high school and uni.

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Joeyinthesky

Picking fruit - apricots, apples, cherries for my uncle. We were paid per crate, I can’t remember how much but it seemed like a handsome sum at 13/14. That job taught me to be quick, careful and efficient- and to be cautious how many apricots I ate because it was a long way back to the packing shed toilet!

Prior to that, sweeping floors after school in my parents ag machinery business for no pay... I hated every minute of that.

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MintyBiscuit

Worked at The Reject Shop. Decent bunch of people and not a terrible job. The worst part was when they stopped letting us just have the radio on and had playlist cds sent to the stores, and between each song it would say RE-JECT

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Silverstreak

Check out chick when I was 19. It helped me get another checkout chick job years later. I had to balance my cash at the end of the day, which was a pain. The second time around we had touch screens and the processes were a lot more automated, which was easier.


Back in my day, pretty much all of the checkouts were open during the day, not like nowadays where it's all one express, one non-express and the self serve.

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Silverstreak

As to what I found useful, it taught me customer service and how to handle a till / data entry, which helped me get further cash handling, customer service and data entry jobs. Also, that most customers are nice, but it's the horrible ones that will ruin your day.

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LemonMyrtle

Safeway (woolies) cashier.


What I learned was:

1. The general public are rude, and unwashed


2. Working under a negotiated agreement, in a large unionised workforce, is the best way to ensure you get good pay and conditions.


3. Don’t work for a place that is open until midnight on weekends if you also want to maintain a social life.

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Babysitter, got paid about $10 a night, huge money back in the day. Then as a checkout chick at a brand new supermarket. I earnt $3.24 a hour at 15. I was so excited when it went up to $4.16 an hour at 16. My first paycheck was $15.25. I spent $5 and saved the rest. Felt so rich.


I learnt humility from that checkout job. Plus never work with a hangover, roast chickens and hangovers just don't mix. Ever!

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Maccas, for the grand total of $5.37 an hour.


I was the first in my year to get a job so went from being the poor kid to one with plenty of cash overnight. It was pretty sweet.

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Babysitter. It was in the 80s and the family had the Joy of Sex on the bookshelf out for all to see.


I actually found it pretty hard to get a retail job, living in an area with really high unemployment many worked at jobs some would see as “teenagers first job material” for most of their life and it was really hard to get something with award wages and decent conditions. I finally scored a bakery job in University but it was short shifts and little chance for extra hours. An understanding of the realities of small business really helped me in my career later on.

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VeritasVinumArte

[mention]JRA[/mention] . what extras were you doing (apart from manual price input)? We did the usual packing, pricing, restocking, cleaning, cashing in/cashing out balancing of tills etc.

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ImperatorFuriosa

I was a cleaner in a high care nursing home. I hated every single minute of it and the smell of that place always seemed to linger on me. *shudder* Some of the elderly people there were a riot though.

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Total luxury here, I fluked a job in a bookshop. I learned how to talk to anyone about anything and how to fake it till you make it. Invaluable lessons. The boss had a side gig as a driving instructor and I still remember some of his hot driving tips too even though I never got in a car with him!

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