I'm technically a Millennial (1983) but I worked for 3 years at a small video store from about 18 to 21. Minimum wage, low responsibility, and very little supervision. Best job I ever had.
Same.. I didn't even know xennial was a thing until recently. I was born in 80, which is the cutoff time for a lot of the categorization of generations. But I was often times, the youngest in the group growing up so I always felt like i related more to Gen x, than millennials. That is.. til I saw a video of a self proclaimed gen x'r, who looked like she was about FIFTY FIVE, goin on 100, years old! Extremely sobering experience.. 😂 But that put me on the hunt and led me to the xennial subreddit. Everything started clicking, around the cobwebs of my brain.. lol. You definitely should do a video on xennials! Maybe even open the door as an invitation for subscribers to compare memories and experiences etc, in the comments.
@@springrain9438generation X was coined in like 1986 but didn’t become a popular term until grunge era so most people that identify it aren’t really X.
My 1st Job was at Kmart in 1984-1986. I was happy to have it since I did not want to flip burgers. I stocked the shelves, and ran a register. My 2nd year I worked the Garden Shop loading cars and trucks. The only people who made the Blue Light announcements were managers, and people would run to whatever part of the store to buy what was marked down. The blue light was nothing more than a enclosed cart with a car battery, hooked up to a light with a on and off switch. I think my old store number was 7184 in Marietta Ga. Kmart also payed in cash every Friday, it was a pretty cool 1st job, now that I think about it.
My local Kmart was Closter, NJ. Our blue light was like the light on a cop car. One of my friends worked there in HS and the parking lot was where everyone came at night with their cars, beers and weed... good times!!!
My first job was the Kmart garden shop. Because it was walking distance from the high school. I got a work permit at 15 to start working after school. We had a little ceasers in our Kmart. New Milford, CT.
When my brother was in high school, he made a killing working in the diner area of Kmart. He (and I) remember the housewives and the old ladies losing their god dam minds over the "blue light special" and your right- the "blue light" was a literally a reinforced shopping cart with a blue light on a pole, a speaker all attached to a car battery with a on/off switch
I had the ultimate teen job. I was a backstage crew member or stage technician for Hara Arena, a concert venue in Dayton, OH. It was awesome, but hard work. I met every rock star from 1985 to 1989.
My dad was management at a local arena and stadium. I saw any and every concert worth seeing from the time I was about 10 or 11. Good times... and great memories.
Most of us Gen X were told to get a job at 15 all year long in HS. I worked at the grocery store bagging groceries. We had to wear slacks and a shirt and tie. I made 3.85 hr. These days. I know very few teens who work a part time job in HS or College. Parents refuse to let their kids work. The cool thing about working at 15. We had a lot of friends who worked at subway, McDonalds. We always had free food and would trade.
I required my 16 year old to get a job if he wanted a car, car insurance, and gas money. And just for basic social skills. Especially after Covid. Now he’s 18 and has been working at Jack in the box for over a year. He’s doing so well, and I get free chicken sandwiches whenever I want! 😂😂
My parents did not want me to work, but they did not want to give me an allowance. Therefore during the summer I was a waitress for $2.15 an hour plus tips. Pro-tip, you have to put up with that guy that has a crush on you who owns coffee in stairs for 6 hours. He tips you really nice
@@mysocalledgenxlifeI'm gen x and my parents spoiled me. I had to drive the 1985 Chevy celebrity until a fender bender totalled it. Then they bought me the purple party monster Mazda MX-3. I paid the college physics guy to do the sound system. Worth every penny! My parents didn't want me to work because I need all the bonus stuff extra curriculars for my future.
Started work at 13, gen-X, born in 79. First job was walking dogs, babysitting, pulling weeds, picking cherries, organizing garages, my first official job was at Taco Time at 16.
@@zombieloveserte I mowed and saved mowed and saved one day I bought a sick Schwinn before they were sold at Walmart like at a. BMX bike shop. Then I rode my new bike to the sports shop in town and bought my first pair of Jordan's. I was 12. 1992. Got a Jordan shirt to match. I thought I was the 💩
I remember my wife laughing at me for referring to a long movie as a, "two reeler." 😄 It never even occurred to me that it was a completely outdated way of thinking about movies. lol
@@ImGoingSupersonicNo, but the length of that one movie could be enough time for a double feature. Some movies required a second film reel to finish watching at the theater (pre-digital), or *gasp* were rented out on TWO videotapes.
Jobs I had in the 1980s before the age of 18: Door-to-door newspaper subscription sales; Hospital candy striper; Movie theater usher; Mall Santa (seriously); Math tutor; Book store manager; Fast food cook (old school Hardees); Retail worker (sporting goods). I was the real life version of Brad Hamilton from Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
That’s quite a lot. You are literally Brad. I just worked as burger fry cook for a couple years and then towards the end of high school, was a waiter at an old folks home. Had to dress in the suit and all that and the football dudes would swing by and break balls cause kids weren’t dressing in suits back then.
@@nellywilliams2776Do you think the glamour shots people were just trollin everybody? I mean.. a lot of them came out kinda hideous. Ijs.. maybe it was like an inside joke or somethin?
My first job was as a file clerk. Retrieving files for accounting agents, re-filing them when done, making copies, all kinds of paper-related tasks. Definitely no longer a thing.
@@bannedtwice7767 In all fairness, the push for wanting to increase pay to $20 for service jobs is less "people are trying to make it a career" and more "in today's economy, $20 has the buying power that would be equivalent to working minimum wage as a 90s teen. Housing, food, and basic necessities are and will continue ballooning in price mostly due to corporate greed which they then try to say is more the fault of the working class "just not working hard enough" or "people don't want to actually earn their paychecks and just want to coast by at McDonald's" when the cold, hard reality is that nearly *every* job in America no longer provides the same quality of life and cannot sustain the standard of living of the previous generations. The Boomers ruined shit for Gen X and that ruin just exponentially trickled down. Is McDonald's or any minimum wage service job "a career"? No. But should the average person be earning peanuts working multiple jobs and still be unable to afford rent or groceries? Also no. A college aged kid can no longer support themselves on a meager McJob while also balancing classes even if they do the ol "survive on Kraft mac and ramens" like we did in uni. According to a recent study, an American adult should be earning roughly $96,500 annually or the equivalent of $46.39/hr, full time. $20/hr may have been a career salary in the 90s, but in 2024 dollars that ain't getting anyone far. The ruling class of business owners, corporations, and financial institutions are routinely robbing the working class and yet for some reason people always want to put the onus for not being able to afford to live in our late stage capitalist hellscape on those same exploited workers for demanding fairer compensation because how dare they have the gall to ask for more than you're currently earning?! You have much more in common and should share solidarity more with those underpaid workers and demand more equitable business practices in your OWN job. No one is looking to make fast food a career path, people are just trying to live with even a modicum of the same comforts previous generations were able to experience like being able to actually afford a home and higher education. We all are getting fucked, you gonna lie down and take it?
It sucked enough to make you want a BETTER JOB. I worked at the mall as soon as I was 16. $ and a car meant getting OUT OF MY HOUSE. We lived with BOOMERS, dude. Parents are too friendly now.
Great video,I'll never forget the days of getting up at 5am ,bundling up papers and putting them in the metal baskets on the back of my bmx bike and hurling down the empty early morning roads to deliver the days news paper. Awesome time.😎. Keep up the great videos. ❤️
So that is the thing that makes all the rest of Illinois grow up and move to chicago. There is like nothing else in that whole state. I was really shocked driving through it from Texas
I had a friend in college (1988-1991) that managed a discount theater. He would let us come in after closing on the weekends to watch whatever they were playing at that time. We’d order pizza and watch a couple of movies late at night on the huge screen. We felt like the masters of all we surveyed. Back to the Future 2, Alien 3, Terminator 2, Predator 2 (crap, were there a lot sequels then). It was a lot fun.
I spent whole summers in movie theaters as a kid back when $1 second-run theaters were a thing. It was cheap, and it was air conditioned. And let me tell ya, PG movies got away with a whole lot more back then.
I was a paperboy in junior high. You could actually get that job at 12 where I'm from. It was an absolute free pass if you wanted to be wandering the streets well after curfew. My parents paid my overhead. Luxuries were my responsibility. The highlight of my paperboy 'career' was meeting and getting really baked with Demien Slade in Pasadena, CA, back in 2002. He is THE Two Dollars Kid from 'Better Off Dead'. He was a friend of a really close high school friend I was visiting. Fun times. I did athletics in high school. So my parents didn’t make me work. But I had a mountain of chores and corporal punishment, although being phased out, was still an occasional option in my home. So work got done. And I had to maintain a 3.0 or above.
@@honestytoafault If you were a pre-teen in the early 1980s (12, 13, 14) you could get a job delivering newspapers. When my family moved from inner city Brooklyn to the suburbs of Long Island I called a job delivering Newsday and Daily News. If another newsboy/newsgirl left her job you could take her route and expand. My sister and I accumulated 5 or 6 routes between us. Customers would tip 50% to 100% and on holidays like Christmas/Hannuka or Thanksgiving you got envelopes with over a hundred dollars!! These jobs disappeared by the mid to late 80s and unemployed ADULTS began taking over routes and were considered more reliable.
@@honestytoafault There's good reason for that. As per my own experiences, I was a paperboy from 12-13, it wasn't exactly safe for a kid that age. I'm glad they are not put at risk now.
Yessss!!! The long box CDs came in!!! My kids thought I was crazy. Our favorite game is "used to be a Pizza Hut". The building is still shaped the same.
That's why when I went to Blockbuster I will rent a 3-day rental and return it after day two. That way I won't have to be pressured on returning a tape at a certain time because I had all day😂
Worked at a photo booth for a while and then went on to manage a couple of one hour labs. Never a dull moment. Love the footage from the film One Hour Photo - great movie!
Great vid! Mini-rant: the nostalgia for Blockbuster these days drives me nuts. Back in the day, any film lover knew they absolutely sucked and were the worst choice for rental stores, mostly due to their market power allowing them to demand censored versions of movies. It was the complete opposite of the "director's cut" boom we got on DVD later and it screwed tons of VHS releases. FAMILY VIDEO 4 LIFE.
Absolutely. I rarely went to a blockbuster. Preferred the small independent stores and family video. I was a manager at family video for two years and it was a decent job.
Depends on which Blockbuster store you went to though...I worked at one where we carried both the censored and uncensored versions of movies...and we pulled in about 5 grand every Friday and Saturday in the 90s.... people weren't hitting the Family Video in our area that's for damn sure 😆
I always liked the mom and pop shops as well. We even had one when I first bought a home in the late 90s. They were there for a couple of years, then closed. Sad...
My first job was as a Full Sevice Lot Attendant at a gas station. It paid $4.50 a hour. I also had to scrub the garage bays floors with some green stuff when the mechanics were done for the day. My dad R.I.P. was a mechanic there.
Not GenX, but I worked in a video store as a teenager. It was 2004 and I was 16, about to turn 17. I'd dropped out of school by this point, and was desperately searching for something to fill up my hours and get me away from home. A family friend owned the dying video store in our small Wisconsin town and hired me on. One of my favorite bittersweet memories was towards the end of my time there: the transition from VHS to DVD happened pretty slowly, but when the VHS firesale didn't clean out all the stock, we had to throw a fair few tapes away. It was late and I had just closed the store. Took the last carton of tapes out back, and instead of chucking them all in, I sat out there with a cigarette and took my time to look at them as I tossed them in. Glad I did, because in saying goodbye to what felt like my childhood, I managed to "liberate" a copy of Creepshow and Return of the Living Dead.
@@danielmeans9539 To be fair, I don't think any of the ones that got tossed would be worth anything. Most of them were Z grade kids movies and dumb "How To" videos. Anything worth anything got nabbed in the sales.
I'm 23 and from Flint. A few of these jobs still exist near me, but they're generally hard to get. We still have a record store, a drive-in theatre, and there are arcades not far from here. I can't speak on the rest, though. Great content, makes me feel like I've been transported to a world I just barely lived in.
@@michaelbarbarich3965 Yes, inflation was extremely bad in the 70, and bleed into the 80's of course. However there was a national attitude change when Regan won, and the greatest decade began in earnest. We all just decided to have fun. Of course there were problems like any other time, but we didn't let it get us down. Activist in the 80's were ignored for the most part, and those activist didn't have a cult like passion for their delusion. The "Two dollars, cash" quote is from an 80's movie you obviously didn't see. Along with John Hughes, another great 80's director was a guy named "Savage" Steve Holland. He had a series of teen comedy's in the 80's, one of those being "Better Off Dead" with John Cusack. I would recommend it for you to watch, but your dead pan "Rose colored glasses" comment leads me to believe your not the life of the party type. You probably wouldn't find any joy in it at all.
@@michaelbarbarich3965 UA-cam was offended for you with my reply, and deleted it. "2 Dollars...... Cash..." is a movie reference, as well as john6291 post from the same movie. I think the reply was deleted because of the movie title. It stars John Cusack, and is probably the most popular of the writer/director... Ga-Ga-Boo-Boo. That's not his name of course, but UA-cam may also find that directors name too abrasive for the saf..e area crowd. The movies is "Better Off ...." The last word rhyming with lead. It was hilarious, like UA-cams nonsense.
My first Gen-X job was in the Mall. Malls were a major thing in the 80s (and consequently in the 90s), but sadly I don’t feel that they’re really a thing anymore. Sure some Malls are still open, but there’s not much inside them anymore.
wages were good too .. babysitting paid five dollars an hour and my first cashier job at a grocery store paid seven dollars an hour in which in 1983 went far
I delivered pizza in the 90s, I had enough to pay my rent alone, feed myself, go to concerts and movies all the time with my friends, and buy tons of CDs and video games, plus cannabis.
WHAAAA? Man, I got ripped off. I got a dollar an hour for babysitting, even for a family of 5 kids. I remember getting a new "client" who paid $2 an hour and only had 1 kid. I felt like I'd hit the jackpot! I was born in 81.
$7 an hour (in 1983) is pretty high for an entry-level job. Did you babysit in Beverly Hills? Minimum wage was only somewhere ~$4 an hour back then. I had a job over the Christmas break, working in Manhattan (NYC) for $7.70 an hour in 1986. at a (small one floor) phone center where we took inbound phone calls, from people who were ordering Broadway tickets for the holiday season. (which included the Rockets show it radio city musical Hall) & $7.70 an hour (in 1986) was considered WAY BETTER (Higher) pay, than the NYC suburbs. (and the rest of the country, of course) (as compared to entry-level & minimum wage jobs) - & I remember in 1988, it was a big deal, when semi-Major cities like Boston, (& major city suburbs) were paying $6 an hour to work at fast food places. Which was considerable more than small & medium city market that were only paying $4.50 an hour maybe $5 an hour the most (in 1988)
My first job was a clerk at a supermarket part time while in high school. The only full time workers were the manager, asst. managers, butchers, and some cashiers. Everyone else was part time, and primarily younger people, often students. Fast forward 45 years later, and I see many adults taking jobs that were previously occupied by teenagers and young people.Same with the fast food industry.
I was just complaining about that. Back in the 80s, working at McDonald’s, Burger King, etc were entry level jobs for high school kids. We’d work part-time after school and college kids going to night classes would work the morning shift. The only full time employees were the managers and the assistant managers. Now, immigrants have taken those jobs away from high school and college kids and made it their careers. Further, they attempt to maintain families with those jobs and complain about low wages. Even worse, today’s high school kids don’t want to work. They’re mostly overweight gamers.
Record stores not only still exist but Vinyl is now outselling CDs again and even walmart has a couple of racks of albums. Yes, a lot of the major chains collapsed under their own weight but a lot of the independent stores survived in part because the large chains typically didn't sell used copies so the indie shops were the only places to find a lot of stuff that went out of print and there is a LOT of music that can't be streamed legally or bought as a digital download. I don't know where the person who made the video lives but around here you can still find dine in Pizza Huts along with plenty of other Pizza places and arcades are very much still a thing. I live near one that even does themed nights including free pinball on tuesday nights and the place is always packed for it. And ticket sales and concessions are still very much a thing too at every theater I know of.
I live in the Midwest in a small town. And I even said in the video that some of these places still exist…but these are not regular jobs like they were in the 80s. There is a massive difference between “my town still has a Pizza Hut and a record store” and EVERY town having all of these places with multiple options and with teens working everywhere. Pizza Hut hasn’t had indoor dining since before 2020, and if you get to work in a record store, chances are you are an adult working full time or the owner. These places don’t hire teens anymore. And for you to act like arcades are a common thing everywhere like the 80s is absurd. Yes, many of these things are still around in places for novelty purposes. But they aren’t a staple of life like they used to be. And if you were alive in the 80s, the difference is quite obvious.
@@mysocalledgenxlife Try coming to eastern tennessee. I just searched on google maps and found 8 out of 21 nearby pizza huts still offering dine in. I don't think they are building new ones with dining rooms but a LOT of the older ones still have them. I haven't checked lately but I don't think they do the salad bars anymore though. But also like I said, there are lots of other pizza places too with Pizza Inn being a quite popular example with a buffet, table service, and takeout. They aren't quite a national chain since there aren't any locations on the west coast. But they are just one example of a competing chain with there being plenty of others offering the same types of service and the jobs that go with that including for teens. I stopped counting results for record stores at 25 and that was only the ones specifically listed as record stores. It should tell you something that google maps has a business category for record stores. I also stopped counting video arcades at 25 and that isn't counting places listed as amusement centers with go karts and other stuff. And again. The fact that google maps has a category for video arcades should tell you something. For me the difference from the 80s is that the shopping malls that still exist don't have arcades anymore unless they are part of a movie theater. Again, the large chains went under but a lot of local ones survived and there are new ones that didn't even open until well into the 2000s. I also see more of them closing at 11 or midnight instead of 3AM or just not closing at all in the summer. There was a lull in arcade popularity in the early 2000s before it picked up again but they really are all over the place again. And yes, all of these places still hire teens. Perhaps you don't live in an area where these things are popular still but I can assure you that they are plentiful across the country.
I live in a major City and all those things no longer exist. But I have been to places that are lost in time. If you live in one of those places cherish it.
I live in a small north east coast city and our downtown only has old buildings & small businesses, no chains. We have a couple vinyl record stores. Hidden gems
Back in the ‘90s I lived in Massachusetts and dine-in Pizza Huts were already scarce, at least in the areas of the state where I lived. My jaw dropped when the video mentioned kids getting hired there in the ‘90s for $20/hr. Minimum wage was $4.25-4.50/hr. I remember being jealous of the kids getting $7-10/hr.
Graduated high school in ‘89. Worked for Wherehouse from 90-94. Worked as a record clerk, but mainly as a video clerk. The most common question I got was, “What’s new and good?” 😄 The descriptions of both jobs are, for the most part, spot on accurate.
Paper boys were great, they'd bring the paper right up to your front porch so you just had to open the door and lean down to get it; when they switched to adult drivers in cars, even tho they gave you plastic boxes to add onto your mailbox post down at the street, plenty of times the driver just flings the paper onto the driveway where it's going to get run over, or onto a lawn where the sprinkler is going to get it, or even if it's in the box, rain can still drive into the box and get it pretty drenched and unreadable, whereas porches usually had a protective roof over them. And of course that means you have to not only be decently dressed to go down your driveway to get your paper nowadays, it's a lot less friendly to disabled and elderly people who are prone to falling or need to wrestled their walker out the door, etc. Paper boys were definitely the superior delivery system! I remember my parents always giving our boy a big tip at xmas.
I worked my first job at six flags of Texas for the summer at 15 in 1995 and earned money for a 1991 Subaru legacy. Then I got my dream job at electronics boutique at 16.
Thanks the Reaganomics, living in the new Rist Bentley, my father a Steel Worker was laid off after Reagan destroyed the Unions by claiming that Air Traffic Controllers were government employees and therefore could not strike, even though they either technically worked for the owner of the airports or the airline company. But at 14, I had to find work to help support the family and worked as a dishwasher and salad and prep worker for a couple of years until I was able to graduate high school one year early to escape the area. But I worked from a dishwasher to head chef and every position in between before and after going to college.
I spent so much money at Camelot. There was this girl at TapeWorld, she was the manager, dont remember her name but she had dark brown hair, so pretty. She was in college, i was in high school, asked her to prom, she had a boyfriend though. Still crushed all these decades later. Lol
We used to buy our concert tickets at the Mall Record Stores too… waiting in line for tixs was so much fun, and dj’s from the local rock stations would show up there and do promos…. give out records and later cassette tapes or even free concert tickets 🎟️ with a ride on the radio station Bus to the show
I remember getting my dad to rent the third one. I was like 9 and cried bc his grandparents died, I kept hoping they would be reunited with them at the end of the movie
I began working a "real job" when I was 13 (1992) "setting trap." Setting trap was sitting in a little sunken shed putting clay pigeons on a spring loaded mechanical arm. When the ref pushed the button it'd kick out the target and swing around. You had to be quick to get the clay target on without busting it and your hand out of the way to not get a finger taken off, lol. That was seasonal, so during the summer I worked framing and demo on a construction site. I worked one summer at a christmas tree farm- 8 hours a day trying to make evergreens look, eventually, in ten years, like a christmas tree. I hated that one. Most pointless job I ever had. I continued to do construction after school and in summers till I was 16 and got hired at Footlocker. That sucked too, but the people I worked with were great. I was a high schooler and most of them were college age. So, plenty of fun hangs and herb.
If you were a pre-teen in the early 1980s (12, 13, 14) you could get a job delivering newspapers. When my family moved from inner city Brooklyn to the suburbs of Long Island I called a job delivering Newsday and Daily News. If another newsboy/newsgirl left her job you could take her route and expand. My sister and I accumulated 5 or 6 routes between us. Customers would tip 50% to 100% and on holidays like Christmas/Hannuka or Thanksgiving you got envelopes with over a hundred dollars!! These jobs disappeared by the mid to late 80s and unemployed ADULTS began taking over routes and were considered more reliable.
not to mention the steady flow of cash from BABYSITTING!! paid for the first year of college on babysitting wages saved from when i started at ten years old .. very lucrative back in the 1980s
Nostalgia certainly seems to make everything sound way better than it was. 1. Nothing like working in the record store and having customers come into say, "do you guys have that song? it's on the radio. it goes do do do..." 2. Same thing but at the video store, "do y'all have that movie? it's got that guy in it, I think he's got a gun." 3. Where I lived phone book delivery was always done by some overweight middle aged guy who had an old beater station wagon. Never once saw kids my age doing it. 4. Pretty much the same deal with arcade attendants. It was almost always some middle aged dude that was slightly pervy looking with a quarter changer belt. 5. Movie ticket counter is still a job that teens and young adults get. Did I mention how I knew a boy that had to clean what can only be described as a sh!t explosion in the restroom at the theater in our town? No kidding he said it was all the way up the walls of the stall and even on the ceiling. How TF did they get it on the ceiling???? 6. All the Pizza Huts where I lived sold beer so the only teens working there were in the kitchen because of serving laws. 7. Photo lab jobs were actually pretty cool. I knew a girl who worked in one that had the greatest stories about developing film for private investigators and people taking boudoir photography. 9. You missed one. Vending concessions at a a local university, high school or minor league sporting event. First job I ever had was vending at my local university football games.... I enjoyed getting to see the games for free but it was really hard work for not a lot of money.
I say that to young people who think gen X had everything perfect and ideal. There's a lot of that in UA-cam comments, jealousy of our generation. I agree that it was the best modern era - but younger people don't see the negative things in cliche depictions of the 70s and 80s. Like being told nonstop that nuclear war could wipe us from existence at any moment without us having time to know we're dying. See most Prince's Purple Rain album lyrics for reference. "We could all die any day." And we couldn't all afford the cool kid must-have fashions. The first pair of Nike sneakers my parents could afford to buy for me was a mustard yellow pair from a discount bin. In Jr High I got nicknamed "Mustard."
@@naturalnashuan as a tween my friends and I all got one pair of the cheapest Nikes available at the beginning of the school year and come Spring they were looking mighty ratty. Then Reebok was the rage when I was a young teen and I kept mine so long that I had to glue the souls back together with crazy glue. There are lots of younger kids that feel that way sure but a lot of people our age have those rose colored nostalgia glasses on too. Maybe childhood was hard enough that I never forgot how much things could suck growing up for me to ever feel like those were the best times ever. I think a lot of people don't miss those time as much as they miss being young and healthy and having their whole lives ahead of them. It helps them to gloss over all the crap parts of growing up back then IMO.
Very first job was grandparents' groundskeeper. Hard work but free lunch and good pay! Second job was maintenance guy for my high school's athletic department. Third job was working for a local fish & chips fast food chain near Seattle, WA. I swear all food was much better and higher quality back in those days!
born in 70, I started delivering papers at age 6.. I would help my older brother deliver them. then when I was about 8 years old I got my own route. I delivered papers until I was about 12 years old.. then I started working construction(during the summer when school was out) I worked for a stone mason as a hod tender, mixing cement/mud and keeping him supplied with rocks. I was making big bucks I thought. then I noticed fully grown adults started taking over paper boy jobs.. i thought that was the weirdest thing. to see fully grown adults delivering papers from a car.. I thought why are fully grown adults doing little boy jobs for? that was very strange to me..adults delivering papers did not last very long, just part of the 90's.
I just subbed after watching your latest video but now I'm checking out the rest of them. I worked at Sam Goody in the mall when I was 15-16 then I worked at Circuit City after I graduated high school for about a year. These Zoomers have no idea.
Do you remember Impulse? They were a chain of mall stores owned by Circuit City. They sold all the latest techno gadgets. I worked at one in the early 90s.
"Paper or plastic?" Now there's a gen x phrase. My town was small. We had two tv stations and no rock stations, only pop and country. Only Zepplin and Floyd songs I'd heard were on the Pizza Hut juke box. I got married and moved to Phoenix in '91 and, musically speaking, I lived the '70s and '90s at the same time. I felt very lucky for that!
I did quite a few of these. I worked at Pizza Hut in the kitchen and delivery. I was an employee at a video store that was also a photo lab. We'd also transcribe people's reel to reel to VHS. I worked as a projectionist on my college campus, as well. Also videotaped law students practicing courtroom stuff. I was a film student so doing these sorts of things was pretty normal.
My grandfather was a coroner in the 80s and 90s. Back then a country coroner would just use their own camera for autopsy photos. They also used that camera for vacation photos. The poor schmuck who developed photos for my grandfather would get to see not only his vacation to Europe, but then suddenly see a human who had been opened for the autopsy. Times were different then.
Awesome! I knew a coroner who traveled to remote places to pick up bodies. He and a coworker took turns driving around sleeping in the back of the hearse with the corpse. His favorite story was about picking up a hitchhiker while his coworker was sleeping next-to the corpse. His coworker woke up and reached through the little window in the dark and grabbed the hitchhiker by accident, asking, "Are we there yet?" The hitchhiker took a flying leap from the car. 😂🤣
1:43 Here in Austin, TX we have a store called half price books, I bought so many records from this place! Rebuilding my vinyl. Me in 1995: I want my learners permit!!! Mom: you need insurance! I'm not paying for it! Me gets a job. Mom: why did you get a job?! I can't take you to it!!!
And that's why my first and second jobs involved working with my mother. 😨 I met my first boyfriend at that job and she was always watching us, getting fodder for gossip.
I remember being so excited to graduate from my $22.50/week paper route and mowing neighborhood lawns to my first real job. I started working as early as I was legally able. Not working never occurred to me. I can't imagine a young kid now getting up at 4:30, folding and banding or bagging papers, and then delivering them all on time with no supervision.
My brother-in-law (R.I.P.) was an assistant manager at a local indie record store; then, after it closed, he switched to Tape World (which eventually converted into FYE).
Early teens paper boy. Late teens local video store clerk. The adult section was always popping and you learned ALL the dirty secrets. Teachers, doctors, cops, neighbors…
Dublin, Ireland has a Tower Records with home stereos/record players in the back. I was so happy to spend some time in that place. Record stores and book stores were a staple of my youth.
I miss the sense of community in comic shops, video stores, music shops, and local theaters. They were hangouts, you learned stuff about culture, and you grew up with what was sold there and the people who worked there.
Paper boy was my first job but not as a teen, I was 10 and 11. It was for the afternoon edition of the NY Post and my route was 4 buildings in an apartment complex in Brooklyn.
I had a high school job working for US Robotics refurbishing computer modems as a solder techinician. Pretty sure jobs like this still exist. Not glamorous, but if you're decent at soldering it did pretty well.
Born in '77 and I worked in the music department for a combined book, music and video store when I was 18-20. We had no Internet and used music catalogs to order unique albums from the UK, Germany, Japan etc.... I'd order out of print (in the US) pre WWII country blues and crazy Hendrix albums/bootlegs under friends names. Every few weeks they'd arrive and my checks would vanish. Regrettably, many albums found there way to my Dodge Shadow at no cost during smoke breaks. Music, rent, beer/grass and ¢49 tacos claimed my income and I felt I was getting the better deal in those days.
My first job at 16 was as a telemarketer for a hearing aide company, Miracle Ear. I lasted a month. I got paid $5.00/hr. in 1988. I didn't get another job right away. Miracle Ear was the month of October. Next job was in May of 1989. At the local mall in the food court. The place was local to where I lived called Hot Dog Charlie's. We sold only hot dogs, soda, coffee, and rice pudding. Nothing else. The company had several locations that were not in a mall, but the location I worked at made the most money for several years! It was fun while I was there. I got like 4 or 5 of my friends jobs there....those were the days...
My first job was working for my dad in his landscaping business. It would be raking grass clippings and bagging them or leaves till I was big enough to mow. Then I started babysitting at 9, and then got my first job with a workers permit when I was 14 at the local ice cream shop.
I worked as a hotel desk clerk behind bullet-proof glass. In thhe middle of the night when people didn't check in. That was awesome! I did almost no work and could do whatever I wanted because customers couldn't see me unless they rang a bell.
I got my very first job on August 5th 1994 which also happened to be my 16th birthday. I was doing odd jobs around my housing complex. I later moved on to working at Mervyn's, and as for pizza it was Papa Murphy's for me in 1999. Red red wine by UB40, along with Kokomo and Don't worry be happy.
I was a paper boy from age12-15. Every 2 weeks I would get a bill from the newspaper and I would have to go collect money from the customers. Anything I made over the bill was my pay. It was cool because whenever I needed money I could just go collect from a few customers and I would be good. Before I quit I collected for1-2months in advance and kept it all. After all I needed money to pay for weed and beer and the other stuff a 15year old needed in 1989
My first job was helping my uncle set tile when I was 14. 30 years later and I have one of many trades I've learned and can get a job at will if anything happened. Got laid off last year, was working again within 2 weeks.
I was quite literally “born on the radio” back in 1965- my father being a small market radio station manager. I had my Class 3 Engineering license by the time I was 13 & “running the board” for just about any pop, country, gospel & “adult contemptorary” … I reopened a drive-in movie theater with my twin and in between all that, moonlighted (what the youth of today call “a side hustle”) mowed lawns, shoveled snow and sold “black market rubbers” to gullible horny lads that had no clue what a Faber Kneaded Rubber actually was… Yeah- radio DJs, the riff-raff of the Back-Row Betty’s and the high gained f Romano the successful grift made for a beautiful set of tween/teen years…
They would put the CDs in a long paper box or a plastic thing (long rectangle) in the same shape. Either it was to make them harder to steal or to make them easier to show the cover in the shelves.
I recently found a couple of rolls of undeveloped film and took them to CVS to get them developed... man, they did an absolutely terrible job and they didn't even give me the negatives back!
I worked at Child World when I was 15. Then I got a job at Burger King. It wasn’t a bad job. I’m originally from NJ and lived by the beach. A cool job in my area was checking beach badges. You need one to get on the beach during peak hours. Those jobs filled up fast! My husband for a time worked nights for Pizza Hut delivering pizza. Thanks for the memories. My teenage sons got jobs working at Dunkin Donuts and Panera Bread.
My first job was a cashier at Busch Gardens in Tampa, FL. Not the best start but it was interesting. I did work for Tower Records in Reno, NV at the height of CD sales in 2000, it was kinda like "Empire Records." I also did the Photography job in the Mall in Reno but it wasn't that fun, customers were pretty rude. I did both of these in my early twenties. My main job as a kid was mowing lawns and yard care. I bought my GI Joes, Hot Wheels, and Nintendo system doing this. I also did this to collect CDs. I also washed dishes at home so that was additional income. The funny part was I was finishing up dishes as I watched this from dinner tonight!😋 Some jobs were cool, some where a total drag. I did a few other things before I finished my Bachelor's degree and got my first "Real Adult Job" but those are not as fun, pay better but that's it.🤔
I miss the days when they would layer the butter syrup into the popcorn bucket for you. Now, you have to pump it yourself and it all lands on top. 15:51
I vaguely remember the McDonald's birthday parties. For us in our neighborhood though, kids I knew usually did parties at the local roller skating rink. And I used to be a paper boy too.
I was at the tail end of GenX (graduated high school in '96). I was a sacker and cashier at a big grocery store. I've noticed no one ever takes your groceries to you car anymore, or even offers. 😢 in my day we did it automatically. My 17yo just got a job (starts training tomorrow) and my 16yo has been working lawn jobs since he was 14. Happy to be raising hard working (homeschooled) teens.
I remember blockbuster - boy do i miss that so much. it was 8pn - pitch black out and was walking to blockbuster to watch a movie XD soemtimes i want to go back to when i was a little kid - also why does it seem like the 70's 80's and early 90s were so much fun? oh wait.... PEOPLE TALKED TO EACHOTHER WITHOUT ELECTRONICS!
The only one I knew I've heard of that had a McDonald's birthday was because they couldn't have a Chuck e cheese or ShowBiz Pizza birthday or one of those mini golf places that are everywhere usually.
Fun fact: sit down Pizza Hut restaurants are still alive and well in the UK. I walked by one in South London a few years back and was surprised that they still existed in that form. The place was packed, too.
I'm technically a Millennial (1983) but I worked for 3 years at a small video store from about 18 to 21. Minimum wage, low responsibility, and very little supervision. Best job I ever had.
You are a xennial like me! I might make a video about our special micro generation.
Same.. I didn't even know xennial was a thing until recently. I was born in 80, which is the cutoff time for a lot of the categorization of generations. But I was often times, the youngest in the group growing up so I always felt like i related more to Gen x, than millennials. That is.. til I saw a video of a self proclaimed gen x'r, who looked like she was about FIFTY FIVE, goin on 100, years old! Extremely sobering experience.. 😂 But that put me on the hunt and led me to the xennial subreddit. Everything started clicking, around the cobwebs of my brain.. lol. You definitely should do a video on xennials! Maybe even open the door as an invitation for subscribers to compare memories and experiences etc, in the comments.
@@mysocalledgenxlifePlease do! We don't quite fit in anywhere lol
@@springrain9438generation X was coined in like 1986 but didn’t become a popular term until grunge era so most people that identify it aren’t really X.
That is Awesome, thank you for sharing. May I ask what type of work you do now?
My 1st Job was at Kmart in 1984-1986. I was happy to have it since I did not want to flip burgers. I stocked the shelves, and ran a register. My 2nd year I worked the Garden Shop loading cars and trucks. The only people who made the Blue Light announcements were managers, and people would run to whatever part of the store to buy what was marked down. The blue light was nothing more than a enclosed cart with a car battery, hooked up to a light with a on and off switch. I think my old store number was 7184 in Marietta Ga. Kmart also payed in cash every Friday, it was a pretty cool 1st job, now that I think about it.
But did yours have a little diner area?
My local Kmart was Closter, NJ. Our blue light was like the light on a cop car. One of my friends worked there in HS and the parking lot was where everyone came at night with their cars, beers and weed... good times!!!
My first job was the Kmart garden shop. Because it was walking distance from the high school. I got a work permit at 15 to start working after school. We had a little ceasers in our Kmart. New Milford, CT.
@@roadmarch0364 Kmart has the best ham sandwiches at the little cafe that used to be in there in the early 80s.
When my brother was in high school, he made a killing working in the diner area of Kmart. He (and I) remember the housewives and the old ladies losing their god dam minds over the "blue light special" and your right- the "blue light" was a literally a reinforced shopping cart with a blue light on a pole, a speaker all attached to a car battery with a on/off switch
I had the ultimate teen job. I was a backstage crew member or stage technician for Hara Arena, a concert venue in Dayton, OH. It was awesome, but hard work. I met every rock star from 1985 to 1989.
Jealous!
I roadies for a handful of bands. I was always broke,but my adventures were priceless.
My dad was management at a local arena and stadium. I saw any and every concert worth seeing from the time I was about 10 or 11. Good times... and great memories.
Sometimes we delivered pizzas to rock concert venues.
I saw so many shows at Hara!
I was the guy who brought the shopping karts back inside at K-Mart.
I did for Walmart, and nowadays they have those powered carts that push them in and they still can't keep the lots cleared.
I was the kid who stole a shopping cart because I needed it to deliver newspapers!!
They still have people doing that.
@@juniorjames7076 That's called being a thief.
Sure you did
My dad actually had a machine solely for rewinding VHS tapes. They actually rewound extremely fast instead of doing it in the VHS machine.
A VHS machine is called a VCR. 📼
Yeah, we had one of those
Yeah we had the red race car one! Actually still have it
@@RachelASmith1990😁
Yup, ours was a nice looking red sports car and I loved how fast it would go... making it sound like the rewinder would drive off.
Most of us Gen X were told to get a job at 15 all year long in HS. I worked at the grocery store bagging groceries. We had to wear slacks and a shirt and tie. I made 3.85 hr. These days. I know very few teens who work a part time job in HS or College. Parents refuse to let their kids work. The cool thing about working at 15. We had a lot of friends who worked at subway, McDonalds. We always had free food and would trade.
I required my 16 year old to get a job if he wanted a car, car insurance, and gas money. And just for basic social skills. Especially after Covid. Now he’s 18 and has been working at Jack in the box for over a year. He’s doing so well, and I get free chicken sandwiches whenever I want! 😂😂
@@mysocalledgenxlife Nice! I wish more parents were like you..
@@mysocalledgenxlife I still like their nasty/yummy tacos, but don't eat them very often cause I just don't eat out anymore.
My parents did not want me to work, but they did not want to give me an allowance. Therefore during the summer I was a waitress for $2.15 an hour plus tips. Pro-tip, you have to put up with that guy that has a crush on you who owns coffee in stairs for 6 hours. He tips you really nice
@@mysocalledgenxlifeI'm gen x and my parents spoiled me. I had to drive the 1985 Chevy celebrity until a fender bender totalled it. Then they bought me the purple party monster Mazda MX-3. I paid the college physics guy to do the sound system. Worth every penny! My parents didn't want me to work because I need all the bonus stuff extra curriculars for my future.
Started work at 13, gen-X, born in 79. First job was walking dogs, babysitting, pulling weeds, picking cherries, organizing garages, my first official job was at Taco Time at 16.
So you were a late bloomer?
Taco Time in Oregon? I loved those!
I worked at a taco time in Washington
@@zombieloveserte I mowed and saved mowed and saved one day I bought a sick Schwinn before they were sold at Walmart like at a. BMX bike shop. Then I rode my new bike to the sports shop in town and bought my first pair of Jordan's. I was 12. 1992. Got a Jordan shirt to match. I thought I was the 💩
Gen y
I remember my wife laughing at me for referring to a long movie as a, "two reeler." 😄 It never even occurred to me that it was a completely outdated way of thinking about movies. lol
Is that the same as a "double feature"?
@@ImGoingSupersonicNo, but the length of that one movie could be enough time for a double feature. Some movies required a second film reel to finish watching at the theater (pre-digital), or *gasp* were rented out on TWO videotapes.
Yeah, your comment just reminded me some long movies had 2 VHS tapes. CRAZY!
We were certainly the last to remember businesses using a searchlight to draw people "downtown ".
Jobs I had in the 1980s before the age of 18: Door-to-door newspaper subscription sales; Hospital candy striper; Movie theater usher; Mall Santa (seriously); Math tutor; Book store manager; Fast food cook (old school Hardees); Retail worker (sporting goods). I was the real life version of Brad Hamilton from Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
That’s quite a lot. You are literally Brad. I just worked as burger fry cook for a couple years and then towards the end of high school, was a waiter at an old folks home. Had to dress in the suit and all that and the football dudes would swing by and break balls cause kids weren’t dressing in suits back then.
I remember going to the Sears Portrait Studio so many times to get family portraits taken.
I worked there in the 90s when they were still using film instead of digital. Those were very fun times.
Remember Olan Mills and Glamour Shots 😂😂😂😂
@@nellywilliams2776Do you think the glamour shots people were just trollin everybody? I mean.. a lot of them came out kinda hideous. Ijs.. maybe it was like an inside joke or somethin?
I had my 17yo's baby pics done at sears. Must have been at the tail end of their era!!😂😂
Picking corn on a farm, roofing, warehouse and working as a hose dog on an oil truck were my jobs from 14 in the 90s😂😂😂
picking fruit on a farm was a first job too (good times)
My first job was as a file clerk. Retrieving files for accounting agents, re-filing them when done, making copies, all kinds of paper-related tasks. Definitely no longer a thing.
Working at Mcdonalds use to be a teenager and starter job now its a fricken career
No, its still a job
@@stvargas69That people are trying to make a career. They literally want 20+ dollars an hour to assemble a cheeseburger.
@@stvargas69 yes it use to be a stepping stone not a career
@@bannedtwice7767 In all fairness, the push for wanting to increase pay to $20 for service jobs is less "people are trying to make it a career" and more "in today's economy, $20 has the buying power that would be equivalent to working minimum wage as a 90s teen. Housing, food, and basic necessities are and will continue ballooning in price mostly due to corporate greed which they then try to say is more the fault of the working class "just not working hard enough" or "people don't want to actually earn their paychecks and just want to coast by at McDonald's" when the cold, hard reality is that nearly *every* job in America no longer provides the same quality of life and cannot sustain the standard of living of the previous generations. The Boomers ruined shit for Gen X and that ruin just exponentially trickled down.
Is McDonald's or any minimum wage service job "a career"? No. But should the average person be earning peanuts working multiple jobs and still be unable to afford rent or groceries? Also no. A college aged kid can no longer support themselves on a meager McJob while also balancing classes even if they do the ol "survive on Kraft mac and ramens" like we did in uni. According to a recent study, an American adult should be earning roughly $96,500 annually or the equivalent of $46.39/hr, full time. $20/hr may have been a career salary in the 90s, but in 2024 dollars that ain't getting anyone far. The ruling class of business owners, corporations, and financial institutions are routinely robbing the working class and yet for some reason people always want to put the onus for not being able to afford to live in our late stage capitalist hellscape on those same exploited workers for demanding fairer compensation because how dare they have the gall to ask for more than you're currently earning?! You have much more in common and should share solidarity more with those underpaid workers and demand more equitable business practices in your OWN job. No one is looking to make fast food a career path, people are just trying to live with even a modicum of the same comforts previous generations were able to experience like being able to actually afford a home and higher education. We all are getting fucked, you gonna lie down and take it?
It sucked enough to make you want a BETTER JOB. I worked at the mall as soon as I was 16. $ and a car meant getting OUT OF MY HOUSE. We lived with BOOMERS, dude. Parents are too friendly now.
Great video,I'll never forget the days of getting up at 5am ,bundling up papers and putting them in the metal baskets on the back of my bmx bike and hurling down the empty early morning roads to deliver the days news paper. Awesome time.😎. Keep up the great videos. ❤️
Thank you!
Me too! Had a paper route for 6 years '85-91. Winter mornings were tough...
16:25 The Blue Light Special stampede was hilarious. 😂 It was like listening to a buffalo stampede migrate from one end of the store to the other.
I miss seeing that
The running joke here is "You know you're from Central Illinois if your first job was corn detassling." It's something you do when you turn 14.
So that is the thing that makes all the rest of Illinois grow up and move to chicago. There is like nothing else in that whole state. I was really shocked driving through it from Texas
@@AF_1892you're from Texas and miles of nothing actually surprises you?
Especially when you're from Fulton County LO.L
I had a friend in college (1988-1991) that managed a discount theater. He would let us come in after closing on the weekends to watch whatever they were playing at that time. We’d order pizza and watch a couple of movies late at night on the huge screen. We felt like the masters of all we surveyed. Back to the Future 2, Alien 3, Terminator 2, Predator 2 (crap, were there a lot sequels then). It was a lot fun.
Oh wow. What great memories. And only Gen Xers have those kind of stories. Thanks for sharing!
I spent whole summers in movie theaters as a kid back when $1 second-run theaters were a thing. It was cheap, and it was air conditioned. And let me tell ya, PG movies got away with a whole lot more back then.
I was a paperboy in junior high. You could actually get that job at 12 where I'm from. It was an absolute free pass if you wanted to be wandering the streets well after curfew. My parents paid my overhead. Luxuries were my responsibility.
The highlight of my paperboy 'career' was meeting and getting really baked with Demien Slade in Pasadena, CA, back in 2002. He is THE Two Dollars Kid from 'Better Off Dead'. He was a friend of a really close high school friend I was visiting. Fun times.
I did athletics in high school. So my parents didn’t make me work. But I had a mountain of chores and corporal punishment, although being phased out, was still an occasional option in my home. So work got done. And I had to maintain a 3.0 or above.
Wow, so you met THE paperboy.
Nowadays adults run several paper routes.... so kids can't do that anymore
I loved that movie & will still yell that line out if it fits the moment lol.
@@honestytoafault If you were a pre-teen in the early 1980s (12, 13, 14) you could get a job delivering newspapers. When my family moved from inner city Brooklyn to the suburbs of Long Island I called a job delivering Newsday and Daily News. If another newsboy/newsgirl left her job you could take her route and expand. My sister and I accumulated 5 or 6 routes between us. Customers would tip 50% to 100% and on holidays like Christmas/Hannuka or Thanksgiving you got envelopes with over a hundred dollars!! These jobs disappeared by the mid to late 80s and unemployed ADULTS began taking over routes and were considered more reliable.
@@honestytoafault There's good reason for that. As per my own experiences, I was a paperboy from 12-13, it wasn't exactly safe for a kid that age. I'm glad they are not put at risk now.
Yessss!!! The long box CDs came in!!! My kids thought I was crazy. Our favorite game is "used to be a Pizza Hut". The building is still shaped the same.
When you mentioned calling for late tapes I had a shock of anxiety. 😂
That's why when I went to Blockbuster I will rent a 3-day rental and return it after day two. That way I won't have to be pressured on returning a tape at a certain time because I had all day😂
I still have a Hellywood Video tape somewhere... I think it's Jay and Silent Bob too.
Worked at a photo booth for a while and then went on to manage a couple of one hour labs. Never a dull moment. Love the footage from the film One Hour Photo - great movie!
Great vid! Mini-rant: the nostalgia for Blockbuster these days drives me nuts. Back in the day, any film lover knew they absolutely sucked and were the worst choice for rental stores, mostly due to their market power allowing them to demand censored versions of movies. It was the complete opposite of the "director's cut" boom we got on DVD later and it screwed tons of VHS releases. FAMILY VIDEO 4 LIFE.
Absolutely. I rarely went to a blockbuster. Preferred the small independent stores and family video. I was a manager at family video for two years and it was a decent job.
Yeah nobody went to Blockbuster. It was video watch or family video.
Our town had a very independent video store with very niche and foreign films. That place was awesome.
Depends on which Blockbuster store you went to though...I worked at one where we carried both the censored and uncensored versions of movies...and we pulled in about 5 grand every Friday and Saturday in the 90s.... people weren't hitting the Family Video in our area that's for damn sure 😆
I always liked the mom and pop shops as well. We even had one when I first bought a home in the late 90s. They were there for a couple of years, then closed. Sad...
My first job was as a Full Sevice Lot Attendant at a gas station. It paid $4.50 a hour. I also had to scrub the garage bays floors with some green stuff when the mechanics were done for the day. My dad R.I.P. was a mechanic there.
Not GenX, but I worked in a video store as a teenager. It was 2004 and I was 16, about to turn 17. I'd dropped out of school by this point, and was desperately searching for something to fill up my hours and get me away from home. A family friend owned the dying video store in our small Wisconsin town and hired me on.
One of my favorite bittersweet memories was towards the end of my time there: the transition from VHS to DVD happened pretty slowly, but when the VHS firesale didn't clean out all the stock, we had to throw a fair few tapes away. It was late and I had just closed the store. Took the last carton of tapes out back, and instead of chucking them all in, I sat out there with a cigarette and took my time to look at them as I tossed them in. Glad I did, because in saying goodbye to what felt like my childhood, I managed to "liberate" a copy of Creepshow and Return of the Living Dead.
That's wild there's actually some VHS tapes that are worth money for avid collectors on Ebay lol!
@@danielmeans9539 To be fair, I don't think any of the ones that got tossed would be worth anything. Most of them were Z grade kids movies and dumb "How To" videos. Anything worth anything got nabbed in the sales.
I'm 23 and from Flint. A few of these jobs still exist near me, but they're generally hard to get. We still have a record store, a drive-in theatre, and there are arcades not far from here. I can't speak on the rest, though. Great content, makes me feel like I've been transported to a world I just barely lived in.
If you missed the 80's, you kind of have no idea how terrible current times are. - "2 Dollars...... Cash..."
Four weeks, twenty papers, that’s two dollars. Plus tip.
The early 1980's were marked with stagflation still lingering from the 1970's.
Rose colored glasses
@@michaelbarbarich3965 Yes, inflation was extremely bad in the 70, and bleed into the 80's of course. However there was a national attitude change when Regan won, and the greatest decade began in earnest. We all just decided to have fun. Of course there were problems like any other time, but we didn't let it get us down. Activist in the 80's were ignored for the most part, and those activist didn't have a cult like passion for their delusion. The "Two dollars, cash" quote is from an 80's movie you obviously didn't see. Along with John Hughes, another great 80's director was a guy named "Savage" Steve Holland. He had a series of teen comedy's in the 80's, one of those being "Better Off Dead" with John Cusack. I would recommend it for you to watch, but your dead pan "Rose colored glasses" comment leads me to believe your not the life of the party type. You probably wouldn't find any joy in it at all.
@@michaelbarbarich3965 UA-cam was offended for you with my reply, and deleted it. "2 Dollars...... Cash..." is a movie reference, as well as john6291 post from the same movie. I think the reply was deleted because of the movie title. It stars John Cusack, and is probably the most popular of the writer/director... Ga-Ga-Boo-Boo. That's not his name of course, but UA-cam may also find that directors name too abrasive for the saf..e area crowd. The movies is "Better Off ...." The last word rhyming with lead. It was hilarious, like UA-cams nonsense.
My first Gen-X job was in the Mall. Malls were a major thing in the 80s (and consequently in the 90s), but sadly I don’t feel that they’re really a thing anymore. Sure some Malls are still open, but there’s not much inside them anymore.
wages were good too .. babysitting paid five dollars an hour and my first cashier job at a grocery store paid seven dollars an hour in which in 1983 went far
That's like 20 an hour or more in today's money
I delivered pizza in the 90s, I had enough to pay my rent alone, feed myself, go to concerts and movies all the time with my friends, and buy tons of CDs and video games, plus cannabis.
@@trevor2001
yeah .. my rent in the 90s was less then $500 an month for a one bedroom apartment
WHAAAA? Man, I got ripped off. I got a dollar an hour for babysitting, even for a family of 5 kids. I remember getting a new "client" who paid $2 an hour and only had 1 kid. I felt like I'd hit the jackpot! I was born in 81.
$7 an hour (in 1983) is pretty high for an entry-level job. Did you babysit in Beverly Hills? Minimum wage was only somewhere ~$4 an hour back then.
I had a job over the Christmas break, working in Manhattan (NYC) for $7.70 an hour in 1986. at a (small one floor) phone center where we took inbound phone calls, from people who were ordering Broadway tickets for the holiday season. (which included the Rockets show it radio city musical Hall)
& $7.70 an hour (in 1986) was considered WAY BETTER (Higher) pay, than the NYC suburbs. (and the rest of the country, of course) (as compared to entry-level & minimum wage jobs)
-
& I remember in 1988, it was a big deal, when semi-Major cities like Boston, (& major city suburbs) were paying $6 an hour to work at fast food places. Which was considerable more than small & medium city market that were only paying $4.50 an hour maybe $5 an hour the most (in 1988)
My first job was a clerk at a supermarket part time while in high school. The only full time workers were the manager, asst. managers, butchers, and some cashiers. Everyone else was part time, and primarily younger people, often students. Fast forward 45 years later, and I see many adults taking jobs that were previously occupied by teenagers and young people.Same with the fast food industry.
I was just complaining about that. Back in the 80s, working at McDonald’s, Burger King, etc were entry level jobs for high school kids. We’d work part-time after school and college kids going to night classes would work the morning shift. The only full time employees were the managers and the assistant managers. Now, immigrants have taken those jobs away from high school and college kids and made it their careers. Further, they attempt to maintain families with those jobs and complain about low wages. Even worse, today’s high school kids don’t want to work. They’re mostly overweight gamers.
Record stores not only still exist but Vinyl is now outselling CDs again and even walmart has a couple of racks of albums. Yes, a lot of the major chains collapsed under their own weight but a lot of the independent stores survived in part because the large chains typically didn't sell used copies so the indie shops were the only places to find a lot of stuff that went out of print and there is a LOT of music that can't be streamed legally or bought as a digital download.
I don't know where the person who made the video lives but around here you can still find dine in Pizza Huts along with plenty of other Pizza places and arcades are very much still a thing. I live near one that even does themed nights including free pinball on tuesday nights and the place is always packed for it.
And ticket sales and concessions are still very much a thing too at every theater I know of.
I live in the Midwest in a small town. And I even said in the video that some of these places still exist…but these are not regular jobs like they were in the 80s. There is a massive difference between “my town still has a Pizza Hut and a record store” and EVERY town having all of these places with multiple options and with teens working everywhere. Pizza Hut hasn’t had indoor dining since before 2020, and if you get to work in a record store, chances are you are an adult working full time or the owner. These places don’t hire teens anymore. And for you to act like arcades are a common thing everywhere like the 80s is absurd. Yes, many of these things are still around in places for novelty purposes. But they aren’t a staple of life like they used to be. And if you were alive in the 80s, the difference is quite obvious.
@@mysocalledgenxlife Try coming to eastern tennessee. I just searched on google maps and found 8 out of 21 nearby pizza huts still offering dine in. I don't think they are building new ones with dining rooms but a LOT of the older ones still have them. I haven't checked lately but I don't think they do the salad bars anymore though. But also like I said, there are lots of other pizza places too with Pizza Inn being a quite popular example with a buffet, table service, and takeout. They aren't quite a national chain since there aren't any locations on the west coast. But they are just one example of a competing chain with there being plenty of others offering the same types of service and the jobs that go with that including for teens.
I stopped counting results for record stores at 25 and that was only the ones specifically listed as record stores. It should tell you something that google maps has a business category for record stores.
I also stopped counting video arcades at 25 and that isn't counting places listed as amusement centers with go karts and other stuff. And again. The fact that google maps has a category for video arcades should tell you something. For me the difference from the 80s is that the shopping malls that still exist don't have arcades anymore unless they are part of a movie theater. Again, the large chains went under but a lot of local ones survived and there are new ones that didn't even open until well into the 2000s. I also see more of them closing at 11 or midnight instead of 3AM or just not closing at all in the summer. There was a lull in arcade popularity in the early 2000s before it picked up again but they really are all over the place again.
And yes, all of these places still hire teens. Perhaps you don't live in an area where these things are popular still but I can assure you that they are plentiful across the country.
I live in a major City and all those things no longer exist. But I have been to places that are lost in time. If you live in one of those places cherish it.
I live in a small north east coast city and our downtown only has old buildings & small businesses, no chains. We have a couple vinyl record stores. Hidden gems
Back in the ‘90s I lived in Massachusetts and dine-in Pizza Huts were already scarce, at least in the areas of the state where I lived. My jaw dropped when the video mentioned kids getting hired there in the ‘90s for $20/hr. Minimum wage was $4.25-4.50/hr. I remember being jealous of the kids getting $7-10/hr.
Graduated high school in ‘89. Worked for Wherehouse from 90-94. Worked as a record clerk, but mainly as a video clerk. The most common question I got was, “What’s new and good?” 😄
The descriptions of both jobs are, for the most part, spot on accurate.
I worked there ‘96 - ‘97, mainly to get the good retail discounts and free video rentals. This job was a good primer on retail customer service.
Paper boys were great, they'd bring the paper right up to your front porch so you just had to open the door and lean down to get it; when they switched to adult drivers in cars, even tho they gave you plastic boxes to add onto your mailbox post down at the street, plenty of times the driver just flings the paper onto the driveway where it's going to get run over, or onto a lawn where the sprinkler is going to get it, or even if it's in the box, rain can still drive into the box and get it pretty drenched and unreadable, whereas porches usually had a protective roof over them. And of course that means you have to not only be decently dressed to go down your driveway to get your paper nowadays, it's a lot less friendly to disabled and elderly people who are prone to falling or need to wrestled their walker out the door, etc. Paper boys were definitely the superior delivery system! I remember my parents always giving our boy a big tip at xmas.
I have to just crack my door and lean down. If you call the newspaper company they will customize where you want it.
Except for the weather, and the non paying, excuse giving customers, and the touchy feeley distributors. Oh yeah, 'great' job......
I worked my first job at six flags of Texas for the summer at 15 in 1995 and earned money for a 1991 Subaru legacy.
Then I got my dream job at electronics boutique at 16.
Confessions in theaters are expensive because that's how the theater makes money. They make almost nothing on the actual movies
Thanks the Reaganomics, living in the new Rist Bentley, my father a Steel Worker was laid off after Reagan destroyed the Unions by claiming that Air Traffic Controllers were government employees and therefore could not strike, even though they either technically worked for the owner of the airports or the airline company. But at 14, I had to find work to help support the family and worked as a dishwasher and salad and prep worker for a couple of years until I was able to graduate high school one year early to escape the area. But I worked from a dishwasher to head chef and every position in between before and after going to college.
Records were sealed.. you couldn't read liner notes until you bought the record
I spent so much money at Camelot. There was this girl at TapeWorld, she was the manager, dont remember her name but she had dark brown hair, so pretty. She was in college, i was in high school, asked her to prom, she had a boyfriend though. Still crushed all these decades later. Lol
We used to buy our concert tickets at the Mall Record Stores too… waiting in line for tixs was so much fun, and dj’s from the local rock stations would show up there and do promos…. give out records and later cassette tapes or even free concert tickets 🎟️ with a ride on the radio station Bus to the show
I remember phone books... And pay phones... And playing online using the ol local BBS. Or GEnie.
We are the only generation to have BBS. That was wild!!!
I totally recognize that Pizza Hut commercial! It’s the one that played before Land Before Time on VHS!! 😮
I remember getting my dad to rent the third one. I was like 9 and cried bc his grandparents died, I kept hoping they would be reunited with them at the end of the movie
I began working a "real job" when I was 13 (1992) "setting trap." Setting trap was sitting in a little sunken shed putting clay pigeons on a spring loaded mechanical arm. When the ref pushed the button it'd kick out the target and swing around. You had to be quick to get the clay target on without busting it and your hand out of the way to not get a finger taken off, lol. That was seasonal, so during the summer I worked framing and demo on a construction site. I worked one summer at a christmas tree farm- 8 hours a day trying to make evergreens look, eventually, in ten years, like a christmas tree. I hated that one. Most pointless job I ever had. I continued to do construction after school and in summers till I was 16 and got hired at Footlocker. That sucked too, but the people I worked with were great. I was a high schooler and most of them were college age. So, plenty of fun hangs and herb.
Setting trap! I never thought about that being a job, but of course it is. I love that so much.
@@mysocalledgenxlife Thanks. I still have most of my fingers... (jk, they're all gone). Another great vid!
1996 my first job out of highschool was working in an internet cafe
I worked at Sears portrait studio in the 90s when they were still using actual film cameras. Those were good times.
If you were a pre-teen in the early 1980s (12, 13, 14) you could get a job delivering newspapers. When my family moved from inner city Brooklyn to the suburbs of Long Island I called a job delivering Newsday and Daily News. If another newsboy/newsgirl left her job you could take her route and expand. My sister and I accumulated 5 or 6 routes between us. Customers would tip 50% to 100% and on holidays like Christmas/Hannuka or Thanksgiving you got envelopes with over a hundred dollars!! These jobs disappeared by the mid to late 80s and unemployed ADULTS began taking over routes and were considered more reliable.
There's more to that. Some paperboys, like me, had some rather negative experiences. It wasn't always safe for a kid.
not to mention the steady flow of cash from BABYSITTING!! paid for the first year of college on babysitting wages saved from when i started at ten years old .. very lucrative back in the 1980s
Nostalgia certainly seems to make everything sound way better than it was.
1. Nothing like working in the record store and having customers come into say, "do you guys have that song? it's on the radio. it goes do do do..."
2. Same thing but at the video store, "do y'all have that movie? it's got that guy in it, I think he's got a gun."
3. Where I lived phone book delivery was always done by some overweight middle aged guy who had an old beater station wagon. Never once saw kids my age doing it.
4. Pretty much the same deal with arcade attendants. It was almost always some middle aged dude that was slightly pervy looking with a quarter changer belt.
5. Movie ticket counter is still a job that teens and young adults get. Did I mention how I knew a boy that had to clean what can only be described as a sh!t explosion in the restroom at the theater in our town? No kidding he said it was all the way up the walls of the stall and even on the ceiling. How TF did they get it on the ceiling????
6. All the Pizza Huts where I lived sold beer so the only teens working there were in the kitchen because of serving laws.
7. Photo lab jobs were actually pretty cool. I knew a girl who worked in one that had the greatest stories about developing film for private investigators and people taking boudoir photography.
9. You missed one. Vending concessions at a a local university, high school or minor league sporting event. First job I ever had was vending at my local university football games.... I enjoyed getting to see the games for free but it was really hard work for not a lot of money.
I say that to young people who think gen X had everything perfect and ideal. There's a lot of that in UA-cam comments, jealousy of our generation. I agree that it was the best modern era - but younger people don't see the negative things in cliche depictions of the 70s and 80s. Like being told nonstop that nuclear war could wipe us from existence at any moment without us having time to know we're dying. See most Prince's Purple Rain album lyrics for reference. "We could all die any day." And we couldn't all afford the cool kid must-have fashions. The first pair of Nike sneakers my parents could afford to buy for me was a mustard yellow pair from a discount bin. In Jr High I got nicknamed "Mustard."
@@naturalnashuan as a tween my friends and I all got one pair of the cheapest Nikes available at the beginning of the school year and come Spring they were looking mighty ratty. Then Reebok was the rage when I was a young teen and I kept mine so long that I had to glue the souls back together with crazy glue.
There are lots of younger kids that feel that way sure but a lot of people our age have those rose colored nostalgia glasses on too. Maybe childhood was hard enough that I never forgot how much things could suck growing up for me to ever feel like those were the best times ever. I think a lot of people don't miss those time as much as they miss being young and healthy and having their whole lives ahead of them. It helps them to gloss over all the crap parts of growing up back then IMO.
Very first job was grandparents' groundskeeper. Hard work but free lunch and good pay! Second job was maintenance guy for my high school's athletic department. Third job was working for a local fish & chips fast food chain near Seattle, WA. I swear all food was much better and higher quality back in those days!
born in 70, I started delivering papers at age 6.. I would help my older brother deliver them. then when I was about 8 years old I got my own route. I delivered papers until I was about 12 years old.. then I started working construction(during the summer when school was out) I worked for a stone mason as a hod tender, mixing cement/mud and keeping him supplied with rocks. I was making big bucks I thought. then I noticed fully grown adults started taking over paper boy jobs.. i thought that was the weirdest thing. to see fully grown adults delivering papers from a car.. I thought why are fully grown adults doing little boy jobs for? that was very strange to me..adults delivering papers did not last very long, just part of the 90's.
I just subbed after watching your latest video but now I'm checking out the rest of them. I worked at Sam Goody in the mall when I was 15-16 then I worked at Circuit City after I graduated high school for about a year. These Zoomers have no idea.
Do you remember Impulse? They were a chain of mall stores owned by Circuit City. They sold all the latest techno gadgets. I worked at one in the early 90s.
A friend of mine worked in a video store for a long time. He loved telling people they weren't allowed to rent there anymore. Shocking abuse of power.
"Paper or plastic?" Now there's a gen x phrase. My town was small. We had two tv stations and no rock stations, only pop and country. Only Zepplin and Floyd songs I'd heard were on the Pizza Hut juke box. I got married and moved to Phoenix in '91 and, musically speaking, I lived the '70s and '90s at the same time. I felt very lucky for that!
I did quite a few of these. I worked at Pizza Hut in the kitchen and delivery. I was an employee at a video store that was also a photo lab. We'd also transcribe people's reel to reel to VHS. I worked as a projectionist on my college campus, as well. Also videotaped law students practicing courtroom stuff. I was a film student so doing these sorts of things was pretty normal.
I worked in an office as a clerk at a local community center. I typed checks and manually made double sided copies on a xerox machine.
That is epic!
My grandfather was a coroner in the 80s and 90s. Back then a country coroner would just use their own camera for autopsy photos. They also used that camera for vacation photos. The poor schmuck who developed photos for my grandfather would get to see not only his vacation to Europe, but then suddenly see a human who had been opened for the autopsy.
Times were different then.
Awesome! I knew a coroner who traveled to remote places to pick up bodies. He and a coworker took turns driving around sleeping in the back of the hearse with the corpse. His favorite story was about picking up a hitchhiker while his coworker was sleeping next-to the corpse. His coworker woke up and reached through the little window in the dark and grabbed the hitchhiker by accident, asking, "Are we there yet?" The hitchhiker took a flying leap from the car. 😂🤣
1:43 Here in Austin, TX we have a store called half price books, I bought so many records from this place! Rebuilding my vinyl. Me in 1995: I want my learners permit!!! Mom: you need insurance! I'm not paying for it! Me gets a job. Mom: why did you get a job?! I can't take you to it!!!
And that's why my first and second jobs involved working with my mother. 😨 I met my first boyfriend at that job and she was always watching us, getting fodder for gossip.
I remember being so excited to graduate from my $22.50/week paper route and mowing neighborhood lawns to my first real job. I started working as early as I was legally able. Not working never occurred to me. I can't imagine a young kid now getting up at 4:30, folding and banding or bagging papers, and then delivering them all on time with no supervision.
My brother-in-law (R.I.P.) was an assistant manager at a local indie record store; then, after it closed, he switched to Tape World (which eventually converted into FYE).
Kmart also had a blue light dial-up Internet service. That was the slowest f’n server I had ever used; probably because it was free.
Early teens paper boy. Late teens local video store clerk. The adult section was always popping and you learned ALL the dirty secrets. Teachers, doctors, cops, neighbors…
I was a manager at family video and we had a back room. Definitely learned a lot 😂😂
A+ video!
LOVE IT! All of these jobs need to be brought back!
Dublin, Ireland has a Tower Records with home stereos/record players in the back. I was so happy to spend some time in that place. Record stores and book stores were a staple of my youth.
I miss the sense of community in comic shops, video stores, music shops, and local theaters. They were hangouts, you learned stuff about culture, and you grew up with what was sold there and the people who worked there.
Paper boy was my first job but not as a teen, I was 10 and 11. It was for the afternoon edition of the NY Post and my route was 4 buildings in an apartment complex in Brooklyn.
I had a high school job working for US Robotics refurbishing computer modems as a solder techinician. Pretty sure jobs like this still exist. Not glamorous, but if you're decent at soldering it did pretty well.
Born in '77 and I worked in the music department for a combined book, music and video store when I was 18-20. We had no Internet and used music catalogs to order unique albums from the UK, Germany, Japan etc.... I'd order out of print (in the US) pre WWII country blues and crazy Hendrix albums/bootlegs under friends names. Every few weeks they'd arrive and my checks would vanish. Regrettably, many albums found there way to my Dodge Shadow at no cost during smoke breaks. Music, rent, beer/grass and ¢49 tacos claimed my income and I felt I was getting the better deal in those days.
My first job at 16 was as a telemarketer for a hearing aide company, Miracle Ear. I lasted a month. I got paid $5.00/hr. in 1988. I didn't get another job right away. Miracle Ear was the month of October. Next job was in May of 1989. At the local mall in the food court. The place was local to where I lived called Hot Dog Charlie's. We sold only hot dogs, soda, coffee, and rice pudding. Nothing else. The company had several locations that were not in a mall, but the location I worked at made the most money for several years! It was fun while I was there. I got like 4 or 5 of my friends jobs there....those were the days...
I worked at a fastfood restaurant in a mall and spent most my money at the arcade and music store when I was a teen.
Love the Better Off Dead scene, yeah had a paper route in the 80s (also broke a customer's window!) 😅
Oh those glorious mullets! 😂😂
My first job was working for my dad in his landscaping business. It would be raking grass clippings and bagging them or leaves till I was big enough to mow. Then I started babysitting at 9, and then got my first job with a workers permit when I was 14 at the local ice cream shop.
My first job was fun and paid basically nothing. I was a Floor guard at a roller rink when I was 13-18. Good times.
I worked as a hotel desk clerk behind bullet-proof glass. In thhe middle of the night when people didn't check in. That was awesome! I did almost no work and could do whatever I wanted because customers couldn't see me unless they rang a bell.
I got my very first job on August 5th 1994 which also happened to be my 16th birthday. I was doing odd jobs around my housing complex. I later moved on to working at Mervyn's, and as for pizza it was Papa Murphy's for me in 1999. Red red wine by UB40, along with Kokomo and Don't worry be happy.
I was a paper boy from age12-15. Every 2 weeks I would get a bill from the newspaper and I would have to go collect money from the customers. Anything I made over the bill was my pay. It was cool because whenever I needed money I could just go collect from a few customers and I would be good. Before I quit I collected for1-2months in advance and kept it all. After all I needed money to pay for weed and beer and the other stuff a 15year old needed in 1989
My first job was helping my uncle set tile when I was 14. 30 years later and I have one of many trades I've learned and can get a job at will if anything happened. Got laid off last year, was working again within 2 weeks.
My 18 year old is going into the trades. You are so very right. Every young man should be doing that.
Can't go wrong with the trades. Plumbers and electricians especially.
I was quite literally “born on the radio” back in 1965- my father being a small market radio station manager.
I had my Class 3 Engineering license by the time I was 13 & “running the board” for just about any pop, country, gospel & “adult contemptorary” …
I reopened a drive-in movie theater with my twin and in between all that, moonlighted (what the youth of today call “a side hustle”) mowed lawns, shoveled snow and sold “black market rubbers” to gullible horny lads that had no clue what a Faber Kneaded Rubber actually was…
Yeah- radio DJs, the riff-raff of the Back-Row Betty’s and the high gained f Romano the successful grift made for a beautiful set of tween/teen years…
They would put the CDs in a long paper box or a plastic thing (long rectangle) in the same shape. Either it was to make them harder to steal or to make them easier to show the cover in the shelves.
I mowed lawns at 11 and filed papers for a neighbor. First official job was as a hostess at 15. That would have been about ‘89,
I recently found a couple of rolls of undeveloped film and took them to CVS to get them developed... man, they did an absolutely terrible job and they didn't even give me the negatives back!
$100 in the early 90s is almost $300 in today's money
I worked at Child World when I was 15. Then I got a job at Burger King. It wasn’t a bad job. I’m originally from NJ and lived by the beach. A cool job in my area was checking beach badges. You need one to get on the beach during peak hours. Those jobs filled up fast! My husband for a time worked nights for Pizza Hut delivering pizza. Thanks for the memories. My teenage sons got jobs working at Dunkin Donuts and Panera Bread.
I feel like 2 jobs for teens that still hold up from the gen x era are fast food workers and amusement park operators.
And supermarket/grocery store cashiers or stockers. I see a lot of teens work those jobs.
My first job was a cashier at Busch Gardens in Tampa, FL. Not the best start but it was interesting. I did work for Tower Records in Reno, NV at the height of CD sales in 2000, it was kinda like "Empire Records." I also did the Photography job in the Mall in Reno but it wasn't that fun, customers were pretty rude. I did both of these in my early twenties.
My main job as a kid was mowing lawns and yard care. I bought my GI Joes, Hot Wheels, and Nintendo system doing this. I also did this to collect CDs. I also washed dishes at home so that was additional income. The funny part was I was finishing up dishes as I watched this from dinner tonight!😋
Some jobs were cool, some where a total drag. I did a few other things before I finished my Bachelor's degree and got my first "Real Adult Job" but those are not as fun, pay better but that's it.🤔
Delivered small local phonebooks in some neighborhoods as a school marching band fundraiser. It was cold and wet. A really miserable job.
The only thing I would change was the ever pervasive cigarette smoke... other than that it was perfect and I'd go back in a heartbeat.
McDonald’s definitely used to cater to children more. 🎉 22:05
I miss the days when they would layer the butter syrup into the popcorn bucket for you. Now, you have to pump it yourself and it all lands on top. 15:51
Gen X here. First job was at Orange Julius in the mall. I was 15.
That’s where I first learned about the Chicago dog!
I vaguely remember the McDonald's birthday parties. For us in our neighborhood though, kids I knew usually did parties at the local roller skating rink. And I used to be a paper boy too.
I worked at Burger King as a teen and we LOVED doing the birthday parties. The parents usually tipped the "planners" really well.
22:41 He just wants his $2 dollars.
I was at the tail end of GenX (graduated high school in '96). I was a sacker and cashier at a big grocery store. I've noticed no one ever takes your groceries to you car anymore, or even offers. 😢 in my day we did it automatically.
My 17yo just got a job (starts training tomorrow) and my 16yo has been working lawn jobs since he was 14. Happy to be raising hard working (homeschooled) teens.
Omg i remember pizza hut servers. That place was so fancy and i was obsessed with reading for a free pizza program.
Record stores still exist in major cities.
I remember blockbuster - boy do i miss that so much. it was 8pn - pitch black out and was walking to blockbuster to watch a movie XD soemtimes i want to go back to when i was a little kid - also why does it seem like the 70's 80's and early 90s were so much fun? oh wait.... PEOPLE TALKED TO EACHOTHER WITHOUT ELECTRONICS!
The only one I knew I've heard of that had a McDonald's birthday was because they couldn't have a Chuck e cheese or ShowBiz Pizza birthday or one of those mini golf places that are everywhere usually.
I had a paper route at 10, was babysitting at 12 and got my first 'outside' job waitressing at Friendly's when I was 15.
I can’t imagine being paid 20 an hour even now and I’m a younger millennial.
I made $3.85/ hour until I was 18.
Do not forget working at a Record Store. That was my first job.
RecordLand 🤘🏼
I recently told my wife that most of the jobs/places I worked no longer exist
I remember the moment when I made a resume in college and realized that all the places I worked were already gone by then.
Fun fact: sit down Pizza Hut restaurants are still alive and well in the UK. I walked by one in South London a few years back and was surprised that they still existed in that form. The place was packed, too.
My first "real" job that wasn't babysitting was working at a food court eatery called Bain's Deli when I was 17.