At what age did you have your first official job?

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At what age did you have your first official job? For instance, working at the local pizza place cleaning dishes.

Still working on it, I hope to have a job and to go to school this year thru Voc Rehab.

I lied to get my first job at Carl's Jr. when I was 13 (was meant to be 14 to work). I grew up in a very abusive household so found ways of getting away early on, through part time work and after school activities. Usually part time work because my social skill set didn't work out with many after school activities, and I wasn't allowed to go out with friends after school.

17 years old but I really don't consider low wage, part-time work to be a steady job. I didn't get my first job that paid enough for me to live off of until I was 25.

My first job was a summer job at the age of 14, using a postal digger to put clothesline poles into the ground or taking them out of the ground. Was very hard work, but nothing like having a strong work ethic.

15 - 2-week unpaid work experience at doing general tasks for school staff
16 - 2-week unpaid work experience at school library

22 - 2 days shift work at a warehouse, got dismissed for physical reasons and 12 hour shifts weren't for me
23 - 2-week unpaid work experience at retail position in small food/clothing store

23+ unemployed so far, take your pick.

I was 17 and worked as a rink attendant. It was possibly the easiest job ever. Now I work as a lab assistant and chemistry tutor now that I'm in college.

I did a lot of volunteer work before I was 18; however, my first paid job, I got at 18.

I had my first official job when I was 20, as well as my last. Employment was an interesting experiment, but it didn't really work out for me.

I started part time work at 13, cleaning holiday/vacation accommodation.

Before age 18, I was a paperboy and made deliveries from various stores.

I obtained my first "real job" when I was 18. I worked full-time at a medical library during the summer of 1979. I've only been unemployed for a total of about two weeks since then.

17, first official job, but I had done paid babysitting at 14 and traded cleaning a piano tutor's house for free piano lessons at 15.

The first job I had outside of my own home was cleaning up at a gas station. I stopped by the gas station on the way home from school in the fourth grade, so I must have been 10.

I had various little money-making projects as a kid. Like kool-ade stand, or putting on magic shows in the garage, or running a neighborhood pet show. I used a mimeograph to run off flyers to pass out around the area to get odd jobs.

A little older, and I had a paper route on my bicycle. Let's see... that was like 8th grade.

First job where they withheld taxes and required a social security number was when I was 15, working at a hardware store. Then I worked at a burger joint in high school.

Then I joined the Coast Guard for four years, and did search and rescue in Alaska before doing security and groundskeeping and tour guide work at a lighthouse in Palos Verdes, California.

After the Coast Guard I volunteered as a crew person for a hot air balloonist, worked for a while at an aluminum siding factory, then my balloonist friend's father hired me at Nuclear Consulting Services as a fabrication technician, were, among other things, we refilled carbon air filters for nuclear power plants and build disposable air filters for inflatable Army hospitals.

After NUCON I picked up aluminum cans by the road for a few months, and actually made better money doing that than at NUCON.

Then I was a rural letter carrier for the US Postal Service.

My ballooning friend got killed in a ballooning accident, and I decided I should be doing what I really want to do in life, so I quite my job at the post office and moved to Honolulu, where I worked as a sandwich-board man, meaning I wore a board on my front and back, with ads for a hotel in waikiki. I also got a second job on the night shift at an all night gas station.

I have washed dishes, and began to move up in kitchen work, working at lots of different kinds of restaurants over the years, eventually working all position in the kitchen. My favorite kitchen jobs were prep and saucier, though I've done broiler, grill, fry, etc. From high-class, white tablecloth fine dining to sandwich shops.

I've sold christmas trees. I've cut grass. I worked at a garden center and did landscaping.

I got a Securities License to sell mutual funds, which took some training and testing, but then I hated the whole "commission-only, no leads" kind of thing, so that didn't go anywhere.

I worked at an ecommerce Internet business as a fraud analyst and moved up to Chief Investigator and Compliance Officer, helping to stop cyber-crime and preventing terrorist financing schemes.

I have registered domain names and sold them for profit.

For a while I was buying used books at thrift shops and auctions and yard sales and selling them on the Internet. That was very interesting, and sometimes there was the thrill of buying a book for a dollar or two and selling it for a couple hundred dollars. But mostly it was more work than it was worth. I have sometimes thought about doing that again, but it's hard to make enough to live on that way.

I started a business cleaning up after dogs. That was more than 25 years ago, when almost nobody had ever heard of such an idea. I started with $150, built the business over 10 years to have 6 trucks, several employees, and hundreds of regular weekly customers. I sold that business.

I had so many people asking me about that business that I wrote a book about how to do it. I self published my book and sales from that book supported me for more than 15 years. Now I give the book away for free and hope that people who start their own businesses using that information will advertise on a web site I own.

Now I'm getting close to being able to collect social security.

I was 19 when I got my first job and the job lasted for 6 weeks. I haven't had a job since.

Washing dishes at Denny's Diner the summer after I finished high school. My parents felt I should focus on school related stuff during the high school years so I was not working then.