What a way to make a living

[Shauna]

It's my first day of my first ever job tomorrow. It's only taken a year of unemployment and 4 years of trying to find part-time work to complement university, but I've finally found my way there. It's been a tough ride, not many people like to take a risk on a 22 year old with no work experience. x}

I'll be working for HM Revenue & Customs in the Debt Management & Banking department as an Assistant Officer - Collector. Whatever that is. :3 I'll find out tomorrow! I am mostly looking forward to not being stuck at home by myself all day, but I'm sure once my first pay-cheque comes in that'll be a great addition to my life too.


So guys, what was your first ever job? Were you a teenager? Older? Find it difficult to find yourself work? EDIT: Or just post your work history! That's cool too. xD

[Psychotic]

I'll be working for HM Revenue & Customs in the Debt Management & Banking department as an Assistant Officer - Collector. Whatever that is. :3 I'll find out tomorrow!

Haha holy trout Shauna you literally became my enemy because my job is the actual opposite of this and I regularly deal with folk who do your job. This is a great day.

PRO TIP: Make sure you've made people wait for two hours or so on hold before picking up the phone. That's the HMRC way!

[Shauna]

Seriously? xD

Of course, I imagine that my day to day work will be napping at my desk and maybe taking a call if I feel like it.

[Psychotic]

Dude yes seriously. If I ever encounter a Scottish lady called Shauna I am actually just going to start giggling like a schoogirl! Then I'll play hardball with you.

I am very pleased for you by the way, it sounds like a damn fine first job! I'd definitely be fascinated to see what goes on over there. I'd be surprised if you will have a lot of time to nap but trust me, the stories you will hear will blow your mind.

[Heath]

Gosh, if Shauna is your enemy you'd love who I work for

My first job was doing a bit of data entry/website work for a family friend's appliance spare parts company. Before that I volunteered with the British Red Cross. First proper job with a real application process was working for Woolworths. Despite my efforts over 12 months I couldn't save it from administration.

[Psychotic]

Unless it's Wonga or Provident you'll have trouble beating her.

[Shauna]

First proper job with a real application process was working for Woolworths. Despite my efforts over 12 months I couldn't save it from administration.

RIP Sweet Prince

I am very pleased for you by the way, it sounds like a damn fine first job! I'd definitely be fascinated to see what goes on over there. I'd be surprised if you will have a lot of time to nap but trust me, the stories you will hear will blow your mind.

Thanks! But yeah, I've heard that it can be crazy.

[Jinx]

First job ever! Woop. And yeah, even having a crappy job when you're younger is better than having no work experience. There's this guy, Ethan, I know who's...25 now? And he's studying to be a doctor. But he's never had a job. He's gonna have a hard life, let me tell you.

My first job was at McDonald's. I did a bit of everything, but mostly I did customer service. I was so bad ass I could have an order taken and payment handled in less that 20 seconds, yessiree.

[Sephex]

I was very briefly a bus boy at a wedding reception place right next to a fancy golf course. I dropped a whole tray of champagne glasses and never went back.

[Iceglow]

My first ever job? Lets see. I held a paper round for a few months as a kid but I hated it so jacked it in, I wasn't the up at 5am type tbh as a kid. I then worked for a local independent computer game store for a few years cash in hand. It was fine but considering there was no real contract with the boss there it was a case of I could earn £40 for a full days work or £40 because he had to leave in a hurry and asked me to step in and watch the store for 2 hours. I was essentially the assistant manager in that place by the time I was 17. In the mean time, I spent a few weeks up in Essex when I stayed at my brothers putting bikes together at a cycle shop because it was the Christmas orders for some extra money. I also began working with a friend on our own "business venture" we'd repair PS2 consoles for £30 a pop (far cheaper than the £75 Sony asked for) splitting that income between us and my bosses store since he'd let us use the shop to do it all in. Was a good earner because when you pop a PS2 open the most common fixes take no cost to repair and a maximum of 15 minutes, 2 consoles at a time, 15 mins a console - 10 each on the repair. Sometimes we'd earn up to £100 apiece for repairing them, plus if we done any alone/on our own time/property we'd keep the full wage.

My first official contracted, income declared job would be Sainsbury's where I worked as a general merchandise (read; dogsbody) assistant. Essentially my department was things like; furniture/electricals/clothing/books/dvds/cds/cookware and so forth. However being nothing on my department was perishable, we'd often be seconded over to other departments, most notably checkouts. I also ended up spending a lot of time on beers wines and spirits, fresh food and produce (fruit and veg) worst job in the world was being asked to put the flowers display up in winter when I wasn't on my anti-histamines. It was during this job I found the time to work as a writer for Serial Dreamers as though I worked some 30 hours a week officially I was still part-time and my shifts would be Sat - Tues only.

After leaving there, it was HMV, simultaneously balancing that and Pizza Hut to make ends meet at the time I started. After a while though I solely worked for HMV since I managed to get full time work. I quit there and frankly in hindsight it was the luckiest escape ever, that company is in dire straits and genuinely whilst I was one of their best sales staff there was and still is so much that company does wrong that it could do so right I feel I had no other choice.

Currently I'm now working as an inbound customer services tech support. I answer calls where customers are having trouble streaming stuff. Now if I can fix the problem this is great and I get lots of thanks, unfortunately when it's a customers equipment/own fault you tend to get a lot of abuse. I'm a pretty open person and I will outright state to a customer that they called me as they needed help, if they continue to be rude or aggressive towards me, I will not help them. Most of the time that shuts them up, they're calling a premium rate number, more often than not from their mobile and get abusive when told to do stuff they need. It's like half these customers think I'm sitting there with a magic button in their acct waiting for their call to go "Oh don't worry sir, even though you're receiving a line speed of 300kbps I'm just going to press this button and allow you to stream regardless" rather than tell them the truth of; "the minimum speed you need is 2.4mbps, call your isp because clearly there is a problem with your line speed at this time."

[Araciel]

16- kitchen staff at a summer camp for young athletes. It was a sweet gig - six hrs a day four days a week, free run of camp facilities and room and board... End of the summer pay check was like a thousand dollars.

[Denmark]

my first honest-to-goodness real life job was as a busboy the summer between high school and college. the restaurant was pretty fancy/expensive, and we got a portion of the tips, so it was good money.

the next summer i had my next job working at a Dunkin' Donuts central manufacturing location, or, as i put it, the donut factory. made/sorted donuts for 50+ stores which got sent out by truck at the end of the night (1-2 AM). 40 hours a week, so made a lot of money (for a 19 year old kid living at home). also still managed to have somewhat of a social life that summer despite working nights.

then nothing until grad school. i worked as a tutor and a grader for undergrad courses. i enjoyed the tutoring; grading is just busywork but still fairly easy.

the summer between my grad years i had an internship working for a start-up company writing code. it wasn't my ideal job, but it was some good work experience and my former boss recommended me to another company in the same building, where hopefully i'll be getting an offer this week. fingers are crossed.

before this most recent job prospect i'd been out of work/school for almost a year, living with my parents. i'm definitely ready to move on with my life.

edit: oh this wasn't post your job history? smurf it.

[Night Fury]

I did a paper round from the age of 14-16

I then worked a summer on an ice cream van and a small cafe in a park. I HATED ice creaming, omg. People were so rude. We'd be packing up to go and like... people just didn't get it. So we'd have to make them an ice cream, and then more people would come along. Also, the ice cream machine once like smurfing exploded on me and I was covered in ice cream when there was a queue! It actually wasn't that bad of a job really, just very long hours that were sometimes boring, and because it was cash in hand I got underpaid. But I got a free lunch and free ice cream and I only did it for like 9 weeks or so and I was able to do all kinds of cool stuff that summer with the money.

Then I got a job at Primark and I'm still there, now a Supervisor. I actually kind of like it, as a Supervisor I get to just do whatever I want and I like to make it as fun for my staff as I can, I think I run my department really well without having to be a total bitch to my staff which is always awesome.

[Shorty]

I was a little sixteen year old carhop at Sonic.

No, I did not wear skates.

[Shiny]

My first ever job was when I was fifteen or sixteen and I filmed Board of Education meetings. It was entirely as boring as it sounds. There was only one time it was exciting and that's when the theater and ROTC groups started arguing with the Board over all the school's expenses being spent on the Football turf. I've never had a job unrelated to media with exception of babysitting, which I don't actually count because it was all family.