Working a first job is an important part of growing up.
Whether it's working a paper route (do kids even do this anymore?) or working at a video rental store (do those even exist anymore?) first-ever part-time jobs establish important life values and lessons to the youth.
Also, there's nothing that validates accomplishment at a young age more than being able to buy something with their hard-earned money.
Curious to hear examples of this, Redditor MisterChiTown92 asked:
"What did you buy with your first ever work paycheck?"
These generous Redditors found value in paying it forward.
Dinner's On Me
"It was 1976, I was making a whopping $2.50/hour at age 16 (20 cents higher than minimum wage, and it was an office job so I wasn't on my feet all day)....my family didn't have a lot of money (which is why I started working while in the 11th grade), so with my first paycheck I took my Mom and brothers out to dinner at Big Boy. I remember being all proud to say 'Get whatever you want, even the combo meal and a milkshake, it's on me."'
– Ouisch
Dinner Miscalculation
"I took my mom out to a fancy French restaurant. I had no idea how much it was going to cost, then plus tip, I didn’t even have enough! So she had to help me pay the rest. My mom still joke about that from time to time when we go out with the family."
"That was almost 25 yrs ago, damn time flew by."
– jonwtc
Gift For Mom
"I bought my mother a beautiful shawl. I never saw her wear it but it was in with her things when she died nearly 50 years later."
– WakingOwl1
These Redditors got to reward themselves with the things they enjoy most.
Creating Memories
"About twenty bucks of my first paper route earnings, for the pizza buffet and soft drinks, and some arcade games, with my best friend."
"While the shape I've been in has varied over the years, I've kept that stamina I built up hauling around damn near my weight in newsprint. For long endurance rides, hikes with a loaded-up pack, and running."
– ArmsForPeace84
Brand New Kicks
"I was 14 and got a job as a bus boy at a local BBQ joint. With my first check, I went and bought myself a pair of blue/brown Airwalk shoes. I remember how cool it felt to be able to buy something for myself and not have to ask my parents."
– johnnybmagic
Scoring Big Time
"A Playstation 2. Excellent buy, kept it for a over decade before buying an Xbox One."
– Birdo-the-Besto
"It was an Xbox 360 for me. Loved that console."
– HabeLinkin
"Still have a modded PS2. Had a hard drive with games on it too. It still turns on last I checked, I wonder if the hard drive still works..."
–DubaU
A Timeless Treasure
"My family owned a construction business, and my father had me on site for as long as I could remember. I don't remember the first thing I ever bought with what he paid me, but I remember the first thing I set out to buy and had to work for weeks to get the money for. It was a Lego castle set. $49. I'm almost 50 now, and I still have it."
– Spodson
Naughty Pleasures
"lol I bought a candy g-string so I could eat it off of my girlfriend while she was wearing it, and a black cowboy hat with spikes on it from Hot Topic hahaha"
– dirtydickmf
Some recalled having to prioritize taking care of business over indulgences.
The Necessities
"gasoline and insurance to continue to be able to go to work."
– TurpitudeSnuggery
"I remember getting my first paycheck being so proud of it and my stepfather goes wow you don't have enough for gas. How are you getting to work for the next two weeks? Made me realize I needed to work more."
"I should also put in here that this was my first on the books paycheck. Made it feel a little different."
– truelydorky
Saving Up For Wheels
"Used to mow lawns and do odd jobs for cash when I was a kid. When I got my first 'real' paycheck that I had to cash at a bank, I saved every penny for several months until I bought my first car at age 16."
"Had zero expenses back then, which made it easy to save money. Fun memory."
– YupHio
Building A Wardrobe
"Clothes."
"I had to start working at the age of 12 because my parents could no longer afford to buy clothes for me."
– Opposite-Purpose365
I worked at a video game store in the mall when I was 15.
I was miserable being stuck behind a counter in a tiny corner store with hardly any adequate air circulation. Working with a personality-clashing co-worker didn't help things either.
But when I got my first paycheck, I remember thinking it was a major milestone and reward for enduring the unpleasant work conditions.
I used my first-ever earnings on a denim jacket from the Gap at the mall where I worked. I wore that stone-washed jacket with pride at school for years.
What was your most prized purchase from your first paycheck?
Reddit user New-Low5765 asked:
"People who work in the airline industry, what are some of the craziest things you have seen?"
Don't Drink And Tow Aircraft
"Worked as ground crew. 2nd day on the job we were issued a notice to gather."
"So when you check in every morning you’re supposed to always take a breathalyzer test to prove you can like you know, ride around the tarmack, use pushbacks on planes, etc..."
"For whatever reason this dude hadn’t taken it/got past without taking it."
"He was not sober."
"He was tasked with pulling a 370 [aircraft] into a hangar."
"He eyeballed it for whatever reason."
"So here we are watching a video of this absolute loon break the whole wing off while damaging the hangar in the process."
"Because he was drunk, insurance doesn’t kick in."
"We were promptly told that Christmas bonuses might be a bit smaller."
~ ProbablyChe
Occupational Hazard
"Someone had the tip of their finger cut off when closing the door to the plane and didn't say anything until the flight landed at the arrival gate and when the door was opened the chunk of finger fell out."
"The staff then said, 'Oh yeah, that's my finger. you can throw it away'."
"I guess he just bandaged and wrapped his own hand."
"It was about 1/4 of his finger including the nail that was cut off. The cutoff portion wasn't particularly bloody and it was really pale."
~ If_I_remember
"A plane I got on once almost left without half of its aircrew on it."
~ BeerisAwesome01
"'Let’s just go, they can meet us there'."
~ InformativePenguin
"Plot twist. That included the pilots."
~ Windyandbreezy
Excess Baggage
"Coffin with dead body inside being left off the flight due to overload without notice either to us or the family and the family realising it by seeing it while the plane was leaving and screaming to us."
~ elenivog
employee of the month ups GIFGiphyNoped Out
"Saw the pilot walk into the passenger area and say 'I'm not flying this piece of sh*t' and get off the plane."
"All the passengers followed him."
~ Jaded-Session8422
"Hell yeah, I'm following the pilot off the plane if something like this happens!"
~ lukaron
Giphy"I had something similar happen, but never got on the plane."
"It was sitting there seemingly ready but they never started boarding."
"Eventually the pilots walk off the plane and a few of us heard them say ‘This junk isn’t going anywhere’."
"Flight ended up getting cancelled a short time later."
~ potatocross
"I was threatened with [pilots walking out] multiple times a week as an aircraft dispatcher."
"Auxiliary power units (APUs) run the air conditioning (AC) in the aircraft and they were always broken down and not fixed quickly, so when the pilots show up it is hot as hell inside and there's no ground crew to connect the external AC."
"So I would get a call from the Captain telling me he is not going to fly this piece of shit because it is too hot."
"Then they'd go on a tirade about how bad the company sucks because they don't do maintenance."
"I would agree with them completely."
Giphy"Then by the end of the call they'd say they will take it but the company sucks and needs to fix the APU."
"Occasionally the captain would refuse it, but then the ground crew would hook up the AC and they would always get back inside and fly it."
"For sure there were issues that popped up where the AC had an unsolvable issue and it would result in a cancelled flight."
~ Winchery
"I’m Dallas-Fort Worth based. No APU/AC in November? Meh, whatever."
"No APU/AC in August in Texas?"
"I’m not going on that airplane. Ground just can’t keep up."
~ poser765
☣️ Bio-Hazard ☣️
"Flight diverted to my airport because a girl in hotpants got uncontrollable diarrhea from the laxatives she took before the flight to help get over her weekend binge in Vegas."
"She sh*t in her seat and down the aisle and all over the bathroom."
"Five other passengers had uncontrollable vomiting because of this and the panic on the plane from the crew and rest of passengers caused the plane to make an emergency landing."
"They ended up having to cancel the remaining leg of the flight to decontaminate the plane."
"Police were sent and interviewed her and her friends and no charges were filed. I don't know if the airline put her on any kind of no-fly list or tried to have her pay for damages."
~ If_I_remember
GiphyHighly Unsuccessful
"There were two suitcases checked in that were full of nothing but weed."
"The police arrested him in the gating area & confiscated the bags."
~ Traditional_Pair4840
"Something similar happened when I was a ramp rat back in the 1960s."
"Law enforcement was going to do the arrest at his destination."
"The weed disappeared before they got there."
~ endadaroad
Stealthiest Catch
"As a baggage handler I once had a shipment of live Alaskan crabs escape their container on the ramp."
"Flights were delayed."
"Turns out those guys scatter when they panic and try to hide under anything and everything."
~ Gregwaaah
"My significant other worked doing maintenance checks on commercial planes."
"This explains why they once found a bunch of dead crabs under the floorboards in the cargo bay. It was a mysterious mystery."
~ Highly_Referential
Avoiding A Strip Search?
"A fully naked woman just walked through the terminal and tried to walk through security like she wasn’t fully naked."
~ Commercial-Chance561
"She was just very considerately trying to make it easier for TSA."
~ TrooperJohn
"They make you take off your shoes but they don't say that's all you can take off."
~ smartguy05
Language Barrier
"I witnessed this in the security screening of a large American airport."
"And to be fair, there was a language barrier as the passenger in question seemed to be speaking mainly French, and struggling to understand the TSA agent's instructions in English."
"Female passenger (tall, attractive, and sophisticated-looking) was wearing a business suit with a pencil skirt and matching jacket, which was buttoned closed, going through security."
"The TSA agent told her she had to remove the jacket. She ignored and tried to go through anyway."
"He stopped her and told her again more loudly (that's when everyone started noticing)."
"She said no. He insisted. She refused again, and tried to walk through."
Giphy"He got angry."
"She tried to explain something but it was unclear because her English was poor."
"It went back and forth."
"They both started getting angry and frustrated. It started holding up the line and other passengers were getting agitated."
"A few people tried to intervene and explain more calmly that she needed to put her jacket through the x-ray machine."
"Finally, near tears, she blurted out 'fine' and removed her jacket, revealing that she was wearing nothing at all underneath, and walked through the screening machine topless."
~ SigmaSeal66
I'm a nervous flyer so it's not something I do often, but I still feel a little cheated that nothing this bizarre has happened while I was traveling.
Has something ever happened during your travels?
Share it in the comments.
Who among us hasn't wondered about how our rich buddies have made their fortunes?
Some people work really hard actually.
They're in an office or in the field all day and night.
They have their noses to the grind.
And yes some people just collect an inheritance.
That's ok too, but how do you make it bigger?
Redditor h3llofaRide wanted to hear about how the rich make a living, so they asked:
"What does the wealthiest person you know do for work?"
My rich friends are all investment people.
They know when to buy and sell.
It's a gift.
Fancy Services
Coding Looney Tunes GIF by Looney Tunes World of Mayhem
Giphy
"The wealthiest person I know (and hang out with regularly) built a company (IT services) and then sold it for several hundred million dollars."
"He now runs a company that does the same kind of IT services in a different field. (He figured out a winning business formula and is just repeating it in a different market)."
omniumoptimus
Name It
"A family friend retired after being a COBOL programmer for 30 years. About 2 years after his retirement, a company came to him and said 'Name your salary' and he requested around $1.5 million/year. He was hired on the spot and still works there."
bbbbbthatsfivebees
"A family member worked at various companies, he told me this is very common. It's not obscure programming languages, just that they know what's going on. And don't let anyone else near it or something."
chabybaloo
Oink Oink
"Pig farmer. I kid you not. He's my father's old friend. I visited him once when my father and I were passing through the state. He lives in a modest classic farmhouse with his wife, both in their seventies. I mentioned I was starting a school in West Africa as we were catching up."
"A few weeks later I got a text asking how much it would cost. I told him 40k, thinking it was really nice of him if he wanted to send a few dollars."
"I got a check for 40k. I thought it would take me years to raise that. I'm typing this from Sierra Leone because he also paid for the house I thought would take years to raise funds for."
LadyCordeliaStuart
That Dude
"It's a guy I work with. He started with one Jimmy John's franchise and turned it into 10 franchises. Ran them for 10 years then sold them all and dumped the money into the stock market and real estate. He did this all while working as an airline pilot, currently still working at the airline. This dude owns and flies his own private jet on top of all that."
OT-35
Every day...
Proliferate Charlie Chaplin GIF by nounish ⌐◨-◨
Giphy
"Inherited a small factory from his father. Developed it into a huge nationwide company. Still goes to work there everyday despite being worth hundreds of millions."
ShipJust
Factory work. That is where so much greatness begins.
On the Road
Happy Go Crazy GIF by DAF Trucks NV
Giphy
"Truck driver. Starting his own trucking company."
Apprehensive-Crow-96
"Tons of money in the trucking business. An owner of one in my city drives a Porsche 918."
ForgottenPercentage
In the End
"Own their own conveyor belt business. Makes almost 2 mil a year after it’s all said and done."
TakeMe_To_Eisengard
"I was a control systems engineer who started contracting on the side. Now I build out crazy manufacturing systems like this. All it takes is getting one project to build a conveyor system and if you end up good at it then boom, you build conveyor systems for the rest of your life. Conveyor systems are actually really expensive and complex in the manufacturing world."
PleasantProgram7572
Life-Changing
"Both in tech. A friend is in a company about to IPO and is VP level so will do well there. Her husband just sold his company (gaming company) to the biggest gaming company in China for, as she put it 'life-changing money.' Both are very intelligent, super nice, and crazy hard-working. They worked for it, and it couldn't happen to nicer people."
BonePGH
The Little Things
"I was a fly fishing guide for many years, and one of my regular clients year after year owned a factory on the East Coast that is one of the top suppliers of O-rings and small plastic machine parts in the world. I never asked how much they made obviously out of respect. But they always tipped absurd amounts ($1500 was my biggest tip for 3 days) they flew private and drank and shared $600 bottles of wine like they were nothing."
The_Kinetic_Esthetic
Let's Play
gamer GIF by Totorial
Giphy
"He's the founder and CEO of a very successful games company. I met him over a decade ago when the company was successful but nowhere near what it is now. He's also one of the most approachable and friendly people I've ever met, to the extent that it sometimes feels like an act."
Lauantaina
Games and gaming.
Who knew?
Can I count all of my hours of Nintendo for tax exemptions?
