First Jobs 1.0 Learning How to Work
What was your very first job? What did you learn from it? These first jobs shaped me. I learned how to work. I was lucky. We had chores and responsibilities way before these jobs. It was low drama, and we just worked. We also found ways to have fun. My first ever paying job was...
Minit Saver Market 1973 - 1990
1973 - I was about 8 when I started "working" at the store.
My sisters and I each had our own little book that we kept up with the hours we worked. When we had enough hours to ask to be paid, we totaled it up and did the math and gave it to our dad. My starting pay was 10 cents an hour. Mostly I straightened up the bottle room full of glass coke bottles, swept a little, cleaned the ash trays with windex, and took out the trash. My sisters and I also helped bag groceries at the front counter and carry them out to cars. The big boys did the real work. I'm sure I was mostly in the way. Years later, at my interview with Mike Ford for a job at Kraft Foods, I listed Minit Saver Market on my job history. I put 10 cents an hour for my starting pay. Mr. Ford said, 10 cents an hour!?? I said, hey, my sisters were only making a quarter.
1988 - Dad had a stroke July 23, 1988. Sheri left her job at Motlow State Community Collège to run the store. I worked there in the early morning hours stocking coolers and shelves, and cleaning, before my regular day with kraft Foods . Melanie, my oldest sister, probably had the most difficult job of all. She worked full time in Nashville as a nurse in a hospital ICU, and was the go-to caregiver for my dad, with all the complications that go along with a stroke. We all pulled together, and did our part. Two years later, the Minit Saver Market closed in 1990, after being open for thirty years. There is a facebook page for the store with lots of old pictures...
https://m.facebook.com/Minit-Saver-Market-Tullahoma-TN-116192141767142/
Cuttin' Grass 1976 - present
Dad purchased the lot next to the store after the Dug Out building was tore down. It was a big triangle shaped lot that was mostly on Wilson Avenue. He bought a Murray 5 Hp push mower from Ropers, with the high rear wheels. He kept the mower at the store.
I was about 11 years old. Mowing that lot, and the grass at the store was my responsibility. With all the cars going by, and people coming into the store, I soon had three or four yards to mow up and down Wilson Avenue. I pushed the mower on the sidewalk, cut their grass, and pushed it back to the store. Mrs. Batts lived on Northview Street off on 1st Avenue. She worked at Shoney's, and made the strawberry pies that were so good. Her yard was one of the ones I took care of. Between cutting grass and working at the store, I had a little money in my pocket and started a savings account at the bank.
For two or three years in the early 1990's, I cut the grass at Domino's Pizza. They paid me $20 cash, and $20 in pizza credit. One day the manager said I'm changing to another guy that spends money with us. I said, You pay me in pizza, that's why I don't have to spend money here. He said I'm still changing. I said, allrighty, no problem. Thanks.
Today, Will and I are still cutttin' a little grass. We have a few yards. The idea was to help him learn some responsibility, and begin handling his own money. He does most of the hard work. We are out there together, and that is the best part.
Mason Shoes and Garden seeds 1976-1977
Selling Door to Door is tough. Bless the people in my old neighborhood of Mt. Vernon. I was about 12, and knocking on their doors. Mason Shoes had a nice catalog, and a plan for people like me that wanted to make a little money. I found out pretty quickly it was harder than how they described it. Still, I sold a few pairs of shoes, and learned a lot.
Somewhere in there, I responded to a comic book ad to sell flower and vegetable seeds. Now I had more to talk about. Knocking on the same doors, the kind people of Mt. Vernon bought a lot of seeds from me. I was learning how to work, and how things worked in general.
Blow Pops and Squirt Guns - Yay Capitalism
One day the principal, Mr. Duke, called me into his office. He said he had heard some things. He didn't ask me any direct questions. He said if he found out I was the one selling squirt guns in his school, I would get suspended for a week. My dad found all this to be very amusing. That ended my capitalism experiment at school until I got to college.