I was talking with a group of friends this week and we had a discussion of our best and worst jobs. Our conversation reminded me of my first jobs. Perhaps your list is similar to mine.
I collected newspapers and sold them to the “junk yard”. I loaded them into my dad’s car and he drove me to the yard on Saturday mornings. We made the trip about every six weeks or so. My grandparents and some key neighbors – those without ambitious kids like me – saved their papers for me. My job was to tie the loose papers into bundles so we could transport them to the yard.
The price I was paid varied and was set by the “junk yard man”. Most of the time I was paid a penny a pound for my troubles. We would drive into the junk yard onto a set of scales. We drove back onto the scales after we unloaded the papers. The difference in weight equaled the weight of the papers, and I was paid accordingly. The most I ever made was $3.00, but when candy bars cost a nickel and comic books a dime, $3.00 was huge.
Later, I became a salesman for a brief period of time. My two products were greeting cards and bleach – yea bleach. Both endeavors were short-lived.
My greeting card business began after I answered an ad in Boy’s Life . Boy’s Life was a magazine that I received because I was a member of the boy scouts. There was an ad in the back of the magazine that invited young entrepreneurs like myself to make an investment in their future. The business model was simple. You paid an up-front fee for a box of greeting cards and sold them to neighbors, friends and family.
My mom fronted me the money. She sent in the required fee and I received a box of greeting cards. The cards were suitable for all occasions… birthdays, get well, sympathy, and friendship. They came in a fancy display box so I could display my wares appropriately.
Mom paid $5.00 for the cards, and if I sold them all at the suggested retail price, I’d have $10.00. The problem with the concept was that the salesman, me, had to take the cards and the display box out of the house to show potential customers, providing them with an opportunity to get “a high quality product at a low, low price”. I made one sweep of the neighborhood and that was it. Not for the cards – for me.
I ended up selling most of the cards to my aunts and family friends when they came to visit. My mom bought the rest. (I gave her a family rate.)
My bleach sales career developed in a similar fashion. My dad had a bleach company on his Faygo delivery route. He had the opportunity to buy bottled bleach in bulk, and I sold it house to house throughout the neighborhood. Dad bought the bleach, and I paid him back through my sales. I kept all of the profit.
Dad brought home several cases of bleach loaded into the trunk and backseat of the family car for several days in a row. When he was done we had cases of bleach, stacked as high as Dad could reach, down one side of our garage. There were four glass bottles of bleach in each case. Dad bought the bleach for ten or fifteen cents a gallon and we sold it for twenty-five. He brought more bleach home as our supply diminished.
My job was simple. Put a case of bleach in my wagon and go house to house to see if any of the neighborhood moms needed any. Turns out they did. For a time we were the bleach barrens of the neighborhood. That profitable endeavor ended when the bleach company raised its price so high that our profit margin became zero.
When I was in the fifth grade I landed a job delivering the local shopping news. (Mom signed me up for this gig.) My papers were dropped off at our house once a week and I had to make my deliveries that day before sundown. The job was simple. Roll each paper up, secure it with a rubber band, and hang it on the front door of each house.
I hated that job. First of all, I believe I delivered to about 2,000 houses, and secondly, all of my friends were out playing while I was out working. Sometimes, if I got lucky, mom would have some of the papers rolled before I got home from school. Dad helped if I was still out on my route when he got off work.
The only good thing about that job was the rubber bands. I had an unlimited supply of them. I took them to school, made long sling-shot like ropes, and snapped many of my unsuspecting classmates. That was great fun and the only joy that job brought me.
Dad, and his Teamster friends, went on strike when I was in seventh grade. It was a long strike and Dad didn’t bring home a paycheck for several weeks. Mom got our family a job delivering telephone books to help pay the bills by answering an ad in the local newspaper.
Mom went to the telephone company and picked up books for our assigned route. The company wanted us to deliver one book for each phone that the home had (usually one) and pick up the old book. We were paid one cent for each book we delivered and two cents for each book we picked up. Mom and Dad delivered books all day, and I helped them when I got home from school each afternoon. We could complete more than one route each day and were paid as each one was completed.
At the end of the first day, Dad said, “We aren’t going to do that anymore.” (He thought that we were working too hard for the money we made.) Mom replied, “Yes, we are. It’s honest money and we can use it.”
The pennies, nickels and dimes that I made in my various endeavors, and the pennies that our family made in the telephone book business, were put to good use. Those jobs were simple. Work and get paid.
A great part of the value of working, whether you get paid or not, is feeling that you have accomplished something worthwhile. That’s really the story behind any job.