planetdan

Saturday, February 25, 2006 :::

Payday!

Some people frame their first earned dollar, but I saved my first honest paystub, which I found the other day:

I was hired at $4.25 an hour without any chance for a raise due to the fact that the company was already in chapter 11, which wasn't a surprise considering the fact that the entire department store would be lucky to have ten customers a night. I can't think of anything in the world that I would do for $4.25 an hour anymore. Someone could offer me that to sit around and watch TV and I'd still turn it down. Totally not worth it.

I had to get the job to pay for car insurance, which were the rules in my house. My mom told me that I could blow every penny of my first paycheck, just to get it out of my system, but that all subsequent paydays would be dedicated to savings. So after two weeks of work, I got my first paycheck: eighty bucks. I remember exactly what I bought, vividly:

1. A Hypercolor T-shirt (Actually, it was a generic brand from Kohls, but it still changed colors when you blew on it.)
2. A Black Crowes cassette tape
3. Gasoline
4. Some Pizza Hutt

Little has changed. I still blow all my money on trendy clothes, music, and bad food. As they say in Six Degrees of Separation: It's hand to mouth, just at a higher plateau.

Anyway, you can get Hypercolor paint now. For your walls and stuff. But it's like $350 a gallon. And I'm not sure why you'd want to go gettin' all hot on a wall.

::: posted by dan at 1:05 AM :: [ link ] :: (24) comments

Comments are Closed On this Post

24 previous comments:

FYI Merona sweaters from Target are not "trendy." Just sayin'...

By

brent, at 10:44 PM

Dan, you should keep track of how much you spend on booze. You will likely be very surprised and see that you really do have a problem. Remember AA is here for you. All it takes is to ask for help.

By

Anonymous, at 10:45 PM

This "AA" guy makes me laugh outloud. Is he serious? Razzle

By

Anonymous, at 11:19 PM

Neither were hypercolor shirts. I'm always a little bit behind.

By

dan, at 11:30 PM

Dan,
#1: Hypercolor paint? Sign me up! I need it!!
#2: You do need to keep track of how much booze you consume. Everyone should. Gor instance, I jsut finished my 3rd handle of Captian Morgan's today. does that make me an alcoholic?? No. cause I catalouge it, and since I'm sober enough to mark it up, I blatently have no problem.

Or so says my inner drunkard.

By

Alicia, at 1:47 AM

P.S., didn't mean to spell just as jsut, and it's not cause I'm drunk, even sober I spell it like that. It's cause I'm kind of retarded.

By

Alicia, at 1:49 AM

I can't remember what I bought with my first paycheck from my first job. I feel I have lost something important from my childhood. I do remember that it was a job as a dishwasher at one of those restaurants where 90% of the clients were over 85. We actually had someone die right in the middle of dinner once. Creepy. By then I was upgraded from the dishpit to the hostess and I had the job of seating the next lovely couple at that table. Never got over that...

By

elizabeth, at 7:21 AM

don't feel so bad - my first job paid $2.70 an hour. I'm older than you.

By

Anonymous, at 8:50 AM

I made $4.25 at TCBY.But I got all the white choc.moose I wanted and that stuff is worth it's weight in gold.
Chris L. had hyper color sweat shorts.Like you want to highlight if your butt gets hot?

By

Stacy, at 8:52 AM

I used to get paid the exorbitant sum of $1 per hour per child for babysitting. GAH! Not only did the pay suck, I didn't even like kids. And this was before my podunk hometown got itself a Pizza Hut I could turn to for comfort, so consider yourself lucky.

By

Jugglernaut, at 9:08 AM

My first paycheck was direct deposit. Oh, nostalgia in the information age.

By

Nate Swanson, at 10:58 AM

Babysitter: .50/hour, didn't matter how many kids there were.

Dishrat at Chi-Chi's: $3.05/hour. But the bartender felt bad for the dishrats and always gave us booze. The line cooks would pinch my ass. The manager tried to corner me in a closet...a number of times (oh wait, that was when I worked at the cinnema for $2.98/hour).

I don't remember buying anything. I guess we did play a lot of pool and ate a lot of Rocky Rococo's.

By

Colleen, at 4:26 PM

YOu so get hot on your walls... or is that just me? I really need you explain whats cool to me. I'm young and impressionable, teach me your ways Dan.

By

the other sarah, at 4:34 PM

There's an automotive version of the hypercolor paint too (I saw it in a Japanese scooter magazine.)

I totally loved Best! They were pretty famous in their day for their "daring" architecture. Sadly, the Best we shopped at did not feature any daring.

By

vespabelle, at 7:29 PM

I need a ruling here. The AA guy posted as "anonymous" -- is that ironic, technically?

By

Not with Anonymous, at 9:26 PM

My first job was babysitting for $5 a DAY...not an hour...a DAY...with my twin sister, and we had to share the damn money. My mom and step-dad pimped us out to their friends for cheap babysitting.

We quickly let people know though that paying us such an ungodly wage gave us the right to have friends and boys over while we were "watching" ::snicker:: their children...

People should know they get what they pay for...

By

Darcy's Twin, at 12:46 PM

First Job? Tim Horton's Donuts c.1978 earned a whopping $2.75 per hour.

First Pay cheque? Earned enough to purchase a 'steam' curling iron, bottle of hair spray, and Tiger Beat magazine with pin-ups of Erik Estrada and Shawn Cassidy (traded the latter for a Parker Stevenson).

By

Anonymous, at 8:49 PM

I love everybody's first job stories. I guess technically my first job would be babysitting, too. $1.50 for three kids in a ghetto apartment complex. Babysitting was the worst job ever.

By

dan, at 3:31 PM

My first job was babysitting too! ($3.50/hour for 3 hyper kids) Every time I got paid I made the long trek down (and thus, back up) a steep hill to the grocery store in order to purchase a tub of Cool Whip. (That was obviously before I met my tried and true loves, Ben & Jerry) Hey! Does the AA person have any hook-ups to Overeaters Anonymous???

By

Anonymous, at 11:57 PM

Anonymous, at 11:58 PM

My first job was also babysitting; hated it. Anyway, my friend and I would save up our money, go to Snyder's and buy all sorts of ridiculous stuff to make ourselves beautiful. I vividly remember dying my arm hair blonde...

By

Anonymous, at 10:07 AM

One of my least paid jobs was at McDonald´s in Frankfurt, Germany for 6.13 Euros an hour - i thought it sucked, but that´s alot better than 5 Dollars - sheesh! now that´s crappy pay! I´ve been boycotting McD´s since then any way (only been a year now). btw babysitting was my very first job, too - that was in San Antonio, Texas.

By

Richard, at 7:37 AM

Oh the memories this brought back. $4.15 an hour (yes, 10 cents less for being "in training"!) at a fabric store. My very first job at 14. And to think that I thought $6 and $7 an hour in college was big money.

Ugh.

Funny you should mention the Hypercolor thing. My husband was just wearing one of our old ones the other day. It doesn't do anything, since a dryer run ruined it years ago.

By

Twinmama, at 10:58 PM

Merona sweaters from Macy's were cool -- literally, as the weave was very loose.
But, then, that was '80s Nevada.

By

Rev Fawkes, at 10:37 AM

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