Your First Job

[Gistok]

We never claimed that the Redford seated 2000, the original capacity was in the neighborhood of 2000, adjusted for 1920s ballywhoo. When we took the building over the seating was at 1495, the projectionist union made a rule in the 1950s that if you had over 1500 seats you had to have two union men in the booth on weekends. The Goldberg Brothers [[Community theatres) fixed that by having enough seats removed so that the count was 1495. We added those seats back in 1980 when the Toledo library gutted their auditorium from their main branch, we transported those seats and installed them on the bare "steps". The count is 1571 after our $270,000 partial re-seating done in 2003. The original seats were much narrower and crammed together, the seats we removed and scrapped in 2003 were from the 1950 re-seating, also when the current marquee was added.

56packman... thanks for that interesting info... I wonder if this have happened at the United Artists.... original seating 2070... later reconfigured to 2012... and much later it went down to 1488. Sounds like they wanted to get under the 1500 limit as well....

[Gistok]

One very weird thing was that they did NOT allow patrons to take drinks to their seats [[because of the carpeting). So if you were thirsty, you had to stand up in the vestibule and drink your coke or whatever. One guy came up, bought two drinks...and got so upset when he was told he couldn't take it to the seat, he poured it right down the front of an usherette's uniform...ice and all.

The boss...protective as he was...walked down, grabbed the guy by the collar and threw him out of the theatre and told him to never darken the doorstep again.

Concession stands in theatres were frowned upon in the 1920s and 1930s. It wasn't until about 1940 that they become popular. Many theatres had to find space in the lobby areas to put them. Sometimes it meant the removal of statuary or fountains or artwork to make room for them.

This explains why old movie palaces were so short of bathrooms. People weren't allowed refreshments back then... so the need for a restroom was much less.

But some folks took advantage of this early situation... on either side of the 1910 built National Theatre entrance were small stores that sold candy or ice cream and other items.

So when theatre attendance dropped during the war and TV years... it was the refreshments stand that kept many a theatre from closing down.

[Ray1936]

Quote: "This job required a shirt and tie [[something my current "professional" job does not), "

That's a good point. My job at Fromm's Hardware in the early fifties demanded a white shirt and tie and no jeans. I never thought twice about it.

[Magnatomicflux]

I was 14 and I made lead fishing lures. To be more accurate, I filed the "flash" off of the newly cast lures with a file. I then had to stick them, hook first into this peice of wood with grooves in it one after the other, and keep doing it fo 8 hrs. It was so hot in this place, it was very small but housed a smelter for the lead. But of course there was no fan in this place just two open doors, I passed out twice at the job. Anyways, after 1 week I had made 8763 peices. I opened my first cheque and saw that I made $87.63.
Never went back.

[Jimaz]

I was 14 and I made lead fishing lures.... Never went back.

Good decision. You probably saved yourself from lead poisoning!

[Magnatomicflux]

Yeah...now that I think of it, I don't think I was given any gloves either!!!

[oladub]

I sold the Sunday edition News and Free Press in front of the Woods Theater on Saturday nights. I could make up to $14 walking home by 1am. One group of customers would drive up and buy papers to get the latest horse race results. There was also a male prostitute who would be picked up and dropped off over the course of Saturday night. We would talk sometimes while waiting for our respective customers.

My first paycheck job at 16 was working for the Dewey S-- landscaping company on East Warren. Most of our jobs were in the Grosse Pointes. Hot work in the sun. One fellow employee was fired on the spot for drinking from a water spigot. The boss considered it bad form. Once when the boss was away, a black maid brought us out glasses of ice water with the instructions to drink it fast before her boss came back. I still appreciate her gesture. At the end of the day, we sat on the back of the company stake truck with our legs hanging off and enjoyed the breeze; our bodies depleted of energy.

[Kathleen]

Great thread!! I note a couple of folks whose path may have crossed with mine over on the east side since we ate Kavan's and shopped at Chatham's etc. Wonder how many of us crossed paths with other Forumers years back....

So...my first job with a regular paycheck...

For 6 weeks during the summer of '74 between my junior and senior years of high school, I worked at Westcott Paper Products, still located on the northwest corner of Cass and Amsterdam. A classmate had worked there the previous summer so I went with her when she applied to work again during the summer. I took the job, but I don't recall her working with us that summer.

Westcott did a lot of work for the auto industry, preparing and packaging materials for auto showroom displays. We basically worked on small assembly lines. For example, preparing pages of car upholstery and matching vinyl roof swatches. Or placing one particular piece of a display into a box and once all the pieces were in, folding the boxflaps in and running it through the machine that closed up the box.


It was a fun summer. There were lots of high school and college students employed. I carpooled from the east side with 3 or 4 college students, older siblings of grade school classmates. The job was 8-4:30, 30 minutes lunch, and two 10-minute breaks. The catering truck showed up at lunch and at breaks. We punched a clock, and we worked 6 days a week. $2.00 an hour. They didn't take taxes out, so I brought home $96 a week for six weeks. Socked it all away in the bank, since I was still babysitting a couple evenings a week and was able to live off that money. The following summer I used half of the money to buy my first car: 1966 Dodge Coronet.

I have fond memories of that summer. And I'm still in touch with one of my fellow employees. But I opted not to go back to the factory the next summer. I got a job in the housekeeping department at Bon Secours Hospital and worked there on weekends and filled in for the fulltimers when they went on vacation during the summer. Worked there for my first two years of college before getting a job in Purdy Library at Wayne State for my last two years of college. Upon graduation, I took a job at Gale Research where I've been employed now for more than 30 years.

[kathy2trips]

YMCA @ Harper & Gratiot.
90 cents an hour.....think it was 1966.

I took a sewing class for kids there that same year. I would have been 10.

My first job was waitress at Big Boy on Groesbeck, weekends, January 1973. I asked my mom about her's, too. My mom's first job was at Sam's [[a dept. store) downtown. She lied about her age to work; she was 15 in 1940.

[Blueidone]

I took a sewing class for kids there that same year. I would have been 10.

My first job was waitress at Big Boy on Groesbeck, weekends, January 1973. I asked my mom about her's, too. My mom's first job was at Sam's [[a dept. store) downtown. She lied about her age to work; she was 15 in 1940.

Big Boy on Groesbeck & Kelly in Fraser? I worked there too, but before you...it was the next job I had after the Gateway. Worked through the summer of 1968 and on weekends from that fall until sometime in 1969 when I got my next job working at Mt. Clemens General Hospital as a lab clerk.

[56packman]

Concession stands in theatres were frowned upon in the 1920s and 1930s. It wasn't until about 1940 that they become popular. Many theatres had to find space in the lobby areas to put them. Sometimes it meant the removal of statuary or fountains or artwork to make room for them.

This explains why old movie palaces were so short of bathrooms. People weren't allowed refreshments back then... so the need for a restroom was much less.

But some folks took advantage of this early situation... on either side of the 1910 built National Theatre entrance were small stores that sold candy or ice cream and other items.

So when theatre attendance dropped during the war and TV years... it was the refreshments stand that kept many a theatre from closing down.

GISTOK--it's not that the theatre operators "frowned" on concessions stands when the palaces were built, they just didn't have to consider the income because the business was structured then that they made their money at the box office. Being "company owned" by the studios through an arrangement where someone like Kunsky held the Paramount/Publix franchise for metro Detroit also made him a shareholder in the studio, and the profits were kept in a tidy little circle. Every neighborhood theatre worth mentioning built before the mid 1930s had a candy store nearby. It took the theatre operators until the mid to late 30s to figure out what they were missing--the sale of concessions. After the 1949 consent decree came into law the studios could no longer own the theatres, and the sales of concessions became most important. The multiplexes today have to give about 95% of the price of a ticket to the studio/distributor for the films, so the concession stand is where the money is made.

[Catman]

My first job was at the Rustler's Steak House on Wayne Road across from Westland Shopping Center [[or Westland Mall) in 1976. I was a dishwasher but they also had me to come out from the back to carry the food from the stand to the tables. That wouldn't pass sanitary standards now days! Because I had a hearing impairment, I had difficulty hearing the buzzer for me to come out to the front. I was working for less than minimum wage because supposedly I was supposed to have a share of the tips. A couple of weeks later, I got a job at the Westland Mall Big Boy's restaurant for more money. A year or two later, Rustler's closed. Serves them right!

[lizaanne]

1983 - I was washing dishes at the Fox and Hounds on the weekends in the upstairs banquet rooms. I worked my butt off there, just making minimum wage I believe. Hard hot work for a young girl working alone on parties of over 100 sometimes. I would get help with some of the really big parties, but for the most part I did it alone. In spite of all that, had a good time working with really fun people. So sad to see that place go, what a loss.

[mikefmich]

The place where I learned to swim, only a couple of years earlier.

I did that too Al.....well, I tried to learn. lol
Young guy named Cookie was the instructor, that was maybe 10 yrs before I worked there, circa 1955-57.

[mikefmich]

My first job was a bus boy at Kavan's Colony East about 1973-1974.

So that was YOU who dumped the tray of dishes in my lap!?!?!?

My cousin lived two doors off Morang on Balfour, I used to eat there a lot.

[turkeycall]

February of 1967. Service Station attendant at Warren-Farmbrook Sunoco. The job paid $1.00 per hour. Learned a lot - service with a smile, how to repair flat tires, oil changes, lube jobs.

Gas was 28.9 cents for regular but Sunoco 260 was out of sight. The numbers on the pump only went to $9.99. About the only time I ever sold ten dollar's worth of gas was when a guy in a Corvette came in running on fumes. I remember selling $10.30 one time.

[grumpyoldlady]

My first job after graduating from Denby in '67 was as a sales clerk at J.L. Hudson at Eastland. I made a whopping $1.525 per hour... they made a point of telling us it was "a dollar and fifty-two-and-a-half cents" per hour. Was contingent and didn't get a lot of hours. As soon as I was hired by Ma Bell, it was "farewell" to my aching feet.

[rid0617]

First job was something not heard of now a days. A full service gas station. 1968 and earned a whole $1.60 an hour. Lived better on that $59 a week gross pay than I do not on police retirement.

[rid0617]

If anyone is old enough to remember my father's first job was 1951 working for Fred Mays Trim Shop on Mack Ave

[gnome]

My first job was picking strawberries, .07 cents a quart. I was six. Did that every summer til I turned ten, then started a lawn mowing concern. Had 32 yards and two Helpers when I gave it up for haberdashery work.

[xphillipjrx]

My first job was at Little Caesar's Pizza Station on Telegraph S. of 10 Mile. Mike and Marion Illich used to come in on Sundays for a meal. When the Wings got Petr Klima I think Caesars was one of the first meals he had in the US. I also worked at the one in Ann Arbor on South U when I went to college and I was Little Caesar two years during the Art Fair. Good Times.

[MizMotown]

First Job at 16 - Telephone Research - Bugging people all hours of the day asking if they were going to vote for Regan or Mondale.

Other jobs: Guardian Photo in Novi. Sorting and processing people's film dropped off from Arbor Drugs, Perry Drugs, etc... [[that place was a trip) Tydell's Photo Supply Co. in Livonia. Yazaki Corp. in Canton and MI State Fair for 15+ years.

[blindowl]

First job was in '72 at the Edmund Olds dealer on Campau, right across from Woody Pontiac. I thought it was great being a car porter, drivin' all those new cars. We used to have to cram 'em in that small lot, and I must say, we got to be pretty good drivers, not puttin' a dent in a car.

[reddog289]

I mowed lawns for other people besides the folks. Then in 9th grade I got a Free Press route.Which left me with left over papers in the pre recycleling days. Took them out to the trash.After 30 years I am still taking out the trash,The only job I ever had to not take out the trash was when I worked at a machine shop and my Uncle took care of the trash.Hell I could be CEO of Fords and I would still be pulling my trash bag and getting rid of it.

[DetroitDad]

15 - I took a html class, and found http://www.htmlgoodies.com and designed my own site selling amusement park tickets. I found out that the Credit Union in my neighborhood had the cheapest prices. I made a fan site and resold them on there, making $5-$10 a ticket.

16 - My first employer was TCBY on 5 Mile in Livonia @ $5.50 an hour.