So therefore first step to straightening out country is to getting rid of half the lawyers....

Seriously, how many people on this website ever had a minimum wage job?

I had one on the side but only because the girls that worked there were good looking AND easy...

Had another job that paid the bills.

Put me down, started at 15 working for Pitre's exxon and wrecker service (family) in Chauvin la. 4.25 Per hr...

Worked my way through "school for commercial fisheries" and graduated and started my very own turtle farm!

I was making minimum wage before I could legally drive...

I cut grass before getting a "real" job. $25 a yard and took 45 minutes a yard. Dumbest thing I ever did was sell those contracts. Tax Free money is great.

I had 2 washing equipment as it came in from rent at A1 Rentals at age 15 in the summer and on saturdays and at Bayou Grocery as a cashier/clerk before and after school

When I was 23, I had just got out of the Army on a Green to Gold ROTC Scholarship, and was attending Columbus State University outside of Fort Benning, Ga. No more Army chow hall or free room and board in the barracks.

School was paid for, but I had to provide the living. I got a job painting houses with a bunch of drunks and dope heads. When that crew fell apart, my money ran out. Times were lean, and I was just married, and also had to provide for the wife. One morning, I jumped in my truck and drove to the first subdivision under construction, and the first house I saw with workers, I got out and asked if the builder was around. They let me know he was two houses down, and told me his name. I walked over, told him I was fresh out of the 75th Ranger Regiment, and attending college ROTC, and that I need a job. He asked what I could do, and I told him any work that he may have. He told me to follow him, and he drove to a brick apartment complex that his company was building. There were left over bricks in piles, and bricks that had sunk in the red clay mud all strewn all around the buildings. He told me to collect all of the bricks up, put them on pallets, so he could take them to another work site. I did not even ask him how much he was going to pay me.

For three days I pulled bricks out of the mud, and cleaned off the mud and stacked them. I handled so many bricks; the skin was coming off my hands. When I was done, he paid me $4.25 an hour, and then gave me a bunch of jobs doing punch out work, cleaning up around construction sites for the next couple of weeks.

On one of the houses he was building, the painters bailed on him. They left material, so I took it upon myself to finish painting the trim on the exterior of the house. The boss showed up, and asked who told me to paint. I let him know the painters left, and that i figured I could finish it up. He looked at my work, and asked where I learned to paint, and I let him know that I had done some custom painting on big houses up north of Atlanta. He more than doubled my pay that day and bumped me to $10 an hour.

The next week, he let me know that I was going to paint his personal houses, and two houses that belonged to his daughter. He also wanted me to do some work on a screened in porch on the back of his house. He gave me the keys to his house, and told me that some of his workers would be by later to drop of materials for me. When the truck showed up, I went out to get the rolls of screen and lumber, and his other workers asked for the boss. I let them know he was not around, and they wanted to know how I got into the house. I will never forget telling them that I had the keys to his house. They looked at each other, then at me, and wanted to know how in the hell I had only worked for three weeks, and already had the keys to the boss's house, and that they had worked for the company for years, and would never be given the keys.. For the next couple years, they always razzed me about my "special status" with the boss and his family.

In my junior year of college, construction slowed way down, and there was no work for me until spring. I went by Seminole Deer Processing in Phenix City, Alabama to drop off a deer for my father in law. There was a sign saying they needed a worker. A fellow named Jimmy Lumpkin ran the place, and I asked him about the job, and he inquired if I could skin and gut deer. He had a slew of them hanging up, so I stepped inside the cooler and skinned one out. I was back to minimum wage, and for the next couple months I skinned and gutted deer, salted hides, and cleaned meat saws and grinders (I had cleaned butcher shops for minimum wage when I was in high school). It was good work, and I enjoyed it.

Even when I was a captain in the Army, I used to pick up side jobs when on leave or weekends, doing sheet rock finishing, painting, Bobcat operator, and tree surgeon work. I still enjoy working with my hands, and I gained much from those jobs earlier in life. I am thankful for the folks that hired me on, and it was honest and decent work. I have never had to take a handout, collect unemployment, or get any gov assistance in my life, and if I have to, I can go back and work construction again.

Correct and very true but when u have tons of applications. The more creditable school applicants will get chosen first. U can't always interview everyone that meets the requirements.