Though I used to pick up minimal money selling things door to door (there had been a few opportunities through school and cub scouts to earn prizes and such by selling things like fruit and popcorn), I got this catalog that basically encouraged kids to sell greeting cards door to door, and you got a dollar or two from every sale, which in the 80s wasn’t bad for a kid.
Then when I turned 16 there was this restaurant in town, it used to be an A&W, but it was just an independent little root beer stand…they sold ice cream and such, but mostly it was burgers, broasted chicken & cole slaw, things of that nature, and homemade root beer. Every day from the time we got into 7th grade, a group of 3 friends and I would walk there from school (that was the first year we were allowed to go off school premesis), and the owners would give us each “a kiddie burger” (which was really a full sized burger, but they just charged us the kiddie price, and a root beer…they comped the root beer and just charged us 85 cents w/ tax for the burger, so it became our hangout. When I turned 16 I applied to work there, and they hired me in the kitchen. I pressed the hamburger into patties, washed and processed the chicken, cut the cabbage into cole slaw, sliced the green peppers, broated the chicken, grilled the burgers, cleaned the dishes, took out the trash, etc. I got paid $3.85 an hour and all the free root beer I could drink (and an occassional free burger if I worked over dinner time).
It was hot, greasy work, but I had a great time, the people I worked for were really nice, it wasn’t “corporate” and it just kind of felt like our own little “family”.