12 First-Job Bosses Whose Kindness Lasted Decades: a $20 Tip at 14 and a 5 AM Spreadsheet Rescue

“I’m 14 and this is my first paycheck, and my boss decided that I did such a great job and tipped me 20 dollars”

He says that he’s old fashioned, by that he means that all of his employees are his family and that if you treat them well the restaurant will get better service and he’s right. He has some employees who’ve worked their for over 20 years and honestly I’m just glad that my first boss is an incredible person.

Tbh he’s a better person than most of the ppl that I know.

I going to photo copy it and then frame it.

I was 13 when I got my first regular job, part time at a neighborhood grocery store owned my two brothers, Italian immigrants. My family was poor and we needed the money. Joe, the oldest brother and the main man in charge, was a tough boss, had high expectations. But he was a good man. But at the same time when he realized how poor my family was, he started giving me a little ’bonus’. He allowed me two sodas a shift of work, free, a bag of chips and a candy bar, and I could make myself 2 sandwiches from his sandwich bar. Anyway, I was a fast growing boy, and always hungry. So I was in hog’s heaven. He taught me about pretty much every part of the grocery store business. And when I graduated HS, early at age 16, he set me up. But he called a cousin who was some kind off manager for [a big supermarket chain] and talked me up to him. Vouching for me. At 16 I became their youngest ’manager’. I went out of my way for Joe to be better than he required, he went out of his way for me.

One day my distributor passed after hours, my boss drove me to [the auto parts store] and then payed for the new distributor because I didn’t have enough money. He then stayed with me while I changed it out to make sure the car started and I could get home. Took a total of two hours, and he never said anything about needing to get home or getting tired. That night I asked my dad to wire me money and I gave my boss two one hundred bills for the distributor the next day. First job, super glad I got such an awesome guy for a boss.

When I first started in my career, in early 1983 I was put in charge of developing a huge financial spreadhsheet for a proposal. I’d pretended I knew (I think it was) [the spreadsheet program] better than I did. The proposal had to be turned in no later than 7am across town- no way to email is in those days. So I worked on this spreadsheet for hours and hours. My boss came in about 8pm as I was just finishing up. I hit the key to calculate, and virtually every cell came up with an error. So my boss and I went through every single cell on the entire spreadsheet. We were up most of the night, finishing around 5am. This was my first job in my career, I was 30. I thought he was going to be so angry. But he told me to come with him to deliver the disks with the proposal and printed out proposal. I was waiting to be chewed out. But he just talked to me. Then invited me out for breakfast, and we talked more. He was really kind to me. But to a young man just starting in his career, his kindness really mattered. It was the best lesson on how to treat people who work for you. Or really, how to treat anyone.

“Promoted a dishwasher to prep cook, promoted her to line cook, continued to crush it. Tomorrow I’m giving her, her first knife of her own for her hard work.”

A small shop in Lancaster Pa.

Wow. Wasn’t expecting such a reaction. Thank you all for the kind words and awards. And I will pass along all the good vibes to her.

I think it’s more the thought that counts.

My first real boss, his name was Lee. He was just a good, down to earth dude. I was working in a manufacturing facility for pre-engineered metal buildings and my first job was to use angle grinders to clean the steel beams after welding and before paint. This shop was a big metal box in the south so it was hot. Lee gave me my very first incentive program of letting me sit in front of the fan if I was able to catch up to the welders. I used to jog up and down the length of the steel to clean it as fast as possible so I could sit in front of the fan. Then he quit eventually and my new boss, Danny, came out and saw me sitting in front of the fans on his first shift in charge. He told me to stay busy and sweep the floor. I argued but he insisted. I never caught up to the welders again. I’d take 10x longer to clean a beam if they are running slow. Whatever it took to not have to sweep.

As a girl of 12, I mowed yards (usually 7 to 10 yards per week at $7-$10/ yard), shoveled snow, and raked leaves. I actually tied the mower to my bike and hauled it around the neighborhood! I had an 8-track radio attached to the crossbar with electrical tape. Then, at 15, I applied at the grocery store — it was within walking distance — for a cashier position, but the manager was on the fence about hiring me. So, I loaded watermelons for customers and collected carts for free all day to show him I wanted a job. He hired me PT the next day at $2.90/ hour. I still mowed lawns. Also, I gave about 50% of my earnings to my family to help out. I moved out at 17.

I’d been trained in university labs, where purchasing new material required an act of God and everything we had was machined from dumpster scraps. So I turn up, and for my first job, the boss tells me to make a very basic thing. I’d talked the heck out of my skills, he wanted to see if I was for real, and this was a thing a junior engineer should know how to make. So I looked around my work station. It was bare. I scrounged around in my cupboards, I found some stuff. A few days later, I went to fetch the boss. His eyebrows drifted higher and higher. Finally, he stopped me. Okay, I was for real; he had PhDs who couldn’t have done that job. But why on Earth had I gone through all that trouble, when any sensible person would have grabbed the right material and been done in an afternoon? But I didn’t have any, boss. Nobody had shown me the stockroom. The boss led me over, and sure enough, there was a giant pile of exactly what I needed. I learned that I was solving the wrong problem.

Pumping gas,15.5. I bought a [1968 car] from my boss for 375$ but couldn’t drive it because I wasn’t old enough to have a drivers license. I was riding my 10 spd to work in the snow in January in MN. He finally caught on and said, " You’re not even 16, are you?" I said no.. but I am close! My birthday was in March. I was running the gas island and fixing flat tires. My mom was terrified because I was the only one there from 5:30 to 11pm. I had to close out the till and make a 2k cash drop and lock the place up and leave. It didn’t seem like a big deal to me.

My first job was at our local movie theatre. This was back in the day when an usher in a blazer walked backwards down the aisle shining a flashlight in the floor so you could see where you were walking. Our boss was the perfect first boss. He was strict but fair. He taught us to be to work on time, how to treat customers with respect, not to eat or chew gum while on duty, how to count back change. And how to clean that dang popcorn machine until it shined. We were checked out every night and if it wasn’t clean enough, we had to try again. He treated us with respect and was kind when he needed to correct us when we made a mistake. We got into all movies for free, which was a great perks for teenagers.

My boss was the person who sat down and told me about the importance of saving for retirement and the power of compounding interest. He had printouts and everything. I was only 16 at the time and the job was a minimum wage gig at a mom and pop video store, but I took his advice to heart and started putting money into a 401k as soon as I had my first job out of college.

The guy was a bit of a jerk otherwise, but at least he helped me out in some way.

I’m 65, and I was fired from my first job. It was a desk job — which I hated. After I got my work done. I wandered around and talked to everyone. My boss told me I was a square peg trying to fit into a round hole, and I should be in sales. Best advice ever. Still not cut out for a desk job...so I run a restaurant!