Thanks for sharing.

Yes, $4.25 was great in 1989 for a kid.

My best job was the school district swim classes - assistant teacher. I *hated* taking my shirt off where the hot girl teachers could see my tits BUT.....it was $3.35 an hour all for saying "kick your legs...good job" and then clearing out the kickboards.

3.35 was min wage at the time but....AT 14 Sbarro told me on the phone that i gotta be 16 cause of knives so using hte phone book i called the manager at home and he was so cool. "Ok you called me at home, it shows you wanna work. You can't touch ovens or the kitchen so you'll get less hours"---umm hell yeah so $4.25 at the mall was great.

Appreciate your story about the bump in pay, it's funny how a few bucks meant to much at those ages. I asked for a raise and got to $4.50 and manager told me to keep it secret cause it was only for me but THEN a girl blabbed that her pay was off and that she never got the 4.75 he promised her. So the manager was smart...he told us the TRUTH that corporate ain't allowing $4.75 but he wants to keep us. SO.....each week we'd figure out the difference in pay - @4.50 vs 4.75 and just add the extra hours to our time cards :) yes, my contempt for how easy and dumb corporate folk are started long ago.

Best was weekend nights the chef would call out "do we have people" ....us..."yeah some people just walked in" so the dingus would make 1-2 pizzas, bring them out, and get so pissed 'you assholes there's nobody here you just wanted pizza to take home"

Free food. What a prize.