My first job paid about $5.50 an hour.
I was 15 or 16. My best friend’s dad ran a foundation repair company, and he hired me for two reasons. First, I knew his son (most jobs in life come through relationships). Second, I was small enough to fit. My buddy and I spent eight hours a day playing mole, shimmying under crawl spaces with five-gallon buckets and digging out room for the real crew. I also learned how many dead cats and rodents are under old houses. It’s more than you think.
It wasn’t going to make me rich, and that wasn’t the point. I was in the working world, picking up skills I could trade for better pay later. If I wanted to get rich, that was on me, not on the guy signing my checks…