I suspect most AT readers can recall their own shock when opening their first paycheck and discovering the share of earnings that were deducted. But this video has special charm, in part because the narrator, who may well be the dad, is so understanding of what lies ahead. This is an absolute classic.
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-WiscoDave
*****
My first payroll job was in 1977 at Columbus Photo Service developing film in Columbus, Georgia, making a whopping $2.35 an hour, 5 cents above minimum wage because I worked the night shift.
My first week, I put in 60 hours. Man, I was really looking forward to that $140 check which was more than I'd ever earned up to that point. My reaction was about the same as the youngster's in the video when I opened my first paycheck and saw that I had netted less than a hundred bucks. What the fuck.....
It got worse. A couple years after I got out of the army I went to work at Riverbank Army Ammunition Plant. My pay was on a sliding scale, depending on what job I was doing for the day. I eventually went to work doing set-up on a machine that installed rivets on the caps of cluster bomb units, one of the higher paying jobs on the production line, making $11.50 an hour and working a minimum of 87 hours a week - 13 hours a day (set-up work always entailed an hour more than production to get the machinery ready for the shift) 6 days a week and 9 on Sunday. I worked those hours for years. I was single at the time and declaring Single 0, so I was getting raped on taxes.
One week I only put in 60 hours due to line maintenance and my paycheck was only slightly less than it was if I had worked a full 87, and I'm talking something like a 25 dollar difference.
The last year I worked there, I had gotten married and declared Married 2, and got a huge raise on my paycheck. When I showed the difference on my first check to my set-up partner, he immediately dropped his tools and proposed marriage to every unmarried woman in the plant, no matter how ugly they were.
