Low Wage Job Quotes

I delivered Chinese food on Long island, which is pretty depressing. I lived with my parents and did that for six months. I got a job a few towns over from mine so I wouldn't have to see people from my high school.

I took a $40k pay cut to leave my technical copywriter job and work for $6k a year.

The first job I ever had was at a pool-liner-manufacturing plant. Minimum wage was $4.25, and that's what I was making. It was this huge, hot, un-air-conditioned factory staffed with all women and me. This is in Georgia, during the summertime, so it was pretty ridiculous.

I cleaned toilets and shined shoes.

I've been homeless. I've worked at 7-Eleven.

My first job was when I was about 12, cleaning houses in the afternoons for different elderly women in town. I hated it.

I washed dishes so I could make movies. it was never a way for me to make money.

My mother was a cleaning lady all her life.

When I was 18 years old, I had a Saturday job working in a clothing store on London's Bond Street. I would fold T-shirts for ten hours at a time and get paid £19 for the privilege.

I think my father kept struggling to get us into better neighborhoods, better schools. One of the worst jobs he had was folding shirts under these fluorescent lights all day at the equivalent of a Kmart. I remember visiting him at work, thinking, 'When I grow up, I've got to do anything else.'

Everyone in showbiz is driven by ego, so how do you go from having loads of fame to working at 7-11? You can't do it!

My mum was working as a cleaner at some hotels to make extra money so she could pay for her degree. I'll never forget waking up at five in the morning before school and helping her clean the toilets at the hotel in Stonebridge.

I had a job since I was 12 years old. I did everything under the sun. I pumped gas. I worked at gas stations, car washes, dry cleaners, anything and everything that I had to do to pay the bills. So for me, I know what it's like to hustle.

When I got to Toronto, I got a job at the car wash for 90 cents an hour but you got paid everyday so I always had a few dollars.

By the time I left the bar, I was 30. I was a dishwasher. They call it a bar-back, but essentially, I washed dishes for a living. I had no high-school diploma, I had no agent, and my literary successes were non-existent... but it was the only thing I ever wanted to do, so I did feel trapped.

I think my darkest days were probably when I was catering. I would go to these parties and pass out hors d'oeuvres, and it's like you're invisible. I remember one catering captain told me that all you are is a tray that comes into their space for a moment and then you leave. It was one of the most depressing things I've ever been told.

My high school job was putting insulation in attics - in Louisiana in the summer. It must have been 95 degrees every day, and the insulation used to get all over me. It was not fun. But I didn't know any different. It wasn't like I was spending summers on Cape Cod.

We came to Portland because there was a good alternative public school. Friends who lived there told me about it, and my son loved it. I left his dad and went to work slinging hash in a breakfast diner and working nights tending bar in a biker tavern.