>> $50,000 a year salary divided by 52 weeks divided by 80 hours a week (based on the working hours I imagine from that add) = 12.00/hr.
>>
>>I've done many things in my life for 12 bucks per hour - some of them were even legal! <s>
>
>I acutally made $5.50 and hour at my first programming job. Of course this was 1981 and I was only 14 years old...ha


My first job was bagging groceries and stocking shelves at a grocery store, a job I kept through high school and on summer vacation after my freshman year at college. Starting pay: $2.10 / hr. There was a dime bump in the minimum wage in there and a couple of merit increases (I was GOOD at stocking those shelves, bud, LOL) but I don't think it ever got higher than $2.50 / hr.

Funny thing, though. I learned quite a lot in that job. Blocking and tackling, you might say -- showing up on time, not shirking, taking pride in doing small things right. We care so much about money now, rank ourselves based on money, and have perhaps lost some contact with the simple virtues. A subtle distance has grown between us and the smell of wood smoke, as John Cheever put it.