Susan Drewke:  

My first job was at Fulton's Pastry Shop in Northville, where I got paid $1.10 an hour (maybe less) to sell doughnuts. I was fifteen. Sherry Earehart worked there with me. What I remember most about it is how mean and abusive Mrs. Fulton was. She used to frost cakes with the same knife with which she scratched her head, a frown on her face and a long cigarette ash growing in the ashtray right there next to the cakes. She fired me when I got sick for two days. It was a great relief after that to get a job at Burger Chef, where federal employment standards applied. I believe the minimum wage was $1.90 an hour and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. We were even allowed breaks. As nice as I thought it was, I must admit that I got taken and the Burger Chef managers had a good laugh when they hired me to paint the entire outside of the building for $25. Total. Not $25 an hour. I volunteered for the project -- but as a sixteen year old girl with no commercial painting experience, I had no idea how hard it would be. Those were the days. The numbers have changed but the game is the same. Funny, I went to law school after my last employment dispute at a restaurant. I refu...Expand for more