He is best known for being CEO of one of the world’s largest companies.
But before Tim Cook took the reins at Apple, he started his career in a very surprising place.
Speaking on the Table Manners podcast, Mr Cook revealed that he started working when he was just 11 years old.
He says: ‘A lot of [his upbringing] was centred on work and the belief that hard work was essential for everybody, regardless of your age.
‘And so I started working when I was probably 11 or 12 on the paper route.’
After years spent ‘throwing papers’, Mr Cook says he ‘graduated’ to his next job flipping burgers for a local restaurant at the age of 14.
‘I worked at a place called Tastee Freez. It was the only fast-food place in town, and so everybody congregated there,’ he explained to Jessie and Lennie Ware.
‘I wore a little hat, and I wore an apron, and I was making $1.10 an hour at the time, it was sub-minimum wage, which was legal at that point in time.’
While he is now known for being the leader of one of the world’s biggest companies, Apple CEO Tim Cook (pictured) started his career in a more humble position
Tim Cook grew up in the rural area of Robertsdale, Alabama, which had a population of just 2,000 people at the time. Tim says his first ever job was delivering papers, a job he started aged just 11. Pictured: Tim Cook in his high school yearbook
Tim Cook was born in 1960 to Geraldine and Don Cook in the city of Mobile, Alabama.
However, the family later settled in Robertsdale, which, although technically a city, had a population of just over 2,000 at the time.
Mr Cook says: ‘I came from an extremely modest background in a rural town with two, three thousand people in it, so it was a blink and you’ll miss it kind of place.
‘But it was terrific. The house was filled with love and everybody knew everybody in town and what everybody was doing. And so it was a very different upbringing.’
It was in Robertsdale that Mr Cook got his first jobs delivering papers and flipping burgers while attending the local high school.
Later, according to the Mobile Press-Register, he worked at Robertsdale’s Lee Drug Store with his mother.
While the Tastee Freez where Mr Cook got his first taste of gainful employment is no longer open, the Lee Drugstore is still the city’s only independent pharmacy.
At high school, Mr Cook reportedly played trombone in the band and served on the yearbook staff.
After spending a few years ‘throwing papers’, Mr Cook says he ‘graduated’ to flipping burgers at a local restaurant called Tastee Freez, a chain of burger and ice cream stores which still has a few locations in the US
During this time, Mr Cook also worked on the high school yearbook as the business manager in his senior year. Pictured: Mr Cook in his high school yearbook, class of 1978
In a hint of his future business success, the young Mr Cook even served as the yearbook’s business manager during his senior year and was responsible for selling adverts to local businesses.
It was those years growing up in rural Alabama which Mr Cook says taught him the value of hard work.
‘They [his parents] instilled hard work. And that has stayed with me for a lifetime, the value of it, the fact that work can be a part of your purpose,’ says Mr Cook.
‘I think before Apple, I think I loved to work. I didn’t love the work, and now I love both. And there’s a big difference that you feel when you do that.’
After graduating from Auburn University, where he saw his first personal computer, Mr Cook worked at a number of tech companies including IBM before Steve Jobs invited him to join Apple in 1998.
He says: ‘I worked with Steve for 13 years before he passed in 2011. That was a very, very sad time. I thought he would always be there, and that’s not how things worked out.’
Now, as CEO of Apple, Mr Cook says that he still employs those hardworking values he learned as a child – including one habit that would have been useful on his early-morning paper route.
The tech leader says the one thing he has always stuck with is to start the day at 5 am.
Since graduating from Auburn University, Mr Cook has gone on to become one of the world’s most well-known businessmen and has even met King Charles III (pictured). However, he attributes his hardworking attitude to his parents and ‘extremely modest’ upbringing
In previous interviews, he has said that he uses the time to answer some of the 500-600 emails he gets each day.
Those include emails sent in by the many happy, or extremely unhappy, Apple customers who reach out to him on a daily basis.
He says: ‘It’s the part of the day that I can control the most. As the day starts to unfold, it becomes less predictable, and by the end of the day, all these things can commandeer your time and intention and energy.
‘And so I love the part of the day that I can kind of block out the world and focus on a few critical things and just be silent for a while.’
THE TRILLION DOLLAR RISE OF APPLE
1976: Founders Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne created the company on April 1 1976 as they set about selling computer kits to hobbyists, each of which was built by Wozniak.
The first product was the Apple I.
1977: Apple released the Apple II in June, which was the first PC made for the mass market.
Steve Jobs unveils Apple Computer Corporation’s new Macintosh February 6, 1984 in California.
1981: Jobs became chairman.
1984: The Macintosh was introduced during an ad break for the Super Bowl and later officially unveiled during a launch event. It was discontinued a year later and Jobs left the firm.
1987: Apple released the Macintosh II, the first colour Mac.
1997: Apple announces it will acquire NeXT software in a $400 million deal that involves Jobs returning to Apple as interim CEO. He officially took the role in 2000.
The then Chief Executive Officer of Apple, Steve Jobs, with the iPhone
2001: Apple introduced iTunes, OS X and the first-generation iPod.
The first iPod MP3 music player was released on October 23, 2001, at an event in Cupertino and was able to hold up to 1,000 songs.
2007: Apple unveils the iPhone.
2010: The first iPad was unveiled.
2011: Jobs resigned in 2011 due to illness, handing the CEO title to Tim Cook. Jobs died in October from pancreatic cancer.
2014: Apple unveiled the Apple Watch. It also unveiled its first larger iPhones – the 6 and 6 Plus.
2015: After purchasing Beats from Dr Dre, Apple launched Apple Music to compete with Spotify and other music streaming services.
2016: Apple returned to its roots and announced the 4-inch iPhone SE. Meanwhile, the firm is embroiled in a legal battle with the FBI, involving the agency demanding access to the locked phone used by Syed Farook, who died in a shootout after carrying out a deadly December attack in San Bernardino, California with his wife. The court order was dropped on March 28 after the FBI said a third party was able to unlock the device.
2017: Apple introduces the iPhone X, which removes the home button to make way for a futuristic edge-to-edge screen design and a new FaceID system that uses advanced sensors and lasers to unlock phones with just the owner’s face.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs speaks at an Apple event at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, Calif.
2018: In a first for the company, Apple introduces new features in its latest operating system, iOS 12, that encourage users to manage and spend less time on their devices. The move was spawned by a strongly worded letter from shareholders that urged the firm to address the growing problem of smartphone addiction among kids and teenagers.
2019: In January, Apple reports its first decline in revenues and profits in a decade. CEO Tim Cook partly blamed steep declines in revenue from China.
2020: In March, Apple closes all its bricks and mortar retail stores outside of China in response to coronavirus.
2021: In an online virtual event in April CEO Tim Cook declared Apple’s goal of becoming carbon neutral for Earth Day. Later in the year the iPhone 13 was announced.
2022: In September the iPhone 14 was announced. One of the new features included a new sensor to detect if a user had been in a car crash as well as an improved camera system.
2023: Apple brought back its ‘Home Pod’ after the first generation was discontinued. The ‘Home Pod’ can be seen as an alternative to Amazon’s Alexa or Google Home as it is powered by voice commands.
