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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Your first paid work
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
What was the first paid work you ever had - a Saturday job in a shop, a paper round delivering newspapers, working in a pub or burger bar as a student, mowing the lawn for someone elderly - that sort of thing?
* was 17 when * got a Saturday job in a florist's shop. They gave me an overall and all the dirty jobs, and much of my time was spent changing the water in the flower vases - lugging great, stinking pots of green water to be emptied into the loo, cleaned out and refilled. Repeat next week. The rest of the time * was serving customers and getting muddled by the mental arithmetic involved for orders like:
"* 'll have four roses at 75p each and two chrysanthemums at 30p and a bunch of that gypsophila at 15p. Actually no, make that two more chrysanthemums, put back one of the roses and add three gerbera at 12p each. How much is that?"
At the end of the day * went home tired, smelling of dirty green water, but * can still remember the joy * felt in getting my first ever pay packet. Notes and coins that [* ]* had earned[/* ] and could spend as * pleased.
[ 21. September 2014, 11:35: Message edited by: jedijudy ]
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Meerkat
Suricata suricatta
# 16117
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Posted
Although I worked in the family shop until I left school after 'A' levels and got my first job, I wasn't paid as such. Sooo, my first paid work would have been starting employment with NatWest Bank on an annual salary of £1,185. Yep, that grand sum... £1185 pa... in 1975. I bought my first car after 4 months! A Vauxhall Viva.
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Simples!
Posts: 160 | From: Herts, UK | Registered: Jan 2011
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
When I was un my early teens, I worked a couple of nights a week for a company that did phone-solicitation for tickets to wheelchair basketball games. They were somehow funded in such a way that allowed them to pay us a set wage, no matter how many tickets we sold.
Despite the fact that they also solicited donations for the team, they were adamant that they were not a charity, and that selling wheelchair-basketball tickets was just like selling tickets to any other sport. I've heard since then that there are indeed people who like wheelchair-basketball on its own terms(as opposed to just showing support for athletes with disabilities), but I can't say that I have met any.
[ 16. August 2014, 07:12: Message edited by: Stetson ]
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Amos
Shipmate
# 44
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Posted
Kennel maid. Walked dogs. Groomed dogs. Fed dogs. Socialised puppies. Cleaned up after dogs. That was in my mid-teens. Second job was the summer after I graduated from high school: receptionist in a psychiatrist's office.
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At the end of the day we face our Maker alongside Jesus--ken
Posts: 7667 | From: Summerisle | Registered: May 2001
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Sparrow
Shipmate
# 2458
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Posted
When I was 16 I had a summer job in the local McVitie's biscuit factory. I spent six weeks standing in front of a conveyor belt, assembling cardboard boxes, picking up packets of biscuits and putting them into the cardboard boxes, then putting the boxes on another conveyor belt which took them away. It was boring, hot and tiring and by the end of the six weeks I couldn't look a biscuit in the face. But at the end of the week I had £16 in my pay packet and the satisfaction was immense.
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For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life,nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Posts: 3149 | From: Bottom right hand corner of the UK | Registered: Mar 2002
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Fifteen. Chambermaid in a sort of Gormenghast of a hotel in small ferry port. Big throughput of coach parties. Many of the rooms were real cat-stunners. And it was waaay before the days of en-suite - there were chamber pots in the bedside cabinets, which you had to check - and occasionally empty. You got a free fried breakfast in an underground kitchen in the company of old women in overalls who spent the time retailing lurid tidbits from the Sunday papers. It paid £3 a week.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Sarasa
Shipmate
# 12271
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Posted
Working in C&As on Oxford Street as a Saturday girl. It was the time (1968) when Oxford Street went from half-day closing on Saturdays to being open all day, so their were lots of opportunities. I think it paid 30/- a day. I bought a Donovan LP with my first pay packet.
My best friend worked in Marks and Spencer on the Edgware Road so we'd often meet up after work and spend our money going to see plays in the West End. She now lives in Australia, but we still do that when she comes over.
[ 16. August 2014, 07:58: Message edited by: Gussie ]
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'I guess things didn't go so well tonight, but I'm trying. Lord, I'm trying.' Charlie (Harvey Keitel) in Mean Streets.
Posts: 2035 | From: London | Registered: Jan 2007
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Ad Orientem
Shipmate
# 17574
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Posted
My first paid job was when I was 16 working part-time in Budgens. I got sacked after a year.
Posts: 2606 | From: Finland | Registered: Feb 2013
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Evangeline
Shipmate
# 7002
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Posted
I was 18 and I taught kids to swim over the summer holidays. Fabulous fun.
Posts: 2871 | From: "A capsule of modernity afloat in a wild sea" | Registered: May 2004
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
Aged 14, I had a very short-lived job on a Saturday market stall, selling Argentina World Cup souvenirs.We sold "Ally's tartan army" records, badges, scarves, hats... Three weeks of selling like hot cakes then completely unsellable.
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
Ten weeks labouring on a building site in the summer of '76. Yes, the hot one. Paid 78p an hour for a 45 hour week which was £35 basic, though with bonuses for stage completions cleared £60 most weeks and even a cool hundred one week.
I think of this every time I hear office drones talk about 'hard work'.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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Jante
Shipmate
# 9163
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Posted
First paid work- as a newspaper girl at the age of 12. I got "1 a week for 6 mornings and 5 afternoon deliveries, but as I had to also collect the payment on a Saturday I also got tipped and that often amounted to a further 50p which seemed riches in the early 70's. from there I went to work at the local supermarket as a Saturday girl and got 33p and hour!
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My blog http://vicarfactorycalling.blogspot.com/
Posts: 535 | From: deepest derbyshire | Registered: Mar 2005
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Taliesin
Shipmate
# 14017
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Posted
I had a paper round that paid £3 a week when I was 13. Later I got a Saturday job in tremlets the chemists, which was awful, but luckily I was fired for wanting two days off in August. That paid 75p an hour. Then, amazing, I got a job in a wholefoods vegan collective, and they paid me £1.50 an hour because everyone was equal. I loved those guys. The highlight was when someone brought in an orphaned baby Fox. ![[Axe murder]](graemlins/lovedrops.gif)
Posts: 2138 | From: South, UK | Registered: Aug 2008
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ExclamationMark
Shipmate
# 14715
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Posted
In 1970 age 13, 10 shillings for a Saturday morning gardening (4 hours). A 2 mile cycle ride each way.
Posts: 3845 | From: A new Jerusalem | Registered: Apr 2009
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
I was fired from the florists after 3 weeks because they had another branch in a nearby town and one of the full-time people there wanted to transfer permanently.
I then got a Saturday job as sales assistant in a sports shop which lasted quite a while. I was paid £6.50 for the day, which went further than you think in 1978. That job lasted until some inspectors came round in 1980 to check that Saturday staff were being paid the appropriate rate for our ages. It turned out I should have been getting £9 a day and my employers owed me back pay. It took several reminders from the inspectors before my employers paid me, and it cost me the job as I was deemed too expensive to keep on.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
I got my first pay on the Friday after New Year when I was six years old - choir pay for the period from the weekend of Sunday before Advent (when I joined the choir) up to and including Christmas.
Can't remember how much it was but I do remember paying it into my PO savings account.
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
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Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
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Posted
After graduating high school in 1962 I worked that summer as a "houseman" (janitor) at a local hotel -- cleaning the public spaces (lobby, toilets, conference rooms, hallways, etc.) and giving each guest room a thorough cleaning after guests checked out (apparently the chambermaids just gave them a quick once-over while guests were in residence). It paid $1.10 an hour.
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"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
I was 16, we lived in Birmingham. I worked on Saturdays and summer holidays in a jewellery factory. I would get 500 charms at a time and have to paint them. Yellow canaries in cages etc. I painted ladybirds red then - when dry - black spots, legs and heads. It was tedious, tedious work. Occasionally I would paint a multicoloured ladybird then run through to quality control and beg them to let it through. They did!
Yep. I had a summer job painting spots on ladybirds!
One of the lads in the polishing shop fell head over heels in love with me, but I ignored all his advances. I can't think why now, he was very good looking!
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Abigail
Shipmate
# 1672
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Posted
1971 aged 16. Saturday girl in Woolworths. It was two months after decimalisation and on my first morning the supervisor said aggressively, "Do you understand the new money? Tell me if you don’t because I’ll have to teach you." I remember thinking, Well, if I don’t understand it after two months I don’t know how much you can teach me in the ten minutes before the shop opens…
I hated the job. They gave me an overall that was a size too small and really uncomfortable but I was too embarrassed to say anything because I was a bit overweight and VERY self conscious about how I looked. I also had to tie my long hair back in a pony tail which I hated.
After the first day I spent every Saturday filling up shelves and stamping prices on tins of dog food etc. I earned £1.99 per week. I stuck if for four months.
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The older I get the less I know.
Posts: 505 | From: London | Registered: Nov 2001
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
The year I was 16 I got office junior in a meat processing factory. Squealing piggies in one end, a free half lb of sausages with your wages at the other. Every morning I would tour the site distributing the post. Sometimes it would include letters from complainants, enclosing bits of bacon. The itinerary went past a pick up point where there would be dozens of pigs' heads stuck on spikes awaiting collection.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Arethosemyfeet
Shipmate
# 17047
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Posted
I started a Saturday job in Clarks in 2000, earning £3.42 an hour on a 4.5 hour shift. There were two shops in the town and the price we paid for not stocking children's shoes was that we supplied the opposite end of the market, dealing with the swellings, deformities and bunions of those richer in years.
Posts: 2933 | From: Hebrides | Registered: Apr 2012
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Horseman Bree
Shipmate
# 5290
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Posted
Age 14. Pinsetter in a bowling alley. Can't remember the pay rate - a few cents a string, but a bottle of Coke was only 7 cents, so the pay added up quite well. You had to be quite nippy, esp. if the high school kids were bowling.
And you could barely see the bowlers at the other end for the cigarette smoke!
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It's Not That Simple
Posts: 5372 | From: more herring choker than bluenose | Registered: Dec 2003
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itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
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Posted
Breaking out concrete floors in a tannery - the tanning chemicals rot the concrete, so there was a 10-year replacement rotation on all the affected floors. I was paid £50 cash in hand per week in 1976, which was pretty good at the time. Great fun with two other school friends, and we got to look round all the tannery.
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
Posts: 994 | From: Planet Zog | Registered: Jul 2014
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lily pad
Shipmate
# 11456
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Posted
Babysitting at age 12 for 35 cents per hour. It was very exciting when we moved to a new place and the going rate was 50 cents an hour!
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Sloppiness is not caring. Fussiness is caring about the wrong things. With thanks to Adeodatus!
Posts: 2468 | From: Truly Canadian | Registered: May 2006
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BessLane
Shipmate
# 15176
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Posted
When I was in 4th grade (10 years old), my parents let me get a paper route delivering the afternoon paper. By the time I was 14 and could get a job in the mall, I was delivering both morning papers and both afternoon papers. And since the paper-girl knows when you're going to be on vacation, I used that knowledge to land side jobs picking up mail, taking care of critters etc when folks on my routes were out of town.
It was a lot of fun, I got tons of exercise (especially on Sudays lugging those giant papers around), I got to know most of my neighbors within about a 3/4 mile radius and I made pretty decent money for a kid in the late 70's.
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It's all on me and I won't tell it.
formerly BessHiggs
Posts: 1388 | From: Yorkville, TN | Registered: Sep 2009
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moonfruit
Shipmate
# 15818
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Posted
About 15 or 16, working for a small supermarket near my home. I think it was called Gateway - I know the company don't exist anymore. I worked 5-9ish Fridays and 6am to midday Saturdays, on the chilled section. I'd been there about 6 weeks when they made me stay late one Friday because we'd been tipped off about an inspection so the dates on everything needed checking. I got home over an hour later than usual, my mum was going nuts because I hadn't been able to call her and let her know what was going on, and I never went back. Happy days.
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All I know is that you came and made beauty from my mess.
Posts: 180 | From: Just outside the M25 | Registered: Aug 2010
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Stercus Tauri
Shipmate
# 16668
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Posted
Delivering double glazing flyers in the mid sixties, on Saturdays. I don't remember the pay, but won't ever forget the blistered feet. The best part was the salesman taking us to and from neighbouring towns in his Mk II Jaguar. He was a delightfully crazy driver (for young teenagers) and it was the first time I ever saw 100 mph on a speedometer.
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Thay haif said. Quhat say thay, Lat thame say (George Keith, 5th Earl Marischal)
Posts: 905 | From: On the traditional lands of the Six Nations. | Registered: Sep 2011
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HughWillRidmee
Shipmate
# 15614
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Posted
Bob-a-Job
Singing in church choir - 8/6d per quarter plus two-bob for a wedding - no extra for becoming Head Choir Boy (there were only six of us and my dad was the vicar).
Aged 16 - £5 a week cash-in-hand for six summer weeks counting etc. donations to a national charity resulting from a particular (1964) appeal before starting full time work in a central London life insurance HO on £320 p.a. (which included free lunches and London Weighting!)
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The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things.. but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them...
W. K. Clifford, "The Ethics of Belief" (1877)
Posts: 894 | From: Middle England | Registered: Apr 2010
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Adam.
Like as the
# 4991
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Posted
I actually forget quite how old I was, maybe 14? Anyway, it was washing dishes and pots and pans, etc., at Poppins Family Restaurant (pop in any time; full menu always available). Eventually I worked up to doing drinks, soups, desserts and till. Soon as I was 18, though, I got a job in a pub as a barman and soon got enough shifts that I could quit the restaurant. Even on busy nights, I found bar work far less stressful than restaurant work.
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Ave Crux, Spes Unica!
Preaching blog
Posts: 8164 | From: Notre Dame, IN | Registered: Sep 2003
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MrsBeaky
Shipmate
# 17663
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Posted
I was 17 (!974) and spent four weeks in a small factory making plastic "wedge-wood" style flower pots so that I could then spend two weeks on an archaeological dig in the south of France.
I earned £18 a week and the experience was a complete eye-opener for that sheltered convent school girl.....
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"It is better to be kind than right."
http://davidandlizacooke.wordpress.com
Posts: 693 | From: UK/ Kenya | Registered: Apr 2013
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
Babysitting, from about 12 for my younger sisters - it was the only way I got pocket money, and then for other people from about 16.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Dogwalker
Shipmate
# 14135
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Posted
From about age 12, mowing the lawn and shoveling snow for Mrs. Dr. Evans across the street. She had graduated college in 1914, taught school for a year or two, married "the Doctor" (she never called him anything else) and moved into her house in 1917, so she had lived there almost 50 years.
She was a lady of fixed ideas. She had, I think, the first gasoline powered lawnmower ever made, and she required I use it instead of my father's modern one. It was a reel-type mower, self-propelled, and when you engaged the clutch it took off at a speed that was an uncomfortably fast walk for twelve-year-old me. And there was no slipping the clutch, either. It was engaged or not engaged, full stop.
And no mowing on Sundays. After school or Saturdays, only. (I think snow-shoveling was allowed on Sundays, though, if necessary.)
She also felt strongly that you should vote the straight Republican ticket and go to church on Sunday. She was a sufficiently up-to-date Congregationalist, though: it made no difference that we went to the Catholic church, only that we went.
And it was the job of the "senior man" on the street to call the Electric Company when the power failed. Apparently after the Doctor died, she appointed our next door neighbor, and after he died she appointed my father. (There was another, more senior, neighbor, but he was "undependable".) We found out about the appointment one day when the power failed, when she called our house and enquired whether my father had called the power company, because it was now his responsibility.
She really was a sweetheart, though. Our house had been in two apartments for years, and she really enjoyed it being in one family again. One day, when I was helping her clean an old storage area, she gave us a hand-crank ice cream freezer that had been a wedding gift to her parents in the 1880s. We got many more years of use out of it, after finding someone to repair a couple of minor leaks.
I don't remember what she paid me, but it wasn't a lot. But the memories are more of a reward than the money, in any case.
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If God had meant for us to fly, he wouldn't have given us the railways. - Unknown
Posts: 155 | From: Milford, MA, USA | Registered: Sep 2008
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
My first job was picking tulips. They mostly sell the bulbs, not the flowers, and the flowers need to be picked at some point so that the bulbs will grow the right size (or something like that).
I even wore wooden shoes. It doesn't get Dutcher than that!
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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jedijudy
Organist of the Jedi Temple
# 333
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Posted
My Grandpa died when I was fourteen, so we older cousins would take turns staying with Grandma, either helping her during the day, or spending the night. I think she gave us a dollar a day.
During that same time, my dad would let me answer the phone for him in his office that he shared with my uncle. I got $5 a week for that! Hog Heaven! And, I was able to read my books while doing nothing at the desk!
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Jasmine, little cat with a big heart.
Posts: 18017 | From: 'Twixt the 'Glades and the Gulf | Registered: Aug 2001
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CuppaT
Shipmate
# 10523
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Posted
Babysitting at age 12 when my older sister was unable to. Eventually, some of those same people started asking for me first off, which felt rather nice.
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Stand at the brink of the abyss of despair, and when you see that you cannot bear it any longer, draw back a little and have a cup of tea.
~Elder Sophrony
Posts: 919 | From: the edge of the Ozarks | Registered: Oct 2005
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saysay
Ship's Praying Mantis
# 6645
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Posted
Eight. The Ice Cream Connection, my uncle's business. We sold hand-dipped ice cream out of insulted carts at festivals (he also had people on city street corners during the week, but I only did that for a week or two when I was eleven). I took the money and made change and earned minimum wage ($3.25 an hour - so much more than the $1 an hour for doing extra chores around the house that I was used to!)
It was a total violation of existing child labor laws, but the odd thing was, I served ice cream to cops in uniform and nobody ever said anything about it. I mean, one of them gave me some advice about holding the money in smaller amounts and putting the rest in my apron and told me to make sure I was getting paid enough for my help, but Richmond seemed to have some sort of unspoken agreement that as long as I was working for family and not being pulled out of school or forced to work long hours everyone would pretend they didn't know about the child labor laws...
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"It's been a long day without you, my friend
I'll tell you all about it when I see you again"
"'Oh sweet baby purple Jesus' - that's a direct quote from a 9 year old - shoutout to purple Jesus."
Posts: 2943 | From: The Wire | Registered: May 2004
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
It was a total violation of existing child labor laws, but the odd thing was, I served ice cream to cops in uniform and nobody ever said anything about it.
My understanding is that both Virgina and Federal Child Labor laws exempt children working for their parents in non-hazardous occupations. "Uncle" might look close enough in the right light, although wouldn't pass a strict reading of the law.
[ 16. August 2014, 18:07: Message edited by: Leorning Cniht ]
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Oscar the Grouch
Adopted Cascadian
# 1916
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Posted
I think I was 14 or 15 when I started a Saturday job at a local butcher's. I hated it. Detested it. But it was the only way I was going to get any money for things like clothes or music.
The worst times were Christmas Eve - we had to get in really early to prepare for the carnage that would follow as people came in to get their turkeys etc for Christmas Day. By the time we finished, all I wanted to was sleep for the next 24 hours.
Still - I leaned how to make sausages.
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Faradiu, dundeibáwa weyu lárigi weyu
Posts: 3871 | From: Gamma Quadrant, just to the left of Galifrey | Registered: Dec 2001
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Gracious rebel
Rainbow warrior
# 3523
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Posted
I was 16 in 1976, and I had a Saturday job in BHS. First taken on just for Christmas where I worked on 'merchandise' (ie clothing etc, not groceries) but as i wasn't till trained I got all the boring jobs like tidying the clothes on display and putting customers purchases into bags. then I got offered a regular Saturday job, where I ran the frozen food counter. In those days BHS sold frozen food 'loose', we weighed out what customers wanted and put it into a plastic bag. There was one woman who came in every single Saturday and always had the same order 'half a pound of sliced green beans and a pound of peas'. At the end of the day I had to take all my frozen food on a trolley, up to the stockroom in the scary lift, and put it in a large walk-in freezer - where I was always worried that I would get shut inside. then I had to clean the display freezers - a job specially reserved for the Saturday girls (the weekday staff just covered up the buckets of food and left it in the display freezers overnight). I think my pay was £5.85 per day or something like that.
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Fancy a break beside the sea in Suffolk? Visit my website
Posts: 4413 | From: Suffolk UK | Registered: Nov 2002
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Chorister
Completely Frocked
# 473
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Posted
I didn't realise how rich I was during my teens - teaching piano to many of the local kids each evening after school, plus babysitting and church choir fees. It's been downhill ever since....
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Retired, sitting back and watching others for a change.
Posts: 34626 | From: Cream Tealand | Registered: Jun 2001
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Edith
Shipmate
# 16978
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Posted
At Martin Emprex factory in Nottingham sewing buttons on to Pinky and Perky pyjamas.
Then for the second half of the summer holidays being switched to handwriting the labels on dozen boxes of Directoire Knickers because I was the only worker who could spell it.
'Call yerself a bleddy student? Get stuck in then and bleddy write on all them bleddy boxes.'.
£6.00 a week for five days 8.00 am to 6.00 pm and a week in hand.
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Edith
Posts: 256 | From: UK | Registered: Mar 2012
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Tree Bee
Ship's tiller girl
# 4033
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Posted
Apart from all the babysitting my first job was at 18, library trainee as a first step on the way to becoming a librarian.
The job was a good training, £10 a week, and we underwent a reorganisation from a borough council into a county council, something I later experienced the other way around.
I had to leave home and live alone to take the job and my boyfriend moved back to London.
I was very unhappy.
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"Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple."
— Woody Guthrie
http://saysaysay54.wordpress.com
Posts: 5257 | From: me to you. | Registered: Feb 2003
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
My father was a doctor, and during World War 2 secretarial help was unavailable. He would type out the bills, and my job was to fold them and put them in the envelopes so that the address showed through the window.
I was paid a penny per bill. I usually ended up with about eighty cents. In those days you could buy sixteen candy bars with the money.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Starbug
Shipmate
# 15917
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Posted
I delivered the local free newspaper once a week. I was paid 1p per paper (this was in 1982-3). I was at college doing business studies and fitted it around my studies. It had to be delivered on Thursdays, or Fridays at the latest - the distribution company would phone random residents to check that they'd received this week's copy.
I grew to hate letterbox flaps! Some of them have such tight springs that you can only just force them open. The ones with the brushes behind them to prevent draughts are the worst, as the brushes used to make the papers scrunch up. I could never have worked for the Royal Mail.
I was made redundant when the paper moved to a different distribution company.
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“Oh the pointing again. They're screwdrivers! What are you going to do? Assemble a cabinet at them?” ― The Day of the Doctor
Posts: 1189 | From: West of the New Forest | Registered: Sep 2010
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
After my brief few Saturdays selling Scottish World Cup souvenirs, I got an excellent summer holiday job when I was 16.
The Council were opening a new branch library and were recalling books from other branch libraries to fill it. My job was to check each incoming book, replace the plastic cover-sleeve if necessary and replace the existing date-stamp label with a new one. I also collected the mail from the mail room and did the mid-morning bun run.
What made it interesting was that I was in the "special" library room in the Council buildings. At some time in the past, two people had left bequests to the Council library of their collections of, respectively, masonic books and pornography. These books were shelved in the "special room" and could only be accessed by written request, However, as the books themselves were not in the main catalogue, and the existence of the "special" books was not advertised, no-one ever requested them.
There were no photos in the pornographic ones (at least, not in the ones I flicked through in my lunch hours) but one of the masonic ones had photos of all the members of the Royal Family who were masons in full regalia, which I found quite fascinating.
I got paid £40 a week for this splendid job!
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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TonyK
Host Emeritus
# 35
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Posted
As a teenager (in about 1958) I delivered Sunday papers - covering two weekly rounds. For this I was paid 5 shillings - 25p. I never got any Christmas boxes - the lads who covered the rounds on weekdays got these...
I started proper work in 1962, as an accounts clerk at a major London-based insurance company for £450pa.
It seems so long ago now...
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Yours aye ... TonyK
Posts: 2717 | From: Gloucestershire | Registered: May 2001
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Piglet
Islander
# 11803
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Posted
Saturday job in a newsagent's, c.1978, when I was 16. £3 per day and newsprint ingrained on my hands, but it financed my first pair of desert boots (as mentioned on the American thread recently).
I don't know that I've ever felt quite so rich. D. says that his first church job (when he was 12) paid 5 shillings a week and he was rich; his next one paid 10 shillings and he's been stony-broke ever since. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music
Posts: 20272 | From: Fredericton, NB, on a rather larger piece of rock | Registered: Sep 2006
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
I was nine or ten, and the poor child down the street was failing English grammar. Her parents somehow got hold of me and hired me to be her personal grammar Nazi for two hours a week at 40$ a shot! (Yes, geek that I was, I spent it on books)
Pity the poor girl--there is no pitiless grammar teacher like a slightly older school child. I drilled her till her eyes crossed.
She got an A.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Stejjie
Shipmate
# 13941
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Posted
Paper round for me. First doing the local free newspaper, which was back-breaking as there were 100s of the things and it was quite the hilly round. Then a "proper" round for the local newsagents, Monday to Saturday, which came in at (I think) £6.50/week. Used the money to save up and buy the computer I'd always wanted, an Amiga 600, just as they released its successor...
Eventually got "promotion" to being the one who helped the owner of the shop (who must have been in his 70s or 80s) sort out the morning rounds, which entailed being at the shop at 5:45, which was fine(ish) in summer, but hell on cold, wet Sheffield winter mornings. And on one memorable occasion meant me being there when the owner thought he was going to have a heart attack (he didn't, much to the relief of this then-17 year old).
The best bit of it all was finding out my round went past the house of the girl from my class I fancied, which was perfect for Valentine's Day. Sadly, it was unrequited love...
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A not particularly-alt-worshippy, fairly mainstream, mildly evangelical, vaguely post-modern-ish Baptist
Posts: 1117 | From: Urmston, Manchester, UK | Registered: Jul 2008
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