Thread: Your first paid work Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 
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 ]
 

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Posted by Meerkat (# 16117) on :
 
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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Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :
 
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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Posted by Amos (# 44) on :
 
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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Posted by Sparrow (# 2458) on :
 
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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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
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.
 

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Posted by Gussie (# 12271) on :
 
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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Posted by Ad Orientem (# 17574) on :
 
My first paid job was when I was 16 working part-time in Budgens. I got sacked after a year.
 

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Posted by Evangeline (# 7002) on :
 
I was 18 and I taught kids to swim over the summer holidays. Fabulous fun.
 

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Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
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.
 

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Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
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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Posted by Jante (# 9163) on :
 
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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Posted by Taliesin (# 14017) on :
 
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.
 

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Posted by ExclamationMark (# 14715) on :
 
In 1970 age 13, 10 shillings for a Saturday morning gardening (4 hours). A 2 mile cycle ride each way.
 

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Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 
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.
 

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Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
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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Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :
 
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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Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :
 
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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Posted by Abigail (# 1672) on :
 
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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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
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.
 

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Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on :
 
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.
 

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Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on :
 
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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Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on :
 
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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Posted by lily pad (# 11456) on :
 
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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Posted by BessHiggs (# 15176) on :
 
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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Posted by moonfruit (# 15818) on :
 
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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Posted by Stercus Tauri (# 16668) on :
 
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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Posted by HughWillRidmee (# 15614) on :
 
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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Posted by Hart (# 4991) on :
 
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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Posted by MrsBeaky (# 17663) on :
 
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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Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
Singing in a church choir -with extra cash for the many weddings.

Also two paper rounds, morning and evening - i hated Fridays when the broadsheets had supplements which weighed me down.
 

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Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
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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Posted by Dogwalker (# 14135) on :
 
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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Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :
 
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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Posted by jedijudy (# 333) on :
 
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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Posted by CuppaT (# 10523) on :
 
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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Posted by saysay (# 6645) on :
 
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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Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 

quote:

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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.

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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 ]
 

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Posted by Oscar the Grouch (# 1916) on :
 
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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Posted by Gracious rebel (# 3523) on :
 
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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Posted by Chorister (# 473) on :
 
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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Posted by Edith (# 16978) on :
 
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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Posted by Tree Bee (# 4033) on :
 
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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Posted by Moo (# 107) on :
 
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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Posted by Starbug (# 15917) on :
 
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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Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
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!
 

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Posted by TonyK (# 35) on :
 
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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Posted by piglet (# 11803) on :
 
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.
 

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Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
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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Posted by Stejjie (# 13941) on :
 
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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Posted by Zappa (# 8433) on :
 
Janitor's assistant in a shopping centre.
 

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Posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom (# 3434) on :
 
1981 - Holiday job indexing phone books at the Post Office. In a window-free basement. With 9 other people who were there on job experience and thought it was a really good job.

After six weeks I was ready to commit homicide. I just couldn't decide who...
 

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Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
At the age of eleven in 1960, in my last year of primary school, I sold evening papers up at the local tram junction.

As well as selling them to public transport commuters, we walked amongst the motorists pulled up at the lights and sold them through the car windows, fumbling with the change when the lights changed so that they would tell us to keep it.

My first week's pay was ten shillings, out of which I expansively bought my mother a box of chocolates and my brother and sister a Coke and an ice-cream.

I then graduated to a bike delivery round, which paid thirty shillings a week.

At Christmas we dropped off cards sold to us by the newsagent, with the doggerel "In the midst of Christmas joy/ Please don't forget your paper boy" the tips from which certainly repaid our investment.
 

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Posted by chive (# 208) on :
 
When I was thirteen I had a job delivering the local free newspaper. Got sacked after a few months because I made an executive decision that nobody actually wanted the paper so I just threw them all in the bin (pre recycling das). After that I dog walked for various people then got a job on a friend's farm which I loved.
 

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Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on :
 
Mine

Excluding the time we dusted my fathers study

was as one of the temporary minions the Joint Matriculation Board (JMB) employed to process the exam papers. It was tedious, repetitive and they trusted computers to mark exam papers more than us! However, because computers some of the time was spent getting the papers ready for the computer to mark (i.e. checking the candidates intentions were clear).

Jengie
 

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Posted by Ethne Alba (# 5804) on :
 
Making gear knob covers; we used to sit outside a friends back door, watching their Black Labrador and talking nonsense.
 

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Posted by TheAlethiophile (# 16870) on :
 
I was a late starter. After my A-levels, I started work at Whipsnade Wild Animal Park, which was a couple of miles up the road from where I grew up. Mum was supposed to give me a lift to the interview, but her car broke down so I had to do a brisk cross-country walk over Dunstable Downs in the rain. Afrer turning up rather drenched, I was sent to dry off in the Discovery Centre (reptile house).

The job was working in a café over the summer period. It was mostly cleaning tables, though I also enjoyed working on the washing up. The place was an odd mix as they not only took on students, but it was also a place where some ex-cons found some work after getting out of prison. We never asked what they did, but they had some good stories.

We had some great moments. For starters, not many people walk through the gates of their workplace to see a family of ring tailed lemurs soaking up the morning sun. The downside was when the elephants were being walked and they pooed near one of the outside tables, so I'd have to clean it up. I'll never forget one of my colleagues trying to annoy a tiger through the cage when the tiger turned away and raised its tail. Being a cat owner, I could see what was about to happen, but my colleague didn't and he was rather shocked at how far the spray went!
 

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Posted by Roseofsharon (# 9657) on :
 
Newspaper delivery round, aged 13.
 

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Posted by geroff (# 3882) on :
 
I was 15 in 1976. I worked on Saturdays in the model shop where I spent all my money anyway - 33p/hour. And in November I got to sell fireworks even though I was too young to buy them. I was so glad when I got a proper job in 1978 - £25/week working in a builders drawing office.
 

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Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :
 
Working on a sod farm, where pieces of lawn are for sale to people who want instant green grass in their yards or garden. It was in the early 1970s, and innovative at the time. If I recall I got just less than $1 per hour, but I very clearly recall cigars, beer and chewing tobacco. Chewing tobacco is something older workers give to young ones so as to make them turn green and ill.
 

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Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on :
 
1976, IIRC, when I was 17, working behind the bar in The Shirley Poppy. Quite an eye-opener, but a generally lovely clientele who all knew each other. Classic local pub.

Earned the money I needed to pay for a school Classics trip to Greece. It was a great job!
 

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Posted by Tubbs (# 440) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by North East Quine:
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!

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Originally posted by Robertus Liverpolitanae:
a dandy umbrella with a carved dinosaur handle

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Originally posted by Moo:
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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