I was talking to a mate of mine about how back in the day when you’d left school you would go to the job centre and have a browse of the cards to see what was available and then hand the card in for an immediate start. It doesn’t work that way anymore.
Back then you could get interesting (or at least different) jobs albeit often short term.
He was a projectionist in the Ladbroke Grove Odeon for a while and then an attendant on the London to Aberdeen night train.
I got a job (and this isn’t a euphemism) cleaning out Jane Seymour’s swimming pool.
Now it seems the only quickly available jobs are food delivery.
And I have to add being Jane Seymour’s pool cleaner had no similarity’s to the videos I’ve seen since.
My mother was working for the local council when I was 18. I came home from school after I had finished my A Levels and she informed me I had a job for the summer working in the council yard “you start on Monday”. 55 quid a week before tax.It was a hideous job but a huge amount of money for me at that time
Where I lived we had a kind of “Youth Employment Exchange” with cards on the wall. You took the card of the job you fancied up to the desk and the nice lady sitting behind it would ring and arrange an interview, sometimes for the same day, usually the next. Living near Heathrow, there were lots of clerical jobs in import/export, travel agents, plus jobs in warehouses and Drivers/driver’s mates. Many of these jobs were YTS or similar. You would also get some unsolicited advice from desk lady, usually along the lines of “go for a haircut/shave love,” “do you own a tie” etc, but all said with a kind of Mumsy concern rather than scorn. She’d wish you luck on the way out and I got the impression she meant it.
My Dad worked for a local authority and always brought home a photocopy of their weekly “jobs available” circular.
Heathrow eh? A quick stint at that Brinks Mat place; in and out in under a day? Mint.
My first came about after I wrote to the local hi-fi firms and did my school work experience week in one. That saw me through the graduation, when I answered an ad in a local paper. Ever since they’ve been by either recruitment agency or by personal recommendation/head-hunting.
My lad did a couple of evenings a week in the local parcel depot during his A-levels, to pay for his first car. He now works full-time for them. They’re a popular red and yellow three-letter German company.
It’s all very different nowadays and I’m pleased I’m not young.
After paper rounds and supermarket shelf stacking, my first job was in a crappy little factory in an old mill in Macclesfield. I was packing parcels of printed media so it was paper cut city. Two good things came out of it – I quickly realised going into the 6th form was eminently preferable, and I worked across the bench from a spectacularly long haired and Jeff Baxter moustached Scotsman who talked at length about the Flying Burrito Brothers and made me a tape of them and I’ve been a fan ever since.
Twang Jr delivered pizza for a few months, which he quickly hates, then landed a job as an assistant in a recording studio in Brighton, which he loves. It’s mainly just being in attendance as people hire rehearsal rooms but he does get to assist on proper recording sessions too.
It’s not Brighton Electric is it?
Not sure. Near the station I think.
Greengrocers, Council (= binman, roadsweep, sewage suction and other lovely stuff), Hotel Porter, Assistant at Jaeger. All had their merits.
Where there any hot dog stands in Jane Seymour’s pool?
Lost on me I’m afraid … actually just remembered another job I did (me being friend to the stars of course) I put up the marquees when Eric and Patti got married they had a tent with pinball machines which impressed me more than it should have.
I remember my first summer job working in a factory. As a working-class lad I was well aware that most men I knew went off to work each day at the crack of dawn and returned home at teatime. What I didn’t realise was just how boring, monotonous and bloody hard all of these menial tasks were.
I stood at my station, running labels through a bath of glue, stuck them on both sides of a box then pushed it off to the forming machine.
Clock in at six, first tea- break at 8 thirty. Do not, repeat, do not look at that big clock hanging there.
Look at that big clock hanging there. It’s ten to seven, it’s only ten to seven! Six weeks of hell, very well paid hell I must admit. Riches beyond my youthful belief.
But the awful realisation, – 120 men came here every single working day, same bloody thing every bloody day.
I studied hard, well reasonably hard, after that
I had a paper round from age 13. Up at 6.30am to do it before coming home and getting ready for school. I always got extra rounds to do on a Sunday when some of the other kids could not be bothered turn up.
Living on the sunny Norfolk coast we had plenty of ‘holiday camps’ so I got a regular Saturday morning job as an oven cleaner in the holiday chalets. I was employed from 9am – 1pm and had to clean the ovens in 15 chalets. The length of each job varied based on the cleanliness that weeks occupants! Some took up to 45 minutes, others were completely unused.
On a good day I would finish by 11.30am, find a chalet with some credit still in the coin operated TV and watch Grandstand for an hour or so whilst being paid.
Life guard at Corton Holimarine!
I had 2 paper rounds (one in the morning, one in the evening).
A friend of mine delivered the free papers, and I took that round over when he was on holiday.
“How hard can it be” I thought. “Bloody” is the answer, and was pleased when he came back.
Also had a monthly gig delivering newsletters and collecting for Charity (Cancer & Polio).
The income from this was splurged over the counter of a second hand record shop and Our Price.
Left school, jacked the paper rounds, and started work – none of this “gap year to find myself” stuff.
Then again I did a 4 year Civil Service Apprenticeship – so quite a bit of time was spent dossing about
(the one thing about the Civil Service at that time was it did teach you the art of avoiding doing too much work)
I had a Saturday job in an old school greengrocers: open fronted, green Astro turf and potatoes stacked up in huge piles. I loved it and was there for about three years. Bloody cold in winter though.
Was there incorrect use of the apostrophe ever e.g. ‘Leek’s for sale 50p each’
Very common amongst our Greengrocer brethren backing the day allegedly.
Of course and the manager made his own cardboard price tickets using a peculiar curly script which seemed to be common amongst greengrocers at the time. Haven’t seen it for decades. The job made me really good at adding up in my head as there was only an Arkwright style till with mechanical levers.
I missed the era of easily available work, albeit in grotty jobs. I had the usual paper delivery jobs asa teen, and was bottle boy in a pub for a summer, but I graduated in the mid 80s, in Preston, where jobs were thin on the ground. I didn’t have a pot to piss in but I quite enjoyed the few months of dossing around before I found gainful employment.
I had 7 weeks on 12 hour nights/day shifts with an 18 hour changeover shift in a food processing place. It was gruelling but you didn’t spend any money as it was work and sleep. Made a lot of cash and bought my first good electric guitar which I still have. Unfortunately not my mate Andy’s Gibson Les Paul Black Beauty which he wanted all of £500 for. A lot in 1977 but it’d be worth a fortune now.
The food processing job was grueling? Didn’t realise that was processed food.
My aunt and uncle owned a poultry farm in Northumberland. They supplied eggs to local catering firms. On Saturday mornings they’d load some surplus into the the back of a long wheelbase Land Rover and rock into the Grainger Market in Newcastle.
Their reluctant but skint teenage schoolboy nephew would meet them there at about 8am and set up their temporary stall, right outside the General Weigh House. Directly opposite the Tripe Shop. Yep.
I spent every Saturday morning for 3 or 4 years with them, facing a shop full of tripe, flogging eggs by the never ending half dozen to the passing populace. Unsurprisingly, some would break. Unsurprisingly I ruined many pairs of trainers.
I got a handful of notes at about 1pm and sodded off. Usually to one of the record shops but, I was sticky with egg yolk and ruined trainers so never felt like lingering too long.
I always visit the same spot whenever I’m back in the toon, once or twice a year. The Weigh House is still there but The Tripe Shop has long gone.
I was in there last week and one of the butchers did have a big sign up advertising tripe. I idly wondered who buys the stuff.
With an advertising slogan like this who wouldn’t.
Being an old romantic I used to arrange to meet my girlfriend outside here.
One girlfriend introduced to the ‘joys’ of tripe and put a piece in my mouth, what can I say it was like when you were bored in class and would choose to chew on a rubber to alleviate the boredom, except the rubber was more tasty.
Ah. A suspicion confirmed.
This was the late ‘70s/ early ‘80s and the customer base were pensioners. Very much in the tail end of old demob trousers and flat hat era. Tripe must have been a working class delicacy back in the olden days for them.
My thoughts were on a ‘fuck that’ motif
Your talk of pensioners reminds me of working behind a bar in the mid 70s. We were a members only club and open between three and five in the afternoon when the pubs were shut. Our members were at that time of day the ones who wanted to spend the time drinking and waiting for the pubs to reopen.
A group of ladies were sat at a table, another joined them with a newspaper parcel sat down unwrapped the parcel to display the vinegar soaked mass of tripe and they all dipped in and helped themselves. Yum!
Quite a few Geordies, it seemed. They opened up at about the same time in the morning. The entire shop front was a deep sloping shelf of pale yellow piles and coils, with the married couple proprietors behind it gleefully lobbing bits of it into bags.
By the time I was covered in egg-sticky and on my merry way all that was left was an oily white shelf.
And in all that time I was never remotely tempted to cross the 10 feet of alleyway to have a closer look.
We sensibly stuck to some tea and coffee from Pumphries.
Dog owners like me
As a youngster, I only did paper rounds. Never did any bar work or worked in a shop etc etc.
As I approached the end of my Uni days, I figured I better get a job but I was too lazy to use the usual channels so went to a recruitment agency. I knew that I wanted to stay in Manchester and they put me in touch with GEC Plessey Semiconductors – it wasn’t even a proper interview (the HR person was off that day) and was basically 20 minutes talking with my future boss about cycling….
After that, they shipped me off to Singapore and it’s been recommendations ever since. I have gotten through my whole working life without ever attending a proper interview !
I see my kids as having a much tougher time with the need to do internships etc etc during there Uni days. They’ve both worked a lot harder on jobs growing up. The elder boy did the usual restaurant work as well as working in a brewery for a while and then doing cleaning work at the Halls over the summer break at Uni. The younger boys seems to have hit on a big earner doing tuition for secondary level. I don’t envy them – I had it easy.
My interview at Rio was like that. A couple of hours talking bollocks about music – the tech head, wearing a Pop Will Eat Itself t-shirt, was a massive Carter USM fan – followed by a short pop quiz.
“I assume you can do the electronics stuff”.
I had a distinct advantage on the technical side as at UMIST the electronics department was in the Ferranti Building, which was the former company name of where I was being interviewed. Most of the semiconductor process stuff we learned was based around their process, so it was assumed I knew it.
And I know there was great demand for electronics grads back in the 90s, but flying you out to Rio De Janeiro for an interview is a bit excessive,,,,,
My first ‘paid’ work involved sitting on the floor of a small warehouse before a humongous heap of nails of various sizes. The ‘job’ entailed sorting the nails into matching groups of twenty and putting them into plastic bags. The job ended when the last nail was bagged. I doubt I earned more than a quid.
I did the obligatory paper round during the school summer holidays. When I was at university I also had a job with Royal Mail delivering the Christmas post. I vividly recall knocking on someone’s door with a package that had to be signed for. The door was opened by a woman smoking a fag wearing only a dressing gown that she hadn’t bothered to fasten. It was a very brief transaction.
She still writes…..
After the obligatory paper round, which was really good exercise but hard on the weekends because of all the papers’ supplements/magazines, I had a Saturday morning job at a building/DIY suppliers (don’t look for it, it’s not there any more).
As my first experience of real work, it was OK: a bit of shelf-stacking, sorting stuff in the storeroom, occasionally helping customers if I knew what they were talking about (no DIY-er, me). But most importantly, every shift earned me enough to buy a new album from Woolie’s on the way home. Ah, those were giddy days…
When I got my paper round, which paid 1.20 a week, I received a Life Lesson from my father – who immediately stopped my 1 pound per week pocket money. “You’re a working man now…” he said.
I moved on to weekends as well and earned more – and on one glorious day, I followed a trail of dropped 50p pieces across a lawn. There were about 6 of them!
Weekdays were easier than weekends and my round involved delivering to rooms inside a massive multi-floored old people’s home. Always very toasty in there, whatever the weather.
Another round involved delivering to a convent. A large gated property protected by geese. Each morning I tried to open the gate silently and tiptoe down the gravel path – afraid that I’d alert them. My success rate was around 50/50 – often running back to the gate just in time to avoid a severe pecking.
I hated weekend deliveries as the Sunday Times was about 3″ thick and impossible to get through most letter boxes which were literally letters only. There was the compensation of the News of the World and the People which had the odd risqué photo of course.
Slight deviation, the worst job I had a was as a temp at a sandwich factory. Standing at a conveyor belt in a refrigerated warehouse, waiting for a slice of bread to put the day’s filling on. Tomatoes were the worst as they were cold and wet, sliced ham had to be peeled apart. All very dull while listening to Radio Local on the warehouse “PA”.
One day, we were making egg mayo and cress. I was in the middle of a “team” of three. The bloke next to me had a bucket of egg mayo which he splatted onto the bread with an ice cream scoop, I spread the mix out with a pallet knife and the whole confection was finished with a garnish of cress by the bloke on the other side of me. At tea break, I suggested to egg mayo man that he might want a bit of variety so how about swapping for a while. He looked at me and said, “You haven’t been here long enough, that’s top job.” Pay was £1.75 an hour in 1991.
I just got a leaflet delivery job – for myself really but am sharing it with the lad whilst he’s still on summer holidays. 30,000 steps earned me all of £22.50 – providing the dongle proves I actually delivered the leaflets.
I had a series of temporary jobs in my later teenage years – often over the summer
* working in the Suchard laboratory in Neuchatel, testing whether it was possible to make soluble cocoa powder (it’s normally a suspension)
* working in a nuclear research station, assisting on a project to use chaos theory formulae to model graphs of public reaction to nuclear power (it was as mad as it sounds)
* working for ABB, hand assembling transformers with thin slides of metal around a wired magnetic core (I still have the little model donkey I made from left over pieces)
* split shift work as a kitchen porter in a country hotel in Hampshire – a real killer – hard manual labour and completely disrupted sleep patterns.
Your kitchen porter experience reminds me of my, over 2 years, regular holiday job, aged 16- 17, as a general hall porter and dogsbody at Lewes’ White Hart Hotel. 50p an hour, irrespective the day; I worked Christmas Day one year. As well as carrying bags and taking folk to their rooms, my jobs included helping with morning coffees, afternoon tea and bar snacks (making sandwiches), stocking the bars, washing glasses in the bar and collecting glasses. I loved it, and the manager loved having someone who actually did the job without resenting the poor pay and appalling hours. So much so, knowing I was about to start med school, he suggested I give up such lofty notions, as I could be an assistant manager within a couple of years.
The path not travelled…
I would have dreamed of being a Hall Porter. Arriving at 6am into a room 6ft square to face the previous evening’s kitchen equipment, piled up to the ceiling, the worst being the steel pans cemented with remnant boiled sugar, which required very hot water to dissolve, and knowing that there’d be a continual supply of used pots and equipment through the morning and early afternoon, and that the next day I might be called in for the late afternoon to midnight shift – well it drains my energy and wrecks my body clock just thinking about it now. Still, it was an education.
I did a couple of school jobs – car parlk attendant, waiter. Did a summer with Eurocamp/Sunsites on a site in France.
But the first ‘responsible’ job, which carried me through three summers and a job post University, was an Emergency Assistance Coordinator.
Basic remit – people have vehicle or medical emergencies abroad, we sorted it out. I had that Anthony Minghella’s sister on the phone once. And had to help deal with Dolores O’Riordan
Plastic plate with pattern presser. Can still remember the sequence. Sweltering hot in front of the press in an Aussie summer not to mention the dust from the plastic tablets. Perfect job for a 15 year old asthmatic.
Next was another holiday job setting up industrial shelving. Hard and grubby but more fun.