Your teenage/ student jobs

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1980-2, whilst doing my A-Levels, worked Saturdays in the stockroom at Woolworths in Coventry, think we were paid about £12.00 for 10 hour shift. I seem to remember the pick n mix stock was a grazing target everytime you walked past it.
 

Noru

Well-Known Member
14-15 cleaner in the local butchers (Saturday's).

16-18 Forecourt attendant at an independent petrol station (weekends).

18-20 seasonal chef at a Youth Hostel & occasional bar work in Yates while studying.

The Youth Hostel over 3 summers was the best job by miles.
 
14-17 local paper round on a morning and Wednesday/Thursday. Based on number of leaflets. The more leaflets in the paper the higher that pay. About £26 a week on average for what was about 6 hours work.

17-19 Accountancy apprenticeship in a few local accountancy practices.

I then moved into industry and started my career as an accountant.
 

swee'pea99

Legendary Member
started my career as an accountant.
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mjr

Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
Couldnt get a job as a student , lived i a tiny village with an irregular bus route , no other transport as parents couldnt afford to buy me a bike
How the heck did you get to school then? :huh:
 

marinyork

Resting in suspended Animation
Location
Logopolis

How times change.

I never had a paper round, I couldn't get one. I did try and get a job on several farms in summer picking, but there were always long waiting lists. Jobs in my youth were data inputter and medical records clerk. It's all been downhill since then the last few years (I earn less in real terms than what I did in the last decade).

I have a relative who rings up and asks when I'm going to MTFU and get rid of the 'saturday job'. It really winds me up, it took me 7 years to get that job, but I am aware some other people do it at 16.

Some pretty mad stuff on the thread too.
 
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Living in a rural area I spent most of my school holidays working - I think I first did a summer job when I was aged 7 or 8, picking raspberries and strawberries, and did this all the way through primary school. I also went to the tatties, tree planting, and tree weeding. In later secondary school I moved on from gathering tatties to being on the "carts", which was throwing the full baskets into the tattie boxes being towed by the tractor.

I also had a few paper rounds over the years and worked in a supermarket filling shelves when in secondary school.

Once I had left school and went to uni, I had various jobs, mostly working the doors on pubs during term time, and working on building sites and factories during breaks. The most mind-numbing job was working on the pea-line at a factory, 18 hours a day for the time of the harvest (which was 4-6 weeks), and we would frequently fall asleep on the platform and risk falling off the side. There were many occasions when I woke up to find a blockage and a fountain of green cascading groundwards. I only lived a 10-minute walk form the factory but some nights it took me considerably longer to walk home as I was so knackered - I don't think I went to bed the entire time I worked there, and made do with a couple of hours kip in a chair before heading out again. It was great money* though as we worked 7 days a week for the whole period, and had nae opportunity to spend money so I went back to uni with a decent amount of beer money.

*edit - it was also back in the days when students did not pay tax.
 
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swee'pea99

Legendary Member
How times change.

I never had a paper round, I couldn't get one. I did try and get a job on several farms in summer picking, but there were always long waiting lists. Jobs in my youth were data inputter and medical records clerk. It's all been downhill since then the last few years (I earn less in real terms than what I did in the last decade).

I have a relative who rings up and asks when I'm going to MTFU and get rid of the 'saturday job'. It really winds me up, it took me 7 years to get that job, but I am aware some other people do it at 16.

Some pretty mad stuff on the thread too.
Ah, right. Makes sense. Indeed, much easier times for casual work. Indeed, chatting to my manager when I was working in the health food shop I asked her how long she'd been there. She said several months. When I expressed surprise she said that she spent her summers at the Serpentine in Hyde Park, swimming and sunbathing and just hanging out with the bunch of people who did likewise, then in the autumn she'd have a look round and pick a job to see her through the winter and earn enough money to get her through her year. She'd been doing it for years. This was back in the early '70s. Those were the d-a-a-ays my friend, we thought they'd ne-e-ever end....
 
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