Your 1980s Saturday jobs

1976, greengrocers after school for 2 nights, 2 hours (no fancy tills and all prices and totals had to be worked out in my head whilst serving), then 1977-78 Saturdays and school holidays at Dolcis, East Street, London, so incredibly busy. No uniform for greengrocers, but crimpelene two tone brown for Dolcis!! Then did some temp office work whilst at college. By the time I started my first full time role, I'd a fair amount of work experience!

1966 Timothy Whites - (later became Boots) - I think we were given a button through overall to wear; it’s a long time ago…….
A whole day (9-6) for 19s 9d - wage was £1, 3d deducted for NI. If I needed to buy a new pair of tights that week, that was most of the money gone. They were about 17s 11d a pair, as they were quite a new thing.

It was the mid 90s but I worked the till in a small local supermarket. I loved that job, proper old fashioned time card and clocking in. We had some properly wild customers as well. There was a guy who had some conspiracy about the government poisoning us through the water so he only drank distilled water (which we seemed to sell by like the 5 litre container). He’d come in and stock up every Saturday. There was also a girl who used to come in with her family all the time, clearly very poor. She must have been about 11. I watched her grow slowly more and more pregnant and then I never saw her again. I still often wonder about her.

I also had a Sunday job as a groom and exercise rider for a polo club. THAT was a whole different world! I really enjoyed it, but posh people (and faux posh people, because there were a lot of those) are also wild.

I had the BEST Saturday job from 81-83. Woolworths, on the record counter. Go to work, play your favourite music all day, go home. I started on £6 odd for the day and ended on £10.21.

BHS in early 80s. Work on the men’s department. Back then the clothes were all folded and in cellophane bags. The large counters had stock underneath in cupboards and we had to stock constantly. The most annoying part was that one of each size and colour was on a hanger in the centre of the counter so customers could have a look at them but they insisted on taking them out of the bags. As a result I am very good at folding clothes neatly.
We had awful checked nylon overalls.
It was at the height of the Norrhern Ireland troubles when there were a number of mainland high street bombings. At the beginning and the endo the day we had to do thorough security sweeps to look for unattended bags.
The most exciting thing was the introduction of computerised tills for stock control. I also learned to read price tickets for the hidden price code. It was common for people to change the stuck on price labels to reduce the price of an item so we were supposed to check them to make sure we charged the right price.

Yes, I think it was a remedy for upset stomachs! The kaolin did indeed sink to the bottom leaving the liquid morphine on the top. Of course, the instructions said to shake well before use!

I worked at a large newsagent chain on a saturday and school holidays...manager was greasy and slimy and combed over his few hairs on his bald head, wore a shiny brown polyester suit and was often squeezing past female staff...yuk...
One day the lift broke down and I was stuck in it, bored I decided to look into some big boxes that were piled up...they were full of swedish hard core porn, gay and straight....lift got working and manager rushed into lift and grabbed the boxes and scowled at me...
a few months later he didnt return to work..we discovered he was sacked as in the evenings, he converted the staff room into a porn cinema and showed films and sold the magazines, vile creep, he once tried to fire me for not getting a receipt for a battery for the staff room radio and accused me of stealing it ....

@cheapskatemum that stuff with morphine in it used to settle like chalk in a bottle of olive oil. I can remember being given a few glugs of it, everyone had a bottle in the house.
Also - the amount of sleazebag male bosses abusing their roles to abuse young girls it’s horrible to remember how normalised it was.

One of the blokes who had something to do with the bar - not the restaurant manager - he was in his 30s and had a girlfriend/partner called, let's say, Carla. Which is also my, let's pretend, name. Anyway, I'd be minding my own business mopping the restaurant floor, and, let's call him DickHead, would say, "Right, I'm off now, maybe going out for lunch later, and then I'm going to have sex with Carla." Of course, 16 year old me just thought, "What. An. Utter. Fucking. Knob. Head." But he wasn't paying my wages, so I just got on with my job, and pitied poor girlfriend Carla, and wondered what she was doing with such a Neanderthal. Actually, that's insulting to Neanderthals, now I think about it.

Sorry, the 80s were too late for me. I had a daily paper round before school in the early 60s I was 13. I was paid 10 shillings (50p) a week for 5 early mornings, 6am to 8am.

Also Boots the Chemists, started in 70s when I was 16, but still worked there during Christmas holidays while a student in the 80s. I remember offering Durex to a man who’d asked for Earex. Also, in those days you could buy ‘over the counter’: a huge bottle of 100 Paracetamol, kaolin & morphine, codeine & a product called Zoff which removed the sticky residue after removing a plaster, but youngsters used to sniff it, so you had to keep a record of who was buying it.

So many jobs.
At 14 I worked an hour after school in a village shop cum list office. The sub PO guy was revolting with wandering hands in the stockroom, while his wife was locked in the PO cubicle.
WH Smith in the music dept. Also revolting pervy manager.
At 18 I did night shifts at a biscuit factory. Couldn’t eat biscuits for ages after seeing some very unsanitary practices.
Best casual job was in a fish n chip shop. Lovely family business and I got to take home all the unsold food after lunch. I think we all put a lot of weight on the summer of 87!

My early Saturday jobs were in a cafe and chip shop, making toasted cheese and onion sandwiches, dusting doughnuts in sugar, washing up and funnelling potatoes through first the peeler (it was well noisy) into a bath of cold water, and then through the chipper! I was paid £1 per hour in 1986, one weekend I earned £25 and I thought I was minted. (Edit - it was school holidays and I did Friday to Monday, I can count, honest).

Between GCSEs and A levels I worked in a relative's off-licence and video shop, selling alcohol and cigarettes to people from my school that I knew full well were underage.

During A levels (1990-91) and for a while beyond, I enjoyed a life-changing salary increase to £3.23 per hr at C&A in Colchester. Uniform was a not unpleasant black skirt and white blouse, and I was on menswear - mostly folding sweaters, foiling shoplifters and checking for incendiary devices. I liked it there, they were a good bunch of people and management were ace. Big-up, Mrs Fitch!

Fantastic. Also love your name @GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER

Cleaning in a country club bar and restaurant area. I also did, for extra money, ironing for the restaurant manager's wife, who had rheumatoid arthritis. I would clean in the bar and restaurant then head to the living area upstairs to do the ironing. Would have been around 16 or 17 at the time. I also cleaned in our nearest large hospital, chiefly evening shifts on day wards so after everyone had left.

My babysitting was brilliant - one under-2 who never woke up, and they always left me lots of very nice nibbles. Plus they were quite happy if my boyfriend joined me during the evening.

Just once I was unable to go, but recommended a schoolfriend, and was a mite pissed off when they started using her now and then too - I relied on that £1.50 or whatever it was then - £2 IIRC, if they returned after midnight.

McDonalds.
Their uniform. Lunch. (1/4lb with cheese, choc shake and fries)
I got shoes too as they were trialing them.
Loads of nice people worked there.

We broke £100 hour record on the tills. It'd be about 5 orders worth now rather than 20.

I had to mentally warm up to do the till... I loved organising the back room and managing the stock levels. I ended up doing kids parties on a Sunday.

We used to work really hard. We also used to drive to a service station after we'd finished closing up for a coffee and to unwind.

1980’s babysitting always reminds me of Rita, Sue and Bob, Too…. 🤣
You sounded safe enough in the E-type though?
A nun at school told us that we would go to hell if we worked on a Sunday. It was before official Sunday training but the paper boys on my class are destined for the devil.

Never had a Saturday job but did a lot of babysitting for a well-off couple who went out a lot - the husband often drove me home in his E-type!

But I badly wanted a summer holiday job once I was 16, but wasn’t allowed to - had to stay at home to mind younger siblings while Dm was at work. She said she’d make it up to me, but never did. 🤬

I did once (in upper sixth) have a Christmas holiday job with the post office, despite our headmistress disapproving strongly of holiday jobs and trying to tell us it was forbidden!

Elder sister had a summer holiday job in Woolies for IIRC two shillings an hour! This was in the 60s.

Woolies in the 70’s was the dream, and the record counter as well..

In the late 70s I worked on the record counter in Woolies. Best Saturday job ever. Loved it. Played punk all day, flirted outrageously with blokes when the pubs closed and giggled with my full time colleague.

My friend worked underage in a local pub collecting glasses, she was 16. They sent her to the barrel store alone with stories of ghosts there and she was petrified!

Oops that should say ‘for being too helpful to the public’ .

I worked in Sterile Products at the Wellcome Pharmaceutical Factory for two summers running when I was at university. The first year I was a cleaner and had to dress in full Haz-Mat. The second I was sorting phials of insulin for packing. We had to check for any tiny filaments or specks in the liquid - if we found any they were rejected. Because we were young with 20-20 vision, we spotted loads and the older women on the conveyor belt got really annoyed with us.
I also worked as a library assistant for a number of vacations and got told off by the chief librarian for being

I could not wait to get a job, started at 14.
Also used to do some hair ‘modelling’ as my friend had a YTS at a posh salon so it saved me a fortune and I got a fresh hair do every few weeks.