Your 1980s Saturday jobs

I don't remember if it was expected or we just wanted out of the house but my siblings & I all worked weekend jobs from early doors.
I started at 12 in a fashion shop. £7 a day for 9-6. I even skipped school to work.
Next job from 14 was a retail warehouse (6am-2, sat & sun) I physically worked as hard as the grown men, needed to prove myself so I wasn't relegated to making tea all day!
The owner was a creepy fucker, he discovered I wasn't going to allow him to molest me (just having a laugh apparently) when I knee' d him in the bollocks 😅
I worked behind a bar at 15 after the landlord believed I was of age!

I always had my own money, I learnt to see creepy fuckers very quickly, and I spent very little time at home.
Great success 🙌
ETA I name changed for this

Boots veteran here too! Although my era was early 2000s.

Late 80’s, Saturday job at Littlewoods food hall in Leeds. Horrible brown polyester A line skirt that clung to your tights and an apricot blouse on top. I started off on the meat/cheese counter, I remember one sleazy man often coming in and asking for some tongue (meat) with a salacious look on his face 🤢. I then ran the bacon counter (there was only me 😂) which I much preferred and there were some lovely regulars that came in. Towards the end, they shut the food hall and we were moved to womenswear which was so dull in comparison.

After my A levels I went into the local Job Centre to see if they had any bar work or similar, to tide me over before starting Uni. There wasn’t much available but the bloke said he had just got a job in that may suit me. This was Nanny to 2 children (the current Nanny was ill). I went to visit them and was offered the job on the spot. They must have asked for references but I remember starting very quickly afterwards. The kids were around 4 and 6, I remember feeling absolutely knackered every evening. They were lovely kids but hard work and the days were very very long. How times have changed, employing an unknown 18 year old to take care of your kids for 9/10 hours a day!

My Saturday job was Chelsea Girl ( now River Island) back in the early seventies. I earned £1 a day but took home 99p as I had to pay 1p National Insurance. My first pay packet I bought a brown leather handbag. Have loved handbags ever since.

Washing up in a pub aged 13, walked 2 miles there and back. £1 an hour. This continued for years until I eventually ran lunchtime food service, mostly with the microwave and fryer.
£1.75 an hour at Pizza Hut aged 15 at the same time, must have done a couple of shifts a week. I remember having to clean after the shift and not paid for this if we ran over a certain time (ie customers who were slow to leave). Was the making of me tbh in many ways, my work ethic is very strong!

A bakers shop with an instore oven. Baked hot x buns at easter, so many buns....

My mum was always pleased with the unsold rolls and cream cakes for Saturday tea. 🍰

Early 90s here. Working for a discount supermarket we had to stencil the price cards for promotional display baskets. We couldn't always fit all the lettering in so for a while we had a special on a ' Coconut Spong'. Spelling wasn't everyone's forte so we also had 'Vanish Carpet Mouse' on sale. Simple times.

I worked in Thornton’s. Loved it! Back then the toffee came in big slabs and I had to break it into pieces with a toffee hammer and arrange it in the boxes. I loved doing that. And yes, I did sneak bits of toffee in my mouth and then hope no customer came as I had a mouth glued together with sticky toffee!

My hairdressers had a work experience girl but they don’t really need a Saturday girl. My old hairdressers they had Saturday shampoo girls.

There was a Jean Genie in Croydon near where I lived!

I was brought up the local high street by my mum but all the Saturday jobs had gone by the time we went! Even the 2 pet shops opposite each other had no vacancies. Another friend worked in Sketchleys.

I got £5 maybe more for babysitting. Easy peasy.

I didn’t have one! I babysat on a regular basis. My best friend was a Saturday shampoo girl in a hairdresser. Another friend worked in Safeway as a checkout girl but increased to after school and weekends.

I worked in a boarding kennels. In 1979 I got £3 a day, plus lunch, 8-6. Cycled six miles there and six miles back. I was sooo fit! The following year I got a pay rise to £4. Then I swapped to quality control in a local food factory, which was more money but not such good fun.

That sounds a pretty good wage in the 80’s. My first Saturday job at 16 was at Littlewoods, 1993. £1.71 an hour.

You could start a thread for that , with desired decade ?

I remember Transax!

I worked in a pet shop, spending my Saturdays catching goldfish, budgies and finches, being bitten by hamsters and lugging huge sacks of feed up two sets of spiral staircases from the cellar. I did it from age 14 to 15 when I got a new job in a cake shop where we threw jam doughnuts at each other before piling them up in the glass cabinet to sell. The pet shop paid £10 for 8.30am to 5.30pm and the cake shop paid £12.50 for 8am to 4pm. I spent my first three weeks wages from the pet shop on a pair of jeans - good times!

First Saturday job in 1987 was in a coffee shop for £9 a day of hard graft. Clearing tables, washing up & making sandwiches. The manager was a dragon, I can still picture her now….serene and full of smiles in front of the customers, face of rage once she stepped into the kitchen 😂 - character building though.

Second Saturday job in an independent coach tour travel agent, got this after doing 6th form work experience there. Loved it. Think I got £12 a day & helped people book trips to exotic places like ‘Yugoslavian Rivera’ and ‘Lake Garda’
….still addicted to travel now

Every kid should have a Saturday job😊

Saturday job at a local (quite large) florist, started in 1988 at age 15. Worked 9-5.30 for £12, there were 3 of us girls. At the end of the day when the boss closed up we had to stand in a line while he paid up the £12 in cash from the till and say thank you

I worked in a local pizza restaurant. £3 per hour weekend evenings with a free pizza to take home. A carafe(!) of Rose wine was made in the bar by mixing red and white wine 😮. I was good at making desserts, sundaes, Irish coffees, and less so at singing happy birthday while brandishing a mini pack of Ferrero Rocher with a lit candle.
Next a newsagents/gift shop in a grey smock/housecoat dress so completely hideous I changed to go out for lunch breaks or the bus. I also remember the carbon credit card ‘machine’ and having to call Transax (?) for a code if someone wrote a cheque over the limit on their card.

I think your Saturday job put you off some things as much as makes you feel nostalgic!

I hated Debenhams after I left @ThisJadeBear I’d probably have liked being in the Topshop section but the concessions were pretty boring (decent overtime though). I had a couple of friends who were “beautiful people” and had jobs on the ground floor in the perfume department. I was stuck on the second floor with carpets and floor lamps!

1980 sports shop, got paid £7.50. Got the sack eventually after the manager got drunk one Saturday and sexually assaulted me in the stock room.

Not quite 80s. Early 90s. Waitress in a pub restaurant on the princely sum of £2 an hour . Gave me a life long dislike of gravy and fan folded serviettes.

I got £5 for a Saturday- this was 1976-78. I seem to remember it increased to £5.50 by the time I left in 78. I used to spend it in Chelsea Girl mostly!