Your 1980s Saturday jobs

I pumped petrol in the Uk in the 80’s. I once filled both tanks of a Jag with 3 star.

At 13 I washed up in a pub after lunch. I can still taste the cooks ale stew, but cannot recreate it.

I worked the till in Safeway where we had to learn the names of all the apples, oranges and lettuce before a shift. I still have a scar on my right hand from catching myself on the scales, but I won the Regionals of the bag packing competition <preen>

Chelsea Girl and we had to wear a particular outfit from the current range. At 16 it was £6.20 for the day (8am to 6pm). At 17 it went up to £7.40 and at 18 £8.60 but no one ever got to £8.60 because the manager made up impossible rules that it would be impossible not to break. I was allowed 2 Saturdays off all year but could only be taken in April and September. Obviously I wanted to go on holiday during the summer holidays which was refused so I had a choice of no holiday or getting sacked so I took the latter.

You sure you're not me!!! I could have written that!

Laura Ashley in the late 70s. We got a new outfit each season and a fairly hefty discount. I loved it especially when I got to work in the fabric department. Got paid £6 per day. I also got asked back during Christmas when I was home from uni.

It did help that I loved the flowery skirts and tops.

I actually came across my old Laura Ashley diary with the green flowery cover the other day.

I started at 7 collecting the post from a local office block. I was given cash to sort out any recorded delivery letters. Eventually I even worked the franking machine (which printed a stamp on the letter rather than a stick on one). Took it all along to the post office. Finished there about 14. It was great. I remember turning up with a football and me and two of the managers being told off by a secretary for playing football around her desk

From 16-18 when at sixth form I worked for wh smith do it all. I ended up after a couple of months managing the timber department, they would leave everything for me to tidy first thing then I'd tell them what to order. The pay was brilliant, £30 cash the following week!

When mum died, wh smith sent out a welfare officer to see me and even sent flowers to the funeral....I bet there aren't many companies who'd do that today for a kid working 8 hours a week

Yes, I think so too and actually at an age where we really respected the adults we worked for and just ‘did as we were told’.
Really helped us to gain experience, build working relationships with others, follow rules, be accountable, from an impressionable age.

Somehow that has been lost in under 16’s not working.

Local corner shop from age 14. Was paid 35p per hour and had to use a meat slicing machine!

When I was 14/15 I used to work Saturdays and Sundays in a Londis (as it was at the time). I had this housecoat esq dress of a uniform. I used to get the bus 4 miles or so there and back. In the summer I was lucky enough to be able to stand over a fan on the floor when it was really hot. I’d stack shelves when there were no customers and work behind the till the rest of the time.

Can’t remember what the pay was, but we were allowed to take damaged stuff home with us, including boxes of cigarettes (I was a smoker at 14, rebel I know!). Most of the damaged cartons of ciggies were Mores in a long red or green packet, red being regular tobacco and green being menthol.

My best mate and I used to think we were dead cool smoking Mores upstairs in our local Maccies, back when smoking was allowed, but we probably looked like right twats! 🤣

My other non-Saturday job was a cleaner at a head office in town, 6pm to 8pm Monday to Friday. Used to get £50 every fortnight, which always felt a heck of a lot of money. The office workers thought we were all scum, looked down their noses at us, and were were always the first to be accused when something went missing. I never would have stolen anything, other than the odd chocolate from a box of Quality Street or similar at Christmas. 🙈

First thing in the Saturday morning was working in a newsagents shop marking up the paper rounds, and doing a couple of paper rounds myself afterwards, then back to helping in the shop, typically 5 am to 10 am, the busy morning "shift".

Then I'd go to a boarding house and clean/change the rooms 10 am till around 3 pm as Saturday was the usual changeover day back then. Back-breaking work as I was on my own and they had 13 rooms to clean and change over 4 floors, plus then also vacuuming and cleaning the communal areas, staircases, dining room, lounge, etc. A lot to do in around 5 hours!

Then back to the newsagents for the 4 pm to 7 pm evening paper and football paper "busy" evening shift and two paper rounds, one for the evening paper and one for the football special paper!

Finally, 7pm onwards, waitressing in a local restaurant around the corner, till around 11 or 12 depending on how busy it was.

Then back to the newsagents for 5am Sunday morning for the Sunday papers where I had usually 2/3 rounds after marking up the papers first thing, or maybe a 4th round if one of the others didn't turn up.

Finally finished around lunchtime Sunday so I could go home to have a bit of weekend relaxation and do my school homework!

(Forgot I'd also have done the Friday evening shift waitressing in the same local restaurant again until around 11 or 12 midnight).

I was on a mission to earn money and saved many thousand pounds over the 2-3 years I was doing all that. Tips from the waitressing and the boarding house cleaning was more than the wages I earned. Xmas was brilliant for the tips from all the paper rounds!

I ended up earning less once I left school and started a proper full time job, as I had to give up the weekend work which was a shame! Really missed the tips too!

Tesco. 8hrs Saturdays & 2 x 2hrs weekday evenings. I loathed it. Couldn't wait to hit 18 so I could work in a pub. Loved working the bar, 11pm last orders & the place was bouncing. My shift would pass really quickly then the landlord would drop us at the nightclub with our little brown wage envelope of cash. Happy days.

I too worked at WH Smith then! Tie neck blouse with coloured flecks and a mushroom coloured wool and polyester skirt! I remember stocktaking and being allocated the bloody Parker pen counter with all its tiny bits and bobs!

Greggs 😂 1986, I was 13!
Things I remember, I was paid £1 something per hour, we got 50% discount and we didn't even have a till that added up, had to do it on scrap paper. Oh and I loved using the bread slicer machine.

I lived in the middle of nowhere and was a waitress at a nearby restaurant. Loved it!

Woolies, scratchy sweaty pale blue nylon shop coat. Record bar, pick and mix and little book of 30% staff discount vouchers. Kimball (?) tags for the Ladybird clothes. Massive stock room and bailing machine that I couldn’t use as needed to be 16. Remember switching from cash wages in an envelope at lunchtime to BACS transfer so had a cheque book at 15!
cashiers were (to me) old ladies that would march off to the bank with the Saturday lunchtime take in one of those big brown old lady market style shopping bags. No Securicor then! Oh I also had three paper rounds and babysat. I was minted!

I forgot to actually put the card in once.. bollocking followed

My parents ran a newsagents shop for years-started working there at the age of 14.

Washing up in a restaurant. Babysitting. Working in a “casual” clothes shop selling Pringles and cashmere on the weekends (I was a surly goth). It was 1983-85, I was 16-18.

Cleaner in a psychiatric hospital. Every bit as much fun as it sounds.

I looked after four children on Saturdays and occasionally in the holidays if the weekday nanny was away. They ranged from 9 years to 3.
Sometimes the parents would be around, they owned a lovely shop in the town we lived in and we would go out for the day otherwise it was just me and them. They lived in an old farmhouse at the end of a lane so quite isolated should anything go wrong and I was paid the princely sum of £10 a day!

Cleaning narrow boats, used a get a backy there on a lad from schools bike, he was a bilge boy! We used to race for the boats that had been taken out by foreign tourists because they would leave good stuff on the boat.

Woolworths late 80s - loved it! Uniform not so much - navy nylon pinafore with a navy/cream stripe shirt underneath.
Also worked in a coffee shop - hot sweaty nylon overall but free cakes!
And Barratts shoes - from memory wore own clothes. Hated it, measuring sweaty feet !

Late 70’s. I worked in a mall in a book/card shop. Spent too much time discussing books with customers and was admonished. Most of my friends worked in “The Mall” so would try to coordinate lunches. A fancier mall went up across the street and my mall was knocked down in the 90’s

Im old so my part time schooldays job was in the 1960s not the 1980s! Nor was it a saturday because by the time I got around to it all the little saturday jobs in local shps had gone. My sister was mates with the daughter of the chip shop owner and heard him say his son had gone to collecge so he was looking for someone to help in the shop. I turned up and was taken on for 3 shifts a week to begin with. It was all cash in hand plus a fish and chip supper (or whatever I wanted) when I finished. I was very well paid compared with my friends who worked in Woolworths or Debenhams and had to get the bus into the city. The shop was 5 minutes walk from my parents house.

Some of my friends were a bit snippy about my working in a chip shop until they learned that I came out with almost twice what they did for the same amount of hours, not to mention the fish suppers and the convenience of a short walk. I learned some useful skills like how to handle money confidently. how to serve customers and how to look busy when the shop was empty. I kept that job on and off for several years and always got some extra hours when I needed to save up. When I began my first full time job (civil service) I was disgusted at having to tax tax and NI. It was the kind of side hustle people now dream about.