Your 1980s Saturday jobs

On the cheese and bacon counter, in Woolworths, in the 70s. A different world for sure!

I worked at Woolworths and there was a horrible boy from school who worked there full time. He had told everyone that he was the floor manager - he had always been a bit of a show off. His job was to sweep the floor.

I worked on the perfume/cosmetics counter at Underwoods the chemist, even though I never wore make up. I would have preferred to work in the electronics section, but that was for the boys.

Uniform for everyone was pink shirts and sky blue jumpers (and skirts for the girls) and Ultraglow was very popular.

We offered a free gift wrapping service at Christmas, so I learnt how to wrap really well and speedily.

My very first Saturday job was a temp job Halfords, but I didn't work there long enough to get a uniform (a jumpsuit). Once I forgot to get someone to sign their credit card slip for a car radio purchase (£149!! Which really was a lot in the 80s) but, luckily, the credit card company honoured it anyway. We had to do some dial up thing to get authorisation codes.

I worked at Clarks Shoes. Grey pencil skirt with a white shirt and a green bow tie!
Think the wages were £12 per day on a Saturday but there was a £5 bonus for the one who sold the most pairs of shoes in a day plus extra points for up selling polish or a matching bag.
I often wish we could turn the clock back to the good old days - fun times - and wasn't life so much easier than now?

WH Smith 1978-1980

brown nylon A Line dress.

was in the greetings card section.

1980 Thorntons on my first day was told I could eat as much as I wanted 😋99p an hour I've still got the letter. Chopped big slabs of toffee with a small hammer, weighed and bagged/boxed up. Served Continentals loose from a glass cabinet with silver tongs. Now and again was allowed on the till! Last job of the day was to scrape the floor of the back room and mop it. Happy days! 😀

Around 81/82 – 6th form years – I worked in a fish and chip shop 4 night a week; loved it (especially the free supper) but it made my school uniform stink.

William Low supermarket stacking shelves, salmon pink uniform, 4 hrs on a Sat and Sun, got paid double time on the Sunday, can't imagine that happening now. ( doesn't exist anymore, bought over by Tesco years back)

I worked as a waitress in a local cafe - black dress and white frilly apron 1980, next job was working in KFC and at 18 I could do bar work
I did not envy a friend who worked in local butchers - we used to go in and buy tripe and liver just to wind her up!

I had a Saturday job at a local dog groomer - or poodle parlour as it was called back then. I learned a trade between 1976-1980. She was a business acquaintance of my parents. I did a City & Guilds later.
On Sundays I worked at the local riding stables from 7am to 6pm, I got a free ride which was between £1.50 and £1.75 over the 2 1/2 years I was there. I was so permanently shattered, working all the weekends and going to school, I chucked the stables job when revisiting for O Levels became more important than working my butt of for 11 hours for a free ride.

I also had a summer job in the local car park. That was great fun winding up the customers and doling out parking fines if they weren’t completely in the parking space.

Woolworths - Ended up on the Delicatessen counter because my tills were always short (ADHD and Dyslexia)

Co-Op Department store - 'Nets and soft furnishings

John Lewis Partnership - Nets and printed furnishings fabrics

Local newsagents. On my feet on the till all day. Had to add everything up mentally - I’m sure the till could do that but the boss was old school.

Got a chest infection as he never turned the heating on. Black hands from handling newsprint.

I worked on a make up counter in Boots and thought I was the dogs bollocks because they only hired pretty girls!

Woolworths in Tooting. Wore a nasty blue and red nylon, long-sleeved, sort of overcoat. Hideous. I was on "drapery" the textiles section. I think I got £8 for the whole day.

True-Form shoe shop - hated it but got a discount & first dibs on sale shoes. Also had to wear grey pencil skirt, & a white blouse/shirt. I was 14 & loved having money to buy records with

Too many!
shoe shop Lily and Skinner. God how much I hated that Job! I just recall hunting through boxes of shoes all the time and never selling any!

A random builders cafe which was a life changing experience with some very bizarre colleagues!

Local pharmacy, I am pretty such it was a company then taken over by Lloyd’s pharmacy. Loved this job. Remember the old tills and labeling prices of good with a label gun.

So most people in my year at school was able to get a Saturday job, I can imagine its a lot harder these days for teens - so many less staffed checkouts these days and shop floor staff, what do teens do?

My first summer job was at 15 in a sea-side rock shop on the pier. Could wear what I liked, but it was swelteringly hot and a very small shop. When we had coach parties there would be about four of us behind the counter and we had to add up huge orders in our heads and only ring in the final amount on an old style till. I'm still pretty good at mental arithmetic.

Occasionally someone would want to pay with -gasp - a credit card - and the manageress would solemnly pull the slidy machine out from under the counter and oversee the process very sternly. If we were busy the tension was palpable.

We had two lolly stands in the window for novelty shaped lollies and motto lollies, and at least twice a month one would get knocked over in the scrum for diabetes on a stick.

On one memorable occasion Millwall were playing and when all the fans came pouring down into the town and onto the beach post match, I had to stand in the doorway holding the manageresses late fathers official issue vintage truncheon as a deterrant. 17 year old me obviously just got laughed at, and there was no trouble, thank the Goddess.

I remember my first wage packet, with what seemed like a fortune in it, and after handing over "rent" to my Mum, and some money towards a school trip to Paris I was saving for, I had enough money to go to Chelsea Girl's bargaing basement and furnish myself with a Banarama adjacent wardrobe. There were batwings and a sackcloth pinafore involved as I recall....

My Saturday job was at Waitrose - vile brown nylon overalls, and learning how to flick price labels onto tins at speed.

Oh, I feel quite misty eyed and nostalgic..... someone take me back!!!

Cucumber packer. Although I didn’t pack any cucumbers. I stood between two conveyors set at right angles and moved cukes (see I learned the lingo) from one conveyor to another as I was cheaper than the fancy right angle roller tray that would be needed otherwise.

Also relabelled trays of cukes as ‘Product of Great Britain’ being very careful to put the new label over the ‘Product of the Netherlands’ words printed on the tray.

At 13 I had my first job in a greengrocers, putting potatoes into bags and weighing them to make sure they were 5lbs. I got 50p an hour, which was a pittance even by 1988 standards! When I was 15 I started working as a cleaner from 8am till 10am every Saturday and Sunday. I got £20 for four hours, and I felt like a queen! My friends would ruthlessly take the piss because I was a cleaner. Meanwhile they’d all be working a long Saturday on the local market for £10.

Some of us are younger too. I think she’s just looking for nostalgia from her era. Not unusual.

My first job was a week at a tar distillers sorting their filing. My second was every Saturday at Great Homer Street market on a clothes stall, I was to watch out for shoplifters. My third was bar work and my fourth was door security. Fun times!

Corner mini market 15-18. Many happy days but the nylon overalls were a horror and the old gentleman that was a bit handy and caused us to get off the shop floor if we had a chance to avoid him (or at least get behind the till barrier.

1986 - deli counter at Waitrose (we was dead posh) I used to stick my fingers in the coleslaw all the time, no gloves. Terrified of the ham slicing machine. Old dears who would come in for a sing slice of ham. Getting the staff bonus was lovely and surprising - maybe they’d told me when I started, but I probably wasn’t listening. Can’t begin to remember the uniform but it must have been brown and orange in places (that was the branding at the time) and nylon