First pay packet 1985!

[thesunwillout]

Whilst whipping out a tenner to give to my dd17 for bus/coffee I was thinking back to what I used to earn at her age at my Saturday job.

I used to stack shelves, local supermarket, and I thought I was minted on my £8.78 for the day!

With this I used to spend roughly

£1, get into local nightclub
£1.80 or so for a bottle of Cinzano, to have round my mates getting ready.
52p for a Bacardi and coke in club.

All booze related, but fun times.
I don't even think we went for coffees at that age.

What was your first job and how did you squander your pay?!

I earned £1.50 an hour in a supermarket in 1990 when I was 16. I spent it on going out, was £2 to sneak into the local club underage, £10 would last all night !

It was in 1989 and I earn £1 per hour in the local shop.

I did 9-1 Saturdays and Sunday’s for 4 years.

I remember spending my first pay packet on bangles.

I had my first job when I was 15 in William Low (Scottish supermarket chain bought over by Tesco eventually) in the late 80s. It was one of the only big companies that would take on 15 year olds. I did one night a week and a few hours on a Saturday, about 7 hours a week total. Old style manual calculator style till, none of your barcodes and swiping!

Can't remember what I got paid but the following year I switched to another job in Bejam and was on less than £2 per hour so it must have been less than that.

Lol, I even used to get a taxi home, rural about 6 miles, that was about £3!

Going back even further, in 1972 I was working with horses which is a notoriously poorly paid job. I was getting £12 a week for upwards of 60 hours!! I was actually fairly rich because I never had time to spend it and the odd night in the pub was funded by the regulars who all felt sorry for us!

Blimey that was a hard working week, I used to dream of working with horses, sleeping in a bed above the stables. Read too many Jill books!

I used to babysit for a fiver a night (I wish I could get someone for that now!)
I had to buy everything myself from food to sanitary towels
I wonder how the hell I did it!

My father made us laugh, telling us that in his early years, he earned 5 shillings (10p) per match, playing for a semi professional team.

How we laughed so he explained ...

With that "10p" he could take my mother out on a Saturday evening for dinner and the "best seats" in the cinema, plus a box of chocolates to eat during the screening.

My mother often mentioned that he wasn't the most handsome or the most entertaining g company, but that one point she noticed in his favour was that he always paid for the best seats.

Punching above his weight.

1971 30 shillings a day. 8.30-5.45. Working on a market shop/stall selling sheepskin coats, Afghan coats (omg the smell) and work clothes.

Really hard work, freezing cold and lugging the coats up and down from the storeroom was hard going. Always knackered when I got home. Rarely went out on Saturday night for that reason, had a date at the cinema with one of the other staff and fell asleep!

My lovely dad got me the job, thanks dad, not. Went to work in a supermarket next same money but sooooo much easier.

I remember earning £20 per day in a summer job in about 1997. Being sensible, I saved most of it - still have a lot of it in a little savings account that I keep for a rainy day!

I earned £8.85 every Saturday working 8:30-6 in a haberdashery shop.
1984 I think.

About the same as me.

1969, £2 a day for a Saturday job on an open air market stall, if you think that is a small amount then you are wrong, it was more than the usual £1-to thirty shillings on other stalls! My friend got 17/6 for a Saturday job in the Coop on the costmetics counter.
My first months pay as a student nurse two years later was £27.

I started work in 1970 and was paid £10.19s 6d, yes, old money. This was at the Patent Office in Chancery Lane which was part of the now defunct Board of Trade. I left after six months for a better paid job at £15 a week. Imagine, an extra £4 making such a difference! From this I took home about £12 a week of which I gave my mum £2.50 (decimalisation had just come) and put £7 in a savings account. The other £2.50 paid for fares and lunches but I was obviously heavily subsidised by my parents who paid for my clothes, toiletries etc.

1985 - £1.06 per hour at Keymarkets (taken over by Safeway)
Did a night in the week and a Saturday
Spent it on going out and alcohol!

I started in a shop when I was 15 in 1990 for £1.00 an hour and worked every Saturday. I used to think I was rich if I worked a full week and got £40...but I managed to save up for a trip to America for my 21st. By the time I left college in 1997 I was on £120 a week lol.

Around 1980 at age 15 I got a summer job in a hair salon, I was paid the princely sum of 10 Irish pounds for a full week, including a late evening! I was delighted with myself at the time.

FadedRed

My friend got 17/6 for a Saturday job in the Coop on the costmetics counter.

Was just coming to say in 1969 I got 17/6 for a Sat job in MacFisheries (it was actually a supermarket, not a fish shop)

For the post-decimal generation, 17/6 = 87.5p

But, for reference, 60 Embassy cost 50p & a Mars bar was 2.5p

1984
6 day week paper round £4.10 a week. I always remember that strange amount

1981 my first real job in the Civil service and I received £50 in cash in a brown envelope weekly. Then after a year or so they paid us all £100 as an incentive to open a bank account and we became monthly paid into the bank. That £50 did seem to go a long way even after giving my Mum £50 a month.

In 1985 when I was 13, I used to get a monthly allowance of £30. This paid for all my clothes, inc uniform (but mum did get me a pair of school shoes a year) and everything else I wanted/needed apart from meals at home (and mum would never buy crisps etc, so if you wanted 'treat' food it was up to you too).
I worked Saturday mornings for £5, and that meant that I had a pretty good time, saved up for school trips and so on. By 16 I worked a full weekend day and extra days in the holidays at £20 a day

I started work at 1961 at the age of 15. I got £4.15s.0d per week plus 15s (75p) a week luncheon vouchers. So for 15p per day I could go to a little Italian cafe near the old Covent Garden and get an Omelette and chips plus a cup of tea. Or I saved for a week and went to a nice restaurant with my 75p.
Also I had to pay my train fair up to London and give my mum my keep.

fare not fair.

1986, Saturday job in Primark on kiddies clothing. £9.68 for 9 til 6 shift. Every week I'd suss out Etam for the must have fashion buy and blow the lot on clothes. I has the most trendy wardrobe at 16 but nowhere to wear it to as I had nothing left over to go out on . That soon changed a year later.. started work for BT and was on £80 per week....felt like a millionaire!

When I joined the Civil Service in 1975 I took home £18 pw and was on very good money for 17.

When pay rises took me to over £100 a month I was minted and had at least 2 holidays abroad every year!

But then I recall bus fare to school as a halfpenny each way, and bag of crisps for a thruppenny bit...... and you could buy sweets for a farthing (beautiful little coin with a wren on)