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 was in college 1985-1988 and worked 5 hours on the deli counter in Presto on a Sunday. Still got double time back then and I came out with around £25 each week which was tax free. In 1987 I also got a few hours on a Friday night in a local pub which was another £10. Very occasionally, as it was my going out night, babysat for neighbours on a Saturday evening.

With that and my grant for going to college which was around £2k a year meant I wasn't too badly off, paid £15/week digs.

The rest of the money went on bus/train fares to college (which you could claim back at the end of the year) and clothes/going out to the student union or local ice skating/leisure centre pub.

At 14 I earned £7 for delivering 650 free newspapers a fortnight. Spent most of it on Body Shop kiwi lip balm.

First job was in 2004 when I was 16. 8am-6pm Mon-Fri admin job getting £125 a week. Spent every penny of it on clothes every Saturday.

I was earning £25 per hour in my first job as a performing arts teacher as a teenager in 2003 😱. I myself started performing at 3 and so I had all my qualifications to teach whilst I was very young and started at a Saturday Stage School expanding to teaching private exam lessons on a couple of week nights as well.

I was able to graduate university with no student loan and save for an MA course. I did blow a hell of a lot of my wages in Primark too lol!

I definitely didn’t appreciate how lucky I was. I had hard times after I stupidly resigned and ended up working low paid jobs for a long time and having to sign on at one point. It was soul destroying.

I earned £2.50 an hour in the hairdressers when I was 12, I had to give it parents for board though. When I became a waitress a year later I felt rich earning £3 an hour!

1994 £2.13 an hour working in Greggs

1987 in a supermarket for £1 an hour. Truly was shit pay.

However. In 1989 when I was 17/18 I used to work in an upmarket restaurant fri / sat night and Sunday lunch and come out with £50 including tips. Nice little earner. No wonder I did shit in my a levels!!

1999, I was 14 and had a Saturday job in a local cafe. The pay was £24 plus lunch and tips.

I spent my first pay packet on a stripy blue jumper from Miss Selfridge!

1971-2, 50p for a Saturday morning feeding and mucking out pigs. I loved it! 1978 first full time job, 18.53 /week working on a golf course. Ten pounds on rent , rest on beer /food. Worked weekends for a tenner a day to pay for fun stuff. Walked to work. Wasn't much fun living in a town in a bedsit, but getting a motorbike improved things no end!