What was your first job EVER?

[thegreenroom1]

Just for fun.
My first proper summer job was at age 13, it was in a hotel for the carvery lunch service. I was paid 5 an hour and worked 3 or 4 hour shifts 4/5 days a week.

What was your first job?

I was a pot washer/waitress in our local pub aged about 16/17.

Excluding babysitting, my first job paid 25p an hour. I was 15 and worked in an old-fashioned tea-room type café.

I made tea and coffee and served cakes and cream teas (someone else had made the cakes and scones earlier in the day), cleared tables and washed up. It was only small, perhaps 10 tables, but very busy on weekend afternoons in the tourist town where I grew up. It didn't have a proper till and of course there were no calculators in those days, so I had to write out bills and add them up by hand.

Looking back it's extraordinary to think how much responsibility I had. I was the only member of staff on the premises when it was open. The owner, who lived above the café, was out all day - usually at the races or betting shop - and used to turn up about 5-6pm. When I'd finished I'd lock up and go upstairs to his bedroom to give him his cash and keys. He was usually drunk!

I started my own tack cleaning business at the yard where we kept our houses 50p for a saddle and £1 for a bridle. I would have been about 9 or 10.

Then I started as a waitress aged 12 in our family run pub.

B&Q

Worked Saturday mornings in the local fruit and veg shop when I was 14. Was £2.50 an hour and I could help myself to any fruit I wanted, it was great!

I think it was the 6 months I did at Derbenhams. One of those 'training schemes' where you are off the job seekers register.

It was actually stuck on menswear for ages with one slot on a make up counter and one on the staff canteen. £11 a week for that. Did not like it much. Mainly men coming in, showing off to their girlfriends by being shitty to an 18 year old shop assistant. Fuckers.

Waitress in an 'olde tea shop' in Cambridge between Trinity and Sidney Sussex colleges. Had to wear an old fashioned black and white uniform with a lacy pinny. The manager was an arse but the tips were good because lots of the customer were Americans or wealthy families.

Me and three friends worked in an Indian restaurant when we were about thirteen. We had great fun - were allowed to drink from the bar etc - with hindsight get a feeling something was very very wrong there - but we didn’t stay long!

I was a Saturday girl in Woolworths.

Fell into it completely by accident with a friend. We were both geeks with our computers back in the 80s wrote a game that was published and then we wrote a couple more. So I guess that was our first job.

My first brush with working from home

Picking Blackcurrants at the local agricultural college... god that was boring.
Then I went to the local Chinese takeaway and did Friday & Saturday nights, 8 till midnight. £10 a night and all the food I wanted to take home.... and they didn’t like those new fangled £1 coins so I got those too 😁
I loved that job, probably explains why I’m the size of a house now though... 🧐

I was 14 and managed to get a Saturday job in a fashion store. It was in the 70's so my daily wage of £4.50 was considered HUGE and was better than any of my friends got in their Saturday jobs. On top of that I earned commission (pence only) on garments I sold. I stayed several years and got exceptionally good at helping customers, flattering them when trying on garments and convincing them to buy clothes!!

£1.50 an hour, pot wash in the pub across the road when I was 15.

Picking fruit for my dad (own business) from a young age.

First proper job ie outside the home, was library assistant at 14. Loved it. My salary on leaving in 1976 was a whopping £4.50 per day!

As a student I worked as a chambermaid, abroad.

25 pence an hour at 15, working for a farmer. Worst bit was greenhouse weeding, best bit was driving the tractor with 5 minutes training. My continued survival amazes me.

A relative has a burger van at the local Sunday market and I helped out for £20 a shift (increased to £25, then £30 over the years) between the ages of 14 and 17. I progressed to a Saturday job in Boots during my last year of school.

Stacking shelves in a supermarket.

I worked on a hardware/ iron mongers market stall, I was 14. I had to be at the market for 8am, to help set up and finished about 5pm. It was in 1981. It was absolutely freezing in winter, never ending chilblains but summer was nice.

From the age of 13-14 to about 19 or 20 I worked

Newsagent
Newsagent (different one)
Chippy
KFC
Cleaner at a very expensive/exclusive private members club pool/gym
Chambermaid
Cleaner at hotel pool/gym
Paintball

Some were at the same time.

Paper round at 13 then cafe waitressing at 15.

Oh and market stall occasionally somwhere in the middle of the list.

Counting the takings from all the tills in Waitrose, back in the late 70's at age 16. I applied to work on the shop floor and thought that would be my role, but on my first day was told they had changed my role. Never seen so much cash in my life! We used to go through till roles to try and find where a discrepancy occurred if cash in till didn't match the tills takings, and I had to cross balance a massive sheet by till and coin / note type before helping put together the banking, just me and a full timer. Mind boggling looking back !!

When I was 16 I worked in bejam (Iceland) after school on a Thursday and all day Saturday. I got paid £1 an hour in 1983. So £12 and my mum made me give her £9 of it. I got sacked for snogging the boy who filled the freezers.

Age 13, mid 90s. I helped at the local YMCA holiday club for 4-7 year olds. 9-3, 5 days a week for £20. Less than £1/ hour but I'd never had so much money!

Saturday girl in a hairdressers 1994. £1.66 an hour.