What was your first Saturday job?

[FayKnights]

I was just reading a thread on items people still use from shops no longer around and one of the posters mentioned shoes from Dolcis.
I worked there in the 90s when I was 16 and earned £2.09 per hour!
It was an absolute hoot and everyone there was of a similar age. We also had a couple of older kids who were supervisors and allowed to work the till. I personally didn’t reach those heady heights, but definitely would have liked to!

I worked four hours on a Saturday afternoon at a local cafe. I got £1 per hour and a free drink. I then went to British Home Stores, for about £1.60 per hour. It was great because most of the Saturday staff were college students/ 6th form and it was very social.

Milkround at aged 9/10. I got £2.50 for what must have added up to 8hrs when you accounted for loading up and cashing up. It did go up to £5 when I was 12, which would get 5 singles or a new album plus I started putting up and taking down a market stall one night and morning midweek. Also the 1970s.

When I talk about my childhood, including corporal punishment at school, my kids think I grew up in the Victorian era.

I worked in Kwik Save for 2 and a half weeks of my GCSE study leave (apparently my parents thought working in a supermarket was a better use of my time), back in 2001. I was paid £2.56 an hour and hated it. I’ve never known time move so slowly. Every shift felt a thousand years long. I got a migraine every single shift I did from the laser scanner shining directly into my eyeballs and the horrid strip lights. Not my thing at all. Luckily I got a job (in my older boyfriends) pub during my A levels which suited me much better (though the late nights meant I basically slept through first lesson biology and dropped this after AS level). It was great earning like £90 a week in the pub though - nights I wasn’t working I would be out spending it all on booze 😂 Good times.

Back in the late 70's I worked in a butchers shop.
No chopping up meat or serving the customers but I washed the trays & tools, swept the floor, cleaned the windows etc.
Wasn't just Saturdays but also after school, think it was about 14hrs in total and I was paid £4.50.

In context many of my friends had paper rounds and were paid between 50p-£1 a week (depending on the length of the round).
I don't remember any of my friends NOT having a job of some kind, it was a right of passage and a great way of supplementing pocket money.

40 years ago
Little Chef as a waitress at 16
Plus free food at break time

Then Sainsburys, various departments
Pay approx £1.50 per hour

I was 16 and worked in a sample book company making wallpaper & fabric sample books. I did Monday to Friday during the summer holidays and got £75 a week. Back in 1990 that was a lot, thought I was Rockerfella! My sister was on YTS back then and got £28 per week.

The job was insufferably boring and repetitive but they took on a few people my age during the summer holidays, so we had a good laugh when we were allowed to talk!

I worked at Tesco. On the day I turned 15 and three months ( which was the exact age you had to be to work back then ) I walked to the local Tesco store and asked for a job application form. I filled it in there and then and walked home. About a hour later I got called and invited for an interview immediately.

The women interviewing me gave me a maths test which she helped me with and I started work the following Saturday. Stayed three years in the end and loved it.

My teenage son has been trying to get a job at Tesco recently - applied for three jobs and has heard nothing! Same with Next. He's just applied at Waitrose so is keeping his fingers crossed.

They make it so hard these days. They have to attend recruitment days and compete with loads of other people or have to do unpaid trial shifts. My daughter has a trial shift for a cafe next week. So many people do the trail shifts on busy days and then don't get the job which makes me think it's just a way for the cafe to get free labour. my friend's daughter did a trial shift at a restaurant on Mother's Day and never heard a thing from the restaurant afterwards )

i had to ask a vaguely known neighbour if there were any jobs in the supermarket - keymarkets - so i dont think it was very easy. 1981 or so. i did get a job there though.
i agree with the computer online applications they are difficult

two of my dc have done trial shifts which seems like a rip off when they dont invite them back!

My DD did a trial shift at a restaurant aged 16. She worked 4 hours over a busy lunch period. She worked very hard, they said she did really well, serving, taking orders, cleaned up the tables after closing. No job or pay. Turned out 32 trial shifts happened that fortnight and it coincided with staff holiday……

The local library, which was great, because I got paid for being where I went every Saturday anyway. And then lifeguarding as well, which meant uli didn't have to pay for swimming.

appalling

My first Saturday job was my local corner shop at 40p per hour. I was 14 and using an electric meat slicer , cheese cutting wire and a candy floss machine! I used to work full weeks during school holiday times too.

A café. I was 13, it was the 90s, can't remember my exact pay but it was 2 pounds something. After that I worked on a greengrocer's stall in the market, then a farm supplies store, which I absolutely loved. A bunch of fun young people worked there and we'd all go to the pub opposite after work. I stayed there for two or three years, until the end of my A levels. I did Saturdays and Sundays, and every hour I could get during the school holidays. Having my own money was brilliant, because I didn't get any pocket money or allowance, while most of my friends at school did.

Having thoroughly enjoyed reading this thread I think it was very much an experience that schoolchildren nowadays are missing.
My experience is that back in the day most children seemed to be working in shops (usually behind the scenes) but with the closure of many of these shops (plus employment laws) this is now rare.

I grew up in a (large) village which had a parade of shops at each end and a few newsagents dotted about for good measure.
The sheer number of paperboys & girls was amazing, at 6am it seemed the roads were buzzing with bicycles and kids carrying a yellow or orange bag. Come evening it happened again and then on a Thursday & Friday there were another group delivering the local "free" papers.
As for the shops we had the full range including grocery, fruit & veg, hardware, sweets, butcher's, off-licence, bakers etc. Of course you could hop on the bus into town to work in Woolies, Littlewoods etc but the local shops gave employment to many kids.

This installed a good work ethic and meant that we were earning (and spending) which resulted in good money management (i.e. if you wanted something and your pocket money didn't stretch, you worked to save sufficient money).
Even with the benefit of hindsight, I think these were great times.

Deli counter in Woolworth's, before Woolworth's did a 'rebrand' and got rid of groceries and fresh food

About £15 for a full Saturday

About 1975, I was a Saturday girl in M&S. Worked all through 6th form and it paid for my driving lessons. Went back twice in the summer holidays as a student and ended up cooking in the staff canteen.
Really enjoyed it.

I did farm work - mucking out pig sties, stables and kennels. Potato, carrot and onion picking not just on Saturdays but in the school holidays as well. I once worked in a potato factory and my job was peeling potatoes by hand with a knife, it was shit and the pay was as bad as the conditions.

I worked in a local place that did cream teas (it was also a local shop). I was a little bit posher and a couple of months older than the other girls - plus I was perceived as being a bit brighter I think, so I got 75p per hour and they got 50p per hour. We did everything for the cream teas, serving, making and stamping butter pats, measuring out jam and cream, washing up etc. plus I was sometimes asked to help out in the shop. It was in the village I used to live in, but at that time I was living in the city about 5 miles away and I used to walk to work, although I was often given a lift home. All the other girls lived in the village.

Worked for Barrett's Shoes in 1987 when I was 15 for £1.35 an hour then a few months later moved to Clarks Shoes for £1.80 an hour

Saturday sales staff at Chelsea girl

My first Saturday job was working in BHS. And that was back in the days when each section had its own till point, tills were manual, everyone used cash and you had to work out change yourself!

There are jobs other than shops. I've known youngsters work in hair salons, sweeping up and maybe shampooing, in a cafe or restaurant, at a petrol station doing various bits, washing cars (you have to be quite good and quick at that), even cleaning house! It is surprising what you can find if you search. I wish my mum had let me get a part time job when I was at school (you used to have to get the school's permission back then too), however I survived without one, worked plenty later on, am long retired so it matters little now :).

Worked Saturdays and over the summer holidays in the ABC bakers in Wembley with a best friend from school just before UK went decimal. Loved it, got really busy when matches were being played on a Saturday at the stadium. And yes we got to take home anything left that wouldn't keep over the weekend, loved the fresh cream chocolate cake. Went on to work at M&S Marble Arch where I think I got a £5 a day. Worked in the food hall, stacking shelves early morning and then on the till. They were a great firm and seem to remember we all got presents when the store hit revenue targets.

1996, macd at Heathrow Airport terminal 2, lasted 3 months, then to The Gap at Heathrow.

I recollect Gap pay as 2.45/ hr, 1.5 times Sunday, triple pay bank holiday