What was your work experience placement at school?

[OneUmberJoker]

It was at a local garden centre

Zoo keepers apprentice and I got pecked the shit out of. I wanted to be a vet upto that point and changed careers overnight

I was off sick during the time everyone was assigned the cool jobs so I was at my local Peacocks that had a cafe in the back and somehow I did neither of those things and just walked around tidying up. Most boring experience of my life.

I spent a week at a vets which put me off being a vet which is what I wanted to do and a week in an office which was much more suited.

I did a week in the Met Office and a week with the RAF - both were brilliant!

Circa 1994/5: Finance office - spent a week filing which bored me stupid. Had a bit more fun at my friend's dad's skip hire company doing the orders and putting ads in papers. He offered me a job but I opted for McDonalds instead because I wasn't convinced he would pay me...he went bankrupt the next year.

I had a great week in the local authority’s civil engineering team, at a time when girls didn’t really do that sort of thing. I had a go at digging up and repaving a road, got a tour of a flyover under construction, and absolutely loved it.

Product testing lab at local factory. This was the most "science" related thing I could find in the local area.

I spent two weeks mucking out horses at a stable/riding school. Learned nothing about the world of work, other then business like having free labour.

Shadowing physios in the local hospital.. I’m now a physiotherapist!

I had an eye opening week in an inner city infant school, with serious safeguarding considerations and later an equally eye opening week in a large financial law firm. I steered away from both in my future career.

My dad’s business because I thought I could be lazy and skive if I was with him. I was wrong. His PA was on holiday whilst I was there so I covered for her 😂

This didn’t happen when I was a teenager

My old infant school. It was good.

A hospital. Making beds, washing and feeding some patients, taking them to other departments in wheelchairs. I was in what would be Yr10 now and it was 3 weeks, including a half-term. I think the hours were 7am-4.30pm. A lot of my friends picked playschool and schools to get the school holiday off.

It wasn't really a thing in my school as the upper band pupils were expected to stay until the 6th form and then university. Some of the middle band did work experience and I remember hearing about one creepy individual having his placement in a morgue. He told tales of sitting on the slab eating his sandwiches!

Wasn't a thing at my school except for the 'lower band' who were not expected to go on to university. Very different in those days.

Several kids at my school just worked at their Saturday jobs full time for a week during work experience. Lucky buggers got paid.

i actually threatened to resign from my job due to always being dumped with the WE kids. I was a conveyancer in a law firm and all the lawyers were apparently too busy to ever do anything with the WE kids so they were left with me and my very boring, systematic job for the entire week. Problem was I was just as busy and brought in more money for the firm than most of the lawyers so I was not happy with being stuck with the kids for a whole week, nice as they were. Anyway, my threat worked and the firm stopped taking on WE kids.

I did mine at MTV

An accountancy practice. It was so dull I swore I'd never work in one. I went into a much more dynamic and rewarding office based career that I was rarely at my desk.

Unfortunately, I now work in an accounting practice, but in the financial planning side as support, as they offered me the hours I need. I still hate it.

It didn't happen. School organised it in batches for different classes, and they didn't get around to arranging it for all of them!

I can't remember being bothered by it back then.

Then I arranged my own in A level years during my free periods when I dropped an A level subject, and volunteered in the local special school.

I’m 46, I worked in oxfam

A equestrian centre. Loved it.

It wasn't a thing when I was at school either.
I can't think of anything my teen self would have wanted to do. A boutique perhaps, or a photographer. Or behind the scenes in a theatre.
Bet my school wouldn’t have countenanced any of those.

I’m 56 and had a week in a local advertising agency with 5 others, we had to develop a campaign for a suncream. I really wanted to work in advertising at the time and due to being buried eyebrows deep in magazines and square eyed a lot of the time, I think it’s fair to say we came up with a pretty punchy creative approach (I’ve realised since it owed a lot to Aapri if anyone remembers that). Our commercial strategy was v weak though (we were 16!) I was poleaxed by how sexist it was - soft porn calendars being produced for clients, the boys with us always trying to undermine our stuff for no reason (I was from a girls school). Came away having lost interest in doing it as a career.

Estate Agents. At the time there was a recession. It was quiet, boring and the staff were not nice to eachother. I left knowing I definitely didn't want to work in an EA.

Shortly after I got a Saturday job in a shop. That also taught me I never wanted to work in a shop as a career or full time job.

When I was at school, you chose a range of work experience placements you were interested in from a list and school arranged it. Now children have to find their own, it's so hard and many of them don't manage to find work experience.