To ask your help for a character's occuption (late 1950s) for my novel?

[Pushpins40]

I'm stuck. It's a minor point but I'm on the upteenth draft of this effing novel with a deadline looming. Google isn't helping, so I wondered if Mumsnet would?

A man, London, 1958, needs a fairly dull office job. Something that would be quite well paid. I thought accountant but I'm not sure I want something professional. I thought managing a department in a refrigeration company (which I thought might be growing post war). But my tired brain is addled.

Any suggestions welcome! Thanks so much.

By the way, the job bored him senseless! Mainly paper pushing other than those odd trips...

How about a clerk to a tax inspector at Inland Revenue, as it was. I work for HMRC and they often put historical info on our intranet, especially stories about men who tragically died in the war. During the WW1 there were civil service battalions, like the 'civil service rifles. Sounds like whole departments were wiped out in one go, very sad.

Anyhow, from this info it sounds like if you were clever but from a working class background the best you could hope for would be to be a clerk to an inspector. If you weren't well off in the 50's you'd be very unlikely to go to uni, but if you got I to grammar school you'd be doing well to land a civil service office job, as opposed to manual labour etc.
Back in those days I think it was viewed as a pretty cushy number, job for life, decent pension etc. But it would be frustrating to know your status meant you'd never progress - I guess people didn't expect any different in those days. Anyhow, it would be boring!

If you want dull but very well paid graduate job, then how about being an actuary?

Or something else in insurance or financial risk assessment

My parents went to uni in the late 50s/early 60s and were both very much from working class families. My grandparents on one side were a shop worker and secretary and on the other side I’m not sure what they did but they weren’t posh or even middle class.

Both parents were the first ever in their families to go to uni and I think both my parents had been to grammar schools which would have helped. I guess they didn’t need as much financial support then? Certainly no fees to pay and maybe grants for living costs?

Someone with a boring office job certainly wouldn’t have been supporting a daughter at uni - she’d have been working in a factory from age 14.

This ^^ (maybe not "certainly" but it would have been unusual enough to be a story in itself).

Teacher-training college might be feasible - not a degree in those days - but commonly seen as a way to avoid the factory/ secretary route for girls from ordinary backgrounds.

That's actually not true New Name - a very broad generalisation - daughter in factory from age 14. All of my parents peers were of that age in the fifties and they had a variety of non-factory jobs, albeit not professions, and were often schooled till at least 16, many in grammar schools - and my parents came from the East End.

And thinking about it, a few went to uni and did become professionals (accountants/pharmacists) and almost all came from working class/lower middle class backgrounds.

There is so much brilliant info here. I can't thank you all enough for sharing what you know. What a gift Mumsnet can be!

I was going to say that. My grandad was a civil servant.

Thank you all