I was 14 when I started as a Saturday morning dental extractions nurse (mid 80s-ish). This was back in the old days when you’d have an anaesthesiologist visiting the surgery.
I responsible for washing & autoclaving tools/equipment as the morning progressed (normally at elevensies when we’d swap dentists). Even at the height of the AIDS crisis, we never had gloves (I remember having coagulating blood swirling around my fingers as I rinsed before sterilising), which was pretty bloody stupid then & utterly incomprehensible now, but there was another, extraction nurse duty that sounds so bizarre as to be almost fiction (although I can promise you it isn’t).
When under sedation, some patients would go completely rigid, and would rise out of the chair (a normal reclining dental chair), so my job would be to straddle the planked patient, grab both arm rests and physically hold the patient back down onto the seat.
Then I’d dismount, patient would be brought round, and I’d escort them to the recovery room (calling for their relatives as I went), then off to the next patient.
And that was everything rigid; climbing onto an unconscious bloke, at 14, across his groin… no wonder therapy was not far behind!
Saying that, it wasn’t too bad a job. I knew the Gas Man (dad of daughters I played hockey with), and the dentists themselves were epic, but can you imagine even suggesting this job today?!
I also had to be present for Sunday emergency nursing if it was our turn to be the local dentist on call; 14, doing everything expected of a normal dental nurse (developing X rays, composite fillings, basic emergency surgery, the whole shebang).
And having to walk to the local licensing place to get a work permit every year lol!
The 80s were mad.
I then went into a very long career in tech theatre crewing (continuing thru and beyond Uni where I was training as a teacher), where men were paid £2.58 and hour but not having a penis meant we were paid the ‘woman’s wage’ at £1.85 an hour! FOR EXACTLY THE SAME JOB!
Utterly bonkers!