Your 1980s Saturday jobs

[Snooks1971]

I’m sure I’m not UR (!) to ask if you can share what your 80s Saturday jobs were.
Mine was WHSmith.The things I remember most:
nylon pencil skirt - horrendous
On the front till and selling Playboy magazine (dying having to look for the price to type in manually)
The woman who had worked there for 30 years still sniggering at the Smallholdings magazine
The designated fountain pen area - under glass 🥰

Boots....nasty white nylon zip up dress that was supposed to look medical. The start of 3 for 2 and the litre bottles of cheap bubble bath flying off the shelves. The Natural Collection. Being told to dress up in a clown costume to hand out Christmas catalogues. All the old women who worked there who were really slow on the tills so I got put on instead in school holidays, robbing the old ladies of their sit down. Having to press the lid of each jar of baby food after the baby food poisoning scare.

My Saturday jobs were in the 1970s. I worked in a cream tea cafe in a small village just outside the city. I used to walk 3 miles there and back every Saturday and Sunday, although the owners quite often gave me a lift home. I earned 75p per hour.

Then later I worked in Jean Genie for a bit. And I did lunchtimes behind the bar in the same village once I was 18. And I worked in a rather nice restaurant as a waitress.

So 80s 😓😓😓

Ryman
Grey polyester skirt and waistcoat (size 14) and red polycotton shirt (size 10). Presume they just pulled any size out of the cupboard.

Went into the stock room one day and came out to find that I had missed Princess Diana buying wrapping paper.

Why just 80's? Some of us are older..

Primark in Belfast. Horrible scratchy maroon and white dress type thingy we had to wear. There was a cigarette kiosk, a pick and mix counter and a jewellery counter. Nothing like today’s Primark. Travellers used to come in and try to haggle over the price of a £1 watch. Oh and its Pree-mark by the way. I don’t care what ye’s call it in England😆 We had to check for incendiary devices after every shift. Us. The teenage Saturday workers. Unbelievable.

A shoe shop called Lennards. Horrible shiny a line skirt and a weird cream shirt with arrows on it and a necktie.
As a teen goth I was not impressed especially as the skirt was too big and the shirt a bit small.

Had to stand around and help with sales, if it was quiet we had to tidy the shoes.

Myself and another girl were roped in in the school holidays too on delivery days where we had to throw the boxes up a flight or 2 of stairs.

The other women would send us up and down the stairs as we had "young legs".

I was paid the princely sum of £2.75 ,an hour.

1990’s

Ice cream cart. Had a creepy customer who used to hang around alllll the time.

WH Smith as well.

Bingo Hall that was a bit wild for 19 year old innocent me, the staff were all shagging around. I couldn’t keep with who was shagging who.

BHS Navy pinafore with blue tie neck blouse under neath.
I loved being on the till, especially using the credit card roller machine.

Woolworths cafe pot wash. Cyan and white uniform and white hat. Most boring job ever

Primark had pick and mix?! Odd!

Boots for me too. The white dress designed for someone 5'3 not 5'11. And topped with a navy tabard. And yes,the dressing up at Christmas. Luckily I didn't have to wear the Christmas pudding because it was even more indecently short than the dress.

I was there for the transition from price stickers (my favourite job) to EPOS. Got paid for a day's training. No idea how it took so long.

Bingo. Electric blue a-line skirt and waistcoat complete with yellow ribboned edging and a yellow and white blouse. Lovely! I used to change just to get the bus home.

Started at 13....

Vegetable Market stall; 8am - 6pm for £10-15 and a load of veggies to take home! a busy busy day, no uniform but it was hot in summer and cold in winter so you dressed to suit, it was non stop with the fella shouting out the bargains! Loads of interaction and laughs with locals, it was great!

8pm til 10.30 I was a waitress at a local family owned Steak house; white blouse, black skirt, 80s love songs playing on repeat, I shudder every time I hear the croon tunes or see an Irish coffee but can still pour one 35 yrs later.

Friday nights was babysitting a family across the road, 3 children under 11. I was only 13 myself but it was brilliant 👏

A shop called Changes which sold clothes from baby/kids wear to mens and women's clothes. Uniform was navy pencil skirt with blouses changed every few months (I remember a white one, plain lilac and a navy belted floral one).

I remember the clicky clack credit card machine.

Vacuuming half the shop (other Saturday girl who is still one of my best friends did the other half) at the end of the day. Manager used to put shake n vac right under the clothes rails so she could check we'd done it all.

Having to fold ginormous knickers

Earning £10.13 for a whole Saturday

No reason 😊 share your stories 🥰 my mum is 82 and worked during the 50s in a department store lingerie dept with a creaky wooden up/down flip thing around the counter
They apparently creaked it up and down when the other was doing a fitting

I worked in a library. Started out ‘shelving’ ie putting the returned books back on the shelves. Then progressed to assistant and so was allowed to be on the desk stamping books out, taking the returns ( but not having to return them to the shelves). Helping people find what they needed. I loved it and was offered a full time job after my O Levels but turned it down to work in an office at an engineering firm ( where I met my future husband).

I was on a frozen yogurt / ice cream cart in Asda Brighton. .. maybe same creepy man ??

Worked in the coleslaw department at a Mattesons factory, making coleslaw. Peeled onions by hand for hours. Worked a machine that peeled carrots. The cabbages were done by the men. Also on the packaging line putting lids on pots and having to keep up with conveyor belt. Shrink wrapped pots too.
Occasionally worked in the pate room if they were short staffed, had to brown the tops of the pate with a blow torch which was fun.
Worked summer holidays full time and a few days at Easter and Christmas between the ages of 15 and 18. Plus often had a call Fridays to do aSaturday morning shift from 8am to midday.

Cigarette kiosk in Woolworths

Gosh loads of random ones!
Started at maybe 13, serving baked potatoes in a bingo hall for £1.50 and hour.
Did a stint as a Silver Service waitress where all uniform was shared and we changed in a barn 😬
After school during 6th form worked in an industrial laundry to earn money for uni (but blew it all on 4 weeks in Ibiza the summer before I went)
The worst though - working in a Chinese takeaway. Grim pissed men coming in at pub closing time 'can I have a 69 please love' 🙄 at me and my also 26 year old friend.

What year was that?

My first job was in 2003, aged 16 and I got £2.10 an hour!

i worked in a kiosk in a Shopping centre, owned by the local cafe - it sold drinks, ice creams, sandwiches, jacket potatoes, sweets.

I could hold five ice cream cones in one hand and fill them with 'whippy' ice cream. They were 23p.

my first task on a Saturday morning was to fill a flask with boiling water for a homeless man - he would be waiting for someone to open the shop.

I earned 99p per hour and I would look forward to school holidays because I would be able to work every day.

the uniform was a shirt dress which was yellow and brown with a half and half yellow and brown baseball hat.

staff would compete to take the most sales/money per day - we had our own key on the cash register which would tally our individual takings

i never took the most in sales because I would be told to clean at a certain point in the afternoon - I hated cleaning the ice cream machine because it smelled of rotting bacon and would make me retch - health hazard.

i got a second job after my brother who was a 'bouncer' at a nightclub asked if I could work the bar as a 'one off' because the staff wanted to watch the turn that night who was Bernard Manning. I was sixteen - the uniform was a one shoulder dress which was silver and very short - my father thought it was a top and that I wore it with jeans. I worked every Thursday, Friday, Saturday night after that as well as my Saturday job in the kiosk.

I worked every shift possible and saved quite a bit up - I loved my little part time jobs.

I was a Saturday girl in a hairdressers - what a culture shock! It was frantically busy all the time, so no one had any time to train me at all and I hadn't a clue what I should be doing. Took me ages to get any good at washing peoples' hair - I soaked quite a few clients down their back with water, by mistake. I found it really hard trying to respond to, and assist, the stylists because I was unfamiliar with all the products and equipment.

One from way back - my mum told me about when she was a Saturday girl in Woolworths during WW2. Apparently, her mum was called up (?)to work in Woolworths too. I remember saying to her 'I bet Hitler was shitting himself'. She didn't think that was funny.

I think Saturday jobs when you're a teen teach you such important lessons about people and life.