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 🥰

Yes, I think it was a remedy for upset stomachs! The kaolin did indeed sink to the bottom leaving the liquid morphine on the top. Of course, the instructions said to shake well before use!

BHS in early 80s. Work on the men’s department. Back then the clothes were all folded and in cellophane bags. The large counters had stock underneath in cupboards and we had to stock constantly. The most annoying part was that one of each size and colour was on a hanger in the centre of the counter so customers could have a look at them but they insisted on taking them out of the bags. As a result I am very good at folding clothes neatly.
We had awful checked nylon overalls.
It was at the height of the Norrhern Ireland troubles when there were a number of mainland high street bombings. At the beginning and the endo the day we had to do thorough security sweeps to look for unattended bags.
The most exciting thing was the introduction of computerised tills for stock control. I also learned to read price tickets for the hidden price code. It was common for people to change the stuck on price labels to reduce the price of an item so we were supposed to check them to make sure we charged the right price.

I had the BEST Saturday job from 81-83. Woolworths, on the record counter. Go to work, play your favourite music all day, go home. I started on £6 odd for the day and ended on £10.21.

It was the mid 90s but I worked the till in a small local supermarket. I loved that job, proper old fashioned time card and clocking in. We had some properly wild customers as well. There was a guy who had some conspiracy about the government poisoning us through the water so he only drank distilled water (which we seemed to sell by like the 5 litre container). He’d come in and stock up every Saturday. There was also a girl who used to come in with her family all the time, clearly very poor. She must have been about 11. I watched her grow slowly more and more pregnant and then I never saw her again. I still often wonder about her.

I also had a Sunday job as a groom and exercise rider for a polo club. THAT was a whole different world! I really enjoyed it, but posh people (and faux posh people, because there were a lot of those) are also wild.

1966 Timothy Whites - (later became Boots) - I think we were given a button through overall to wear; it’s a long time ago…….
A whole day (9-6) for 19s 9d - wage was £1, 3d deducted for NI. If I needed to buy a new pair of tights that week, that was most of the money gone. They were about 17s 11d a pair, as they were quite a new thing.

1976, greengrocers after school for 2 nights, 2 hours (no fancy tills and all prices and totals had to be worked out in my head whilst serving), then 1977-78 Saturdays and school holidays at Dolcis, East Street, London, so incredibly busy. No uniform for greengrocers, but crimpelene two tone brown for Dolcis!! Then did some temp office work whilst at college. By the time I started my first full time role, I'd a fair amount of work experience!

My job was 2 decades earlier. I got a holiday job at the local Odeon, so long ago they had two films with an ice cream break in the middle. Unfortunately, the B movie was Old Yeller (100% on Rotten Tomatoes) and I had to carry in the tray of ices just before the boy shot his dog. I sobbed over that tray every day for a week until they 'let me go'. I think it was the snot on the choc ices.

Those treats were so rare I bet not a kid cared about the snot. I was a kid in the 70’s and every kid had greasy hair and a snotty nose.
The cinema… we had one round the corner from my house, we were allowed to walk around by ourselves. I can remember the Pearl & Dean music.

God that toffee was amazing. Even if it was the same I wouldn’t dare chew it now. It was so creamy… I also remember buying slabs of toffee that came with a separate silver mini toffee hammer. Your probably have to show ID to buy a toffee hammer these days

yes me too. The intervals when you had to go and queue up for the ice creams at the front. The Pearl and Dean music (might include this in my funeral playlist ha)

Dolcis for me aged 14 too! Horrible manager and I felt so sorry for the full time staff. Sales targets for us - ‘fancies’ (shoe protectors, handbags, etc) targets were 10% of shoe targets. Was warned that manager would sack me at 3 months rather than give me due pay rise. Determined not to give him chance, in the sale (with lower targets) I persuaded customers to the full priced shoes at the back of the shop, and equalled my fancies target but doubled my shoe target. So come 3 months, thought I’d done great but he sacked me for selling only 5% of fancies for the value of shoes. Was v upset and my mum came in and gave him an ear bashing in front of customers and staff. I vowed I would never work in a place like that again, and knuckled down to study for exams so that I had better choices in life.

Edited as posted on the wrong thread - but I used to work in a bakery in a market for £2 an hour! Awful

I got told I was getting sacked for not selling enough fancies. On the day of Live Aid. So at midday I got my coat and went home.
Funny story - remember the racks outside that had single shoes on?
My branch was in a really deprived area and single shoes kept getting nicked.
And it went on for weeks - we were all on the lookout.
Some bright spark had worked out we were putting the left shoes out and the branch in town were putting the right shoes so they had a good few pairs of shoes by going between the two and matching them.
I absolutely detested that job. All the shoes were down three flights of stairs. Horrible manager.

I didn't realise Primark had been around that long..!

Worked at a petrol station, Saturdays and Sundays in 1981, 95p an hour. Horrible, vile punters, who would throw a fiver at you if they got £5.10s worth of petrol, but would kick off if they gave you a fiver for £4.99 1/2, waiting for the half pence change. It was self service but customers would occasionally want you to manually pump it, and leave you no tip. Paraffin machine never worked, but customers would endlessly complain as if I was personally responsible for it's upkeep. Was once thumped for giving someone a Scottish pound note in his change. Was told off for eating and listening to the radio on duty by a manager as it was "unprofessional". If the till was short, it was deducted from your wages, even 10p. Received a written warning because I had to go for a wee, and someone saw the lights were off as they drove past. You reeked of petrol when you worked there. People would regularly try to break in and steal the cigarettes we had on the premises. One of the most depressing things was watching the alkies from the pub opposite sit on the steps outside at 3pm and wait till the establishment re-opened at 5pm rather than go home.

Late 70s...Sainsbury's sat job. Thought I'd be on tills but they put me in butchery dept. Washing down bloody rails, labeling frozen turkeys and using the shrink wrap machine. In those days they sold lots of offal and I had to bend lambs tongues to fit them in the tray, the butchers would make 'baaing' noises as I did it. Lots of sexual banter and a sexist manager who said I shouldn't be going to uni 'as you'll only get married'.
Also worked at Boots, pink and blue uniform, tills and jewellry counter.
Worst was a holiday job in a pork products factory where one day all I did was push the sausages down to fit under the conveyor belt arm, I thought Id go mad and ended up smashing them down hard in pure frustration.

So at midday I got my coat and went home.

@ThisJadeBear coat? On the day of Live Aid?? 😂😂😂

Yes. Fecked off, jumped the bus, was home eating an M&S cottage pie on my lap in time for Status Quo. My friend there said the manager was furious, but they had zero customers all day.
Never asked for a reference.
Don’t know why I remember the pie! I do remember legging it from the bus stop home and the streets were empty.
What a great day, I’d just turned 16, O levels all done….

Saxones shoe shop. Huge ladders to go up and down shelves at back to retrieve left shoe/other sizes. Weird cataloguing system you learned to know where shoes were. Massive pressure to sell the “ fancies” i. e. Shoe polish and protector, insoles etc.

Bonus were staff discount, and nights out. Had my first cocktail on one of them.

I was talking about the need for a coat on the hottest day of the year! 😂😂😂

It was to cover the horrible nylon top I hated getting on the bus in it. I think it was a cotton blouson jacket from Topshop with studs on it?
Not my Chelsea Girl winter coat 🤣

A hairdressers washing hair. A time when the less young had shampoo and sets once a week and their hair was like a Brillo pad and stank of smoke. Gross

BHS. 85p an hour

A bit late to this thread but have loved reading all the responses - what a trip down memory lane.

Mine were all in the 90s:

Waitressing in a pub - pervy chef who later burned the pub down.
Selling cartons of juice in the town football arena when REM came to play.
Pizza shop deliveries - preparing the ingredients, taking phone orders, working out the address using a greasy A-Z and driving my dad's car around delivering the orders.
Waitressing in an Italian restaurant where if it was your birthday you got a banana split shaped like a penis with cream spurting out (pervy chefs again).
Barmaid in a really nice wine bar - enjoyed that one.
Shop assistant in Past Times (revolting replica antiques). Surprisingly hard work, always running up and down stairs to the stock room and dealing with shoplifters (they probably thought they were real antiques).
Best one was in a classical/jazz CD shop. Bloody loved that job. Gained a lot of knowledge which helps me in my real job now. Such a nice old man who ran the shop. Needless to say it's long gone now.

Late 70s
My mum worked in the cash office In Safeway and got me a job on the Deli because it was marginally warmer than sat on a till by the open doors in the winter. The Deli manager was lovely and it was always just us two. He then got me the Wednesday afternoon slot (late opening) although I then ran the gauntlet of the butchers.
I babysat for one of them for another 4 years by which time they were on their 5th baby!

Got a job to train as a pharmacy dispenser the following year, in Boots. It was hell with the other girls in the shop and I only stuck it because I quite enjoyed the training. I met my husband which didn’t go down well with the manager thinking I would promptly leave once qualifying. I did but as I pointed out when called to the office, it wasn’t because I was pregnant or my husband was being posted (military) but because of the shop politics.
Worked in pharmacy for another 40 years elsewhere