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 🥰

Early 90's age 14 I worked in a local pub as a pot washer/waitress. I worked 12 hours a week min and had to deal with all kinds of dickhead men. I also had a paper round where I spent hours collecting people's payments and got paid on how much I collected!! Shocking when I look back.

Corner sweetshop. I was sacked after a few months along with another girl as we made a fuss about the owner trying to grope us. My Dad went round and yelled at him in front of customers and I was annoyed with my Dad, not the old pervert himself! Because I didn't want his wife to be embarrassed.

Deli girl at a budget supermarket chain that no longer exists, paid less than £2 an hour, it might have been £1.40 and it was a ten hour shift which was a bit tiring but still the best job I've ever had - there was far less pre-packaged options on the shelves, so customers would come to the counter and tell us how much cheese/pate/ham/bacon/sausages they wanted and we would cut cheese off blocks or slice ham from joints, weigh and wrap and stick a label with the price on. Even now when I visit the butchers my mind works in pounds and ounces, they get a bit confused when i ask for half a pound of sausages 😂

@goodoldsussexbythesea Maybe it was £2.75 for the whole shift...1986/7
I was saving up to learn to drive

Started age 14 in Dolcis shoe shop, horrible manger (hated him), we were forced to pressure customers to buy polishes and protectors etc.. paid a bloody pittance too.

I worked for a family business for a bit, then in a Clarkes shoe shop, where I was trained to fit children's shoes. I then, after one day at a home wear shop which was boring as hell, I then worked in a cafe as some of my friends already worked there.

1986 - deli counter at Waitrose (we was dead posh) I used to stick my fingers in the coleslaw all the time, no gloves. Terrified of the ham slicing machine. Old dears who would come in for a sing slice of ham. Getting the staff bonus was lovely and surprising - maybe they’d told me when I started, but I probably wasn’t listening. Can’t begin to remember the uniform but it must have been brown and orange in places (that was the branding at the time) and nylon

Corner mini market 15-18. Many happy days but the nylon overalls were a horror and the old gentleman that was a bit handy and caused us to get off the shop floor if we had a chance to avoid him (or at least get behind the till barrier.

My first job was a week at a tar distillers sorting their filing. My second was every Saturday at Great Homer Street market on a clothes stall, I was to watch out for shoplifters. My third was bar work and my fourth was door security. Fun times!

Some of us are younger too. I think she’s just looking for nostalgia from her era. Not unusual.

At 13 I had my first job in a greengrocers, putting potatoes into bags and weighing them to make sure they were 5lbs. I got 50p an hour, which was a pittance even by 1988 standards! When I was 15 I started working as a cleaner from 8am till 10am every Saturday and Sunday. I got £20 for four hours, and I felt like a queen! My friends would ruthlessly take the piss because I was a cleaner. Meanwhile they’d all be working a long Saturday on the local market for £10.

Cucumber packer. Although I didn’t pack any cucumbers. I stood between two conveyors set at right angles and moved cukes (see I learned the lingo) from one conveyor to another as I was cheaper than the fancy right angle roller tray that would be needed otherwise.

Also relabelled trays of cukes as ‘Product of Great Britain’ being very careful to put the new label over the ‘Product of the Netherlands’ words printed on the tray.

My first summer job was at 15 in a sea-side rock shop on the pier. Could wear what I liked, but it was swelteringly hot and a very small shop. When we had coach parties there would be about four of us behind the counter and we had to add up huge orders in our heads and only ring in the final amount on an old style till. I'm still pretty good at mental arithmetic.

Occasionally someone would want to pay with -gasp - a credit card - and the manageress would solemnly pull the slidy machine out from under the counter and oversee the process very sternly. If we were busy the tension was palpable.

We had two lolly stands in the window for novelty shaped lollies and motto lollies, and at least twice a month one would get knocked over in the scrum for diabetes on a stick.

On one memorable occasion Millwall were playing and when all the fans came pouring down into the town and onto the beach post match, I had to stand in the doorway holding the manageresses late fathers official issue vintage truncheon as a deterrant. 17 year old me obviously just got laughed at, and there was no trouble, thank the Goddess.

I remember my first wage packet, with what seemed like a fortune in it, and after handing over "rent" to my Mum, and some money towards a school trip to Paris I was saving for, I had enough money to go to Chelsea Girl's bargaing basement and furnish myself with a Banarama adjacent wardrobe. There were batwings and a sackcloth pinafore involved as I recall....

My Saturday job was at Waitrose - vile brown nylon overalls, and learning how to flick price labels onto tins at speed.

Oh, I feel quite misty eyed and nostalgic..... someone take me back!!!

So most people in my year at school was able to get a Saturday job, I can imagine its a lot harder these days for teens - so many less staffed checkouts these days and shop floor staff, what do teens do?

Too many!
shoe shop Lily and Skinner. God how much I hated that Job! I just recall hunting through boxes of shoes all the time and never selling any!

A random builders cafe which was a life changing experience with some very bizarre colleagues!

Local pharmacy, I am pretty such it was a company then taken over by Lloyd’s pharmacy. Loved this job. Remember the old tills and labeling prices of good with a label gun.

True-Form shoe shop - hated it but got a discount & first dibs on sale shoes. Also had to wear grey pencil skirt, & a white blouse/shirt. I was 14 & loved having money to buy records with

Woolworths in Tooting. Wore a nasty blue and red nylon, long-sleeved, sort of overcoat. Hideous. I was on "drapery" the textiles section. I think I got £8 for the whole day.

I worked on a make up counter in Boots and thought I was the dogs bollocks because they only hired pretty girls!

Local newsagents. On my feet on the till all day. Had to add everything up mentally - I’m sure the till could do that but the boss was old school.

Got a chest infection as he never turned the heating on. Black hands from handling newsprint.

Woolworths - Ended up on the Delicatessen counter because my tills were always short (ADHD and Dyslexia)

Co-Op Department store - 'Nets and soft furnishings

John Lewis Partnership - Nets and printed furnishings fabrics

I also had a summer job in the local car park. That was great fun winding up the customers and doling out parking fines if they weren’t completely in the parking space.

I had a Saturday job at a local dog groomer - or poodle parlour as it was called back then. I learned a trade between 1976-1980. She was a business acquaintance of my parents. I did a City & Guilds later.
On Sundays I worked at the local riding stables from 7am to 6pm, I got a free ride which was between £1.50 and £1.75 over the 2 1/2 years I was there. I was so permanently shattered, working all the weekends and going to school, I chucked the stables job when revisiting for O Levels became more important than working my butt of for 11 hours for a free ride.

I worked as a waitress in a local cafe - black dress and white frilly apron 1980, next job was working in KFC and at 18 I could do bar work
I did not envy a friend who worked in local butchers - we used to go in and buy tripe and liver just to wind her up!

William Low supermarket stacking shelves, salmon pink uniform, 4 hrs on a Sat and Sun, got paid double time on the Sunday, can't imagine that happening now. ( doesn't exist anymore, bought over by Tesco years back)

Around 81/82 – 6th form years – I worked in a fish and chip shop 4 night a week; loved it (especially the free supper) but it made my school uniform stink.