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 so too and actually at an age where we really respected the adults we worked for and just ‘did as we were told’.
Really helped us to gain experience, build working relationships with others, follow rules, be accountable, from an impressionable age.

Somehow that has been lost in under 16’s not working.

I started at 7 collecting the post from a local office block. I was given cash to sort out any recorded delivery letters. Eventually I even worked the franking machine (which printed a stamp on the letter rather than a stick on one). Took it all along to the post office. Finished there about 14. It was great. I remember turning up with a football and me and two of the managers being told off by a secretary for playing football around her desk

From 16-18 when at sixth form I worked for wh smith do it all. I ended up after a couple of months managing the timber department, they would leave everything for me to tidy first thing then I'd tell them what to order. The pay was brilliant, £30 cash the following week!

When mum died, wh smith sent out a welfare officer to see me and even sent flowers to the funeral....I bet there aren't many companies who'd do that today for a kid working 8 hours a week

Laura Ashley in the late 70s. We got a new outfit each season and a fairly hefty discount. I loved it especially when I got to work in the fabric department. Got paid £6 per day. I also got asked back during Christmas when I was home from uni.

It did help that I loved the flowery skirts and tops.

I actually came across my old Laura Ashley diary with the green flowery cover the other day.

You sure you're not me!!! I could have written that!

Chelsea Girl and we had to wear a particular outfit from the current range. At 16 it was £6.20 for the day (8am to 6pm). At 17 it went up to £7.40 and at 18 £8.60 but no one ever got to £8.60 because the manager made up impossible rules that it would be impossible not to break. I was allowed 2 Saturdays off all year but could only be taken in April and September. Obviously I wanted to go on holiday during the summer holidays which was refused so I had a choice of no holiday or getting sacked so I took the latter.

I pumped petrol in the Uk in the 80’s. I once filled both tanks of a Jag with 3 star.

At 13 I washed up in a pub after lunch. I can still taste the cooks ale stew, but cannot recreate it.

I worked the till in Safeway where we had to learn the names of all the apples, oranges and lettuce before a shift. I still have a scar on my right hand from catching myself on the scales, but I won the Regionals of the bag packing competition <preen>

Friday night babysitting £3.50
Saturday job in a bakery £11.00
Pocket money from Dad £5.00

I have a similar disposable income today 😂

This was a great idea for a thread OP. Trip down memory lane ❤

In 1990 i worked as chambermaid at a big Hilton hotel.
Had a scratchy tunic to wear. It has honestly put me off hotels for life. Was taught to dry up the crockery ( from tea and coffee making ) with dirty towels. Used so much windolene to Polish the bathrooms and mirrors it used to catch in my throat.
The state some people leave hotel rooms in too .....
Got paid practically nothing.
My sister had a job in a bakery and she used to bring home the left over cream cakes . Much preferred the look of her job x

I remember collecting my wages in a little brown envelope from the cash office window at the end of the day, although I think we were paid monthly. I also remember the transition to BACS payments eventually.

The staff discount was great - at the time I worked at WHSmith they owned Our Price so hot footing it there for a latest release if our own record department didn't have it was a regular Saturday lunchtime occurrence.

In 1979 I was a Saturday girl in John Lewis in Oxford street. In those days the shop closed at 1 o’clock on a Saturday but as I always cashed up it was more like 1.30 when I left. I worked on the jewellery counter and absolutely loved it. We used to have to cover all the counters with sheets when we closed. I also worked there during school holidays and when I left, my section gave me an engraved silver pen. Great memories and lovely people.

1990s first Saturday job aged 15 at a scruffy little cafe. Owners were not nice, the dishwasher took 30 minutes to do a wash. Tiny kitchen which would fit one person in and it had a little sink with only cold water tap.
The owners would have a go at me for not cleaning tables fast enough or getting crockery back out to be used.
They once shoved so much crockery through the kitchen hatch that it fell back out and smashed on the floor of the main cafe area.
I then got my tabard hooked onto the coffee machine jug by accident as I was passing up the narrow galley (1950s type set up but could only have one person going up and down as it was so thin) and the jug fell out and smashed on the floor.
The floors were greasy so sometimes I would slip. I once went upstairs to the storage area and caught one of the owners yanking up his trousers and my innocent mind didn’t realise what he had been doing.
I finally got the sack and it was such a relief. It was such a badly organised place. It needed a deep clean and a proper washing up area.

I worked for a village shop in the early 80s for the princely sum of 60p an hour. The shop keeper was this really nasty little man. Gave me the creeps. My second job was in a delicatessen- ( £1 an hour- whoop whoop!) I used to be shocked at the hygiene there. They used to cut the meat on the slicer using their hands- no gloves, and one of the assistant managers was sacked because he put well out of date sausages out to sell.

I answered the phone on Saturday mornings and very rarely had in person customers.

It was my dad's business so I could wear what I wanted as long as it was smartish.

Fruit and Veg counter at Hillards (chain of supermarkets up t'North that got bought out by Tesco)
I was constantly getting told off for removing my white nylon 'grocers' hat because it flattened my 80's hair 😂

I had retail jobs in Woolworth, John Menzies and Boots. John Menzies was the best because I was always stuck on the till in the other two jobs whereas in John Menzies I got to be on the record counter.

Also worked in my local library on Saturdays and once on a project during the holidays.

Worked in my parent's village shop, no uniform.
Allowed to doodle between customers but not read a book(!)
Had a bell to summon my Mum if anyone complained that I was too young to serve them and didn't trust that I would give them the right change etc (This was before digital tills and I was faster at mental adding and working out change than 98% of the customers).

I’m loving all the shoe shop names that are bringing back memories😊

I had a Saturday job in a concession in Debenhams in the late 80’s, I got £2 per hour. No uniform that I remember, just had to “dress nicely”. One Christmas we all had t-shirts we were supposed to wear for the new year sale. They had “support your local knocking shop” printed on the front and all the Saturday staff refused to wear them. The company was American and the phrase clearly didn’t mean the same to them!

We did have fantastic Christmas parties though - all fully paid for and the company put us up in a hotel.

😂

Debenhams, how posh.
I loved working with clothes in the 80’s it was such a fun time to be a teenage girl with all of that colour.
We used to have a men’s boutique near to the Miss Selfridge where I worked. The staff were like off-duty Calvin Klein models.
For our first Christmas party the manager told us we were having a joint meal and nightclub thing with the men’s boutique.
I have never seen a bunch of girls spend so much time and effort for a night out.
And remember the days before there were security tags on things? I know shoplifting is bad now but it was rife then.
I used to love working in retail over Christmas it was such a laugh and of course the music was great.

I was a Saturday girl at Boots in the 70s. Our uniform was nice, dark blue pinafore dress with a floral blouse underneath. Very much of the time! We Saturday girls were treated horribly by the beauty consultants, they were so snooty. The job itself was ok, except maths was my weak subject and we had to work the change out in our heads. Boots sold a much bigger range in those days and I was desperate to go on the record or books counters, but I was always on toiletries. I used to feel really embarrassed if I had to sell Dr.White's (remember them?) to someone I knew!

Pet shop with a deranged bald parrot for 7 quid a day. It was a rip off even then.
I was once sent to the train station to collect a shipment of lizards tho.

They were like big doorstops in those days!
I got a job in a perfume department as a student but it was 1991 by then.
The politics were unreal…
Have you been on your break with Janice from Clinique, we don’t associate with Clinique.
It was never-ending. I only did a stint over Christmas. Luckily I shared a counter with a brilliant girl from Elizabeth Arden and those skincare capsules had just come out. She used to pop a couple in my pocket every night.
It was funny that people would come up and ask me for advice and I was a bit clueless.
And the torrent of drunk men on Christmas Eve with wads of cash asking for something for the Mrs. They wouldn’t know which perfume would just fall into a counter.

Yeah, dead posh me 😂

I’d have loved a job in a clothes shop ! The best bit about mine was that I had it all through university too so I was able to make money by covering the Christmas and summer holidays when the permanent staff took their annual leave.

It was a big store and I would get so lost finding my way around!

Debenhams was like the dream job in terms of department stores.
It was to me anyway!
Those extra shifts came in handy, didn’t they?
I used to love the sales as we’d go in and get it all ready and we’d pinch the best bargains!