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 🥰

A waitress in a Wimpy burger "restaurant" was my Saturday job. I also did some days in college holidays. Black skirt, white shirt and red tabbard over the top. On you feet all day. The highlight was covering for the "chef" on their lunch break flipping the burgers. I always said to my kids get an education if you don't want a life flipping burgers (didn't tell them it was the highlight of that job!. Got home stinking of burgers and frying and bathed and out clubbing withy £10 wages. The useful thing I learned was using vinegar in water to clean the mirrors without streaking as we had to clean after closing.

I worked in a bakers shop in the city centre in the Late 70’s / early 80s . It was part of a chain of baker shops. I remember the ugly red zip up uniform we wore over our jeans and the naff red and white gingham headscarves.Working there certainly helped my mental arithmetic. I got told off one day for putting too much filling in the sandwiches.

Worked in an army and navy store selling a lot of secondhand army surplus plus camping gear and workwear for £10 a day in the early 80’s.

We had a room full of trousers and shirts that had to be folded up regularly throughout the day as the clothes weren’t piled in any kind of sizes and blokes would come in and rake through everything to find something that fit. My folding skills would rival anyone at Benetton. Italian army trousers were very popular with workmen as they had padded knees. We had lots of regulars who would come in for a secondhand pair of trousers and a new pair of socks every week because they didn’t do any laundry 🤢

The owner was really tight and we went weeks without any new stock and he then complained about lack of sales. He also refused to buy a new till so we had an ancient one that had a maximum entry of £9.99 so if anything cost £10 or more you had to put it through as multiples of £9 till you got to the right total. I have no idea how they kept the books.

I was there for 3-4 years and eventually let go because I had the temerity to ask for a Saturday off at Christmas. I don’t know if they got another Saturday girl after that.

@Creepybookworm @leshirondelles @TheFallenMadonna @Yellowpapersun
Boots for me as well!
We also had the flower blouses and blue pinafore dress!
It was 1982 and I got paid the princely sum of £1 an hour! (Which I would spend in Dorothy Perkins in my lunch break!) 🙂

I started in a hairdressers, basically sweeping the floor, making tea/coffee, passing rollers and washing hair at the age of 13. I left that one and moved on to another salon, decided I absolutely hated hairdressing and went to Martin's Newsagents at 16. We had a navy-blue and white, belted dress as our uniform in Martin's. I remember the blokes bringing up their 'girlie mags', folding them, so I could just see the price (before barcodes were used)!!!

When I was at Smiths (WH) I got moved to the vinyl record department. I thought I was the bees bloody knees, like I was so trendy!

Funny how so many of us recall the awful, uncomfortable, stiff, starchy polyester uniforms 😖 Not fit for purpose… “barely black” 15 denier tights, the panic and shame of getting a ladder so always carrying a spare pair.

I got £5 for a Saturday- this was 1976-78. I seem to remember it increased to £5.50 by the time I left in 78. I used to spend it in Chelsea Girl mostly!

Not quite 80s. Early 90s. Waitress in a pub restaurant on the princely sum of £2 an hour . Gave me a life long dislike of gravy and fan folded serviettes.

1980 sports shop, got paid £7.50. Got the sack eventually after the manager got drunk one Saturday and sexually assaulted me in the stock room.

I think your Saturday job put you off some things as much as makes you feel nostalgic!

I hated Debenhams after I left @ThisJadeBear I’d probably have liked being in the Topshop section but the concessions were pretty boring (decent overtime though). I had a couple of friends who were “beautiful people” and had jobs on the ground floor in the perfume department. I was stuck on the second floor with carpets and floor lamps!

I worked in a local pizza restaurant. £3 per hour weekend evenings with a free pizza to take home. A carafe(!) of Rose wine was made in the bar by mixing red and white wine 😮. I was good at making desserts, sundaes, Irish coffees, and less so at singing happy birthday while brandishing a mini pack of Ferrero Rocher with a lit candle.
Next a newsagents/gift shop in a grey smock/housecoat dress so completely hideous I changed to go out for lunch breaks or the bus. I also remember the carbon credit card ‘machine’ and having to call Transax (?) for a code if someone wrote a cheque over the limit on their card.

Saturday job at a local (quite large) florist, started in 1988 at age 15. Worked 9-5.30 for £12, there were 3 of us girls. At the end of the day when the boss closed up we had to stand in a line while he paid up the £12 in cash from the till and say thank you

First Saturday job in 1987 was in a coffee shop for £9 a day of hard graft. Clearing tables, washing up & making sandwiches. The manager was a dragon, I can still picture her now….serene and full of smiles in front of the customers, face of rage once she stepped into the kitchen 😂 - character building though.

Second Saturday job in an independent coach tour travel agent, got this after doing 6th form work experience there. Loved it. Think I got £12 a day & helped people book trips to exotic places like ‘Yugoslavian Rivera’ and ‘Lake Garda’
….still addicted to travel now

Every kid should have a Saturday job😊

I worked in a pet shop, spending my Saturdays catching goldfish, budgies and finches, being bitten by hamsters and lugging huge sacks of feed up two sets of spiral staircases from the cellar. I did it from age 14 to 15 when I got a new job in a cake shop where we threw jam doughnuts at each other before piling them up in the glass cabinet to sell. The pet shop paid £10 for 8.30am to 5.30pm and the cake shop paid £12.50 for 8am to 4pm. I spent my first three weeks wages from the pet shop on a pair of jeans - good times!

I remember Transax!

You could start a thread for that , with desired decade ?

That sounds a pretty good wage in the 80’s. My first Saturday job at 16 was at Littlewoods, 1993. £1.71 an hour.

I worked in a boarding kennels. In 1979 I got £3 a day, plus lunch, 8-6. Cycled six miles there and six miles back. I was sooo fit! The following year I got a pay rise to £4. Then I swapped to quality control in a local food factory, which was more money but not such good fun.

I didn’t have one! I babysat on a regular basis. My best friend was a Saturday shampoo girl in a hairdresser. Another friend worked in Safeway as a checkout girl but increased to after school and weekends.

I got £5 maybe more for babysitting. Easy peasy.

I was brought up the local high street by my mum but all the Saturday jobs had gone by the time we went! Even the 2 pet shops opposite each other had no vacancies. Another friend worked in Sketchleys.

There was a Jean Genie in Croydon near where I lived!

My hairdressers had a work experience girl but they don’t really need a Saturday girl. My old hairdressers they had Saturday shampoo girls.

I worked in Thornton’s. Loved it! Back then the toffee came in big slabs and I had to break it into pieces with a toffee hammer and arrange it in the boxes. I loved doing that. And yes, I did sneak bits of toffee in my mouth and then hope no customer came as I had a mouth glued together with sticky toffee!

Early 90s here. Working for a discount supermarket we had to stencil the price cards for promotional display baskets. We couldn't always fit all the lettering in so for a while we had a special on a ' Coconut Spong'. Spelling wasn't everyone's forte so we also had 'Vanish Carpet Mouse' on sale. Simple times.