Your first job
#1
Your first job
I started mine for the then DHSS 6 days after my last day at school.
I was a file clerk, registering and recording files in and out for medical boards for people claiming war pensions and industrial injury benefits. I also notified the appointments.
Some of the ways people got injured was comical, like the TV repairman who sat back on a chair to view the picture after he had tuned it (remember those days?) and fell off, or scary like the man who lost a finger in some kind of cutting machine.
I also made an appointment for my then favourite footballer who was injured playing football.
Authority-wise the day wasn't so different to school except we could talk 'in class' and I got paid 14 times what I was previously getting pocket money.
My first wage went on my first jacket.
I was a file clerk, registering and recording files in and out for medical boards for people claiming war pensions and industrial injury benefits. I also notified the appointments.
Some of the ways people got injured was comical, like the TV repairman who sat back on a chair to view the picture after he had tuned it (remember those days?) and fell off, or scary like the man who lost a finger in some kind of cutting machine.
I also made an appointment for my then favourite footballer who was injured playing football.
Authority-wise the day wasn't so different to school except we could talk 'in class' and I got paid 14 times what I was previously getting pocket money.
My first wage went on my first jacket.
#2
BE Forum Addict
Joined: Feb 2013
Location: BC, Canada
Posts: 3,873
Re: Your first job
My first "job" was age 11 ........... Mum got me a summer job at the high class ladies dress shop where she worked part-time. They put me in the Alterations and Dressmaking Room, to be the "pick-up girl", but the 4 or 5 women who worked there decided to teach me how to do tailoring (hemming coats and tweed skirts by hand), how to use an electric sewing machine (ours at home was a treadle) and then how to do straight seams for the skirt of an evening dress they were making for some bigwig's wife in town. That became a Saturday job as well as holiday job for the next 5 or so years, although I did graduate at age 12 to working on the shop floor.
Most of the money I earned went into the family coffers, but I did manage to buy the occasionally item of clothing if I could hide the money from Mum.
My first real full-time job began in January 1965, teaching in a girls' grammar school in one of the few counties that still had them
Intervening jobs included working for Woolworths one Christmas and at the local Pakamac factory during the Easter and summer vacation in my next to last year at school , working the Christmas Post every year that I was at uni, and working in hotels during 3 summer vacs
Only the teaching was really well-paid! Most were also deadly boring.
Most of the money I earned went into the family coffers, but I did manage to buy the occasionally item of clothing if I could hide the money from Mum.
My first real full-time job began in January 1965, teaching in a girls' grammar school in one of the few counties that still had them
Intervening jobs included working for Woolworths one Christmas and at the local Pakamac factory during the Easter and summer vacation in my next to last year at school , working the Christmas Post every year that I was at uni, and working in hotels during 3 summer vacs
Only the teaching was really well-paid! Most were also deadly boring.
#5
Re: Your first job
My first job was as a Professor of Chemistry in Toronto.
Prior to that, I thought of it all as a vocation rather than a job.
Prior to that, I thought of it all as a vocation rather than a job.
#8
Re: Your first job
Paperound at 13 for a local Milton Keynes paper (not 'The Citizen').
I think my first 'proper job' was 17 in a Kangol shop at the local shopping centre but i cant remember now.
I think my first 'proper job' was 17 in a Kangol shop at the local shopping centre but i cant remember now.
#9
Pretty Fly For A Whiteguy
Joined: Feb 2008
Location: Barrie, Ontario(formerly Penperlleni, Cymru)
Posts: 570
Re: Your first job
I worked part time in a mountaineering shop.
#10
Re: Your first job
At age 14 I got a job weighing the veggies at the Beehive (COOP) in Cambridge. I saved enough money to buy a brand new FS1E buy the time I reached 16. � ����
#11
Banned
Joined: Apr 2009
Location: SW Ontario
Posts: 19,879
Re: Your first job
Junior secretary to the MD at M&C Switchgear, (Old?) Brompton Road, South Kensington for the princely sum of £7.00 a week. It cost me £6.00 a month for a rail pass with underground to South Kensingtom included (the good old 'Circle Line'). I gave my Dad £2.50 a week 'keep' and had about £8-9 a month left for myself.
Last edited by Siouxie; Jul 5th 2016 at 2:23 am.
#13
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Joined: Jul 2014
Posts: 1,231
Re: Your first job
First job in 1957 as an Office Boy in an Iron and Steel Merchants Office @ £3 weekly. Worked there until 1966 when I came to Canada. I'd done quite well in the 9 years there earning £20/week on my departure. That was a fairly good wage in 1966.
#14
Re: Your first job
Bussing at a fine dining restaurant at fifteen (lying that I was sixteen). Incredibly good tips and good fun.
#15
Re: Your first job
Worked over all of a 6th form summer holiday as a hospital porter in a geriatrics 'hospital'. As such got all the worst jobs to do, including moving the recently deceased from their beds to the morgue (and the tricks they played on me in the morgue of course)!
On the plus side, managed to save enough to afford my first proper astronomical telescope - a lovely 6" Newtonian with electric drives - the business in those days!
On the plus side, managed to save enough to afford my first proper astronomical telescope - a lovely 6" Newtonian with electric drives - the business in those days!