Jobs

[wellinghall]

I've just come across my first payslip. It was for one week's shepherding work, week ending 26 April 1981. £33.50. I was (just) fifteen at the time.

I had done work for my father (although on a semi-formal basis) before that; but that was all cash in hand.

In the summer of 1981, I started work as a warden at the local stately house. £1.25 an hour. Sundays were double time, and bank holidays £2.50 bonus (I think; or the other way around). My first work there was over one of the May bank holiday weekends, which netted a tidy little sum. I continued working there in the holidays until 1987.

What was your first job?

Comments

[miss-t-ide.livejournal.com]

Such riches! When I had a Saturday job I worked for 4 hours in a pharmacy washing bottles. I got £4. Eee. Them were the days!

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be

[wryelle.livejournal.com]

My first job was a paper round. After that I worked on Saturdays on a veg stall. Then when Morrisons opened in town, I started there, Saturdays and evenings.

Ironically, I may be about to start doing a bit of checkout work again, since there's little else that can be done evenings and weekends if I don't want to go down the sending Polly to nursery route. I'm sort of looking forward to it. ;)

[mrkinch.livejournal.com]

Not counting brief, disastrous babysitting and ten years in bird rescue (for which not I but my husband got paid - guess who did the work?), it would have been as a research assistant (read book runner) when I was attempting to get my Ph.D. I was 35.

[dreiviertel.livejournal.com]

Mine was as an interpreter at the (now sadly defunct) St Petersburg branch of the British Council. It was an exhibition on education in the UK. I remember watching our English Lit professor interpret some bigwig's official speech and make a complete pig's ear out of it.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

First job of any description was the summer job I had between my upper sixth and starting university. The Council had this bright idea of employing young people to give schools a thorough spring clean (summer clean?) over the holidays. It was all a bit... disastrous. Still, it got me some money.

First full time job was working in the library of the Oxford Union for a year. I remember getting my first pay slip, and spending almost half of it on a meal at La Dolce Vita in Summertown.

[overconvergent.livejournal.com]

Not counting free-paper rounds, my first job was on the tills at the local branch of a cash-and-carry in 1994 (Nurdin and Peacock's, now taken over by Bookers). I think I was on ~£2.50 an hour.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

A holiday job as an assistant in the library of The Journal, Evening Chronicle and Sunday Sun in Newcastle.

[gramarye1971]

First job (for a proper payslip that involved taxes taken out) was a summer lifeguarding stint at a local college's pool, when I was 18. It's left me with an unutterable hatred of parents who let their children run wild in swimming pools.

[lalwendeboggart.livejournal.com]

My nan used to grow flowers and sell them to a local florist - she'd let me cut, bunch and sell any leftover blooms. I used to sit at the front gate with them in a bucket of water. Sometimes I'd also sell veg and herbs Grandad had left over after he'd sold his crops on to the market. I was 8. Innocent times!

I did plenty of strawberry and pea picking etc, plus did all my mum's ironing to earn £2.50 a week. Then worked on my brother's mobile shop every Saturday morning to earn £4.

[camillofan.livejournal.com]

My first real job (as in, one with a paycheck) was as a waitress. I was 18. We were paid below minimum wage but taxed on the minimum, the difference being made up in tips (so one often did better than minimum). The last honest work (as in, sweat involved) I did. :-)

[freya-9.livejournal.com]

My first job started in the summer vac post-GCSE's (2003), continued Sundays term-time throughout A levels and vacations until Easter 2007 - at Hamerton Zoo Park - entrance, gift shop and coffee shop; it got pretty busy sometimes but the perks were amazing i.e. visiting cheetah cubs. It was pretty much minimum wage, but zero transport costs as it's only a 2 mile cycle from home.

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

Waaaay back I had an evening paper-round that paid £3.30 per week, but it was a great round for Christmas tips (£18!). At Sixth form I started work at Debenhams on Saturday's in the electrical franchise "Greens", for I forgot how much, where I was supposed to sell people TVs, 'home computers' (ZX80s, Spectrums, Commodore Vic20), Atari games systems and Laser disc players (they were the size of LPS!

[begemotr.livejournal.com]

Collecting giant snails which infested our vegetable garden. They went at 50 kopecks per pint.

[sally_maria]

A paper round, where I earned £3.00 a week - later went up to £3.20.

My first job I got a pay cheque and tax was my Saturday job at the local library - a net of about £25 a month. When I got my first pay cheque I bought the first six volumes of the History of Middle-earth in paperback.

[segh.livejournal.com]

For money: checking the register of electors - two weeks' work which brought in about enough to buy a frock.
For payment in kind: standing around in a Victorian gown showing off fans at at-homes given by the lady who founded the fan museum, for which I was actually paid a frock.