Anyone want to share memories of their first job.

I suppose my first job at age 13 was working in my parent's pub as an unpaid glass washer.
In 1968, age 17, I started work as a trainee dispenser for a well known chemist store chain. I spent 6 months working on the chemist counter before being allowed into the Inner Sanctum of the dispensary. Back then you still made many of the medicines from scratch and many of the recipes sounded as if they came from the middle ages. I found it all fascinating and had many laughs with the shop girls with whom I worked.
As a well brought up catholic girl I did find it embarrassing selling condoms etc when working on the chemist counter. In those days we were not allowed to put contraceptives on display so customers had to ask for them. They were kept in a drawer below the counter. It was labelled, "Indoor Sports!"
By the time I left to have my first baby I was a senior dispenser, surgical appliance fitter and was so well versed in the whole range of 'prophilactics' that I was nicknamed, The Contraceptive Queen.
Happy Days!

My first job (apart from Saturday jobs) was as a studio assistant in a graphic design company. It was the early 70s and I was 16 and wanted to go to Art College to study illustration but my parents had got divorced so I couldn't afford to go.
The design company owner knew my mother (I think he fancied her tbh) I took in my portfolio and got the job
I earnt £6.50 per week and lived in a bedsit which cost £2.50 per week. At the end of the week I walked most places and lived on Oxo cubes! I was delightfully slim
It was great fun, everything was hand drawn and we used Letraset. Our clients were Warner Hudnutt Lambert (Polycolour, Efferdent, Swiss Bio Facial etc) and various other smaller businesses. We did the publicity for the premiere for Live and Let Die as one of our clients products was used in the film. They had a gala dinner at the Inn on the Park and we went to set it up. I hand lettered Roger Moore's place card!
Another time we had to do the packaging design for novelty condoms and as they were thick as rubber gloves, we inflated them and used them as Christmas decorations!
My wages rose to the dizzying heights of £11.50 before I left to earn big bucks in the library service

My first job was as a secretary to a solicitor in St Helier, Jersey. This was in 1954 and I earned £5.00 a week, and worked all day Saturday but had Thursday afternoon free. No document could have a correction so I frequently had to retype pages. There were two smudgy blue carbon copies behind each sheet of paper. Copies of all documents were copied chronologically into what looked like a 15th century printing press - perhaps it was!

Started Saturday jobs at 13, at a fruiterers, then a cafe and lastly the new wimpy bar in the high street. I worked all day for 50p (10s) Left school 2 weeks after my 15 th birthday. This was early 60's. after spending 5 weeks in germany visiting family and picking up a smidgen of German I started training at the civil service typing college in the Aldwych where we sat in large classes, each with a manual black imperial 58 typewriter. They played the william tell overture on a radiogram and our job was to type in time to the (very fast) music. Anyone mistiming carriage return was taken aside and given extra practice. When I was trained I worked in the inland revenue! 40 hours a week and was paid £4.10s 2d per week. I gave my mum £1.50 a week, my season ticket to London was £1.50 too. Mum suggested I save £1 pw which left me 50p, exactly the same as my Saturday jobs but I only worked one day a week to earn that but it did mean I got into the habit of always saving a bit which has stood us in good stead over the years.

I had various Saturday jobs from about 1963, mostly in shops, I was paid about
16/-. During the Christmas holidays I worked in Gamages & Swan & Edgar in London and yes my legs & feet were killing me. I also worked for the Post Office delivering the Christmas mail. I loved that, the sorting office was good fun. My mum lent me her wicker trolley for my round and my mates tied tinsel & balloons on it & made a toot toot sound when I arrived in the morning. It's still making me chuckle now.
I also worked for an office phone cleaning company & was sent all over London & Essex with my brown uniform & brown case of cleaning equipment. Some of the places were down by the Thames Estuary & I spent my lunch breaks watching the birds especially the waders. I am now a very keen member of the RSPB, it's funny how these small beginnings can influence your later passions.

I started work a week after my 15th birthday. I was lucky to get an apprenticeship in book binding & hand sewing ( books) I loved everything about printing.

I started as a Saturday assistant in Libraries on my sixteenth birthday, did Saturdays and holiday work with the same Library service whilst at Uni and during my post grad studies, then worked for that same Local Authority as a Librarian until I took early retirement five years ago!
So basically, my first job was more or less the same as my last job!

My first job was as a concessionaire in Butlins holiday camp, Barry Island. It was 1971. I worked in the department store for an outside trader (he had the concession in several camps). I sold plastic combs and toothbrushes you could have personalised with your name in real gold leaf. I had a little heated printing machine that worked by melting the gold leaf into the plastic. I shared a chalet with an older lady who worked directly for Butlins but I don't remember what she did. Concessionaires were paid more than Butlins employees (I don't remember how much it was) and my boss (by agreement) sent me a proportion of my wages as pocket money and kept the rest for me for when I finished and went back to university in Cardiff. So I got a good lump sum.

The biggest shock I got was realising I had to work seven days a week! Once or twice I was 'ill' so I could get a day off. My counter had to be managed for the day by a rather naive Butlins lady and she was conned by naughty lads into printing rude stuff on the comb and toothbrush sets e.g. Betty Swallocks!

When I graduated, I got a job with Loughborough Corporation as an analytical chemist at the local sewage works. We analysed sewage and trade effluent. My salary was £1350pa. I saved most of it towards a deposit for a house. I paid board to my mum but she put it away and used it to buy me a swish cooker when I got married.

My very first job was in 1968 as a Pre-Nursing Student, which I did for two years before I commenced my State Registered Nurse training. I think we earned about £25 a month, which was to cover the cost of black stockings and bus fares etc. ☺️ I absolutely loved it and although things were a lot more strict and formal, we had wonderful teaching, great experience but also lots of fun and I wouldn't have changed a thing. When I commenced my S.R.N training in 1970, we had to "
live - in " for a year in the Nurses Home and I loved it because it was my first taste of "freedom " and we had lots of fun but we also worked very hard and gained tremendous experience. Oh such happy days.........☺️

How interesting to read all these stories. My first job was a Saturday job at a Littlewoods store in 1963 when I earned 10s/9d. I think my bus fares were over one shilling. I also worked there in the school holiday weeks and I seem to remember being paid £3 10s,(£3.50) minus bus fares again. I moved around departments and when I worked in the clothes department we wore the dresses to model them (no extra pay but I could never have worn dresses as fashionable normally so this was a bonus!)

I had many holiday and gap jobs after that, too numerous and varied to describe, but when I finally started teaching in 1972 I considered myself to be rich with (I think)about £1000 pa before tax and insurance.

My first job was a nightmare. I was 16 and Secretary to the boss who was a bit of a sex pest. The office had six girls working in it and a culture of bullying of which I had my fair share. The work load was horrendous. I took up to 30 letters a day from shorthand, did filing and had to take my turn on the switchboard. I was so exhausted that I used to fall asleep on the bus going home. I hated that job but was determined to stay for at least a year. After about 18 months I found another job in an office with lots of friendly young people my own age. I was coming up to 18 by then and had grown up a lot. It was like moving from a world of misery into a happy place full of fun and laughter.

Now I don't know why I did it but three months past my 16th birthday I decided to leave school. I got a job in a bank, it was 1969 and they had just stopped opening on Saturdays. It was in Fleet Street directly opposite the Daily Express building. I hated it, the others were all so old. The nearest one to me was 18 and all she could talk about was mortgages and weddings. When anyone had to go down to the vaults they had to go in pairs. I always ended up going with Colin who was nice enough but oh the pong! Remember the nylon shirts that were all the rage then?
Only lasted there about six months before moving to a merchant bank, much more fun. I really wish now that I had stayed on at school.

My first job was in Rhodesia as a typist for Civil Aviation.
I was responsible for typing up aircraft accident reports and keeping the accident library up to date.
One of the worst moments was when I had to retype the report of the crash which killed Dag Hammarskjöld, the Secretary General of the United Nations and 15 others for an investigation into his death. It is still unclear as to whether or not the plane was shot down.
Luckily the job was just a stop-gap before I went to university, dont think I could have carried on with it in the long term!

Oh yes I can remember my first job. I went to a Boys school and at 15 went to work at Samgamo Western in a dept of 50 or so women, I and one other were the only boys. My education took a very steep learning curve.

My first job was also in a bank earning £28 a month in 1967. Funny thing was that one of the regular customers I served was my maths teacher (whos name was Mr Measures!,)who used to say 'how on earth did you get this job?' Yes I was hopeless at logarithm and algebra, but my arithmetic never let me down throughout my life career in banking. And have I ever needed to use algebra or logarithm in the last 50 years?----never!

I started work as a pre-nursing student at the age of seventeen , we weren't allowed to start our actual nursing training until eighteen. Therefore we worked in hospital departments like physio, occupational therapy, pharmacy, and I worked in casualty. At seventeen I saw some gruesome sights , I didn't tell my mother half of them fearing she'd insist I'd be moved as I loved it. Parents had more influence then. I earned, wait for it, £10 a month . It was rubbish pay then and my parents and grandparents had to help me out with clothes etc. The fact that we were paid so poorly was almost because so many people said our career was a vocation . We weren't nuns I could assure you, I just wanted to work in a job that meant I could travel one day . When I started my nursing course my salary, never pay, rose to the dizzy heights of £12 a month. It would be a good few years until I got a decent , liveable salary. I never regretted it though.

My first holiday job was in 1968 as an office junior in accounts - I had to add cheques on a large adding machine, then file them for £10 a week. I then went to secretarial college and started work in 1969 at a small charity as a junior shorthand-typist for £13 a week. This was central London, hence the pay was good.

I started work as a live in mother's help immediately after leaving school, as fill in until I started nursing. Great sense of freedom, and sometimes had use of the family car on my one afternoon off a week. There were four children, a bedwetting three year old, twin boys of seven who did their best to make me confused as to which was which, and a sulky nine year old who used to swear at me. I was only allowed to use the one loo in my own bathroom, and cooked for the family, but not allowed to eat with them. They were a very strict Jewish people, with separate sinks for milk and meat utensils, separate saucepans etc, a nightmare for me. They told me one day to leave as they had found someone more permanent - apparently she only lasted one afternoon before telling them what they could do with their job!

Nursing was exciting and terrifying, I only got just over half way through my training - to be left in charge of a whole ward of patients at night, several of whom were due to arrest, was nail biting. If I called the night sister, I would have to give her a verbal report on each patient in the ward, when I couldn't possibly remember 20 diagnoses, each with their own separate medication list, and whether they had had their bowels open or not! We had to live in, and be in by 10.30 each night, with a special late pass until 11.00 pm twice a week. If you were late, you were up before Matron the next morning. The taxi drivers knew us, and would whisk us home from the theatres at top speed, for no charge. I was told I could not have the time off to attend my own engagement party, so went off sick and left the next month.

purpledaffodil I was working in Cheapside on the morning of Churchill's funeral. Just as we left it left St Paul's and proceeded down Eastcheap. My claim to fame is 'attending' Churchill's funeral.

Flossieturner my WRAC unit (based at Mill Hill) was on route lining duty that day on Ludgate Hill. We had been there since five in the morning and my God it was cold. I thought I'd never feel my legs again!

Wow we were only a few streets away from each other. how old were you?.

I am so glad I started this thread, all of these stories are so interesting.

My first full-time, permanent job (as opposed to working on the nearby farms in the holidays), was as a shorthand typist working for the deputy hospital secretary at Severalls Psychiatric Hospital in Colchester.

Although I didn't particularly like secretarial work, it was a lovely, interesting job as I also worked for the various consultants when their secretaries were on holiday/sick. The money wasn't brilliant and I left after about two years to work for a private manufacturing company where I earned considerably more. However, it was so uninteresting that I soon came to understand that it really was possible to be "bored to tears".

My very first job was on the deli counter in Woolies. I worked 4 hrs on a Saturday for 15 shillings. The first time a customer said to me "I'll give you the threepence" when I sold her something for 1s 3d, I didn't have a clue what she meant but I soon learnt. Not long after that we converted to decimal currency and I clearly remember how it slowed things down as we patiently helped customers with their money. My children now laugh at how we could ever have had such a ridiculous monetary system. I'm just about there with centigrade but I still need to mentally convert length and weight to imperial to get any grasp of size.

I was a Woolworth Safurday girl, 1962 I think. Hated it as I was painfully shy. I had to talk to people! First full time job straight from school was in a Council office, Town Clerk's Department as a very junior Junior. I can't recall the pay, don't have that sort of memory but I do recall the people. Most were lovely, kind and helpful. My immediate supervisor looked ferocious, a very stern looking woman but had a heart of,gold. She helped my confidence enormously. I ran errands and loved the freedom of going out of the office and being paid for it. The overall manager was a tyrant though. I had to work one Saturday in six, went to see him with another Junior to ask to swap our Saturdays. My Mum had just been discharged from hospital and was bedridden, it would have helped so much to have that swap so I could look after her and let my Dad catch up on his work. We had such a lecture. A definite 'no'. I soon moved to the library service which was much less formal and structured, first names instead of surnames! Loved it there. My wages were subdivided into thirds from the beginning. One third for the housekeeping, one third to save the other third was mine to spend. My Mum's system which stayed with me into marriage. It worked then, guess it wouldn't for those starting out now. Isn't memory odd? I can recall the people in such detail as I can with the (many) subsequent changes, but what I was paid escapes me. Guess I have always been more interested in people.