Unusual jobs

PECS It was only a holiday job for me though I did it for two summers because the pay was good, around £10/£11 a week if I remember though I had to pay bus fares out of that! One year was 1969 I know because that was the year of the moon landings. I saw some footage on the TV before I went to work in the morning when normally there were no programmes scheduled. I bought a newspaper to record it the next day. Sadly I don't know where that newspaper went! I would have loved to have shown it to my DGC.

Grandma2213 my DHs first 'proper' job (1967/68) before he went to Teacher Training College was with Metal Box!

We had a guillotine in one of the places where I worked, too! We made large manilla envelopes. A thing like a very large metal pastry-cutter, in the shape of the envelope, was placed on top of a large stack of manilla. Down came the top, and hundreds of envelopes were cut out, ready for folding and sticking. The machine made the most horrendous CRUNCH. Woe betide anyone who didn't get their hands out in time! Luckily, it never happened while I was there.

maddyone I've just remembered a spell of wanting to be an air hostess and my mother saying it was just a 'glorified waitress'!

I did a lot of different jobs in school/college/uni holidays. One was cutting up tin to make cans in what was then the Metal Box Company. It was extremely boring but I loved the job title ... 'guillotine operator'!!

Do you know what strikes me on this thread ladies, it’s the number of you who say that either your mother or your father chose your career for you! And the same applied to me. I also always wanted to be a nurse, preferably a children’s nurse, but just like you annsixty, my mother wouldn’t hear of it. However, both my parents wanted me to stay on through the sixth form, and Mum persuaded me (wore me down by constantly proclaiming it’s benefits) to go to do Teacher Training (as it was then called) and so I went to Nottingham ( I wonder if we were there at the same time Ann) and I qualified as a teacher. I enjoyed all my years in teaching, but I always regretted not following my dream. I guess I did at least work with children.

Throughout my childhood I dreamed of working with animals. Even then, I couldn't see it as fair or kind to keep big cats or elephants for example, I circuses or zoos. I wanted to apply to be a mounted police officer at age 17, dad put a stop to that "it's no job for a woman" he said (policing, not riding horses that is).
Dog training - I'd still love to go to our local agricultural college and complete their formal training course.
Gardening - that's had an increasing appeal. All very earth bound my dreams it seems.

I really wanted to be a nurse all my teenage news.
As my mother was a single parent she could/would not let me stay in 6th form ,so I went to train as a Nursery nurse for 2 years until I could go to nursing school.
At 18 my mother was not happy (putting it mildly)at me leaving home and leaving her alone.
I was offered a fulltime job at a Day nursery in Nottingham, which I loved, until I left to have my own family.
I still regret not doing nursing.

tanith wow ambulance driving is a great job and anither not on offer when leaving school! Was that in London too?

I would of loved to of been an air hostess, the uniforms were so lovely and I thought it was the only way I’d ‘see the World’, but my Mum had other ideas. I don’t remember ever seeing a careers advisor, at 15 my Mum got me an interview at C&A Marble Arch branch so I became a junior on the shop floor.
Later in life I became an ambulance driver for 20 yrs a job I loved.

My DH left school at 15, and his Mum had already organised a job for him. His first day's work was a 24 hour shift on a River Mersey tugboat, shovelling coal into the furnace. He always regretted doing what his parents told him to do - as we all did in those days. He would have, given the chance, made an excellent engineer.

Sweet pea, I had a toy telephone exchange that the GPO used, it had all the pulling out pushing in things the real one had, and a little phone attached , I also had a toy Post Office set, with rubber stamps and toy money, I thought I would love to work in the Post Office where I could stamp away all day, I ended up working in a large Department store instead,

Like so many others who went to Grammar School we had the choice of teaching or Civil Service which meant University or Teacher Training College. I had dreams of being a ballerina but despite painful practice could never do the splits! I would have liked to have been a singer but compromising now in my seventies by joining a choir. I also considered journalism because it was a career that offered equal pay with men! Well maybe I'll write a book one day!! I ended up teaching and have to admit I loved it, especially when I moved into Special Needs.

One DGD wants to be an astrophysicist and an astronaut (since she was 8 years old). Another (aged 6 years) would like to be an artist or an architect. Influenced by Grandma? ... Never!!

Slutty gran - was your leech called Archie after Cary Grant?(His real name!)
I was very good at Art in school and wanted to be an artist, but my parents wouldn’t let me so I went to university and became a French teacher. Now I’ve retired, I’m a moderately successful artist and love It’s never too late!

I wanted to be a GPO telephonist, you know the one pushing in those things on long strings to connect callers. I had a slight lisp and the Careers Officer told me in no uncertain terms no one would understand me. I was devastated. Ended up doing secretarial work. Never forgiven him. ?

A few years ago thete wss a job advertised locally for a chicken catcher. Did appeal to me, walking about the woodland with a net scooping up chickens making a bid for freedom from the poultry farm and then taking them somewhere safe ie my garden.

I wanted to be a geophysicist and work on an oilrig until I was told they didn't allow women on oilrigs. I still wish I'd studied geophysics; then I could have done ground surveys of archaeological sites and been on 'Time Team'.
I also loved acting. I wish I'd gone to drama school but I didn't dare suggest it.
The careers adviser suggested I study meteorology. Thinking about it now, I might have enjoyed being a weather girl!

PECS That's funny about the Saturday job. I never did anything exciting. I sat typing and doing clerical work for 40 years! I was asked once to go and dance on a well known pop programme in the '60s. I was too under confident to go.
Who knows what may have happened. Another missed opportunity.

Oh that sounds like anothe job missing from the career advice folder!

Although my parents made me go to a secretarial college
(where I was hopeless) instead of a drama college.
I did get into show business, by a different route and became a magicienne!
I also met my husband (another ?) at a magic convention.
I had such an exciting 25 year career and loved every part of it, sadly retiring when I was 60, and I do miss it.
only retiring at 60

I wanted be a pearl diver in our local canal but sadly funding dried up

I was told in primary school that I was not as clever as my sisters. One was a shorthand typist, the other one was a nursery nurse. I became a trained nurse RGN and RFN. I loved my work and worked happily until I was 68. So I didn't do too badly.

When at infant school my ambition was to work behind either the sweet or the biscuit counter in Woolworths.
I went on to do admin, then accounts and finished up owning a very successful tea shop with my partner.

It could be a book or a film:
"How to Train Your Leech"

it would make a change from a dragon.

I was offered teaching or secretarial training by the careers officer. I wanted to go to medical school, but no way was my dad going to allow that, so I settled for nursing, and I’m glad I did. It was a wonderful career, and now retired I have happy memories.
One thing I did learn during my training was how to handle and apply leeches.
We were told that the treatment was outdated, but it was on the syllabus so we jolly well learned it.
My leech was called Archie - a dear little beastie, he was.
Anyway, leeches are now a very modern and useful treatment prescribed by many doctors, so leech trainers are obvhyiously needed badly!

Never too late jenpax My father was a barrister but would have preferred to have been a writer or an artist. He did paint and write..once we, his kids, were old enough to allow some space in his life.