What was your very first proper job?

Lots of jobs whilst I was still at school at weekends and holidays. Apple picking, washing up in a restaurant, hop picking but my favourite was at Pedigree toy factory. Mornings of sewing teddy bear paws,painting the gold leaves on Sindy furniture and ironing Rupert bear scarves ! Then after Alevels went to train as a nurse in Bristol.

As I loved flowers, I got a Saturday job for the last term of school, which then became full-time in a florist's shop which I thought I'd enjoy, but it wasn't great. I was paid the measly sum of £6 a week. The work was cold and wet, the work of snipping the stems and de-thorning the roses had to be very speedy and the boss was a lecher. (I certainly know how to pick 'em, don't I?) I left after six weeks.

You worked with flowers, and know how to pick 'em.

My parents wouldn't let me work while I was in school except to help their friend with his Greengrocers business on odd days.
People who knew me seemed to expect special treatment and ones from junior school thought it was a laugh at me getting my hands in the potatoes etc. How are the mighty fallen? I think his profits might have been down.
As a student, I worked holidays in a local authority Care Home for the elderly. I loved it there were two of us students and we used to wash the patient's hair and style it for them . On the downside, we had to empty the commodes and change the wet bedding!!!
Maybe that's why I ended up an Infants teacher as DH says all wet knickers and dirty noses.

I worked in a neighbours burger van at 12 ,when I was 14 the same family hired me to work in the sweetie shop in the local cinema which meant balancing the books at the end of the day and sometimes taking the ice cream tray to the front of the stalls .I learnt a lot there .
It was great fun .5 months before my 16th birthday I left school to work in a photographic lab ,from there 3 years later to a studio and 3 years give or take a few weeks I started my own business with my new husband .
It thrived and we gave it up when covid caused our market to disappear 45 years later .
I have had other businesses running alongside the first and still have a business now .Couldn't stand the thought of not having something to concentrate my mind .

Start with milk/paper round when it became legal at 12. Moved into the cash desk of an electrical s

My first job was office junior in the typing poole

Radio & TV shop when 16 (again legal!) after school and all day Saturdays. Earned £1:10 shillings from which 3 shillings & 4 pence was deducted for a stamp. Retired from work at 74 so feel I've 'earned' my pension.

Confused about the mention of 'proper' job, followed by the mention of holiday jobs, etc.

I worked at the local Coop doing some cleaning after school and on Saturdays when I was in the 6th Form. But my first 'proper' job was as PA to a Director of a big pharma company. And later PA to the MD of a big Engineering Company.

As a young mum, I minded a child the same age as mine for a couple of years. After my youngest went to school, I went to Uni full time for 4 years to do a B.Ed.Hons- and then worked as a secondary school teacher and 6th Form specialist until I retired.

I also worked as a PA/receptionist/assistant for my OH for many years!

MerylStreep

My apprenticeship as a bookbinder which included hand sewing books, then at 18 I was taught to set up and operate the machines for sewing books. I loved it.

Oh, MS, your comment reminded me of my dear late Mum, she too worked in the book binding industry and she would occasionally repair and re-bind books for friends and neighbours. I can still smell the glue and the leatherette fabric used for the covers.

Packing boxes of Polyfilla into bigger boxes as they came off the conveyor.

Working a year in west Drayton mending gyroscope units for the aircraft industry. Lots of liquid nitrogen, mercury switches and Toluene about to play with. Little health and safety! . As I had a music scholarship at the same time I had to be very careful re my fingers. Still remember the fiddle (pun intended) that used to go on the timesheets when I was way over mine in hours and others with less used to amicably swap. But I learnt a lot, the cafeteria was great and the camaraderie was brilliant. Only three ladies in total so we had to stand up for ourselves. I was 18 and grew up fast! I don’t regret any of it.

Worked in the market in a jewelry stall when I was at school left at 15 to work in mill ,winding,weaving etc used to flit from job to job. I sat entrance exam to become a nurse passed and settled doing that for 40odd years .

Working behind the counter in the pop music section of a record shop on Saturdays.

What a dream job.

After Uni I didn't go into a profession. I "dropped out" and was a van delivery girl and worked in a plastic bag factory, and in the local community run whole food bakery, bringing vegan food to the community in the 1970's and gasp....wholegrain brown bread that was the real thing not Hovis.

Later reverted to family form and worked for SSD and Community Education. I got those jobs on the basis of lots of voluntary work though during said dropping out period.

I always wanted to work in a record shop!

I kind of fell into a job as graduate management trainee for one of the big banks and had to work in every department for 2 years. Some of it was dead boring, but I was grateful for the experience to learn skills in finance, legal, marketing and advertising, HR and training etc. I think it taught me how important it is to try to get along with everyone in a big organisation, or any organisation for that matter.

PS I'm a great wrapper of presents. The key is in getting the corners of boxes super tight, or double folding the paper with squidgy parcels. 🎁

I wasn’t allowed to have a job while at
school - not that I wanted one. My first job after I graduated was teaching English Literature in Scotland. I hated it - both the job and the place. It seemed so backward after London. This was over fifty years ago and I’m sure it’s different now.

Then I got a job teaching English Language at a northern university. I quite enjoyed that, but all I really wanted was to get married and have babies. So I did that, and lived happily ever after!

Saturday job in a greengrocers when I was 15. At 18, as a qualified Nursery Nurse in a nursery school, I had my own class.

My first job after leaving school at 16 was as a GPO telephone operator, did that for nearly 4 years. Then a few fill in jobs, one working in a cotton mill as a cone winder, hated it. After several years of bitty jobs, I started at the local Boots warehouse, packing those big brown buckets that you see being unpacked in the shops. Then we moved over here in 1977 and I became a canteen assistant in a printing factory, after first working in the box shop stitching boxes. I took voluntary redundancy in 1992, aged 49, that was my last job.

Library assistant and I loved it

In my last year at school I had a saturday job in a small painting and decorating shop. I knew absolutely nothing about painting and decorating and was really shy!!! I used to sit on a stool and do nothing all day, goodness knows why they kept paying me for a year until I left school and started a full time job.

I worked as a photo-copy girl in a large high-rise building full on engineers developing a steel-mill project. It was my first proper office job full time. We copied blueprints as well as any other booklets and documents. Imagine - there were 5 of us copying all day long!

The office was also central supplies, so the engineers were usually happy to come down to ask for copies and pencils while chatting with all the girls. We were all young and it was a lot of fun.

I was also tasked with being relief receptionist on the 19th floor... where all the executives were. I didn't like it at all, it was very stuffy and formal. I'd much rather be down on the lower floors where it was more relaxed!

The job did not inspire me to an engineering career. I ended up in transportation, as a planner, where I am still working.

I bet nobody can beat me on age for holiday woring . I lived in a rural area and all schools got time off to pick potatoes. The lady who worked in our shop was having a week's holiday to do this and she took me with her , I was seven and a half . The area you had to pick was marked out for you and called a bit . At my age i only had a half bit . We statred work at 7 am each day and it was hard work . I cannot believe my parents let me do this . The next year I went alone and had a half bit but at 9 I had a full bit.
When I left school I really did not know what to do with the qualifications I had but a job was advertised at school in a bank . I sat their exam ( found it a bit insulting really ) and started the next week . I enjoyed the work and it was good to be able to go back park time once the children were older .

I left school at 15 and thought I wanted to do office type work. Anyway a friend near where I lived stopped me one day said "Why don't you work at the bra factory it's just down the road, I do it's good money"

So I trained as a sewing machinist using a big treadle keep feet on to work the machine. Stayed for three years, making bra cups turn them, stitch down middle, moved on to other factories making tracksuits, I put zips in jackets then collars on.

Worked in Woolworths on various counters
Did a stint as chalet maid at Butlins in Filey good fun lots of entertainment there.

Then found a husband married.