No. My first workplace was in an office of a woolen textile mill. I was 17. Like almost all of such mills that had survived that long, I think it had closed a couple of years later, but I had moved on by then anyway.
Very much so! When I joined the company in 2004, we were a team of 7. By the time I retired in 2020, there were over 1000 employees. The company was bought out by an American company in 2022 and, as of July 2026, there are over 82,000 employees worldwide. My old office building is still operational.
My first Saturday job in Woolworths...on the loo roll counter, selling Broncho paper.. 😊 School I taught at is still alive and kicking, partly modernised now.
The first hospital I worked at is still standing but it looks very different though some of the old buildings are still in use. The second closed in 1978
Yes. Our district general hospital is still up and running. Albeit hollowed out by decisions made. No more A&E 24/7 with consultant /registrar on call. No more ICU with all that equipment and expertise just gone. No Special Care Baby Unit. It looks the same on the outside (was the 1st NHS hospital in the country, opened officially by Nye Bevan in 1947) but inside? It looks like a (fairly empty) glorified health centre. Huge long corridors that used to be bustling with medics, porters and patients - now empty you can see all the way down them, without a soul walking them. It’s sad really.
And yet the population locally has grown. Seems daft to me. Who makes these decisions?
One is still running. It was a care home but is under different management now. Woolworths where I worked as a Saturday girl is no more, neither is the large psychiatric hospital where I achieved my RMN qualification, which is sad as it was very needed. Care in the community is a poor substitute in my opinion.
4 hospitals, 2 in Scotland, two in England are all blocks of flats. The last one in central London moved just after I left In the last, there is parking for ambulances, but maybe people don't need the use of a car these days after being discharged.
Well, the Ministry of Defence is still going strong! As for the later ones; Abbey National has folded, the cleaning company I worked for after that closed after being in business for a hundred and sixty years. I was then in at the inception of a firm of occupational psychologists and saw it burgeon into a thriving company with a fine reputation, but by the time I was ready to retire it had all but gone to the wall.