WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST JOB??

With the unemployment amongst young people rising again , can you remember your first job and wage?.

Personally, my first day looking for a job i had the offer of three apprenticeships, Plumber,Electrician,Joiner. and numerous other jobs in one day. My first job was a van boy for a furniture company,i was there for three months
then i joined the Merchant Navy.In the Merchant Navy, my Weekly Earning's were @ £4 .all meals included.:D

from this @£4 a week i sent home an allotment of 10 shilling's a week to my Mother :D. Big Buck's.:D.

Oh Happy Days .

 

My first job was working weekends & holidays whilst still a 6th former for a property developer, doing gardening and general labouring/material deliveries. I can't remember how much an hour, but there was minimum wage in those days and I could have earnt more elsewhere, but I put in the hours and had enough to buy a car when I started work.

So no surprise perhaps that my first (and only jobs from then on) real job was a surveyor with a continued interest in gardening.

 

I left school at 15 and had a 5 year Apprenticeship with the local Parks Dept..I cannot really remember the wage but a figure of £3 something comes to mind . I have been in Horticulture ever since ..Always enjoyed my work..

Dave

 

Somewhere around the age of 13 I would babysit for $10.00 for the night.
Then I got a part-time job at 13 also after school working with an accountant entering numbers in his ledgers from forms that was $3.00 an hour. After I graduated from High School got a job at a Deli making sandwiches and being a clerk, that was again $3.00 an hour. All of the later two no benifits.
Then got full-time job at 18 with a Psychiatric Hospital caring for the clients at $3.09 and hour with benifits. Stayed there for a long time, put myself on the overnight shift to go to college in the day.
The hospital paid for 80% of my college costs, and I could study on the overnight while the clients slept, a good situation for me. And that takes me till 27 years old. I'am trying to recall what I made when I left there can't recall. But do know the next job I got at 27 years old I made $20,000.00 a year. And that would have been in 1979. And I did finish a 4 year degree and got a masters later on.

 

Cleaning 2 toilets, 2 shower rooms, 6 lecture rooms & a stairwell, 10 hours a week for £4 a week.

20 Rothmans - 57p Cheapest Draft Bitter in the pub - 20p a pint, takeaway curry from the Bamboo Garden for 2 people - £1.10.

 

Speaking of young people being unemployed.---I 've tried for years to find a nice young person to help with my lawn/garden clean up etc. Offering $8.00 an hour, now $9.00 and hour. My nephew says I should try to tell them that they will earn $20.00 if they do such and such.
BUT, I cannot find anyone. Sometime just a short period someone helps, they don't last.
Trying again this spring. When all the snow melts it will be horrid.

 

I worked in an office learning how to type etc and I earned about £5 a week most of which was used to pay bus fares [I lived out in the country] and paying my keep to my mum.
A world apart from my two sons living standards!!

 

When I was 16, I was the pot washer in the restaurant/cafe in the Sherwood Forest Visitor Centre. I say pot washer, but I spent half my time selling ice creams from the kiosk right next to the Major Oak... brilliant on a wet day... nobody turned up!

If I was told to open up the kiosk, it was a good day... otherwise... euck... pass me the rubber gloves. :P

I got £3.10p per hour. Which considering on a generally good day during summer, I managed to tally up a till balance of around £1500 on just ice creams and cans of pop. Pretty sick really!

That was 9 years ago :D

 

Took up joinery apprenticeship in 1970.

£4 0s 11d a week for the first year, 40 hour week.

rose to £5 10s in the second year.

Still doing it 41yrs later, wages are a bit better, but the conditions have hardly improved in that time.

 

Nurseryman/Supervisor in three private nurseries and three Local Authority nurseries from 1968 till now, bedding, houseplants and exotics. Started on £8 per week, bus and train each way including Sat mornings.

 

I had summer jobs at my grandpa's factory, taking rolls of fabric to the girls on the machines, sweeping up, putting up shelves, executive stuff!
My first real job leaving school at 16 was at the big Boots site (village) at Beeston, Notts where I was a junior lab rat testing ibuprofen. They were great to me and sent me off to college on day release where I eventually got my degree with no student debt! Then they sold the part I worked for off, I thumped an annoying colleague an did pennance in a pot pouri factory for a year, making the perfumes, which killed my sense of smell.

Funny how life turns out.

Cheers
D

 

1st job (aged 15) was a hod-carrier. It was piece work but it worked out at about £15-£20 a week. That was a lot of money in those days. A pint of beer was about 3 shillings. A gallonof petrol was about 2 shillings sixpence. Dad, who was a builder said, "the only thing you get from building is a big pair of bxxxxcks and a strong arm", try something else. So I went into the Police Cadets, fortunately, in those days, if you did something wrong you only got a smack round the head from the copper so no criminal record.:WINK1: Just as well, for me. I was then "earning" about £2 a week but dad, bless him, used to "sub" me. After that, life took its course.:D