Anyone want to share memories of their first job.

I started work, at sixteen, as a cadet nurse. I started on a geriatric ward and worked my way round the hospital, it was a brilliant introduction into how a hospital is run, I even worked in the finance office. I continued in this job until I turned 18 and then became a pre PTS nurse until the commencement of the training school a few weeks later. This was the career I had wanted from being 5 years old, perhaps not surprising that I was born on Florence Nightingale's birthday

Memory Lane! I started teaching in September1959 and was paid £28. Ihave now looked into an old jotter and seen the following:- Monthly Accounts. Average pay-£30,
Lodgings-£12. Pocket money- £7-£8. To bank every month-£10.
Because I was in digs I yearned for my very own radio,but it was too expensive to buy outright, and, as I was not yet 21my father became my guarantor, even though as a clergyman he earned less than I did. This deal took another £4 from my "pocket money". The money doesn't sound much by today's standards but I felt as rich as a queen, lived within my budget---- and never bought on hire-purchase after that.

My first job was a Saturday girl at a supermarket which was great fun.We mostly stacked shelves and helped in the warehouse but we always had a good laugh while working.The manager was a funny man who kept a huge jar of pickled onions on his desk!
My first job after leaving school was a care assistant at an elderly peoples home,which was really a general dogsbody doing everything from cleaning to serving dinner to accompanying residents on a walk.Hard work but I loved listening to the residents stories and hearing about their adventures in life.The oldest was a 105 year old lady.She was lovely and didn't look a day over 80.The manager was a Dutch lady who was very strict but fair and I look back on those days fondly.

My first job was in a shop selling clothes, not posh ones, just ordinary everyday things. I was tea girl for the first few months and on New years eve we had a party in the tea room after the shop closed. There was no heating in the room so we had to light the oven to warm the place up. On the day we were back to work I filled both the kettles and turned knobs
to light the gas. Next thing I knew I was lying on the floor on the other side of the room. Nobody had turned the gas off on the oven, ( it was turned off by the owner at the mains every night), so while I was filling the kettles the gas was building up inside, and when I opened the door it ignited. My face and hands were burnt, my eyebrows and some of my hair was frazzled, I was sore all over. What did the boss do? Rubbed some kind of burn ointment on my face and hands, it was bright yellow, and then I was sent out to the bakers to get the goodies that the rest of the staff wanted for their break. No mention of taking me to the hospital which was just at the top of the street, or even just taking me home. Despite what happened I enjoyed working there and stayed for quite a few years

My first proper job, after training, was as a shorthand writer in the Ministry of Defence. We were a mixed pool of Wrens, Wraf and Wrac (of whom I was one). We worked shifts. The Wraf seemed to think they were a cut above the Wrac, and the Wrens looked down on absolutely everyone! I was hopeless to start with and hated it. I once took a pile of files up to the conference room, tripped over a stair and spilled them all at the feet of a man in a grey suit who was coming the other way. He was very kind and helped me pick them up. I thanked him and it wasn't until he'd gone that I realised it was Lord Mountbatten, who was then coming to the end of his tenure as Chief of the Defence Staff. When I got back downstairs and told our supervisor, she played merry hell with me and called me all the stupid s*ds under the sun! .

My first job was working at a local factory making emergency lighting fittings. It was a summer job in between lower and upper sixth, in 1974. I earned 55p an hour. This was before equal pay legislation came into effect; women were paid less than men (who got 59p) even though we were generally better at the job because it was very fiddly work (installing and wiring up circuit boards) and our fingers were smaller. Managed to save enough from it to have a week in Corfu the next year.

My Mum got me my first job the week after I left school at 15 she took me on the bus up to Marble Arch marched me into C & A for an interview for a job as a junior sales assistant. I got the job starting in the basement ladies dress department the following Monday. It was 1963 and I earned £4.10s a week I gave my Mum £2 10s out of that princely sum. I loved that job even though I spent my mornings cleaning all the mirrors and uncovering the racks of dresses as they were all covered over every evening with dust sheets, we girls had such a laugh all day long and as it was the cheaper end of the market all the customers were just ordinary working class girls like us so they were up for fun and laughs too. The 'posh' frocks were on the first floor with the wedding dresses we didn't have much contact with them 2 floors above. I stayed there till I stupidly got pregnant at 19.

After a year p/t teaching violin/viola/recorder in London schools, my first f/t job was working for a company moving sea containers round the world on punch cards. Every Wednesday we finished early, packed up the punch cards to take to processing centre to print out new week's listing. Every Thursday we were told that no new listings, because of computer error, so until new listings came out late on Thursday we couldn't do anything. Spent day playing Ludo/Scrabble. Pay was fantastic, and great bunch of people, but hated it! Then went into various Civil Service departments, which I loved and later stayed with office work of different types.

My first job was at age 16 as a trainee technician in the Photography Department of the Arts Library, Manchester University. The wage in 1959: £3.50 for a five day week and alternate Saturday mornings. I was catapulted from my working class background into what seemed like a kind of heaven, in spite of my being a clumsy bungler who wrecked yards of microfilm and burnt the prints. The pace was slow, and I met all these middle class types who'd never crossed my path before except for one or two posh girls at the grammar school I attended in Stockport, and the local vicar. I got my mitts on old manuscripts, museum exhibits and criss-crossed the campus delivering stuff to rarefied academics, full of enthusiasm for their subjects. I count myself very fortunate to have started off there. It made me look at girls whose only ambition was to get married and have kids with new eyes because in my single parent family we were too busy surviving to foster ambition. Next instalment available if Gransnetters are interested.

September 1960, went to teach juniors in Camberwell. Shared a flat in Peckham with 2 college friends. First payslip : £36 net per month.My share of rent £12 per month. We each put £1 a week in the kitty for food and cleaning materials!
Into London after school most Thursdays for late shopping (mostly 'just looking'!) and often a show. Tickets so cheap, choice of shows so wide. Public transport also cheap and reliable as far as I remember. Everything at a standstill when Smog came. Walking home from Camberwell to Peckham unable to see a yard ahead, cautiously progressing from gatepost to gatepost in side roads. Most other invisible fellow pedestrians spoke, trying to get our bearings, anxious keep in the right direction, to avoid the cars creeping along the gutters. Not kerb crawling, simply trying to get home too! Smog!

Worked in a hairdressers as a Saturday girl for a year or so before I left school. Left school at 15 in 1967 and became a GPO telephonist. Loved the job and met and married a telephone engineer.

My first job was as a junior in a building society in 1967. I earned the princely sum of £5 a week. My duties included making tea and running errands which had nothing to do with the job and initially I didn't like it very much. As other juniors were employed I moved up the pecking order to become head of a department. We all became great friends and loved our jobs. Then mergers happened and we were split up or made redundant. However, we remained friends and to this day we meet up every 6 weeks or so. Very happy times!

Saturday job on market full. Time job I worked in a mill winding weft for looms it was paye so had to get up to speed quick.

As a Saturday girl on the toy counter in Woolworths, loved it, then they discovered I went to Grammar school so moved me 'up' to the office. Probably the reason I have run from office jobs all my life.

My first proper job other than waitressing while still at school was as a fling clerk in a factory office. I loathed it but it brought home to me that as I had messed up at school I needed to try and find a job that would give me a training and a qualification so after a few more false starts and a disastrous early marriage (when I mess up I really mess up) I trained as a nurse and didn't look back.

In the early 60's one could choose jobs and I had a choice between working at the local newspaper as a trainee reporter or working in the local library with the knowledge that I would eventually become a trained librarian. I earned £2 a week and this was in 1961

It was small, only two of us worked there full time and I hated it. I will never forget the regional chief librarian's words to me when I handed in my notice, how I had wasted his time etc. and my giving up my place at college was a chance I would regret for the rest of my life- eh, no.

Apart from babysitting, my first job was in a bank too. I earned £7 pw and I hated it when I worked in the town centre branch but was moved to a suburban one and loved it. I loved the 'regulars', i learnt loads and loved balancing the branch. I eventually worked on foreign so I am bewildered by why it baffles me now. The pound was devalued during my time there _ things didn't get much more interesting than that.

The female members of staff had the most appalling navy, nylon coat to wear - the men could wear their own clothes.

The manager was often taken out for lunch by the flashy customers and, as he decided the bank charges, the more often and more indulgent the lunches, the lower your charges would be. Snores often emanated from behind his closed door in the afternoons

My first job was as a waitress in a seaside café during the summer season. It was long hours but fun. The bosses were generous and paid bus fares and provided meals on duty. I also met my life long (47 yrs) friend who was also working as a season waitress so all in all a very good time. My first job after leaving school was in a Travel Agents.

I remember my first job. I was 16 straight out of school (further education was never an option). I had done okay(ish) at my grammar school and got a few GCE (O'levels) however I didn't know anyone who could get me into the civil service (my family were all shop workers,factory workers, shipyards, miners etc.) so I had no chance there. I REALLY wanted to do some kind of social work but would have had to go to college and even considered the prison service (I would have been eaten alive) but eventually applied and succeeded in getting a job with a large supermarket chain who had just introduced computers into their administration departments. This was 1976. I joined a small team of data input operators which was quite a new thing for the time and earned me the fantastical sum of £22 a week. Comps were very new and we were given a lot of extra privileges including "eye rest" breaks and extended lunch breaks. I stayed with the company for quite a long time and only had a few weeks away after the shock of giving birth to my son aged only 18. Happy memories.

My very first job was as a Woolworth's Saturday girl. I worked there for two years while at school, and then secretarial college. I loved it. My counter was "loose sweets". From there I went to work in a bank as an office junior. I hated it, most of my day was spent filing! I had a marriage proposal from one of the young men there. I was 17 and much too young, so I turned him down. I often wonder where he ended up.