Anyone want to share memories of their first job.

Flossie I used a big clanking Burroughs machine too. If I remember right there were 4 of them in a line and what a noise they made when all were in use They were positioned so the operators were sat with their backs to the office windows - so we didn't get distracted

Trying to identify accounts by signature was terrifying before names were pre-printed on the cheques. I'm so glad I didn't continue working there.

Does anyone remember typing up the bank statements. A lot of the cheques were so badly written that it was impossible to read the payee. Heaven help you though if you asked for help.

I used a Burroughs 23 machine and when I told my Dad he asked me what I put in it. He thought I said Barrow. I guess he had visions of me wheeling banknotes and coins into the vault.

I left school at 17 on the last day of term and started work in a bank. At the time they used hand written ledgers and we sat on high stools at desks like Bob Cratchet would have used. After a couple of years automated ledgers came in and myself and a more senior girl were shown how to use them over a couple of days. On the day we had to change over the other girl had such a bad asthma attack that she stayed at home . I coped somehow . Some years later on after my marriage I got a move to London and hated the atmosphere there. The boss was snooty , wore a bowler hat and never once spoke to me . When chequebooks started to have you name printed on them he was furious when his came with his surname only as he had used his middle name as well to be posh and have a double barrelled name and people could now see he was just plain Mr. B .
I left the London bank and became a civil servant . What a culture shock . People start to get ready to go home half an hour before the due time , made long distance calls on thier office phones and were so much more laid back .
I went back to banking after my children were older and really enjoyed it until the culture of selling came in and bank managers were swept away in one fell swoop. My boss then was younger than my children and staff numbers shrank . At least the little bit op pension comes in every month now.

I haven't read all the posts on this thread yet but, as I read the OP, I recognised the scenario. I was the daughter of a shop assistant and jobbing gardener. Two months before my leaving grammar school my father was killed. My mother was overwhelmed when her manager 'had a word with a friend' and I was presented with a job in a bank. My wage, however, was only 5 guineas a week, not £10 like Flossies!

My colleagues were so far up themselves it was painful to experience. They were full of the 'I work in a bank' attitude prevalent at the time (1964) and had all got their jobs through people their fathers knew. None of them had been to grammar school and there was a sort of reverse snobbishness shown towards me because I had. I stuck it for 3 months for my mothers sake but then walked out and got myself a job as a basic payroll clerk, earning 10 shillings a week less!

After a couple of weeks at my new job I was asked to take an aptitude test, with a view to joining the new-fangled computer department. The bosses had no idea of what was feasible when they set a wage structure of payment by speed and accuracy and when I left to get married 18 months later I was pulling in £13 per week!

What a really interesting thread! Thank you flossieturner for starting it.

In my first job I was asked my name. When I told the manager, he sneered, we do not use first names here. I was mortified.

I hated that job, stayed a year then started a new one. On the first morning everyone was in the staff room. One of the senior men asked me my name and I said Miss.......
Straightaway one of the women said, OH lad-di-dah Miss........That was worse than the last time, because I tried to explain about how no first names were used at my last job but I don't think anyone heard.

It was an Indian Bank and I loved it, especially the informality. All of the men were from India or Pakistan and all of the women English. They were the most generous kind hearted people I ever worked for.

Left school immediately after o levels, in fact got told off because I should have done the last two weeks of term to do lacemaking and other handy life skills, apparently! Already had a job in Suffolk full time as a groom to the master of the hunt so told my headmistress when I was hauled up that I thought the whole point of education was to get a job, esp one I loved. I had been told throughout school that my horsey phase would pass and I should aim for a proper job as a secretary. I spent the next 35 years working with horses, top racehorses etc, best job in the world.
Loved that first job with the hunters aged 16, lived in a cottage in the grounds, as had left home in Surrey to this pretty little Suffolk village, 15 pounds a week mostly spent in the pub admittedly but very happy.
In the summer break of two months I worked for my dads gardening company and ended up cutting the grass at my old private school, often outside the window where my old class mates were still studying for their a levels! My workmates was a very handsome fit 21 year old who became my boyfriend and my mates used to look at me happy outside in the sunshine with my gorgeous boyfriend, who was laughing now?
Marries that gorgeous boyfriend 35 years ago

I often feel nostalgic about the good old days in offices, when as auntbett says senior women staff were always called Miss or Mrs. I remember that most offices I worked in had a tea lady who bought round tea, coffee and biscuits at 11.am and 3 pm on a tea trolley with an urn. I mastered all the various office equipment from the doll's eye switchboard through to the massive Teleprinter which spewed out masses of paper tape. In one job where I was a secretarial assistant in an estimating office, I was seen as a "skilled kiddie" meaning I could practically run any office. The pay was good too and I was earning as much as many men in my neighbourhood.

Thank you all so much for sharing. I have found this thread absolutely fascinating. It's such a change from then to now - our granddaughters will all have doors open to them that we would never have dreamed of (in theory) but it's so much harder now for young people to get that first Saturday job or entry level work. It's so interesting though! Thanks for sharing.

£3/10/-, not £3.50!

My first job was in 1960 at the age of 16, working for an Old People's Welfare Council in I won't say where. The Organiser was a tyrant, and even an electrician that came to fix our fire jumped up in indignation after she's left the office and said "You don't want to let her speak to you like that" but I was too afraid to say anything.
The pay was £3.50 a week and I wore black stockings as they didn't ladder as easily as the sheer ones, as I couldn't afford to keep buying tights. One of the directors complained about my black stockings and I was ordered not to wear them again.

I will never buy a certain brand of fruit because at interview for a job with them I was told I could not have the job because I didn't have O levels and they didn't know what RSA exams were.

I was unfortunate in having a mother who did everything to stop me doing well at school and just wanted me to stay at home to help her with the housework. My father in law told me I wasn't clever enough to pass the Civil Service entrance exam. I spent a large part of my life thinking I was a dimwit, but now have a degree. I spent my whole working life in a menial poorly paid secretarial role, mostly "temping" after my husband was killed aged 44 and I had to support my 2 sons. You wouldn't believe how many thickos I've come across in well paid jobs. Hard times.

I was lucky enough in 1965 to begin work, and got two job offers on the same day. My first full-time job was a junior secretary with a council office. I was so nervous at first that I made typing errors and, with no Tippex then, I would hide the spoiled letters in my bottom drawer. My boss was a dear, but his deputy was a horrid man and a bit of a bully. I used to dread Monday mornings, and changed to work in a travel agency after six months. My Mum was cross, saying I should stay with the council for security!

I worked in an office in a very stuffy, oldfashioned printing works where senior secretaries were addressed as Miss or Mrs certainly not on first name terms.I was a junior aged 16 and earned £4 a week, of which £1 went on bus fares, £2 for my board, so not much left for anything else! I lasted 9 months in the job and then went to work for British Railways Workshops in a typing pool and earned £10 a week! I was rich!

My first job after O levels was in the laboratory of a large steelworks. I fell in love with my boss and sometimes on Friday afternoos I sat on his knee!
Apart from that I didn't like it and moved to another a steelworks. We were 10 lab assistants and boys were paid more than girls so we were quite a few girls and used to sing our way through all the musicals

Later as a young mother, I worked one day a week in a large department store selling bedding and household goods. I used to take future brides and their mothers around and help them choose their bedding and towels. I loved it and especially the morning coffee, lunch and afternoon tea which went with the job!

I delivered papers and also had a Saturday job in the local independent stationers & printers shop(friends of my mum) when I was about 14/15 until I left school. All those pens and pencils, paper, envelopes and cards! No automatic tills/bar codes and at Christmas all cards were individual so people might buy 20 differently priced cards

Afer that I had holiday jobs before college and in holidays that included: sales assistant in a hoisery department with a whooshy money system that whizzed round the shop, Kenya Coffee house waitress, Xmas postie x 3 Xmasses (& delivered to Jimmy Tarbuck), care assistant in the summer hols (children's home and an adult care home). I also taught English to young French students who came to UK in the Easter hols and stayed en famille with local families and I had to take them on their guided tours to all tourist hot spots! My firts permanent job was a class teacher to a class of 40 'middle infants' (Yr1) in Battersea. Good times!

I was still at school and my uncle who had his own shop offered me a job for the summer holiday which I accepted with delight. I was very busy, serving customers, going to the bank, cleaning and tidying up and I was run off my feet. At the end of the week he opened the till and gave me a ten bob note. I was very upset as my fares had cost me that, but I didn't say anything to him, well you didn't in those days, did you? Mum was fuming and they had a bit of a row about it and she wouldn't let me go the following week.
All part of life's rich tapestry eh!

My first job was in August of 1944. I left school at the age of 14 to go into the printing trade but I was only there three weeks when there was a shortage of paper. The war was still going strong and there were shortages in everything that we now take for granted.
We had to look busy doing something when the owner did his rounds and unfortunately I had been to the toilet and the boss was just walking in.
He said to me because I was a newcomer and the youngest working there ( I use that phrase loosely ) “Well while you are waiting for delivery you can go and clean the toilets out.”
I have to say here that by this time I had grown into a cheeky b****r who would not take any crap from anyone. I think I had caught the ‘speak up for yourself bug’ from my mother.
I remember turning to him with my hands on my hips saying “I came here to learn the printing trade not to clean ruddy toilets.” With that I got my coat and went home. I went to the Labour Exchange next day and told them that the job was not much good because we were standing around waiting for deliveries. I finished up working in a hosiery factory earning 15/- or 75 pence in todays coinage, for 50 hours a week.I handed over 10/- or 50 pence of that for my keep to my mother.
Blimey! just writing this has taken me back 72 years because I am 86 now.

My first job was as a trainee veterinary nurse in Hampstead. Our clients were mostly writers, politicians and actresses. Everybody had toy poodles and Siamese cats.
I lived-in, worked 65 hours per week and was paid £7 weekly.
I thought I'd died and gone to heaven!

Not permanent, but it must have been delivering xmas post as a student. Then another student job, assistant "nurse" in a psychiatric hospital. That was a life-changer.

I started to work in 1956 as an office junior, part of my job was to lockup at the end of the day with the duty person at 5:30, then on my way home I called into the post office with the daily registered letters containing liquid gold silver and platinum. the postmaster at the time said one day if I didn't get the letters earlier he would not accept them. One day my boss saw me out before time and asked what I was doing, I told him and said I was back to lock up at the right time. He phoned the postmaster who denied he had said anything of the sort. So that was me finished

flossie I was almost nineteen.

I was a Woolworth Safurday girl, 1962 I think. Hated it as I was painfully shy. I had to talk to people! First full time job straight from school was in a Council office, Town Clerk's Department as a very junior Junior. I can't recall the pay, don't have that sort of memory but I do recall the people. Most were lovely, kind and helpful. My immediate supervisor looked ferocious, a very stern looking woman but had a heart of,gold. She helped my confidence enormously. I ran errands and loved the freedom of going out of the office and being paid for it. The overall manager was a tyrant though. I had to work one Saturday in six, went to see him with another Junior to ask to swap our Saturdays. My Mum had just been discharged from hospital and was bedridden, it would have helped so much to have that swap so I could look after her and let my Dad catch up on his work. We had such a lecture. A definite 'no'. I soon moved to the library service which was much less formal and structured, first names instead of surnames! Loved it there. My wages were subdivided into thirds from the beginning. One third for the housekeeping, one third to save the other third was mine to spend. My Mum's system which stayed with me into marriage. It worked then, guess it wouldn't for those starting out now. Isn't memory odd? I can recall the people in such detail as I can with the (many) subsequent changes, but what I was paid escapes me. Guess I have always been more interested in people.

My very first job was on the deli counter in Woolies. I worked 4 hrs on a Saturday for 15 shillings. The first time a customer said to me "I'll give you the threepence" when I sold her something for 1s 3d, I didn't have a clue what she meant but I soon learnt. Not long after that we converted to decimal currency and I clearly remember how it slowed things down as we patiently helped customers with their money. My children now laugh at how we could ever have had such a ridiculous monetary system. I'm just about there with centigrade but I still need to mentally convert length and weight to imperial to get any grasp of size.

My first full-time, permanent job (as opposed to working on the nearby farms in the holidays), was as a shorthand typist working for the deputy hospital secretary at Severalls Psychiatric Hospital in Colchester.

Although I didn't particularly like secretarial work, it was a lovely, interesting job as I also worked for the various consultants when their secretaries were on holiday/sick. The money wasn't brilliant and I left after about two years to work for a private manufacturing company where I earned considerably more. However, it was so uninteresting that I soon came to understand that it really was possible to be "bored to tears".

I am so glad I started this thread, all of these stories are so interesting.