What was your very first proper job?

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.

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!

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.

My first job was office junior in the typing poole

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

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 .

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.

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

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.

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.

My first paid job was as an extra at the Post Office, delivering Christmas mail. I did this two years running while I was still at school. I bought my first pair of (not very) high heels from Freeman, Hardy Willis and wondered what my mother would say.
I loved delivering the mail and about a week before Christmas the bag got very heavy, then really light by Christmas. Unbelievably I had to deliver on Christmas Day, and had to get a lift from someone as there were no buses.

My first job was in a shoe shop, I enjoyed it. In those days you had to take the shoes off for the customers & put the new ones on. I can't imagine that happening now.

I had lots of jobs while I was still at school, but my first one when I left was a dental nurse, the same as DanniRae.

I really loved that job! Gruesome enough to appeal, lovely patients, and a white coat and Scholls.

I had a Saturday and school holiday job at WH Smiths, working on the tills.

My first job on leaving school was as a Clerk in a firm of Patent and Trade Mark Agents. I was a very competent typist, never really got the hang of shorthand, and enjoyed my time there and made some good friends.

I was there for about five years and left when I was pregnant with my first daughter.

Working in the typing pool in Debenhams offices. I enjoyed it and was sad to leave.

I went potato picking as a kid as we all did at the local farm it was hard work but the money was good, I got a Saturday job in a hairdressers then apprenticeship which I didn’t complete because of dermatitis that was persistent.
I worked in a furriers shop in town for a year but I wanted an office job. I did an office training course typing and Pitmans script I worked at the Merchant Navy office temporarily until I secured a job at Trade Protection for a number of years. That was my early working life I went on to other things including university it was an interesting work life.

I also left school at 15 and started work in an office on the telephone switchboard. It was alarming at first, putting callers through to the wrong place. But they soon sent me to secretarial college to learn shorthand, typing and book-keeping, thankfully.

I left school at fifteen to be a Window Dresser in Knightsbridge. I commuted every day from Kent and thought I was very grown up.

Kittylester Aged 15, I applied for an advertised post as a bank apprentice, was interviewed, passed the entrance exam and got the job, which I too loved. Until! 4 months later, when it was time for day release at college, I asked the Manager why I had heard nothing and was actually told 'not to worry my pretty little head about it' and that I was not an apprentice but rather a Clerkess and should therefore go to Night School (in my own time and at my own expense) to learn shorthand and typing!!

I should have resigned on the spot, but I loved the work and the staff and was earning much more than my former classmates who had clerical type jobs. So I stayed, learnt to type but was useless at shorthand - in part because there was no one in the Branch who could/would dictate - Instead it was "type standard letter to so&so pointing out he is over drawn and ask him to make an appointment with the Manager ASAP" To keep my options open I also did O grades and highers at night school and surprise, surprise -had to take a day's annual leave to sit the exams.

Later I was transferred, with an additional 'responsibility payment' to an 'only 3 staff' sub-branch. which was designated as a training branch. I was the trainer and that gave me another pay increase and then another increase because I was responsible for foreign currency ( We had a huge Travel Agent customer). When I married, aged 19, I was earning the same as my DH.

Off we went on our honeymoon to Italy (courtesy of said travel agent) and came back to work to a shock. My staff account had been changed to a joint account with my new DH first named, I was relegated to 'temporary staff' and taken out of the pension scheme. 4 years on I was pregnant and was supposed to retire 'before I 'showed' but as they could not find a suitably trained replacement I worked on until 3 weeks before baby arrived. No maternity leave in those days, no reinstatement as they 'did not employ Married Women with children'

You will see from the above that this treatment has left lasting anger - thanks for the opportunity to get it off my chest.

Not sure how a proper job is defined, but my first paid jobs were: temporary supply teacher at a posh boarding school near Slough, translator at a steel works in Austria, bottling department of a brewery, and tea and coffee delivery van driver.

My first and only real job was in museum conservation. I loved it but had to give it up eventually to go to live in the Caribbean where I was not allowed to work.
On returning to the U.K. once our children were at University I took on part time work in a totally unrelated field. Only this morning I mentioned to OH that I was thinking of restarting the part time work and he voiced no objection so who knows I might rejoin the workforce at 73. 😄

After a slew of temporary jobs as a student my first job was as an Articled Clerk training to be a Chartered Accountant. The company I worked for served the meat traders in Smithfield market. Every Friday someone would have to go into the market and collect the invoices from all our clients.

Smithfield market in the mid-1960s was completely and unreconstructed in every way a male environement. Our senior clerk almost always sent the senior partner's 18 year old daughter to do it. She hated it. Once there was two of us, I would go with her. As two women in the market we would get catcalled, it was usually quite jovial, but still not nice. When we got to the stall there was a spiral iron staircase up to the office and the walls were plastered with half naked women. I would usually wear , not high heels but shoes with a narrow louis heel so that I could say I couldn't go up the stairs because it would damage my shoes and I might fall, as the staircase was patterned iron with cut-outs. If I had to go up there would always be someone standing at the bottom waiting try to look up our skirts.

I taught my colleague that the best way to deal with this was to ignore it completely and act as if it wasn't happening. The men were looking for a reaction and if they did not get one, it took the joy out of the situation for them.

Anyway the work was deadly dull and I realised I was not Gods Gift to the accountancy profession and after 6 months I left, again to work in a predominantly male environment, where I was the only woman in the management team. Generally more civilised, but one of the secretaries took me aside on the first day and warned me of the office pest. I dealt with him as well - but that is another story.

I babysat for neighbours' children while I was at school. This enabled me to buy the sort of fabulous clothes, shoes and haircuts that were around in the 1960s much to my mother's disgust.

I then worked in a bank and went to night school to learn touch typing and shorthand.

I loved working in a bank. I loved the fact that we had to stay in the bank if the branch was 1d out. The whole thing suited me and I soon progressed but women were not allowed above a certain level which was intensely irritating

I had a Saturday job in a local well known bakery shop in Derby.
When I left school I started work as an office junior in a furniture store. I worked with a great crowd of people and met my first love there!

Teaching in an infants school in the East End of London, a baptism of fire, but I loved it. Think of the area in Call the Midwife. Lots of real characters among the parents and children. Was there for two years and then got a job teaching service children in Singapore.