how did you spend your teenage years

CarriadAgain Milk boys, Paper boys, Delivery Boys. In my area they would chap doors to wash cars, sweep up etc.

yogitree

CarriadAgain Milk boys, Paper boys, Delivery Boys. In my area they would chap doors to wash cars, sweep up etc.

Shucks - I wouldnt mind that happening if it was something that was the norm. I've got a garden out there that could do with some sweeping up (which I could easily do - but errrrm.....I don't get round to it....and then I still don't get round to it).

Started work as a Saturday girl in Boots, just short of my 16th birthday.
I earned £1.34 p a day.
I used my first pay to buy a lovely bag that I used daily for the rest of my school days .
A bargain.
I was so delighted.
So little but so much xxx

Well pably15 that's quite the question! I could probably write a book about it. Before leaving school, I already had worked several temporary/part time jobs from about age 12, in for instance, a deli, a bookshop, a ladies boutique, Woolco!, a petrol station, a cafe, a gents outfitter (a male person had to do the inside leg measuring!), an ice cream van and so on.

At school I was a bit of a rebel and the headmaster didn't like me belted me . I dogged school a lot (no wonder), went to venues meant for folks older than myself, radio shows (Electric Gardens) and the like. I did OK though academically, and my first 'proper' job I brought home about £5 a week - mum took half for my keep ("after all you've had enough out of us!")

I loved to go to the local discos and dancing, and then I learned to drive. Off I went! Exploring, fun, fun. Went to see bands, discos and so on. Throughout these years I was also involved with horses and, not to mention a boyfriend or two.

After failing to be accepted to train as a Social Worker, I decided to train as a Riding Instructor instead (bad mistake - very poorly paid profession and hard physical work although I loved it). I am still paying the price of pain after a physical life with horses although I retrained in a completely different subject later in life.

I recently found one of those little brown envelopes you mentioned pably my mum had kept it with my wage slip within.

I started working in a corner shop on Saturdays for ten shillings when I was 15 . Then at 16 I was a hair washer, general dogsbody in a salon for a couple of years. I worked Saturday and school holidays for ten shillings per day but made up my pocket money with tips !
In the eight week holidays after A levels I was a temporary nanny to five children under ten! That was the hardest thing, as I didn’t drive and walking with five children was like herding cats! I cooked their meals and did their washing .
All very character forming and helpful in later life. I cut my own hair husband’s hair in lockdown!!

I spent my teenage years at a girls grammar school before going to uni. 1952-1959.

I spent my teenage years (and a few more after that) trashing all the opportunities and advantages that I had been given having won a much coveted scholarship aged 11. I was a disappointment to my family, my teachers and eventually to myself. I look back on those years with regret and some astonishment at my complete stupidity but it taught me a valuable lesson. It's never too late to begin again and I did!

Oh do you really want my memories? I am writing about my growing up, on the edge of Dartmoor, no bus service, just village life, but in writing it was ok. I worked in the village shop prob when I was 15, which taught me a lot about customer service and being able to add up, answer the phone and take orders for delivery, cleaning shelves etc. I would walk most places, to bottle milk! Walk home no one worried about doing that, picked up a couple of times by someone on a motorbike and also in a car! It was really dark but I just did it. My school was 6 miles away and I could not go to discos etc..... understand now why? But I had Radio Luxembourg! I left at 17 to go nursing. Still a teenager but enjoyed those times.

I did all kinds of work until I could get to London. I worked as an office junior in a hospital cleaning contractors in Balham and just by chance I was in London this weekend so took a walk up the high street to look up at where the office was fifty years ago.

I left school at 16, the went to Secretarial College and had a great time and made friends who I still have.

My parents gave me pretty free range and I was a Party girl. 💃
I would do it all over again given half a chance.

I saved up and bought a few ‘with it’ clothes. My favourite shoes were green sling backs with black heels.

I was born in 1958 and from age 13 had a very lucrative baby sitting round, which lasted until was 18.

I absolutely loved my teenage years in (late 60s/early 70s)! Lived in Malta and spent my time hiking, drama group, played table tennis at youth club, volunteered at orphanage run by nuns, swimming in the summer, and disco dancing in the evenings. Also took evening classes for A Levels as well as shorthand and typing qualifications. I had a Saturday job selling lotto tickets. For this I was paid 50 cents (say 50p) from 7am to 2pm, whereas my boyfriend who worked with me got 75c because he was a boy! By 19 I was married, and taking life seriously, working as a secretary and saving up for a mortgage. I felt I did so much in such a short space of time, but I have many happy memories.

Home life as a teenager was horribly miserable so I was glad to escape to school, even though I was shy and got bullied. I spent hours alone in my bedroom doing homework and listening to Radio Caroline on my little radio. I dont remember any socialising. All that studying got me to sixth form and then teacher training college. At college my black and white life burst into technicolour. I discovered alcohol, discos, boys and parties, made the most amazing friends and had the time of my life. I never wanted to go home in the holidays and worked throughout all of them. In a chocolate factory in the summer, on the post at Christmas and in a department store at Easter.

It was nice to hear what you all did in your teens, I loved the 60's, my friends and I were out most nights, when I was 18...age for drinking, I got a weekend job in a bar...£ 1 for working 3 hours friday night and £1.50 for a saturday night...then when my shift finished on a saturday night I was off up to the friday night dance,,,10 pm till 2 am...great memories

First job was aged 14 in the local bakery on a Saturday (1969). Got sacked because I gave my auntie extra buns! Next job in another bakery - got sacked because I messed up the donut maker machine while the boss was at lunch. My Mum said maybe shop work was not my forte, so then parents paid me to do chores - wash car, change beds, weeding, etc. Aged 15-16, hung around street corners and parks, smoking cadged fags, drinking cider, slipping into pubs for a Snakebite (“At a friend’s house…”) Aged 17 - passed driving test and got into University - whole new Universe!!

Never an adventurous teenager, shy and reserved, I had a Saturday job in Woolworths until I was 16 in 1964 when I left school. Did I enjoy Woolworths? Not often, mostly I was terrified. Put to work on the biscuit counter weighing out broken biscuits I was initially pleased to be transferred to haberdashery as I’d hated a day of the sweet, cloying smell of biscuits Well, maths was never my strong point and having to measure out and calculate the cost of lengths of anything was a very scary thing compounded by the temperamental till and working out change. The staff were all very kind to me, I was just too nervous to enjoy being there.

I can’t recall what I was paid except we used my mum’s formula. A third for my keep, a third to save and the final third for me. Seemed fair and we used the same formula with our own children. I vividly recall my pleasure when the first Christmas came along and I could buy gifts for my parents. It felt hugely grown up and was a very special thing to do.

Leaving school at 16, being too nervous to take advice to stay on at sixth form for ‘A’ levels and University , it was a clerical role in the Town Clerks department where I was pitchforked into a very serious, formal working environment. It was all Sir for the boss and surnames for my superiors. I felt a fish out of water, the work was no problem if boring, I was always pleased to be sent out with a list to buy lunch for people, freedom!

Never one for a straightforward path I achieved A level at evening class, moved on to more interesting work in libraries and then the civil service, began to have a social life and had more friends. With two male friends (they were quietly gay) I often headed into London’s East End to notorious areas without a care in the world. Dances and a youth club came into my world. Life was finally fun. I met Mr C and married at 20.

University finally happened when I was 44, I got there in the end and loved every moment

Another Woolworths Saturday girl here. 1 /6d an hour in 1953. Amazing how much you could buy for that small wage now.
I left school 1953 age 15 and stayed full time at Woolworths for 2 yrs.
I was given the make up counter after a short time. Centre Isle 1 side and 1 length. The other side and end was shampoo powder in little paper sachets,tooth paste, toilet soap, combs in many sizes. Hated reordering the comes on the checklist to go to the stock room.
Little dark blue bottles of Evening in Paris perfume, Californian Poppy another.
Off topic but at that time a lot of American ladies used the store. 1 asked me where were the Douche bags..I'd never heard of such a thing which seemed to surprise the lady. I do now know it was a rubber bag to hold fluid, to douche to clean certain lady orifaces..

For pleasure along with friends we liked nothing more than dancing at every opportunity. Rock and Roll..I won a competition for jiving at the local jazz club. Now age 87 I struggle to walk from room to room..fantastic memories.
I'm still friends with one of our dancing crowd..speak most weeks the rest are sad,y past.

I didn’t enjoy most of my teenage years. I was quiet and shy and didn’t really have any friends. I spent most of my free time in my bedroom listening to my records. My life changed for the better when I met my lovely husband at 17 😊.

Gelisajams
Cutting off your nose TO SPITE your face...is the expression

1964, I enrolled in the secretarial school of a large engineering company. I was paid £5 a week less stamp, of which £1.10s was for my Mum, 10s for my Dad who gave me a seat in his car for the journey to work. What remained was for my lunches, clothes and going out.
After training in shorthand, typing &bookkeeping I was given a "very good job" as secretary to the chief design engineer.
I have used the skills I learned then all my life in all my occupations and self employed business.
I insisted that my two sons paid 'board' and took responsibility for some household chores when they started work.
Their young adult children are not required to contribute to the household in any way. Oh dear.

Became a Hairdressing Apprentice and was paid 32/-. Had to give Mum £1 of it. Left when I contacted dermatitis. Wasted my young life with unsuitable chap and was pretty awful to my poor old Grandma, so escaped to the RAF.

I was working in my parent's pub at the age of 12. Mainly during the summer holidays and weekends.
I collected glasses, washed up and helped with stocking up and cleaning.
My wages/pocket money was 2/6 a week, rising to 5/0 a couple of years later.
The swinging sixties bypassed my neck of the woods I'm sad to say.
That, coupled with the fact that I had a strict Catholic upbringing, and a father who had been in the army for 12 years and who was the eldest of a family of 4 boys, meant that my social life was heavily curtailed. My virtue had to be protected at all costs.
He was a lovely man in many ways, but if he could have locked me away from the ages of 13 to 25, I think he would!

I thoroughly enjoyed my schooldays though didn't achieve as well as I could. I messed about quite a bit. Was told I was a bad influence by the head teacher when I was 14, and was not promoted to the A stream as I should have because of it.

I pulled my socks up so to speak, got some O levels, became deputy head girl and started my A levels. The plan was for me to go to teacher training college.
I dropped out after a year and started work at Boots Chemists as a trainee dispenser aged 17 in 1968. My wage was £5/10/0 a week. I gave mum £2 on the understanding that I would not be working in the bar like my brother.

Working in a Chemists was a revelation to me,particularly when working on the drug counter. All contraceptives were stored in a drawer back then. Having them on display was not allowed. Saturdays were the big day for the purchase of Durex etc. Several local prostitutes would by them in bulk. They were all stored in a drawer labelled "indoor pursuits."
I worked there for almost 10 years. Had a great time and made many lifelong friends.

At 18 I met my future husband again. We had been at school together, he was 14 and I 12. We hated the sight of each other back then.
He was at my brother's 21st birthday party and love blossomed. We had been going out for 3 weeks when he asked me to marry him and I agreed.
We married in 1973 and survived, happily wed until his death in 2022.

I did eventually become a teacher.

I started the decade at the grammar school, didn’t like it much but was told it was a privilege to be there. Left at 16, immediately got a job on my local newspaper earning £4.4s 6d a week, and met my future husband there. Ended the decade very happily married with two babies and looking forward to the next decade. Happy times.

I was at school up to completing A Levels and then going off to Teacher Training College, so homework, I was also in the school and church choirs as well as the school brass band. I was a papergirl from age 13 for about 3 years, up at 5.30 six mornings a week, can't remember how much I was paid but the Christmas tips were great (I delivered to some big houses). I danced a lot, ballet and tap, which I loved and this led to me joining amateur op and dram societies as a dancer at 14, generally performing in at least 3 musicals a year. At 13 I became a student demonstrator at my dancing school, Saturday mornings standing at front of classes for younger pupils to copy what I was doing - got my own lessons free of charge as payment and at 15 became a student teacher and was then paid. Saturday evenings were generally spent with friends,a group of 8-10 of us at each other's homes, chatting and listening to music and making plans for trips ice skating, cinema and concerts etc. Loved life and think I was very lucky

Ahh so sorry to hear that…My grandson is autistic and he is literally the most sensible one out of his 2 happy go lucky brothers..He recently asked his mother about getting a mortgage as he's been saving because he feels it will be down to him to look after the other two if anything happens to their parents..,btw they're all in their 20’s.. He’s brilliant…