Who Remembers Their Very First Job!?

[Smowball]

And did you stay in that field of work?
Mine was a wages clerk for a huge company on an industrial estate. There were four of us in the office and my boss was a tyrant of a woman in her fifties, who hated all of us lol. She just barked orders all day, every day and I used to dread getting up to go in. Lasted there about six months and them was offered another job in a very nice new swish office a few miles away which I leapt at the chance!
After a few years I decided that office life wasn't for me - and ended up doing a variety of things, now working from home doing two jobs, but hours when I want, yet I always remember that first job....

[sunny-dave]

Holiday job doing maintenance work at the local sewage treatment plant ...

... god how I hated Monday morning when I had to use a pointy stick to pull the used condoms out of the holes on the rotating sprinklers - it sometimes seemed that the whole of Aylesbury had been on a non-stop weekend bonkathon.

No I don't think I'd fancy that now ...

[albaqwerty]

blooming heck Togo x
Scarey to be going underground at any age.

[paddywak]

You eventually got used to it alba, except when you were on afters in the summer. I still remember the feeling of leaving all that sunshine behind as you slowly began to leave the pit top and descend into the dark.

[Togo]

Funnily enough Alba, like all 16yr old back then, we were fearless. We just treated it as a big adventure. What I do remember is we all drove the instructor mad by singing Manfred Mann's 5,4,3,2,1 before we moved to do anything during "team" effort lessons in moving stuff underground. Manual labour tasks etc. Haha I can still see him rolling his eyes.

[Togo]

Same here Paddy. Dropping like a stone as the light diminished to a little eye in the blackness. Are you well Paddy?

[mccfluff]

My first proper full time was with a health insurance company, i did various things, ended up paying claims, I quite enjoyed it at the time, it was shocking even then (i hate to see it now) how much the hospitals increased charges when they knew it was private.

[paddywak]

Thanks for asking Togo,I'm as well as I'll ever be. The song I'll always remember was Going Underground by The Jam.Riding the shaft on a Monday mornings with 90 guys a lot still half *** from Sunday night all singing their heads off, Happy days.

[albaqwerty]

One thing my nutjob of a brother did, was when asked, was would you like to go down a mine.
He said yes.

When he came back up, he said never again, I have no idea how these men do that, day in, day out.
They are a tough breed.

[Peter Pedant]

// The best year of my life, which I would repeat at the drop of a hat.// first year reg in hosp 1955

mine was absolute unremitting hell - same place - ish
Left and did tropical general practice in araby

in 1985 during the first set of reforms old biggers like Sqad used to come onto the radio and tell young doctors how they didnt know they were alive - and the old ones were sharply told by the younger generation that conditions were longer and harsher

Oh first job - techie at Porton Down
definitely cured me of wanting to work in a lab for the test of my life

[Togo]

Lol Paddy... all my mates used to sing "Working in a Coalmine" by Lee Dorsey at me, haking the tiss. But I was the one laughing when wages came around. I was picking up about £22 a week after overtime which was a lot of dosh in 1967. When I put my mohair suit on and fired the scooter up they were not laughing.

[Barmaid]

My first job was as a waitress in a coffee shop (albeit this was only part time when I was at school). Taught me a lot.

First proper job was a self employed business administrator. That all went pear shaped when the recession hit in the early 90s. So I got a job as a secretary to a lawyer. Who decided that I was wasted as a secretary. The rest is history.

[albaqwerty]

and a heckuva lot are grateful to that lawyer and you BM x

[Barmaid]

Aww thanks, Alba.

[Sqad]

P.P

"first year reg in hosp 1955"

That would make you in the mid nineties.....and you seem much younger than that.
Don't you mean "first year reg in hosp 1965?".......even that would make you mid eighties.

[pastafreak]

First after education ( 2 year art school ) was as a graphic artist. Lasted about 18 months, until I was ready for pastures new. I stayed in that field for 18 years...until my daughter was born.
While in high school I worked weekends at the til in a German bakery in my town.

[EcclesCake]

I used to go fruit picking in the summer holidays, got a lovely tan and got paid as well.

One holiday job wasn't so much fun, my friends father owned a dental lab. My job was to remove the gunky stuff from the impression moulds. We had the radio on all day so it wasn't all bad.

[andres]

Textile research laboratory in Nelson. Three buses to get there but a lift on a 1000 c.c. Vincent motorbike took me part way home. Probably £6 weekly pay but after giving mum my board I still had spending money .Loved it and was there for 3 years. Then moved to another textile laboratory nearer home.Worked in Woolworths office . Self- employed twice. 20 years in occupational therapy at our local hospital.Several cleaning jobs. Happy days .No regrets at all.

[woofgang]

First job was babysitting. I earned ten bob and spent it on a reproduction picture of the Peaceable Kingdom which I have still got. First "real" job was while I was still at school, Saturdays in an Express Dairies shop and I worked there summer holidays as well. During college hold I worked in several Sketchley Cleaners in Chelsea and Kensington...interesting customers....first job after graduating was at Southmead Hospital. I stayed an Occupational Therapist all my working life but went into clinical management, change management, project work and clinical IT projects as well. I loved the work, because I believed in everything I worked on and its nice now to see some of it coming to fruition in local NHS 10 years after I retired. Those of us who were in at the beginning had to shove really hard to move the rock the first inch or so but we did it!

[Prudie]

First job was a Saturday girl in an independent chemists, loved playing with the perfume and make-up, was fascinated by off-the-shelf old fashioned meds I'd never heard of, giggled quite unprofessionally when I sold my first condom. First proper job after education was teaching and stayed in that for 10 years.

[emmie]

mine was working for Time/Life magazine in Bond street,
wonderful people, wonderful place. Age 16 and all grown up.
shame it wasn't to last as they had some bad times and i was made redundant.