| Your first job (non-QPR) 09:16 - Apr 11 with 5102 views | aston_hoop |
What was everyones first ever job? Sitting here on a Monday morning got me thinking back to simpler times, worked in a warehouse at the local supermarket and it was great fun. Nothing exciting but simple times, earn some cash and spend it going out. Then education ruined all that! Given the array of posters on here, some of you must have some great stories? |  |
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| Your first job (non-QPR) on 09:30 - Apr 11 with 3053 views | TheBlob |
First job?Working as sales assistant in a record/hifi store in Eltham sarf London.Got to play with all this shiny expensive gear and getting the latest albums off the sales reps - all loud rock of course! |  |
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| Your first job (non-QPR) on 09:31 - Apr 11 with 3049 views | Konk |
My first part-time job was a morning paper round from 11-16. You had to be 13 to deliver papers, but I managed to blag my way through the interview process, “What’s your name?”, “Konk”, “You sure you’re 13?”, “Yes”. Took me an hour Mon-Sat, 90 minutes on a Sunday, I started at 6am and my wages rose from £5 to £6 by the time I finished. Good times. Paid for my travel and gate money for the football.
Full-time — left school at 16 with a handful of shi t GCSEs, went to the careers office and told them I wanted an office job. Worked for a local engineering company who made Air conditioning kit. My job was to price-up jobs from looking at the architects’ specs/drawings, process orders, chase orders, organise despatch etc. The blokes in the office took me to the pub most days and got me pi ssed, despite the fact that they hardly ever let me buy a round, the secretaries/receptionists used to be lovely to me, and most of the customers were sound, but I got some right stick in the factory for having long, blond curly hair. The women on the shop floor in particular were brutal in their harassment of this callow youth. Did that for a couple of years for £60-65 pw, whilst giving my Mum a tenner a week. Paid for Friday night in the pub, a couple of records a week, the football and that was about it. I certainly wasn't saving for a house/car. |  |
| Fulham FC: It's the taking part that counts |
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| Your first job (non-QPR) on 09:35 - Apr 11 with 3043 views | BrianMcCarthy |
Unpaid - used to help out as kids in our parents' hotel. We'd help make beds, stock the bars, hoover, clean the toilets. Hated the jobs, though the staff were cool and occasionally we'd be allowed spin the decks in the nightclub.
Paid - labouring on the sites at the weekends when I was fifteen. I was as weak as water and the first day they put me down a manhole with a kango hammer to see what I was made of. I was so puny that I honestly think that I could have broken it out quicker if I organised a chain-letter prayer scheme for it.
I used to line up at Cricklewood Broadway with the other skins and see what dodgy builder would hire my emaciated body. A highlight was barrowing tarmac for a Traveller outfit up a plank into a skip with a barrow with a punctured wheel. paid well, though. |  |
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| Your first job (non-QPR) on 09:47 - Apr 11 with 3010 views | TheBlob |
| Your first job (non-QPR) on 09:35 - Apr 11 by BrianMcCarthy |
Unpaid - used to help out as kids in our parents' hotel. We'd help make beds, stock the bars, hoover, clean the toilets. Hated the jobs, though the staff were cool and occasionally we'd be allowed spin the decks in the nightclub.
Paid - labouring on the sites at the weekends when I was fifteen. I was as weak as water and the first day they put me down a manhole with a kango hammer to see what I was made of. I was so puny that I honestly think that I could have broken it out quicker if I organised a chain-letter prayer scheme for it.
I used to line up at Cricklewood Broadway with the other skins and see what dodgy builder would hire my emaciated body. A highlight was barrowing tarmac for a Traveller outfit up a plank into a skip with a barrow with a punctured wheel. paid well, though. |
My bruv Steve's first job was working with the Irish lads on the roads in sarf London for Gleasons, tales of madness and mayhem - always going through cables and the like.Steve puts a pickaxe through a gas main and the ganger comes along with a lighted ciggie and leans over the gushing hole to pronounce "all right which kunt's done it this time then?" with lads piling out of the trench as fast as wellies will allow. | |
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| Your first job (non-QPR) on 09:47 - Apr 11 with 3010 views | loftboy |
Left school 27th may 1983, aged 16 years and 1 month, (yes you modern day kids) started work on an estate in ascot as a gardener at 7am the following morning, jacked it in at 12 am the same day, ended up working as a labourer for a couple.of months for a couple of carpeneters on the buildings, did a couple of years in an office before making a life in distribution and.driving. |  |
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| Your first job (non-QPR) on 09:50 - Apr 11 with 3005 views | Metallica_Hoop |
Trying to sell kaleidoscopes on the Portobello road aged 14.Though I was a self-employed car washer too. (Until priced out the market by cheap labour) |  |
| Beer and Beef has made us what we are - The Prince Regent |
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| Your first job (non-QPR) on 09:57 - Apr 11 with 2982 views | Konk |
| Your first job (non-QPR) on 09:35 - Apr 11 by BrianMcCarthy |
Unpaid - used to help out as kids in our parents' hotel. We'd help make beds, stock the bars, hoover, clean the toilets. Hated the jobs, though the staff were cool and occasionally we'd be allowed spin the decks in the nightclub.
Paid - labouring on the sites at the weekends when I was fifteen. I was as weak as water and the first day they put me down a manhole with a kango hammer to see what I was made of. I was so puny that I honestly think that I could have broken it out quicker if I organised a chain-letter prayer scheme for it.
I used to line up at Cricklewood Broadway with the other skins and see what dodgy builder would hire my emaciated body. A highlight was barrowing tarmac for a Traveller outfit up a plank into a skip with a barrow with a punctured wheel. paid well, though. |
I spent a summer holidays labouring for my mate’s Dad and was officially the worst labourer ever. I literally don’t like getting my hands dirty, I’m scared of heights, I’m not very good out in the Sun all day and I spent a lot of time questioning various health and safety failings/oversights. I got such bad blisters after my first day of demolishing a garage with a sledge hammer, that one of the fellas had to go to the builders merchants to get me some gloves. We were working on a massive house up in Hertfordshire and the owner wouldn’t let us in to use the toilet, which stressed me out when it came to eating my sarnies with dirty hands, whilst everyone else took it in their stride and one bloke was quite happy taking dumps down the bottom of the garden. It was educational and made me think I might be better suited to a generic office job. Almost thirty years on and whenever I see any of the blokes at family do’s, they will introduce me with the words, “This cu nt worked with us one Summer, cried every time we sent him up on the roof and wore fu cking gloves”. | |
| Fulham FC: It's the taking part that counts |
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| Your first job (non-QPR) on 10:02 - Apr 11 with 2973 views | loftboy |
| Your first job (non-QPR) on 09:57 - Apr 11 by Konk |
I spent a summer holidays labouring for my mate’s Dad and was officially the worst labourer ever. I literally don’t like getting my hands dirty, I’m scared of heights, I’m not very good out in the Sun all day and I spent a lot of time questioning various health and safety failings/oversights. I got such bad blisters after my first day of demolishing a garage with a sledge hammer, that one of the fellas had to go to the builders merchants to get me some gloves. We were working on a massive house up in Hertfordshire and the owner wouldn’t let us in to use the toilet, which stressed me out when it came to eating my sarnies with dirty hands, whilst everyone else took it in their stride and one bloke was quite happy taking dumps down the bottom of the garden. It was educational and made me think I might be better suited to a generic office job. Almost thirty years on and whenever I see any of the blokes at family do’s, they will introduce me with the words, “This cu nt worked with us one Summer, cried every time we sent him up on the roof and wore fu cking gloves”. |
Konk, first time I walked on joists I had ground rush, froze to the spot, before I was rescued the blokes I worked with rounded up the entire site to watch and cheer! Within a week I was running over them. | |
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| Your first job (non-QPR) on 10:10 - Apr 11 with 2960 views | rongould |
My first job was as "Boy" on the Thames Sailing Barge "Cambria" owned by Bob Roberts.
It was the last working Thames Barge and is now in a barge museum at Faversham.
I was at school near Ipswich and was befriended by Bob because of my interest in boats and folk music. I sailed in The Cambria from Pin Mill to Ipswich,loaded with sugar beet and sailed it into the dock moorings by London Bridge for Tate and Lyle. This was 1955 and I was 16.
The barge crew was Skipper,Mate and Boy.
Great fun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SB_Cambria |  | | |
| Your first job (non-QPR) on 10:21 - Apr 11 with 2938 views | BrianMcCarthy |
| Your first job (non-QPR) on 10:02 - Apr 11 by loftboy |
Konk, first time I walked on joists I had ground rush, froze to the spot, before I was rescued the blokes I worked with rounded up the entire site to watch and cheer! Within a week I was running over them. |
I had no head for heights either. Used to get dizzy. One of my earlier jobs was walking the joists, like you. Me and a lad from Derry were carrying sheets of ply so I asked if we could put a few under our feet and we'd walk quicker. I was told in a fake-hardman shout that the ply was worth money and that we weren't.
I jacked. | |
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| Your first job (non-QPR) on 10:23 - Apr 11 with 2930 views | TheBlob |
| Your first job (non-QPR) on 10:10 - Apr 11 by rongould |
My first job was as "Boy" on the Thames Sailing Barge "Cambria" owned by Bob Roberts.
It was the last working Thames Barge and is now in a barge museum at Faversham.
I was at school near Ipswich and was befriended by Bob because of my interest in boats and folk music. I sailed in The Cambria from Pin Mill to Ipswich,loaded with sugar beet and sailed it into the dock moorings by London Bridge for Tate and Lyle. This was 1955 and I was 16.
The barge crew was Skipper,Mate and Boy.
Great fun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SB_Cambria |
That's interesting Ron.My old granddad E.R.O Leighton was a Victorian painter,did some Thames Barge "portraits"( he was a cousin of Lord Fred Leighton).He also worked for a commercial firm which produce hand painted union banners,still in use today.Poor guy died prematurely due to the hot lead fumes in the processes employed there. | |
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| Your first job (non-QPR) on 10:23 - Apr 11 with 2927 views | Northernr |
Flogging duty free at Humberside Airport, where you could make handy cash on the side from the security lads be letting them know which Hull chavs had told you to "fook off" when you'd tried to explain they were exceeding their cigarette limit on the way out and they could stop and search them on the way back. |  | | |
| Your first job (non-QPR) on 10:24 - Apr 11 with 2924 views | paesanu |
The bookies! Worked a rotation shift at Corals between Blythe Road, Notting Hill and Hammersmith Road. I always liked a flutter, but it was a real education on how easy it was to spiral out of control. Didn't like seeing the same faces day in day out. |  |
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| Your first job (non-QPR) on 10:33 - Apr 11 with 2901 views | jonno |
Like Konk, first job as a kid was a paper round. Mon to Sat I used to whizz round in about 45 mins (I had to so I could get to school etc.), but on Sundays I used to read every papers football reports on the stairs in the local flats. Used to take me about 2 hours! The old geezer who ran the shop was convinced I was shagging one of the housewives on the round. Then I also started doing a milk round on a Saturday as well. I can remember the feeling of walking down the street having all the cash from my milk round pay in my pocket, owing nobody anything and not a care in the world.
It has taken me the intervening 45 years to get to that debt free feeling again! In the school summer holidays I spent a lot of the weeks working at Plesseys (engineering firm in Ilford) in the canteen (lower sixth) and May and Baker (chemical company in Dagenham) in their canteen. I can recall getting paid cash each day - no tax - in a brown envelope. When I showed my old man I he said I was getting more then he was paid. Joined Lloyds Bank when I left school, worked in the Dagenham branch for a year, money was poor, so joined the Gas Board and literally doubled my pay - then spent the next 41 years with British Gas. But I will never forget those great times as a kid starting in the world of work! |  | | |
| Your first job (non-QPR) on 10:40 - Apr 11 with 2871 views | paulparker |
15 I worked the Hod with for my dads building firm as it was obvious I wasn't the academic type at school and never going to mount to anything (dads words not mine)
Jesus it was tough but a laugh none the less and was good money for a lad my age
some of the characters were funny including one fella who just used to p1ss himself as he couldn't be bothered to find a toilet , a couple of the lads used to take me off for a cheeky joint or 2 in the back of the van at lunchtimes which was always an experience
funny enough im now a Finance manager for a big brick company |  |
| And Bowles is onside, Swinburne has come rushing out of his goal , what can Bowles do here , onto the left foot no, on to the right foot
That’s there that’s two, and that’s Bowles
Brian Moore
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| Your first job (non-QPR) on 10:53 - Apr 11 with 2854 views | Toast_R |
Left College in 1996, signed up with Reed and got a job working for Kodak just as digital documentation had taken off. Kodak had a massive contract with Lloyd insurance and had to digitally archive all their paperwork. Boxes and boxes of the stuff in some warehouse. All it involved was feeding paperwork through a machine around 50 a minute. Mind numbingly boring. Lasted 2 days before I got a job at the DHSS and into the realms of civil service, flexi time and decent annual leave. Moved on to LG now but I really was institutionalised in to the Public sector life that fateful day when I chucked in Kodak. |  | | |
| Your first job (non-QPR) on 11:00 - Apr 11 with 2839 views | Monahoop |
Worked in a local village butchers when it still had its own slaughter house. First job on day one. Clean shop windows. Second job on day one. Sprinkle sawdust on shop floor [ remember sawdust in butchers shops]. So far so good. Third job on day one. Clean slaughterhouse equipment not cleaned from the previous day and slop out buckets of animal guts. [F*ck that stank!]. And so it went on, all the crud jobs for the new boy including plucking turkeys and pheasants and other game in numbingly cold unsanitary conditions [ health and safety would have a field day with this nowadays!]. By the end of the day your clean pristine young butcher boy in his starched white apron, looked like something out of a mass murderers den and stunk like a sewer rat. Boy was I glad the slaughter house part closed down a couple of weeks later. The job remained messy, but not as grotesque as working in that part of it. I loved making sausages. I'll remain quiet as to what went in to them, but our shop did win competitions!!!! |  |
| There aint half been some clever bastards. |
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| Your first job (non-QPR) on 11:29 - Apr 11 with 2794 views | DaBurgh |
Worked in a cemetery, cutting grass, digging graves - when the digger couldn't get in. Started in my senior year in high school, just for weekends and the summer months, then did 9 months after finishing high school.
Strangest thing that I had to do was dig up some guy from our protestant cemetery and take him over for re-burial at a local Catholic cemetery. The poor bugger was in the ground for about 10 years but his widow converted to Catholicism and wanted him moved. I seem to recall it was a very hot July afternoon, just after lunch. Also had an encounter with a crazy tramp that used to hang around the back of the cemetery, a bit of a dumping ground for old flowers and stones etc. I took a wheelbarrow load of stones to dump there and he has just standing there with one of those metal cone shaped flower holders, with the long point at one end to push it into the ground. He was holding it menacingly and waving it in my direction as he told me to get out of there as he was waiting for a rowboat from mars to arrive. Never did see the guy again so I guess the boat eventually arrived. |  | | |
| Your first job (non-QPR) on 11:48 - Apr 11 with 2765 views | karl |
12 year old in a scallop processing factory, 38 years later i'm still working in the cold and wet but moved onto lobsters and crabs primarily but still a few scallops here and there.
DistortR can tell you what we did to the scallops given to Princess Alice during a royal visit..... Vive la revolution! |  | | |
| Your first job (non-QPR) on 12:05 - Apr 11 with 2741 views | A40Bosh |
15 I was washing up in an Italian restaurant at weekends - did not last too long though as I then had to study for O Levels. Spent a few months as Saturday staff in the old "Bejams" (now Iceland I think). Hated Christmas as the junior member of staff as I spend half of a Saturday moving turkeys around in the deep freezer in a snorkel parka way to small for me.
Then when I was in 6th form I hit the big time and worked in Altons Mens Wear in Ruislip High St. Proper "suit you sir!". Used to love it when scrummy mummy and kids would arrive in for full school uniforms at around 10am because that would mean the morning would fly until lunchtime once you got through all the uniforms, PE gear, school shoes.
I wonder what would have happened if I had stayed there full time at the end of my A Levels instead of going in to Natwest at the age of 18. Would i have been just as bored? - Probably more so but would probably have drunk less!!!! |  |
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| (No subject) (n/t) on 12:12 - Apr 11 with 2726 views | BlackCrowe |
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| Your first job (non-QPR) on 12:13 - Apr 11 with 2724 views | MrSheen |
I also used to work for my dad's building firm in the summer holidays. I started as a bored and angry kiddy sent to find things in the back of the van - impossible, dad used to chuck stuff in and I didn't know the difference between a bradawl and a tin of Unibond anyway. By the time I got into my teens I was quite big and strong and keen to make some money, but I was so clumsy and destructive - nickname " Baby Elephant" - I was only trusted with the simplest jobs. These included filling the mixer (or throwing shovels of ballast in its direction) and running barrows of rubble up a narrow plank into a skip. I reckoned if I fell off less than one in five times I was having a good day.
The highlight was piling into the truck and racing to the pub for as many pints as we could finish in the last 15 minutes before closing time, or "lunch", as we called it. I was terrified of heights, and usually inched up ladders and scaffolding with a white knuckle grip on anything I could get hold of, but after lunch, I was Tarzan. |  | | |
| Your first job (non-QPR) on 12:21 - Apr 11 with 2709 views | Juzzie |
Started working at 17 for a printing ink & paint manufacturer based under the Westway flyover between Westbourne Park and Royal Oak tube stations (they moved to Watford many years ago).
Most of my first week salary went to my Mum. My second week's salary I used to pay for my first ever QPR replica shirt (the first Guinness one).
I worked in the ink lab responsible for colour matching and quality control checking of the large order batches from the factory floor.
Did some development work but at 17 years old there was only so much I could do. My claim to fame is matching and creating the orange silk screen ink used for Miami Dolphins numbering/lettering on the replica kits that were popular in the 80's.
We did the inks for other teams too, LA Raiders, Washington Redskins, Pittsburg Steelers etc.
It was only years later that I found out they weren't just used on the replica kits but on the actual team kits too!
I matched a green colour used to blot out the white football lines on the astroturf at Loftus Road as the pitch was used for something else. Problem was I had a piece of turf about 6" square to work from and when I saw it on TV, it didn't look that good, too dark.
Left there at 20.
EDit: I did have a part time job after school when I was 15 for a year and a half. Worked in a newsagents in just near Queensway/Bayswater for about 6 weeks then moved to the photo shop next door (same owner) where I worked in the shop for a few weeks then went into the basement where they did all the processing/printing.
Some of the pictures people sent in were a real eye-opener to a 15 year old boy!
It paid for my first 50cc motorbike, especially as some fukker nicked my bicycle (Raleigh Europa) from outside the shop that I used to get there.
[Post edited 11 Apr 2016 13:31]
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| Your first job (non-QPR) on 12:50 - Apr 11 with 2651 views | dsw2509 |
The first pay packet I received was £3.52 for 8 hours in the local public library as a Saturday assistant during A levels (thereby missing the 1975-76 season in its entirety....). 44p an hour.... |  | | |
| Your first job (non-QPR) on 13:16 - Apr 11 with 2598 views | danehoop |
| Your first job (non-QPR) on 11:48 - Apr 11 by karl |
12 year old in a scallop processing factory, 38 years later i'm still working in the cold and wet but moved onto lobsters and crabs primarily but still a few scallops here and there.
DistortR can tell you what we did to the scallops given to Princess Alice during a royal visit..... Vive la revolution! |
Paper round aged 13 - sunny Ruislip, enjoyed it the most when I stopped a car theft and gained sizeable xmas bonus later in the year from the house I delivered to as a result. Wembley Market aged 14, fruit and veg stall for a year. Then to Tescos butchery department aged 16 - 8 months of unpleasantness that turned me vegetarian for 6 months afterwards. Moved onto a DIY warehouse where I got told off for selling stuff (seems I should have gone and got someone else to do it who was older and could calim commission) so went to Rumbelows where I got paid good money to do the same. First real job was working in a bank in Kinsgbury. Hated it, lasted 4 days and went back to Rumbelows and was made assisant manager the same day as quiting the bank. Briefly worked in a record/computer shop in Ruislip playing games all day, playing my choice of music in the shop and generally living the dream. Money wasnt great, but i was 18 and didnt really care.
Got a grown up job after that and have been doing it ever since. |  |
| Never knowingly understood |
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