bhowells

When I was eighteen I was on the dole after leaving college in 1978, I registered with the Job Centre. I wanted to do clerical work but whenver they sent me for job interivews it was always for postiions as a sales assistantl

I am not knocking the retail trade at all, but it was not for me.

I worked for four months for H Samuel the jewellers Ihated every minute. The reason they employed me was beacuse they wanted a young lad to open up the shop and put the shutters up at night.

When my contract wasnt extended after the christmas period Iwas not sorry.

Eventually I persisted in findlng clerical work and applied for the civil serivice, I had an interview for a post in Companies House the Company registry for England and Wales.

I started in 1982 and have been there ever since/

faginsgirl

I too worked for H. Samuel at Christmas time many years ago. Pergotory!!!!

People were actually fainting in the shop because it was so over crowded and over heated. The staff kept bursting into tears because of the way the permanent staff treat them (which was in fact like dogs bodies!).

I have in my lifetime worked for Greggs. Slave labour!

I worked for a chinese company in England called Tin Lung (no offence to Chinese people but this group of people were WEIRD). It was a sewing factory where if you lasted a week you were doing damn well as they sacked anyone who they thought wasn`t good enough or fast enough to do the work without training!

You got shouted at if you could`nt understand thier language either as they were rubbish at English!

I lasted three days!

They were renowned at the local job centre for hireing staff and then fireing them.

xx

We`re changin` lodggggggggings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

John Llewellyn Moxey

Once I was out of work when the film industry went through a hard time. But, the rent had to be payed. I got a job as a window cleaner at the Piccadilly Hotel.

It was quite an experience. Eating lunch one day in the hotel kitchen, a large clock fell off the wall releasing hundreds of cockroaches. I never ate at that hotel again.

John

Gazza

I had a summer job at a Canada Dry factory back in the 70s. My first 'responsibility' was to sit in front of a light screen as the bottles whizzed behind it on the conveyor belt. The task involved staring at the screen and pulling out any bottles that had anything suspect in them - it worked as a sort of x-ray. You only did 15-min stints because the eyes went wonky.

Eventually they moved me to the yard with another couple of lads to restack wooden pallets - all by hand. Took us about three days. The foreman, who was a decent bloke, said that was all the work they had for us but if we wanted another couple of days he could arrange something. So when we arrived the next morning, all the pallets had been knocked over again!

sippog

As an actor in the 70's - and not infrequently out of work - I'd change jobs an average of every three weeks. I acquired quite a broad range of job experience that way but, of the many jobs I did, two in particular stick in my memory for their awfulness:

The first was mercifully short. I lasted exactly one day even though the money was pretty good for those times, around 30 quid a week. It was working in a butcher shop and my main job was to pick up the biits of meat from the floor and take them out the back to the bins. The catch was that this was the high summer when the London dustbinmen were on strike and the backyard was a heaving, buzzing mountain of uncollected bin liners dating back a couple of weeks. For a long time after that, I couldn't even pass a butcher shop without feeling sick.

I lasted a bit longer in the second one, around two weeks, but the mind numbing tedium of it got to me in the end. It was sorting mail for the Inland Revenue in a nissan hut somewhere in the Twickenham area. The job consisted solely of taking mail out of a wheeled basket and feeding it into the appropriate pigeon hole. That was it. No variation. No change. The only relief to the routine was occasionally finding a letter from somebody grassing up their neighbour for supposed tax evasion - these missives for some reason often went missing in the system . . .

There were people working there who'd been doing it for twenty years. At the time, being young, it seemed incomprehensible. The manager was a nice man and genuinely perplexed, when I handed in my notice, that I wanted to give up such "job security" for the risky life of a thespian. But then, as he said, he came from the generation who remembered the hard times of the thirties, when a secure job meant something. It was quite an insight for me into a different way of thinking.

wadsy

I was a Trainee Production Manager at 18. Trouble was I was working 5 days

a week during the "3 day" week in the mid 70's, freezing my rocks off on the

factory floor. No heating at all ! Before this I'd spent 2 years at Art College.

I took a wrong turn somewhere!

stevie boy

trainee manager at woolworths, at half past five I was sweeping the store

MB

The careers service in London used to have this great scheme where they took anybody who had mentioned wanting to work in film in their careers interview, got us together as a group and treated it as an 'agency' for people looking for runners.

I don't know if they still do it - but, what a good idea.

Unfortunately, I was taken on by a...very unhappy woman (sort of 'The Devil wears Prada'esque...) who seemed to think that runners should be given a deliberately hard time...there was some 'tradition' of this and I was prepared for it..but she was extreme..

I think the twentieth time she had personally insulted me, or got me to take back her lunch on some minor issue (or it would have to come out of my miniscule wages) or tried to make me pay for cleaning fluid for the loos (I don't know why either) I became so miserable that I asked her, politely, if she wouldn't mind if I left...she then sacked me and refused to give me a reference - ending my ability to become a runner..

I used to enjoy walsing around film companies in the West end, though and I was devastated at the time, looking back, I wish I'd told someone..but I was too young to know how to deal with it..

But my worst job ever was working in a fishmongers..horrendous and brutal..I am squeamish anyway, so I thought that was my problem..but a few years later I ended up working for a band whose drummer was the son of the owner - we bonded instantly over how terrible it had been (he'd had to work there whether he liked it or not.)

Lord Brett

When poverty forced me to give up film journalism, I worked for a bank (I won't give their name, but it starts with B and also contains the letters radford and Bingley) spending all day typing a series of numbers and letters from forms into a computer system.

I guess employing temps to do such mindless work was cheaper than automating the system, but I was nearly driven mad with boredom and repetition.

faginsgirl

What a great thread!

Back to Greggs- if nobody minds I will tell a true story of a mistake I made which nearly brought down the entire compnay!

One day I was put on to do sandwhiches. I had to slice open the bun and butter it (hope your following so far as I thought I was at the time).

After the butter I had to put the lettuce in and then put the filling on the top, put the lid on the bun to be wrapped and priced.

Then one day it all went horribly wrong Yes, in a moment of madness I`d actually put the filling in first and then the lettuce on the top instead

I had hell to pay! Some of the workers and someone else quite high up in the shop waved it about in my face asking how they were going to sell THAT! I was incompetent and didnt know what I was doing! Things were slammed about around me and then I was sent to coventry!

On a more serious note (not that that wasn`t serious at the time mind you!) I have a job I enjoy now but my experiences in the workplace have changed me, it made me think about how establishments and people who think they have power over others (even if only in thier own minds!) take advantage by trying to undermine the average working person by trying to humiliate them to the hilt!

xx

We`re changin` lodggggggggings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

scholes

Worked in a pie factory in 1973 aged 14 where I was constantly harassed by this 19year old girl who for some reason had taken a fancy to me-God knows why, given the age difference.
Needless to say I was frightened to death. I had to endure most of my summer holidays resisting her advances.
Then as an 18 year old I had a part-time job working behind the bar of a Pub in Lymm, Cheshire, where I had the misfortune to work for an ex RAF catering officer, with a handle bar moustache that would have put General Melchitt to shame.
He was a rude, impatient and bad tempered old sod , who used to swear at the locals if they dared to complain about the beer.

DB7

About one week on a turkey farm when I was in between jobs and fancied workng outside for the summer. Appalling conditions for the animals, the farmer was a gun nut who would blow away birds for fun, and when it finally came to power-washing the empty sheds - I thought sod it, I'm off.

dremble wedge

When I was 16 I worked in McDonalds. On my first day my duties involved squirting sauce on toasted buns then passing it along to another drone who looked after the next stage of the burger process.

All went well until my supervisor came along to inform me that I was squirting the sauce onto the bun incorrectly.

I had no idea what she was talking about as the sauce was actually going on to the bun rather than the floor, the walls, my uniform or my colleagues (as I say I had been practicing for some time).

'No' she explained 'It has to go on the bun in a certain pattern' and then demonstrated the regulation swirl.

'But surely it doesn't matter, your swirl will be ruined when the burger and pickles are introduced into the equation' I pointed out.

'But that's how we do things here' she smiled steely-eyed.

When, a few hours later she caught me in a quiet moment saying 'If there's time to lean, there's time to clean' I knew that I was in the wrong career, left in my next break and made arrangements to join the circus...

faginsgirl

I know where I would have liked to stick that sauce bottle

xx

We`re changin` lodggggggggings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Carmel

When i was at uni i had my son and my then husband was doing a course in photography so i worked in a bar at night so he could mind our son during the evenings well fighting off old drunk men was not my idea of glamour so packed it in and went modeling part time got paid a lot more too.Although missed the laughs i had at the bar at some of the drunks.

Live each day to the full because one day it will be your last.