My first wages
Without boring rent or bills to pay in the adult world, most Saturday job or student workers felt rich.
In 1984, I got a tenner a day and all the overripe grapes I could eat at my greengrocers, but I would have given all that up for the perks of Tony Martin’s first job.
The reader in Peterborough had the usual paper round but also doubled up at his local fish and chip shop. “I earned the princely weekly sum of 7/6d delivering papers, but then I peeled the potatoes in a cold shed, especially in the winter, for £1 a week,” explains Tony, adding, “But I also got all the chips I could eat!”
Particularly on a Saturday evening when Tony and his mates called into the chippy on the way home from the local cinema. Tony says: “It was great – I never had to pay for mine!”
Helping your dad in the trades was a popular first step for lads – before health and safety was a thing.
In 1964, John Gallie’s dad was a hod carrier on a building site.
The reader from Durham recalls: “I was 11 and my dad’s boss asked him if I’d like to work the school summer holidays as a tea boy on £2/10 shillings a week.”
Not exactly over-stretched, John only made the tea three times a day – which seems remarkably restrained for British workers!
“I started helping my dad as well – I mixed the cement in the mixer then drove it to the brickies in the dumper truck.” At a time when modern teenagers practically faint at the thought of emptying the dishwasher let alone going up a ladder, John was also helping the roofers. “I was putting tiles on my shoulder and carrying them up a ladder. I even got to have a go at driving a steam roller. I loved it – and I’d never had that much money before.”
But if John got stuck into his job, Helen Tabern got stuck down a one-way street as a Christmas postie.
“I was a university student back home for Christmas when my boyfriend and I got holiday jobs delivering mail,” explains Helen from Bryn, Greater Manchester.
“There were a few of us at the depot waiting for sacks. For some reason, I thought I was supposed to deliver an enormous bag – it was bigger than me – and I got upset, saying I couldn’t manage it.” Muddled Helen gave everyone a laugh as the man in charge explained that the huge sack was the incoming mail which hadn’t yet been sorted into various area bags for the posties.
“I never lived that down,” she says. “I don’t think I was suited to the job of postie anyway because even with a smaller bag, I had trouble finding the correct houses and ended up posting cards randomly through letterboxes.
“Apologies to all those who received cards from strangers for Christmas 1971!”
How did you earn your first pay packet? Email siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk