Coffee group people were discussing when we started first working and what our first jobs were. The men said they'd done paper rounds. You were allowed to do those even before you were 15 but I couldn't because I had to get an early bus to school five miles away. One of us, JH, went straight into an accounting firm and trained as an accountant. Most of us didn't go to university. I didn't.
My first job was as soon as I was allowed, immediately after my GCEs. I went down the high street, starting at the garage because friends had got jobs in petrol stations, going in every shop and asking. You didn't have to take a CV with you then, just ask. I think I went to my favourite shops first, like the art supplies, but I didn't have to ask in many because the supermarket took me. Silly thing was they knew I'd done maths GCSE and thought I could do arithmetic so put me on the veg counter. Can you work out how much a quarter pound of apples is if they're one and six a pound? Remember it was pre decimal. 1/6!
They moved me on to check out where the till did the arithmetic. I still managed to mess up though. Because every time someone asked me for carrier bag at the end of the transaction, I'd input the whole cost and then the thruppence extra for the bag. How many times did I do that? But it made the till not balance at the end of the day. For some reason, they still kept me on for five weeks of that summer, and then I stayed there doing Saturdays throughout sixth form. Patient and optimistic manager.
I was naive and vulnerable to the more worldly workers there. At 17, I passed my driving test, and my parents would let me drive the multi seater Bedford Utilabrake around. I must have told someone at the supermarket what I was driving. Anyhow, after a few weeks, I got a message that the lad working on the butcher's counter would like a date with me, which was a compliment but a surprise as we hadn't talked much, if at all, and I had no idea what we had in common or what we'd do on a date. Fortunately, one of the older women warned me off, that he was going to ask me to come with the Utilabrake and drive him and a load of mates. So I made an excuse and refused that first ever date!
In the second year at college, I was too far away to work at the supermarket, but one day some friends were interested in finding Saturday jobs, and a few of us went job hunting together. We asked in Harrods. They like Lorrie who already had retail skills, and took her on, but wouldn't put me in fashion. They offered me a job in their posh Swedish sandwich bar on the fifth floor and I worked there for about a pound a day for nearly a year. You got a free lunch with the option of the most enormous creamy gateaux. But the clientele were not always very nice. One of my fellow waitresses (we only cleared tables because it was self-service), was nearly 16 and in a children's home about to be thrown out to live on her own. A customer called her over and told her that his wife had dropped a shilling and she could have it if she liked (to pick it up).
Then the Irish girls at college told me that William Hill, the bookmakers paid something like £1.50 a day and I went there instead. Nicer work and easier than being on your feet. I worked there till I left college, including working at their offices in my home city in the holidays, even being given the responsibility for opening the offices. You meet a variety of interesting people in a bookies.
