What was your first job after leaving school?

Just wondering what your first job was after finishing school?
I left in 1990 and did a YTS scheme (remember them?) on spraying cars but i left after 2 months as i hated it. I then went on another YTS scheme learning computer programming which i enjoyed. My basic pay was £29.50 plus bus fare money. This went up to £35 when i turned 17, it seemed like a lot of money back then :))
My first real job was a couple of years later, i joined a recruitment company and screened possible employees for contracts we had, the money was good but we were thrown in at the deep end, i made so many mistakes i was fired :))
The trouble with tribbles is.......
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  • edited March 2017
    I didn't actually get a job til' I was 18 I think? I left school decided that 6th form was b*llocks so went straight to college afterwards, decided I wasn't really committed to it, and dropped out after a coupleof months. Rode my BMX in a rather sad attempt to go pro, but realistically that was never going to happen :))

    Apart from a few failed attempts at part time work, and doing a load of dodgy little odd jobs for cash in hand like weeding peoples patios, and the like, I think my first actual job was industrial clearance. Bloody rank it was as well £3.10 an hour for 10-12 hour shifts, £3.30 an hour for 8-10 hour shifts if you did nightshift. I remember one job we went on was down in Stratford on Avon, I was skint when I departed, and actually ended up coming back owing more money than I got paid for the work I did :))
    Post edited by dm_boozefreek on
    Every night is curry night!
  • edited March 2017
    A brain surgeon,





    oh no wait, I mean I was a gardener. then a photographic assistant, after that, it all goes secret and I would have to shoot myself if I told !
    Post edited by grey key on
    Every time I read that the oldest person in the world has died, I have to do a quick check to see it isn't ME..........
  • edited March 2017
    What's a 'job' ?

    Does running around with a hatchet, slaughtering mice count? :)
    Post edited by polomint on
    So far, so meh :)
  • the one i just left lol, took me 18 years to get it, oh wait i did work in a chicken slaughterhouse for 3 weeks back in 1986 ish
    i left school in 85
    Professional Mel-the-Bell Simulator................"So realistic, I found myself reaching for the Kleenex King-Size!" - Richard Darling
  • I left school AT 85 :))
    Every time I read that the oldest person in the world has died, I have to do a quick check to see it isn't ME..........
  • I worked in the office of a leather factory down in Colliers Wood. Everything, and I mean everything smelt of leather. That bit was wonderful. The office ran like a 1950s, bosses in glass offices watching you, management with delusions of grandeur. Bunch of tossers, I lasted a month before being let go. Moved onto BT after that.
    Sod it!

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  • I left school in '88 and worked as a computer operator. Sticking textiles into a colour eye and the PC (it had bespoke software running under DOS) would spit out a recipe of how to reproduce that colour.

    My god it was tedious. I then started training as a colourist (it was a textile dye and print factor I worked in) and they sent me on block release to do an HNC in textile chemistry, with a view to a degree in the future. This work was actually pretty interesting.

    The company was shut down after I'd been there for just over three years, so I got redundancy money, got a job at Glasgow School of Art (textile dept) and moved to Glasgow!
  • My first 'proper' job after leaving uni (I'd done various summer jobs during the holidays) was in '97 as a Medical Records Clerk at the hospital in Aberystwyth. It involved preparing casenotes for outpatients appointments and was basically detective work as many of the casenotes went walkabouts. They had barcodes and were supposed to be scanned in and out of various locations (records library, medical secretaries offices, with consultants, on wards etc) but often this didn't happen so you had to hunt high and low for them. I got a lot of exercise doing that job as the hospital was on four floors and I never used the lifts!

    I quite enjoyed it as the team I worked with were a decent bunch and most of the other staff were friendly (except for the odd power-crazed consultant or battleaxe ward sister). You also got to know everyone as the work took you all over the building. I was there for 5 months and then got a job in the same hospital in HR producing workforce statistics and managing the staff database, training, newsletter etc.
    Post edited by Maroc's Other Projection on
    Cheeky Funster (53)
  • edited March 2017
    Started an apprenticeship at fifteen servicing valve amplifiers which dear old daddy made me give up as the brass was crap and seven years on said crap was such a long time so became a sheet metal worker fabricating Hoffman style presses for the princely sum of three guineas a week which you could boost quite a bit provided you worked all the hours God sent. :(
    Post edited by moggy on
  • Moggy was working probably before we were all born :))
    The trouble with tribbles is.......
  • My first job was in a sweet factory, filling horrible little toy phones with necklaces and flumps - terrible people but the place smelt great and had as many skull-crushers as you could ram down your neck. Then after a week of that they made the whole shift redundant, and I went to a veggie processing place, chopping up turnips with a machete. Then after a year of that I finally got an office job, Damn, that was about 23 years ago... makes me feel old.
  • edited March 2017
    zx1 wrote: »
    Moggy was working probably before we were all born :))
    Cheeky little sod!!

    I have a special set of skills and a very big dog called Mimi and together we will use those skills to find your nice new house and when we do we will remove your cooker your camera and all your food preparation implements then cook you a decent supper.

    At this point Moggy realises he has confused Liam Neeson with Delia Smith and crawls away shamefaced.
    :D
    Post edited by moggy on
  • edited March 2017
    Sponsored Undergraduate engineer, starting in sept, 1987. After many takeovers and mergers, I finally left 29 years later last year to try something different.
    Post edited by murtceps on
  • Tesco in 1980...
    I wanna tell you a story 'bout a woman I know...
  • chef in a chinese takeaway, pay was £2.30 an hour. then after about 6 months moved to another one round the corner cause they offered me £2.50 an hour. world domination swiftly followed.
  • My first wage was 88p an hour.
    I wanna tell you a story 'bout a woman I know...
  • every little helps :)
  • Painter and decorator for a mean man to wanted a lacky not a professional.
    Calling all ASCII Art Architects Visit the WOS Wall of Text and contribute: https://www.yourworldoftext.com/wos
  • def chris wrote: »
    chef in a chinese takeaway, pay was £2.30 an hour. then after about 6 months moved to another one round the corner cause they offered me £2.50 an hour. world domination swiftly followed.

    Was it you who told the story on here about how somebody killed themselves in your kitchen, and the boss expected you to keep working around the hanging corpse when the paramedics and the cops were on the way to cut him down?
    Every night is curry night!
  • def chris wrote: »
    chef in a chinese takeaway, pay was £2.30 an hour. then after about 6 months moved to another one round the corner cause they offered me £2.50 an hour. world domination swiftly followed.

    Was it you who told the story on here about how somebody killed themselves in your kitchen, and the boss expected you to keep working around the hanging corpse when the paramedics and the cops were on the way to cut him down?

    wwwwhaaaat??? :-O
  • I know it sounds completely insane, but I'm sure I read that on WOS :))
    Every night is curry night!
  • I know it sounds completely insane, but I'm sure I read that on WOS :))

    On WoS??? Nah!!! :))
  • Male escort
  • I packed bread for the Co-Op part time while I was in my last year at school, then the day after my final exam went full time. It was a big bakery factory supplying bread to most of the shops and supermarkets in and around Aberdeen, as well as Orkney/Shetland. We had to make up the orders of various types of bread and stack them up ready to load onto vans for delivery. Hard graft (you'd be amazed how heavy a 7 foot stack of bread is), but we had fun, it was a good team, so not the worst job in the world. Paid decent enough as well, I was making more than my mates who were on YTS schemes. It was almost shut down by the health inspectors while I was there, as the glass windows in the ceiling and anything high up was black with filth, and you'd see the roaches scuttle away when you turned on the lights in the morning if you were first in. Bakers were terrible for not washing their hands after going to the loo too.

    From there I moved to the Unemployment Benefit Office for about 6 months temp work, as I knew I wanted to do some sort of office based job rather than manual work, so that was my first proper job beyond the bakery. I loved it there, totally different place back in the 80s. Horrible for clients to visit no doubt, but we were all young and had a very active social life together, with most weekends spent at the social club where drink was cheap and we knew everyone.
  • edited March 2017
    def chris wrote: »
    chef in a chinese takeaway, pay was £2.30 an hour. then after about 6 months moved to another one round the corner cause they offered me £2.50 an hour. world domination swiftly followed.

    Was it you who told the story on here about how somebody killed themselves in your kitchen, and the boss expected you to keep working around the hanging corpse when the paramedics and the cops were on the way to cut him down?

    You may have heard of it on here, as it happened in Brighton in the 70's, the hanging caused a water pipe to move, causing a leak, and the freezers were in the garden, so there was extra danger of electrocution. I won't say which one, but at the time, it was one of the biggest !

    A plumber named Tom was the lucky repair man for that.
    Post edited by grey key on
    Every time I read that the oldest person in the world has died, I have to do a quick check to see it isn't ME..........
  • During my last couple of years in school I used to work weekends stacking shelves in a Waitrose supermarket. I was studying for 4 A Levels and fancying myself to go off to a highfalutin university and despite not being drawn to hard work, I was actually good at the manual job. Of course, I spent all my money on Speccy games!

    Then I got my results through and although I didn't fail any, I got 4 poor grades - not good enough for my Uni offers. When discussing it with my supermarket manager he said, "You know, you only need one basic A-level pass to qualify for the management trainee role here..."

    I suddenly saw myself spending the rest of my life stacking supermarket shelves @-) and hurriedly applied for a bunch of lower-entry-level courses. Managed to get on a Combined Sciences degree at Sunderland, majoring in Computer Programming. 3 years later after graduating I fluked a great job at a large software company earning a whopping £13k, which was a lot in 1990! B-)
  • def chris wrote: »
    chef in a chinese takeaway, pay was £2.30 an hour. then after about 6 months moved to another one round the corner cause they offered me £2.50 an hour. world domination swiftly followed.

    Was it you who told the story on here about how somebody killed themselves in your kitchen, and the boss expected you to keep working around the hanging corpse when the paramedics and the cops were on the way to cut him down?
    tbf if someone had killed themself in the kitchen that is exactly what my boss wouldve done... in fact both bosses i had at the 2 chineses were proper militant cyborgs
  • My first job was selling windows (actual windows, not operating systems) over the phone. Horrible, horrible job!
  • GreenCard wrote: »
    My first job was selling windows (actual windows, not operating systems) over the phone. Horrible, horrible job!
    You didn't work for The Armstrongs, did you? :))
    Post edited by Maroc's Other Projection on
    Cheeky Funster (53)
  • Was initially offered a job writing Game Boy games for Eurocom, but that fell through when they didn't get a contract they'd expected to win. Ended up as a COBOL/embedded C programmer working for a horrible little local company. Eventually lost that job in the umpteenth round of redundancies. Fortunately, a couple of weeks later JPM saw the Spectrum covertape games on my CV and decided to give me a job writing games for them.
    Still supporting Multi-Platform Arcade Game Designer, currently working on AGD 5. I am NOT on Twitter.
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