Your first wage.

[Jimmy Recard]

RDMcG said:

£2 a week serving petrol as an 11 year old in 1959. However my first real job as an articled clerk in Arthur Andersen & Co in 1970 paid the princely sum of£ 1200 a year.

Arthur Andersen? Plenty of people try to forget they worked there since 2001

[RDMcG]

Jimmy Recard said:

Arthur Andersen? Plenty of people try to forget they worked there since 2001

In its day it was a very good company. Worked there till 1979. Sad ending.

[Djtemeka]

jdw100 said:

So money well spent then!

Would have lasted longer if I were any good at pinball

[mr.man]

£9 /6s /4d in 1970 aged 17. First day at work Monday 31st August (Bank Holiday Monday) Only Banks had a holiday.
Four years later £37 per week. Another six years later £128 per week, that was when inflation hit nearly 20% !!

[bucksmanuk]

First job
At 16 - 1981 – washing cars on a Saturday- £1/hr, then they realised I could service them to, so it was then £2/hr for that work.

1983 - Temping in the records department at the local hospital - £2:50/hr. nice easy work, just 6-8 hours a week - then 18 hours a week in the holidays and surrounded by much older women too, all of whom pretty much scared me!

1986 – First real job, trainee design/details draughtsman - £1:75/hr basic for 6 months, with a little bit of OT at time and a half! then £7,500 a year with unlimited OT again at time and a half. I was loaded!! Then my mum said I had to pay my fair share at home, which was £15/week for food and half the household bills… No longer loaded….

[andymc]

Paper round in the 80's paid 3 quid or so a week followed by working at the local supermarket at £15 for 8 hours then onto selling double glazing in the 6th form holidays at £60 or so basic (soul destroying), brief spell cleaning buses 10pm till 2am then my first real job with the civil service at £160 a week in 1993

[Buster73]

Did a paper round when I was 13 , 30 papers on a morning , a few more on the evening and two bags on a Sunday.

£1.60 a week and 20p bonus for no mistakes , which the bds used to invent to not pay it.

Very proud to admit I led the first paperboys strike in our village , it was the 70's though.

They put the delivery charge up but refuse to give us a pay rise , so everyone out was the cry.

One evenings paper rounds not delivered, much to our amusement.

Got sacked the next week , I never worked out why !!!!!

[tezzer]

1977 stock control clerk in an agricultural suppliers (tractor parts and the like). My pay, a whopping £27.27p a week, before deductions.

Wasn't that bad, sat in a warm office on my own all day, listening to Radio 1

[speedchick]

1986, YTS at the Co-Op in Manchester (headquarters!), think it was something like £27.50 per week, plus all but £3 of my travel costs, then it went up to the princely sum of £35 I think in the 2nd year. But I did get to visit some other places helping with management training scheme interviews, and I got a BTEC in Business Studies

[Goaty Bill 2]

A buck an hour, working on the mechanical boat ramp at a fishing 'resort'/hotel.
Load the owners (small boat) out of it's bay onto a trolley on rail tracks, roll it down to the boat launch and onto another trolley (on rail tracks) that let the boat down into the water.
$35-$45 per week.
Ordered a Hardy Palacona cane fly rod from England ($140) at the end of the summer, to which Grandmother added a Hardy 'Perfect' fly reel for Christmas. (I still have both, though sadly the reel has been damaged)

Next summer tree falling at $1100 per month salaried.
Following summer fighting forest fires for $100 per month more.

[zoom star]

At 16 in 1979 I was working a full week of days, and 4 hours overtime on a saturday and sunday morning.
For this I took home £119 per week..
I can remember for my 20th birthday buying a used Rover Vitesse 3.5 V8 SD1 to replace my Morris Marina...
I worked in the design and development department of a textile manufacturer,my wage at the time was so high for my age, (I was paid the department wage scale) I was told not to disclose to the shop floor workers,as an average wage for a shop floor worker was around £50 - £70 I was told it could cause resentment towards me.
Those were the days.

[drainbrain]

1970 selling PF Collier encyclopaedias door-to-door via an office in South Ken.

£15 commission per sale. Sell 2 in any evening and manager took you to the Playboy Club for a steak dinner!

[Moonhawk]

My first actual job was a paper round which was only around £5 per week (it was a weekly local paper and took me 2-3 evenings to complete). It could be more however at Christmas as we got extra for leafleting campaigns.

My first 'real' job was working as a shelf stacker in a local supermarket. I believe I started on ~£1.50 per hour in around 1990 at the age of 15.

[Arklight]

First real job in 1996 was £80 per week, working for a small company building, selling and servicing dental kit.

Loads of interesting stuff to play with, aside from the centrifugal casting machine which ate my arm

i remember getting a pay rise to £100, i had made it!

[jdw100]

drainbrain said:

1970 selling PF Collier encyclopaedias door-to-door via an office in South Ken.

£15 commission per sale. Sell 2 in any evening and manager took you to the Playboy Club for a steak dinner!

Very 70's. I can picture you in a brown flared suit and kipper tie knocking on doors answered by bored housewives in those rayon dressing gowns.

Then off to the Club later for steak and Blue Nun with your seedy boss who has a combover.

[Poisson96]

£5.30 p/h selling food at Krispy Kreme. Utterly dreadful.

[J4CKO]

£2.25 delivering papers in 1984, that was mean even then, Mr Butt had bright yellow eyes and was dead tight, other paper shops were paying big money like £3.50 so it was just a springboard onto better money, and we used to supplement our meagre income by helping ourselves to the penny sweets when his back was turned

I heard Mr Butt had died recently, that was amazing as he looked at deaths door back then !

[33q]

September 1973. £759 per annum....although there was a salary increase to just over £800 in the offing.

I drew about £64 for my first full month

I stayed with the same company for 37 years before 'retiring' 6 years ago. On thankfully rather more than my annual each week!

[London GT3]

PurpleMoonlight said:

1978
Prudential Assurance - London
£3000 pa


40 years in financial services next year.

I started work aged 16 at the Prudential in Holborn Bars on 6th September 1976. I was in the Estates Department as a trainee surveying technician. My annual salary was £2,083. I remember that at the end of the first month my net pay was £99.99 and I felt disappointed that they didn't round it up to £100.00 !! I used to may my Mum £35 per month to live at home and my rail ticket was £29 per month. Compared to my paper round and Saturday job I was rich beyond my wildest dreams!

[PurpleMoonlight]

London GT3 said:

I started work aged 16 at the Prudential in Holborn Bars on 6th September 1976. I was in the Estates Department as a trainee surveying technician. My annual salary was £2,083. I remember that at the end of the first month my net pay was £99.99 and I felt disappointed that they didn't round it up to £100.00 !! I used to may my Mum £35 per month to live at home and my rail ticket was £29 per month. Compared to my paper round and Saturday job I was rich beyond my wildest dreams!

Small world.

A lovely old building and a great place to work back then. I only commuted via the tube for 15 months and then got myself a motorbike. Lost count of the times I had to leave it there of an evening as I was too drunk to ride home (at 5 pm!).

I had to leave in 1985 because group pensions were moving to Reading.

Edited by PurpleMoonlight on Saturday 4th March 13:55