Your First Job?What Age were you?

Mrs_Doyle · 24-08-2007 12:17PM

I used to deliver leaflets and newspapers from the age of 13, but I got my first proper job in Tommy's newsagents, when I was 15 years old.
I was paid £2.75 and hour, I used to give my Mam half my wages, and I still thought I was loaded!

Terry · 24-08-2007 12:33PM

exiot wrote:

I was 14, working on a campsite 2 hours from my house so I stayed out there Monday - Friday, worked 10 - 6 everyday and got €70 for the week. Absolute slave labour

Ask me bollix.
I worked a 70 hour, 7 day week and made £70. I was 16 at the time and they were union rates. £1.64 an hour. After paying emergency tax (which the secretary was supposed to sort out) and other deductions, I was left with just over £70.
I did that for 10 weeks straight.

bringitdown · 24-08-2007 12:40PM

Texaco - 15
Great fun for IR2 / hour + as much as you could eat.
Not sure that was part of the official wage tho.

MonkeyWrench · 24-08-2007 12:43PM

First job was in a large hardware store. Used to deliver beds to homes etc. Pay was absolutely dire, probably less than the minimum wage at the time. £60 per week 15 years ago. On my last day I spilt a whole drum of paint right outside the front door of the shop!

Dudess · 24-08-2007 12:43PM

It's hilarious reading posts from people who got their first job way back through the mists of time in... 1999. God, they must be a wise old 21 by now! And then giving out about the youngsters of today!

My first job: summer of '94, Tesco (Quinnsworth at the time) in Paul Street Shopping Centre, Cork when I was 16 (just after the junior cert). Stacking shelves, helping pack bags at the register and standing at the travelator to help people drag their trolleys over the threshold :rolleyes:. £2.40 an hour, some days working from 8am to 7pm (pretty tough-going if you're 16). I "graduated" to till work by the end of the summer. They even asked me if I wanted to drop out of school and make a career there! I lolled. They weren't impressed. Still went back there the following summer. After that I had enough experience chalked up for Dunnes!

Cuddlesworth · 24-08-2007 12:56PM

14, on rooftops laying down felt, lats and tiles. Next year I graduated to mixing paint for spray guns. Would have been 98' at around 50 quid for the day.

Terry · 24-08-2007 01:12PM

Dudess wrote:

It's hilarious reading posts from people who got their first job way back through the mists of time in... 1999. God, they must be a wise old 21 by now! And then giving out about the youngsters of today!

My first job: summer of '94, Tesco (Quinnsworth at the time) in Paul Street Shopping Centre, Cork when I was 16 (just after the junior cert). Stacking shelves, helping pack bags at the register and standing at the travelator to help people drag their trolleys over the threshold :rolleyes:. £2.40 an hour, some days working from 8am to 7pm (pretty tough-going if you're 16). I "graduated" to till work by the end of the summer. They even asked me if I wanted to drop out of school and make a career there! I lolled. They weren't impressed. Still went back there the following summer. After that I had enough experience chalked up for Dunnes!

Can I point and laugh at you and your 1994 job and the fact that you are young enough to have sat the junior cert?

Dudess · 24-08-2007 01:15PM

Yeah, but I'm not going on as if I'm a wise old woman.

demosuzki · 24-08-2007 01:19PM

mcauley wrote:

Underage Bar-work really was the way to go was it not?

yeap

i started at 12 as a floor boy (1980) in a bar
3 pounds a night. 7 until finish.

finally got promoted to barman at 15 and discovered it was an easier job.

first full time job (summer) also a bar job. at a seasside resort was for 35 pounds plus lodging.

hard work but great days.

better then these damn computers.

mcauley · 24-08-2007 01:56PM

Thought I would be somewhat alone in my bar-work origins!!!

Ishmael · 24-08-2007 02:36PM

Seems to be a lack of farm related jobs. Fecking townies!!

The Bollox · 24-08-2007 02:37PM

13, working on a farm picking spuds

meglome · 24-08-2007 02:50PM

I was thirteen and worked on a building site for my dad, during the summer. God bless the lax laws of the time. Jesus I still remember the much bigger bags of cement they used then, total killer to carry. I remember the following summer was the first time I ever drove anything. One of the guys told me to get the dumper, to which I pointed out I couldn't drive. So he says he didn't ****ing ask me if I could drive he just told me to get the ****ing dumper now. Funny how get the dumper or else can really encourage you to go get the dumper, which I did. Used to drive it on site all the time after that. Met some crazy bastards over the years, I wonder how I wasn't killed. Fell off a scaffolding one time, no barrier on it. Landed on my back on pile of blocks, hardly a mark on me.

Ah manual labour such a distant memory.

Ruu_Old · 24-08-2007 02:52PM

A norm for some of the culchies out there, picking stones at about 12 years old. :mad:

meglome · 24-08-2007 02:55PM

Ruu wrote:

A norm for some of the culchies out there, picking stones at about 12 years old. :mad:

As a city boy I would have assumed the stones wouldn't grow back.

azezil · 24-08-2007 02:56PM

hehehe picking stones, gawd I remember those days, but my first paid job was picking strawberries for 50p a bucket! I think I was about 14 / 15

Dave! · 24-08-2007 02:58PM

I was 16 or 17, was in a warehouse.... Boring, repetetive, strenuous work.

rainbow kirby · 24-08-2007 03:04PM

I was 15, it was Super Valu in Firhouse - it sucked, and I did myself a back injury which still niggles from time to time 8 years on.

johnnyskeleton · 24-08-2007 03:05PM

Working for my uncle at 13/14. Wages were never discussed but after the first paycheque I remember thinking that I would have been better off begging on the streets.

It was actually cheaper to get me to move the entire contents of a warehouse over to a new warehouse by hand than it would have been to use the van for 20 minutes to trasfer it over.

24-08-2007 03:06PM

17, Glass collecting in Sir Henry's. Those were the days.

Smellyirishman · 24-08-2007 03:07PM

2002, aged 15; worked in the Phoenix News newsagents at the gates to the Phoenix Park, the one up the road from the #10 terminal. I think I got 70euro a week (2-4 day weeks) roughly, can't remember too well, all I know is I bought a Sony Mini-disc player with my first few handfuls of cash.

Ah, the memories of that place, filled with junkies so it was but I had some great craic there.

admiralofthefleet · 24-08-2007 03:47PM

15 as a lounge boy in a pub, i loved it even though the wages were a terrible £2 an hour and the conditions were 3rd world. they stopped paying us at last orders (11.30) but you had to stay til the death (sometimes 2.30) and you would lose your job if you left at last orders

watna · 24-08-2007 04:48PM

started babysitting when I was about 14 buit my first real job was Eddie rockets, the summer after 4th year in school. i thought I was great, i had money to buy what i wanted and had a real laugh in work. I worked Sundays in 5th year too, but they didn't pay double time or anything so I used to get something pathetic like £20.

Exit · 24-08-2007 05:57PM

Quinnsworth (now Tesco) in Artane S.C. at the age of 17. Making £2.02 an hour. I don't think I lasted the month. Being on the trolleys outside in the summer was fine, just watching the girls go by. But if I was inside, it was mundane as hell. They literally just had me sweep the aisles all day long.

The Bollox · 24-08-2007 06:02PM

when I was working on the farm I was earning £180 a week. but I f*cking worjed for it. 8 - 6 mon - fri and 8 - 12 on sat. I was the only one of the lads who worked though and £180 was a helluva lot back then for a 13 year old

Kernel32 · 24-08-2007 06:08PM

First job was when I was 12 back in 1987. I was picking spuds, stones, parsnips, carrots, that sort of thing for 1 pound an hour. I probably worked 40 to 50 hours a week all summer. I worked at the same place for 9 years, summers, weekeends, bank holidays and eventually full time. My first offical full time job was there after I dropped out of college. Luckily I got my act together after a couple of years and got out of that work.

GrumPy · 24-08-2007 06:09PM

Was 18 and a salesguy (still am, but I'm only 19 now)

Schism · 24-08-2007 06:15PM

First proper job - 16 working in the mail room of an office building, by the time I had figured out who everybody was and where their desks were the summer was over!

Other than that farm work in the eveing, but that doesn't pay.

Wishbone Ash · 24-08-2007 07:37PM

A few posters have mentioned delivering leaflets/flyers etc. How does the employer know that they have been delivered? Wouldn't the nearest wheelie bin be irresistible?

The reason I ask is that I remember lads working for Coíllte. They would be given 1,000 saplings and get paid X amount per tree planted but they would plant 200 and dig a hole and bury the rest, arse around for a few hours and then go back and get paid for 1,000! :eek:

Terry wrote:

and the fact that you are young enough to have sat the junior cert?

Is that the one we used to call 'The Inter'?

nesf · 24-08-2007 08:04PM

Factory work, fixing and overhauling things when I was 15.

Your First Job?What Age were you?

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