Starting work when why and what?

I left grammar school and started work as a trainee in a steelworks laboratory for the grand wage of £2 2s a week. I had to agree to "further education " which involved one day and one night a week attending college. This is the hard way to get a qualification but I had to work, there was only me and my mum at home as my dad died when I was 12 years old from silicosis he had been a grinder using a sandstone wheel.
I progressed through various works departments including being a manager in the melting shop and ending up buying the raw materials (alloys and pure metals) to produce melts of special alloys. I stayed at basically the same company, just different names over the doors, for just short of 50 years.

 

Motorcycle mechanic on the YTS. Mid 80s wasn't a good period for the industry and the business went belly up. Into engineering next, fabricating quarry plant. Jonah here struck again and after one of the lads there had been telling his tales of being a roadie in the 70s, I decided it was the correct career choice for the testosterone driven,beer fuelled teen-ager I was and ended up backstage at our local conference centre. I wasn't disappointed. Three pints minimum at dinner time and it seemed to impress the young ladies. Winner.

 

40 years ago I was still in school, I was 12.

My first ever 'proper' job was at 15 in 1987 where I worked in car body shop - my job was to take the lights off, bumpers off, wing mirrors etc etc.

I graduated to sanding cars down with the orbital sander and cleaning out the spray booths - it transpired I wasn't very good at the sanding part - no one told me part of that role was to highlight imperfections, so I was back on the 10mm and 13mm sockets with which you could take most cars apart back then.

The guys I worked with were ok - one had his own Page 3 collection stuck to the wall - this display was maybe 20ft long and 10ft high - an incredible body of work.

Highlights included the bailiffs and police coming to switch the power off - which one of the sprayers immediately reconnected as soon as they left, hiding ringers (where a gold ford escort would suddenly become canary yellow etc.) and going up to the local bakery to order 10 doorstep toasts with butter for everyone each morning.

I look back and enjoyed it. Biggest lesson learnt was make sure you are off sick when the decide to bring in a Mk2 Granada that had been sat outside all summer with all masking tape attached and be told to get the stuff off. Nightmare - took me 2 days.

I was paid £150 a week - an incredible sum back then for a 15 year old.

 

Tech apprentice £17/week.
College for 6 months, training centre at a different firm 6 months, college 6 months then finally had 6 months at the actual company that I was apprenticed to, realised the apprenticeship was rubbish and quit. Got a draughtsman's job at the other company for £100/week. I was soooo bored, they thought it was because I was clever but really it was because I was out partying every night to the small hours. They tried to promote me to the CAD dept (1979) but I'd noticed the boss was a pompous arse and for some reason 40-50 years old's up there were having strokes. So I quit and went squatting/playing in bands in that there London.

When, some years later I got bored of constant debauchery I just started at the bottom with a really bad job.

 

Hated school so left at 16 in 1989 and started an electrical apprenticeship manly doing farms and industrial stuff.
I had already done a industry test and had a job offer before my school exams so didn’t bother much with them

1st year was 1 in 4 weeks at college the rest on the job. 2nd year and part of the 3rd year 1 day a week at college then at year 4 you took a 3 1/2 day practical exam.

Started on £50 a week and had to ride my moped to college 12miles away.

 

One thing I remember from the part of my apprenticeship spent in a training centre was if we were late we were docked 1/4 hour pay but if we didn't turn up at all we were paid in full. You can imagine how that went for some of us.

The company I worked for were paying the training centre company to train us but what we got was the bare minimum, like a box ticking exercise with complete disinterest in how we were doing.

Then when I worked for them they were on a go slow as part of a 3 year pay dispute. All of this - so boring I'm surprised we stayed awake. Someone worked out if you sat on the bog lid and put your feet up against the door you'd wake up about half an hour later with pins and needles.

 

I bet that took a bit of cleaning ...what was used Jizer . Yes we had all that caper . You would get prosecuted for doing that know i shouldn't wonder .
I got my own back when one mechanic tried that on me . We were both working on a Dodge tilt Kew with a V8 diesel in .
Well the sump bungs daftly came out on the side with those unlike all the rest sensibly straight down .
Me being suffering from the night before wasn't thinking and undid the bung and didn't but the collecting funnel at the side to collect ...had it in my head it was coming direct down ..He was greasing the front spring shackles and the hot oil and lots of it went directly onto his sexual combination .
There was another event which is worth a mention ...same mechanic on a artic trailer rear axles .
He had to push himself in between the the two wheels and burn through the seized up actuator nuts as it was impossible to undo them with spanners .
My job was to have a bucket of water ready incase he caught fire being as he was crammed in and unable to make a quick escape .
I wasn't paying attention and consequently he caught fire as his overalls were drenched in a weeks worth of swarf ...he really was alight and so the bucket of water was chucked over his front and put him out '

He eventually grovelled out ...stared at me and said ..You Were Going To Let Me Burn To Death You Little B.....D.

 

yep we had that to put up with a lot.

I was lucky in some ways that I had been bullied at school so knew not to fight it. They soon moved onto the other apprentice that fought back and was more sport for them I did feel sorry for him as he left after a bit.

 

First paid job was as a laboratory assistant at Rothamsted Agricultural Research station, where I helped evaluate the impact of different fertilizers on various crops. £72 cash per week, had to queue up at accounts and collect it in a brown envelope. Basically meant spending half the day filling pots with soil and planting Chinese cabbage, and the other half driving around the countryside spraying farmers' fields. Played a lot of football on the site sports field. Good times.

 

There were 63 draughtmen all on a go-slow apart from one bloke on the mech side and one on the elec who went like the clappers. Shows how over-manned the drawing office was. If I made one drawing in 2 weeks, these guys did 40. We were allowed 2.2 hours evening overtime and 4 every Saturday. It was a good example of unions making "progress" just for the sake of it. Eventually on a show of hands that clearly went the other way an agreement was reached back dated for 6 months that left everyone worse off than if they'd agreed the original deal. I'm not anti-union but this was ridiculous. I left shortly after.

 

Ahh ,applied by the drop dead gorgeous girl .

 

1983, vacation work at University programming an IC prober using BCPL to provide positioning to 2.5 microns accuracy.
1984 started work at Philips Research Redhill, working on modems ..