Or something like that!

That “Worst job” thing got me thinking. What summer/holiday jobs did you do in your youth? Up to, and including university.

Among others…
Working in a brewery. Excellent for organisational skills!
Building tennis courts. Got quite the tan.
Driver’s mate for Hotpoint. Sit in van all day. Do a bit of lifting. Meet all sorts of people. Sleep a lot.
Rigging big screens at concerts/TV shows. Drive to gig. Rig in. Sit around for day/s, getting paid. Get to meet amazing people like Rowan Atkinson. Derig. Drive home.
Bouncer. While at Uni. A place called The Pier. Some nights were gown, some were town. Interesting times…..

From around 8 years old I was an “apprentice” electrician (to my dad) every summer holiday.

During college years I had a summer job at a garden centre and then I worked at a place that made floats that bolted onto oil and dredging pipelines.

Edit: I learned to drive a forklift at the garden centre – and also used one at the pipeline place. A skill I hadn’t used again until the early hours of last Sunday morning when I drove one through the streets of Rhyl 😀 (it’s a long story)

plenty not worth mentioning.
trying to market internet terminals in cornershops – the terminals tere there we just had to convinve people to use them. most people had no idea what the internet was for. i think this would have been 1999

council post room. 8-4. post delivery twice a day to sort though. we would do one delivery round a day – alternating which round we went on around the huge building. sorting the delivery and the morning round took about 1:30. sorting the afternoon delivery maybe 30 mins. some days there would be a big box of mail to frank other days nothing at all. There was loads of time to smoke. I was maybe 3-5 a day when i started; i was doing 40 just 8-4 by the end of the summer. 😯 Funny names on the post was a highlight of the day. Miss A Minge. 😆 yeah me too mate!!

My first ever job, other than a paper round, was as a “spotter” in a nightclub- basically a troublemaker. Which sounds quite fun except that my main post was the gents, to stop drug deals. So yeah spent 4 hours a night in a shitey nightclub toilet. On the plus side this was before anyone had invented the Toilet Guy so at least they didn’t have me selling antiperspirant and paper towels. And I had deranged bouncers at my beck and call so that could be quite fun. Night after I left they had a near fatal stabbing right in my area, glad to miss that!

Every summer off in uni after that, I worked in the edinburgh festivals- helped my brother with his company in the runup and teardown and worked venues during the events. Bloody brilliant- free entry to loads of shows, good chat, lots of room to grow and learn (because everything’s so ramshackle and there’s no real chain of command. And, well, most important thing to do was to establish yourself as the only straight in the village- I’ve never been a ladykiller but I had a great time basically by default. Terrible money but, well, money can’t buy you love

Dipping sheep.

At 15 I got a job rigging dinghies, issuing buoyancy aids and taking tourists out sailing.
Spent every summer on to first permanent job at 21 teaching sailing, canoeing and windsurfing in Lake, Scotland, Wirral and Merseyside at uni.

I also did turkey killing, gutting and plucking at Christmas, beech tree seed harvesting in Autumn and paper round.

in 1997 (first summer of Uni) I worked in Greenwich, Connecticut in a very affluent neighbourhood, but on the worst house on the road, my face dropped when i saw it.

General handyman type doings for a very strange man, even his kids called him Dracula!

Highlights were stripping then painting a long V shaped roof facia, only to discover that he had given me the top coat instead of the undercoat, meaning i had to strip it all again and paint it for a third time! Getting electrocuted, and falling off a ladder and knocking myself silly! A bag full of spicy maryland crabs that it took about 4 hours to eat!

Did get to Amish country, Philly, Washington DC (he had a house there too) where the tenants had left the dog, so when we turned up it went metal and ran off down the road!

He had about 25 aircon units in his garage that he sold to unsuspecting bargain hunters and none in the house! Yep!

saving grace was NYC which was easy to reach on the MNR.

The day i left the property was one of the happiest days of my life!

happy days!

Currently working selling tickets in the park as my summer job.
Better than my real job to be honest.

APF

Summer jobs during Uni you mean ??

I was a delivery skipper taking yachts across to Barbados and Antigua, also did quite a few stints down to Mallorca/Ibiza/Minorca and a couple to Punta Alla and Malta.
Did a great one in my second year break to Sardinia in a fully kitted out Pilot Cutter, complete with hot showers, TV, full Nav and an Oven !!! Bloody amazing, got 8knts true out of it and spend three weeks pootling down the coast then across the Med.
No money, just food and flights and I could take anyone along with me.. usually ended up with one of my best mates and both our girlfriends at the time..

Did drivers mate for Curry’s delivering fridges, freezers, televisions etc. 10-12 hour days, about half of which map reading and sitting on my bum in the van and the other half lugging white goods into all sorts of places. I used to cycle the hilly 15mile round trip to the depot too. Some days I did the Isle of Wight which was much more laid back due to the slow pace between drops.

I worked in a sail maker while at uni. Best job I’ve ever done for atmosphere and people to work with although work itself was repetitive stitching and gluing dinghy toe straps I used to look forward to every day there.

Others included, sorting mail on night shift, putting up marquees (good physical work that), working in a commercial freezer (worst) and pub.

Bikebuoy wins the thread (b******)!

used to work on friend’s farm
all market garden produce (several varieties of apples mainly, plums, pears,…)

oh and “voluntary” work at Brands Hatch for F1 British GP, European GP, etc. etc. was mostly scout troops and a few other youth clubs. think the deal was something like 2-3 hours work per day, the troop/club gets a £100 donation, and every one that volunteered (youth and leaders) got a full weekend pass with grandstand or press enclosure access and camping on site inside the ticketed area.

Shittest job I ever did was working as a cleaner in the BAT cigarette factory in Southampton.

All day shovelling and sweeping tobacco dust off the floor and into the bin.

Every day I came back stinking so much my clothes went straight in to he wash. So much black shit came out of my nose when I blew it, it was disgusting.

Lots of Scumpton on Solent representation in the thread…! 🙂

After my A Levels i didnt have a clue what to do….so i joined a manning agency, spent 5 weeks working as a Static caravan delivery truck drivers mate, up and down the country, which was great until i contributed to a caravan falling off the back of the lorry as i couldnt remember which way the ratchet straps were supposed to sit. That was the end of that. Then i did 3.5 shifts at a cucumber packing factory outside hull, which was so mind numbingly dull that i walked out halfway through the second day morning shift…the only job ive ever walked out of. I then took on a pub managers job out of the blue and satyed there for 18 months until i eventually went to Uni.

I went to university after I left school to avoid starting work.

Used to work as a waiter at a big hotel that was v popular for weddings, was the place to get married locally at the time.

Hotel manager used to seek me out to do the introductions, ie everyone would queue up and I’d shout out their name to the wedding party.

**** hated it.

Farm (after school job really but summers 5 days a week and saturdays for 50p plus meals, I was 10/11 and didn’t want to be at homeland got to drive a tractor; win win), de stoning a massive field to be laid to lawn, clearing parish footpaths (2 summers on that, good fun aside from dog shit, bonus paid in undamaged rhythm pamphlet hoard discovery), drystone walling labourer (hard graft, TMS all day on the wireless, lots of tea and rollups all against a backdrop of Cotswold glory)

Other than that I always worked for my Dad in his pottery and at the festivals he sold at for fun (Glastonbury, Elephant, Roghham etc), but never got paid. Was allowed to help on the gallery stuff sometimes, but mainly the functional ware.

Worst summer job was when I was 13 in ’66 on a mink farm, that my best mate’s dad was manager of. Pay was 5p an hour which was shit even then. Had to feed the little b*st*rds, which consisted of a handful of minced chicken bits (heads & feet mostly) and put fresh straw in their cages, the REALLY dangerous bit!
We accidentally let one out once and then spent an adrenalin fuelled hour trying to recapture the evil little sod. They are related to skunks but instead of a spray, they fire a pellet from a gland somewhere near their arse and that’s like being shot with an airsoft pellet that stinks to high heaven.
Minks, sod happy clapper animal liberationists, the best thing you can do with a mink is kill it!

Lots of Scumpton on Solent representation in the thread…!

These threads do drag us out!

I have a sneaking suspicion I may have met a few on here in my uni days but I can never quite put my finger on who they were in real life and I don’t like being caught being wrong any more than I already am!

garage-dweller, as long as you weren’t at the Dimstitute, you’re alright with me!

Dimstitute

Not me. I was once a resident of Monte III you know (back when it was nice and new and slightly posh).

For some reason I now have an image in my head reminding me of drinking BlastAway and Pernod (not together) in the Boilerhouse. Kind of ruins the I was posh and lived in the nice bit of Monte thing!

UEA…
Sotty was on my list, so too Brighton..

‘Firewatchman’

Working for an engineering company who were building a new vessel in a pharmaceutical plant, so lots of volatile substances around. We had to build a new tank, remove the existing tank and install the new tank. I was 19 and working with a group of time-served Scouse contractors who knew every trick in the book.

My role was to keep an eye on the welding / cutting and, in the event of a spark starting a fire, I was to run over to the nearest fire alarm and set it off. I was strictly forbidden from actually doing anything to help contain the fire.

Likewise, once the vessel was built up enough to become a confined space for the welders inside, I had to peer through the manway occasionally and make sure none of them had keeled over from gases. Again, should that happen, a sprint to the fire alarm was my duty.

After 90 minutes on the job I asked if there was anything else I could do to help out, and over the course of the two week contract, ended up doing lots of things that would have had the onsite Health and Safety department going nuts if it had come to their attention. Rigging the crane was my favourite. No need for qualifications if it’s only a low-level lift, eh?

The rate of pay was amazing, and I’d have earned the same as my student loan for the entire year if I’d worked the extra week I was offered. Sadly, I’d already arranged for my then-girlfriend to come and stay for the week, so I missed out on that payday.

It was a sad moment when I said my final goodbyes to my older and much wiser colleagues. I’d learned a lot from them and I was grateful for the experience. All that was left to do was for them to describe, in graphic detail, the act they thought I should perform with my girlfriend that evening, and I was back to being a bloody student again.

I went back to uni in my mid 20’s after leaving school at 16 and doing an apprenticeship at ICI, during which we did various qualifications that I didn’t really see the point of at the time. They’d just send you off for a week doing an apparently random course

But now If I could give anyone words of advice about never being out of work….. forklift licence.

Spent my summers in decently paid, hardly taxing jobs in warehouses. Cheers ICI! 😀

I’ve got a licence for those absolutely mahoosive front end loaders too, but unfortunately never really got to use that 🙁

Bikebouy is definitely winning this thread though. I thought I had it easy 😆

Frozen pea factory (I lucked out – all my mates were on the line, I got a cushy number with the engineers just greasing the line machines a couple of times a shift and sharpening the blades from the nibbing machine).

Then quite a few summers as a plasterer’s mate with my mum’s partner subbing for Tarmac on social housing refurbs.

Farming from about 10 years old.
Once I could drive did a summer on a friend’s veg farm, got out the veg picking as I could drive tractors and be trusted unlike most of the locals.
Next year was grain dryer in old shed and worst summer in memory, hitting 100br weeks through late August and September was fun. Sure the money lasted till at least November

Whilst at Uni one Easter worked as a dustman, most summers a hod carrier (great for rugby training). But in a gap year worked on the front counter of the then DSS. Was regularly threatened. Fun times.

Fork lift truck driver for a major food distributor. The worst bit though was when the stores would send back food / veg that had gone off. If the driver wasn’t aware or it wasn’t tied down you’d have a truck with the inside covered in rotten fruit. Stank to high heaven.

Then worked on a farm during harvest. Lots of sitting in a tractor waiting for the harvester to be full.

Not me. I was once a resident of Monte III you know (back when it was nice and new and slightly posh).

You posh bastard. (Monte II here).

I could do with a pint of Juicy Lucy right now…

Monte III

Proper posh. Boilerhouse is where the bar went after they knocked down the cricket pavilion?
Monte I then Monte II here (using my terminology).
Jeez, I can still see that pint of Grendel now.

Very jealous of those of you who got to sit in the tractor whilst doing farmwork. Many summers spent harvesting market garden produce (lettuce, cabbage, leek and Chinese leaf). Long days of backbreaking work in fields in all weathers on piece rate of 17p per box lettuce / Chinese leaf, £10/tonne cabbage, 50p/box leeks (mid-late 90’s)

Best was probably as a chef in a pasta restaurant, hard work in a boiling hot kitchen, but great atmosphere with the rest of the team.

Worst were the uni jobs: selling frozen food door-to-door and cold calling people to sell fitted kitchens. And yes, those two were both at Soton.

And Monte posh? Pfft. Glen Eyre halls checking in 8)

Tomato picking in a giant green house. 5am till 12.30 6 days a week in my uni hols. Minimum wage plus bonus for fast picking. Never got a bonus. The eastern Europeans who made up the majority of the work force got good bonus but we were too busy having tomato fights and chatting.

And Monte posh? Pfft. Glen Eyre halls checking in

They weren’t posh they were for royalty!

the cricket pavilion?….
Jeez, I can still see that pint of Grendel now.

Worked behind that bar. 😀

I did the grain trailers for a few years, but also did wild oating. We had to remove all the wild oats from fields of wheat, which involved walking up and down the field pulling up the wild oats (I think it was so that the wheat could be sold as seed grain). It was ok in the dry but not so good in the rail.
Not as bad as working for a flat roofing company, that involved climbing ladders with buckets of liquid (ie very hot) bitumen.

Worked in my Uncle’s golf shop. Often for no, or very little pay, but made up for it with discounts and freebies.
Cleaned and sorted stuff out first thing, got that days competition off if there was one, then headed out to play golf all day. Did that every school holiday and weekend from the age of 11-17

Edit.

What ever happened to Chinese Leaf? I used to love that stuff, haven’t seen it for years?

Not quite up to Bikebuoy’s standards, but I did spend 3 summers crewing on old sailing boats, square riggers, converted trawlers and the like in the early 80s. Mainly taking charter groups to festivals around the coast, to Ireland and France. I was the lowest rating in the crew, sometimes got to sleep on deck and if it was wet on the bench in the engine room – no bad thing as it was the driest and warmest place. Jobs included fixing the sails and checking / greasing the engine. On some trips we even had a bonded store, with duty free booze at £4/litre. I was simply working my board and lodgings, but did get crew pay for days at sea. Spent quite a while on a converted Hull trawler run by maverick University Professor who had a high disregard for authority. Exploring the Brittanny coast was a summer highlight – we’d take a 100ft boat into tiny fishing villages, attempting to drink them dry! Got raided by HM Customs too – who took the ashtrays away for chemical analysis and they found minor traces of weed. Ironically, to continue my seafaring theme 33 years later, I’m sitting not 10 yards from a Royal Navy frigate.

Catering agency work. silver service, banqueting type stuff mostly, some bar work and restaurant work. Lots of weddings, always good for people watching, lots of golf clubs and a few fancy hotels. I’d cycle everywhere, so got in 20-30 miles a day.

Was great for casual work. Decent pay and very flexible. Back from uni: “I’m around, give me everything”, say yes to everything for a week or two so you’re at the top of the list of people they call for jobs. If you want to work 120 hours a week, you could, double shifts, night porter, breakfast stuff. I used to compete with a mate to see who could work the most. The week after I did a 24 hour shift, he did a 36 hour one. Wedding 2pm-12am, night porter 12-7am, breakfast/wedding setup 7-2. He did the next day’s wedding on top.

Rack up some cash, if you need a break: “I’m off to Cornwall for a week or two”

“Have a good time, call us when you’re back”

Lows were a few soul destroying shifts at company canteens, and riding home knackered at 3am in the cold and dark with no will to push the pedals any more. The long straight road through Brookwood cemetery back from Foxhills golf club holds a number of those memories!