First part time job was in Tesco, earning about £3.50 an hour at 16 which was a really good rate in 1993 in South Wales, let alone for a bunch of kids who treated the place like a Youth Club every evening. You got free, or close to free meals in the canteen, a 10% staff discount on your shopping which you could sign over to your parents and even a finally salary pension!
The next year Sunday Trading started – they couldn’t contract you to do it, it had to be overtime and they paid double time for it – by the time I left at 19 I was on £10 an hour on Sundays, it was a 7 hour day, you arrived 30 mins before the store opened to kick about and chat for a bit and left 30 mins after it closed to help kick out the stragglers and ‘tidy up’ aka kick about and chat. £10 an hour is £17.23 an hour inflation corrected, about what you’re on at £35k a year these days.
One of the easiest jobs I’ve ever had, my Aunt still works there now, 20+ years later, it’s changed so much, if you wrote the history of this little half-sized supermarket in a fairly quiet town it would tell you a decent chunk of all you need to know about the way the UK has changed in 20 years.
There’s so many real grown up Adults these days who’ll work evenings and weekends they don’t really employ Teenagers part-time anymore.
They pay a bit better than minimum wage, but not much – if I worked a Sunday in 1995 I was earning £10 an hour, if my Aunt works the day after tomorrow she’s on £8.43.
They employ roughly half the number of staff they did in the 90s, but they have twice the footfall.
The canteen has gone, the staff incentive scheme isn’t as good, the pension isn’t nearly as good, and not all staff even get that – the cleaners, the security (the only new role since I left) and some of the night staff are agency.
Staff are expected now to be at their station ready to work 5 mins before their shifts starts.
In the 90s the busiest times were still mid-morning, mid-week, after the stay at home parent (well it was Mum back then) has dropped the kids to school, now they’re the quietest times.
In the 90s Levi’s actually took Tesco to court to stop them selling their jeans which they’d sourced from abroad and sold at half the UK RRP. Because they didn’t want their clothes being sold amongst the fruit and veg and they were, there’s wasn’t an aisle for it – before that day the store sold – food, we had an aisle end for batteries, another for shoe polish and a quarter aisle devoted to small toys for kids parties, that was it. Tesco lost and partly because of that they started their own clothing line, now they’re the UKs 4th largest clothing retailer, ASDA is 2nd, Sainsbury’s is 5th