Now gone I'm afraid but in about 1983, in my first job, I ran up a Ruston diesel generating set from about 1934. DC 240v output, open bus-bars to a series of motor generators (the standard pre-war of transforming DC voltages) controlled by a series of open knife switches.
Account at the time said that when a later day HSE chap visited, he had a fit and left post haste not wanting to be in such a dangerous place.
I believe a museum now has one of three Rustons that made up the set. Side valve diesels with open tappets and oiler lubrication on quite a lot of the top end.
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Blimey L'es, Mrs C is a HUGE R and H fan and is often to be found looking at stationary engines and the like muttering about valve clearances or some such incomprehensible mithering. She'll be round your house wanting tea, cake and reminiscences like a shot!
She likes steam engines too, to my perplexity. They do nowt for me.
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My first employment was a summer job with a company (can't remember the name) doing general maintenance work at a steel plant. My best mate and I were given the job of cleaning out the quenching tanks which were rectangular tanks about 30ft x 15ft and 15ft deep.
When in use they were filled with hot oil heated by pipes in the bottom of the tank and they would dunk red hot steel bars into the oil to alter it's mechanical properties. When the bars first enter the oil small flakes of metal blister off and drop into the bottom of the tank eventually covering the pipes and making it difficult to control the temperature.
Cue Kevin and Tony up to the thighs in warm oil, dressed from head to foot in rubber, shovelling heavy metal flakes into a bucket to be hauled out on a pulley.
Five minutes in those tanks and you were drenched with sweat and smelling of oil and rubber.
BBD would have loved it ;-)
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Lincoln, now that rings a bell, but Ruston Bucyrus Cranes...connected?.
I used to collect damaged crane tyres from Ruston Bucyrus in Lincoln in the early 70's and return them after major repair, because of the slow speeds and type of use massive damage could be sorted.
They tried only once, the first time, sending the tyre still mounted on those huge specialist crane wheels with beads that came right up the sides of the tyre almost to the tread, the purpose being that the crane could move empty quiet(ish) on rubber but as soon as a load was lifted the tyre compressed down and the crane rested on the beads.
We tried all sorts but couldn't separate the beads....we had no tail lifts in those days and no fork truck, it took several of us to get the 4 cwt or so wheel off the small lorry and back on at our workshops after sweating for hours trying in vain to force the thing apart.
Swearer as he was affectionately known in the workshops at RB got chains round both sides of the split wheels and dragged them apart with something substantial.
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>> Lincoln, now that rings a bell, but Ruston Bucyrus Cranes...connected?.
Yep. tinyurl.com/7xfwao4
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I started on a grad training programme for a company owned by this lot: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTR_plc Have to admit that I didn't realise they became Invensys after merging with Siebe - I left in '95.
The company I actually worked for, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newey_and_Eyre, still exists. In fact can still remember the part code for an MK twin switched socket - MK2747 ;-) Chuck in some 6242Y and an MK Sentry board and breakers and off you go :-)
Peter
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Straight after school I earned good money cutting grass here for the summer www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/Corporation/LGNL_Services/Community_and_living/Deaths_funerals_and_cremations/Cemetery_and_crematorium/
Then got a sensible job at the London HQ of the National Coal Board.
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I had a school holiday job working for a firm of airconditioning engineers near the 113 bus terminus and the BBC in Langham Place. I was employed to add up the senior employee's expenses claims and recall that I used a very good pounds shillings and pence calculator called a Miniadd
t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcReosUQW8F7NH0N5divtmqkY_r463GYo03V32QByQLB7ibeh6eU1g
Last edited by: Meldrew on Mon 13 Feb 12 at 15:08
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Central heating company fixing radiators in new build flats.Got bored after a few weeks .
I had many jobs as a youngster never settled drifted from one to another.
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My unoffical holiday job was a 14 year old in a small ship yard.My mate Jan and me where saving up for a two week bike trip to Apeldoorn cycling from Rotterdam.
No health and safety checks in those days.I was using a grinder cutting steel pipes and general dogs body.I loved it payed fot the hols taking a tent with us.Still got a photo of Jan and me great days.
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If I exclude paper rounds, pools rounds and saturday jobs then my first full time job would have been here at Tri-ang Toys during the school holidays.
www.vectis.co.uk/AuctionImages/342/494_l.jpg
I was there about 1971 although that photo appears to be about twenty years earlier.
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>> If I exclude paper rounds, pools rounds and saturday jobs then my first full time
>> job would have been here at Tri-ang Toys during the school holidays.
>> www.vectis.co.uk/AuctionImages/342/494_l.jpg
>>
>> I was there about 1971 although that photo appears to be about twenty years earlier.
>>
What a brilliant first job! A bit of history here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-ang
(I too excluded the paper rounds, saturday job working in an art gallery/bookshop, and after-school office cleaning jobs).
Last edited by: Tigger on Mon 13 Feb 12 at 15:40
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I worked in an ironmongers as a "Saturday Boy" 20p an hour - but a worthwhile work ethic grounding, the ultimate accolade was being allowed to wear the coveted grey 3/4 nylon jacket and pump paraffin from the basement. I handed the coat over to the chap who ultimately became my most enduring friend.....shop's long gone sadly, eclipsed by the DIY sheds.
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tinyurl.com/7uyam4z
worked there three summers in a row in holdays during the sixth form
Part of GKN, and if they were representative, it's no surprise we don't have much of an engineering industry. The permanent staff spent 10 months of the year making galvanised tee hinges, and me and three of my mates spent the other two months of the year making the hinges actually flex !
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My first proper job was in early 2000, worked in a computer factory above a shop. It knocked out cheap crap with Cyrix processors and no operating systems. The factory sold PCs for less than £250 brand new, when most PCs at the time cost way over £500.
We had less than half an hour to build each one. It above an old Edwardian shop, it was cold, was paid £70 a week as it an appreciate . I also had to study NVQ Level 2. I got so bored out of my brains I last two weeks. I then went to college and university for the next five years. At university I had a part time job as a CSS coder and I got paid nearly £10 an hour for that. It was great, I could paid nearly £300 for a weekends work on some projects. Sadly their work died up :(. One of the projects I worked on won an award though.
Been running my own business since 2006, although I did work DSGi in a Currys Digital store from late 2006 to mid 2007.
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Good for you Rattle running your own business takes guts.>;)
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I had a part time job while I was at school, with the now defunct Fine Fare. Three evenings of 2 hours, plus all day Saturday for 30/-. That was about 1969-70 I think. I and my schoolmate had great fun with the 'promotions' which might be, say, tinned ham or some such. We had to make a display stack of these, and the idea was to inflict a kind of compulsory Jenga on the customers, so that the removal of just about any tin would bring the tower down. Of course most of the victims were short in stature, so we gave this up voluntarily after we had had to take the first few old lady victims into the back for a cup of tea.
Although it was small shop, we sold huge amounts of sugar. We'd stack the 2lb bags on a pallet up to waist height, and they'd go in a week. Even big supermarkets now seem to have very little space devoted to it by comparison.
Before that, at 15, I did a summer's labouring at the factory where my Dad worked. Painting iron castings, mainly.
The year after, I did my 6 weeks in a little brass foundry. The H&S fails would make your hair curl. Ankle deep in moulding sand where the chaps were carrying crucibles and pouring hot metal. I did fettling of little valve bodies and pipe elbows on a grinding wheel with another chap who'd worked there years and had lost a couple of fingers doing it (if you don't move the rest right up to the wheel as it wears away, you get a gap - touch the face of the wheel and your finger disappears down the gap). Breathing brass filings without a mask, if you didn't demand one.
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>>chap who'd worked there years and had lost a couple of fingers doing it (if you don't move the rest right up to the wheel as it wears away, you get a gap - touch the face of the wheel and your finger disappears down the gap)<<<
I lost the top (no bone fortunately) of my left thumb like that. Problem was it was at school during a a lunchtime when I had used a home made master key to access the wordwork room. The accident book said chisel cut, but the hospital were undestanding and recorded it as a chisel after I had partly explained the situation. IIRC I was making a better master key at the time.
To this day I check the tool rest at least 3 times before using a grindinding wheel! probably a worthwhile accident if it makes you aware of possible consequences.
First holiday job with a 40 hour week was a factory making rubber goods - hotwater bottles, teats, and 'other things'. I can still remember the hotwater bottles 100% being pressure tested with a compressed airline. A 100cm diameter Disney character looks impressive before it finally bursts. Maws of Barnet - not surprised that they went down the pan in the 1970s I think.
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I was an apprentice at Austin-Rover's plant in Cowley. Maestros, Montegos, and Rover 800s were the factory's products at the time.
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You didn't leave a turd in the spare wheel well of a white Maestro in around 87 did you ?
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My tour of Cowley as a school kid in 1987 still sticks in my mind as a heck of an experience. Knowing some of our year, that could be the source of the turd you mention.....
Last edited by: DP on Mon 13 Feb 12 at 19:33
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After the course which was my alibi 40 years ago I started full time (7 days a fortnight) work in what the BBC called Studio "E" here:
www.tvstudiohistory.co.uk/old%20bbc%20studios.htm#lime
"Nationwide" Monday to Friday, and "Grandstand" on Saturdays - proper live telly.
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I started as a probationary apprentice with a lift maker.
After six months I was fired as " Not suitable apprentice material"
Fortunately other mates working there told me that the company statement was a load of carp which helped my dented feelings. An expected contract did not happen so they had to shed staff so last in first out.
I then became an improver ( that position seem to have died along time ago) so I was an apprentice without any paperwork to prove anything. I got lots of varied experience there at the BBC and jumped ship, after about five years, as a prototype wireman.
edit Only one ref "improver " in Google so that role does still exist - justt
Last edited by: henry k on Mon 13 Feb 12 at 19:42
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" Not suitable apprentice material"
You weren't elevated then !
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>> " Not suitable apprentice material"
>>
>> You weren't elevated then !
>>
Fraid not. In those days it was "make sure the gate is closed after you exit."
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My first job was as a window cleaner at the age of 15, I'd just come out from doing 3 months in a detention centre and as I was getting on for 16 I didn't go back to school.
I worked for Johnny who was a wrestler and Charley a fireman, Charley often used to disappear orf the top of his ladder into someone's home, he was known as have-it-and-run Charley.
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My first was a full time summer job in a then trendy denim / fashion shop just off the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. We were only on the minimum wage rate but we earned commission on sales. Well, Edinburgh in the summer is heaving with tourists but the best ones at that time were the Scandinavians. In those days, branded jeans here in the UK were a fraction of the price they were in Norway for example. Resultantly the young Scandy birds used to get the ferry from Oslo into Leith for weekend shopping trips.
If you managed to spot them in the crowd you'd make a bee-line for them as they'd always buy about 6 pairs at a time which was great for commission and what's more they were usually up for a night out with us locals when you'd finished work...
Fresh intake every week. It was utterly brilliant.
:-))
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First part-time job was aged 13 as a butcher's boy in Southwell, Notts.
First full-time job, between leaving FE college and joining the Army in 1977, was with Wrights & Dobsons, an old-established lace finishing company in Nottingham. Good fun while it lasted, and a fascinating insight into the shop floor for a rural grammar school lad.
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First (summer) job was for what was Express Dairies, at the largest cheese packing plant in Europe, as it was at the time. The plant still exists, as part of this lot:
www.milklink.com/Content.aspx?s=Cheese&pg=Cheese
First proper job, though not quite such hard work, was here:
hmrc.gov.uk/
But please dont hold it against me!
Last edited by: Alastairw on Mon 13 Feb 12 at 22:10
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You mean the scanty birds naughty Humph.>:)
We used to sail Rotterdam Helsingborg Salvesborg Malmo good times.
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Yeah, it was hell that summer but we reckoned someone had to do it. Only downside was that some of them reeked of pickled fish.
:-)
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I could answer that but Pat is listening sorry.>:)
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Quite apart from the fringe benefits I often think I reached a sort of financial equilibrium that year. Never really achieved that since. Like I mentioned we were on commission and could earn good money by the standards of the day and our age if we got stuck in and worked hard. I managed to run an old MG Midget, pay my share of a shared rented flat and have plenty of beer / holiday money on the strength of that job.
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Summer 1976 aged 16. Wm Morrison supermarket Yeadon price labelling goods & stacking them on the shelves.
Was eventually one of the mugs/trustys got to work the 'bailer', an early example of recycling where cardboard cartons were compressed into twine bound cubes. Trouble was you had to get a decent large carton underneath the bale and another on top, otherwise binding it with twine was impossible. Also, the bales weighed about 30kg - difficult to move when you were a skinny runt of 50kg yourself.
First proper full time job was as an Executive Officer in the Civil Service at 18. A few promotions and multiple changes of role and Department later I'm still working for HMG today.
Expect to be made a redundancy offer I cannot refuse before September this year though.
Last edited by: VxFan on Fri 17 Feb 12 at 00:45
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Posh job Brompt.Executive officer at 18 Take it ,if you get a good offer there might not be any money left in the kitty soon..>;
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>Take it ,if you get a good offer there might not be any money left in the kitty soon..
Too late Dutchie.
May 2010: A note from Liam Byrne to David Laws.
"Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid to tell you there's no money left."
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>> May 2010: A note from Liam Byrne to David Laws.
>>
>> "Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid to tell you there's no money left."
Following a long tradition.
Outgoing Tory Chancellor Reg Maudling in 1964 left one for Jim Callaghan along lines of "Good luck, old cock.... Sorry to leave it in such a mess."
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Wrapping giblets in a Ross Chicken processing plant for the likes of Sainsburys in the school holidays. We used to get bored and invent 'mutant' chickens with three hearts or two necks. God knows what the customers thought.
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>> ... We used to get bored and invent 'mutant' chickens with three hearts or
>> two necks. God knows what the customers thought.
>>
It was you was it ?
There was me thinking Dr Who had re-incarnated at a chicken...
;-)
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>> Wrapping giblets in a Ross Chicken processing plant for the likes of Sainsburys in the
>> school holidays. We used to get bored and invent 'mutant' chickens with three hearts or
>> two necks. God knows what the customers thought.
we had one of yours! - It had three legs!
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Part time office cleaner at the SKF garage in Luton age 17.
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I joined Leslie Hartridge (or Hartridges) in Buckingham as an apprentice. Great company and a great apprentice scheme. Absolutely everything was made in house, but then it got sold to Lucas, and went the same way as most of the Lucas companies.
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>> Part time office cleaner at the SKF garage in Luton age 17.
>>
I worked at SKF in luton for a number of years. I liked their garage, as they used to fix small problems with my car. The boss's Saab 9000 turbo was also stationed there.
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>> >> Part time office cleaner at the SKF garage in Luton age 17.
>> >>
>>
>> I worked at SKF in luton for a number of years. I liked their garage,
>> as they used to fix small problems with my car. The boss's Saab 9000 turbo
>> was also stationed there.
>>
I assume it's long gone? Can't see it from a quick look on Streetview.
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>>
>> we had one of yours! - It had three legs!
>>
Catching the beggars is the hard part......
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Sept 1969 - Articled clerk (otherwise known as articled jerk) with Peat Marwick Mitchell & Co, now KPMG. The first of only four jobs in 42 years: each of my four children has had far more than that.
Amazing to think that on £1,000 a year, then a reasonable salary for a new graduate, I could share a flat in Lansdowne Crescent, off Ladbroke Grove in west London, and run a car (my first car, a much-loved 1955 Austin A50).
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My first payslip was from FW Woolworth and Co in 1974 when I joined as a management trainee. A set of average A levels those days and they sent a taxi round to pick you up for the interview! I had built up a decent part time car cleaning base of clients for 5 years previous while at school and college, paid better than the first year at Woolworths. Enjoyed two and a half years working in 7 different stores, nothing mechanical as in most of your posts apart from playing with the cardboard compactor, H&S exempt meat slicers and orbital floor polishing machines that aren't as easy to use as they look! Ran a Kawasaki KH250 when I started and a Mini 1000 soon after the first winter kicked in! I finally twigged that all the open store management positions were regardless of ability, being filled by the sons and occasional daughter of Woolworths buyers aka gods. Quite sad nearly 40 years later when the local store finally closed, brought back many good memories of working with a lot of really decent people.
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Godfrey Davis, Gelderd Rd Leeds, 1970, before they became Europcar.
Washing, valeting and lights and levels check on Mk1 Escorts, Transits and Vauxhall Victors. I was looking forward to doing my first 'professional' bulb change on a Transit and asked the foreman for a bulb. "No need", he grunted and kneed the front lens expertly while lighting up a Woodie.
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3-ton multidrops for Currys.
Stacks of white goods in the warehouse were built and picked manually (clamp truck came in 18 months after I started). Tail lifts on the trucks were some time after that, everything was lifted the hard way and the nearest thing to assistance was yer sack barrow. Backbreaking stuff and I have the knackered back these days to prove it.
God alone knows how we avoided dropping like flies with tetanus. Deep gashes from returned scrap or damaged goods were par for the course.
I don't think they let gung-ho teenagers drive 3-tonners these days. We used to treat 'em like dodgem cars with the added intimidation factor of size for bonus fun points. Great fun and I can still drive backwards round a "mickey mouse" housing estate as fast as forwards, while using only the door mirrors for view, in any vehicle to this day.
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Friend of mine got his first job at McDonalds.
Turned out the boss was a right clown.
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My first employer, in 1949, was the Army. Pay £1.40 a week, clothing free, food free, accommodation free, heating free but did not add up to much of a deal overall. The pay was depleted by "barrack room damages", a racket by which the paymaster fined me whether I had damaged anything or not. The clothing was uncomfortable and mostly shed in favour of civvies if the chance arose. The food was scarcely edible so most of my remaining pay went on Naafi suppers. I was housed in cold, clifftop Napoleonic War-era barracks. The heating never won out over the cold. In fact, it all made an easy transition from my school, which had a similar set-up.
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My first employer - Slidingpillar
