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First Job

G

GEFF

Geff
I STARTED WORK IN THE BUYERS OFFICE IN 1940 AT THE ATCO LAWN MOWER CO. I.E. CHARLES H. PUGH LTD. TILTON ROAD ,GARRISON LANE
I GOT THE SACK BECAUSE EVERY TIME THE BOSS WANTED ME I WAS IN THE JOINERY SHOP. I THEN WENT INTO SHOPFITTING AND REMAINED A JOINER ALL MY WORKING LIFE.
GEFF
 
Atco

Well funnily enough I worked at Atcos' as an Arc welder for 6 months.
I left for a variety of reasons, one being I didn't want to end up wearing glasses as on a daily basis I got 'Arc-eye' ...an incredibly uncomfortable feeling where you literally sunburnt your eye balls, off the welding light.
(It felt like you had a handful of grit in your eyes)
The second was the pettiness of clocking in and out and the gatekeeper not letting you through the gates of a night until 4 15 pm (or whatever the bloody time was)
Oh...there was a third..the wages were rubbish..
 
I hated clocking in and out of work.
After National Service I never worked in a Factory again.
8)
 
:D Where Col has his weekend job they still have the old clocking in machine in use... Col said it's like going back thirty years and the supervisor watches every move you make... no finishing 2 minutes early even if all the works done, you stay till your times up. :lol: :lol: :lol:

Chris :)
 
One of my first jobs at Kynochs, as ICI was then, was in Staff Records, and apart from running around taking messages from one director to another, on Fridays I had to record every time sheet from the clocks. They all had to be finished by lunch time. It was a nightmare :D
 
My first job...earning £10 per week in '75, at 16, was in 'The Gift Shop' at Stockland Green, Erdington, and then after about 6 months was transferred to work in Toyland, next door. Both shops owned by Jim Davies, who owned and ran Jim Davies Model Shop, over the road...a bit further along from Stockland Green Plaza.
In my first job in the Gift Shop, the manageress was his mom, a lady well into her 70's.....she made me work really hard :)
I went to work in Tescos, the next year,on Erdington High St., and went on about £19 or £20 per week, if I remember right.
 
My first job was as yob at C V Bull's butchers on the corner of Farm St and Lennox St. Yob is backslang for boy and is always said with contempt to indicate that you were below the bottom of the pecking order in the shop. The manager was Bert Jones who lived down by the Hockley bus garage; the other assistant was Wally who had no teeth and claimed eat any steak with ease so long as it was cooked properly. Bert and Wally were chrysanthemum enthusiasts and would discuss techniques in the afternoon when the shop was quite while I made them tea and fetched cakes from the shop across the road. I had to keep moving around the shop with a clean cloth to make the shop look busy. One of my jobs was to cycle up to a shop at the top of Hockley Hill to get John Innes potting compost, bone meal etc.
I earned £3 a week when I sarted and £4 10s three years later when I left to work for Wolf Electric by the Villa Cross. My last job at Bull's was to make a sign to go in the window "Smart Boy Wanted". My replacement started with £4 10s!
 
My first Job full time was at Cago Plastics, in Burlington Street, I got 5 or 6 quid a week. It didnt go far, especially after I paid my board and keep. What a fantastic place to work Heres a section off the Aston Mainsite all about it, written by a friend who I worked with.

508570d0.jpg

Our Very First Workplace After Leaving School
Paul McHugh & Rod Birch.
Image Supplied by Paul & Jan McHugh



John & June Wright
Managing Director of Cago's with his wife June


Cago's Plastics
By
Dick Sheppard


Cago Plastics was in Burlington Street Aston just behind the old
Aston Hippodrome
I started work there in 1967, and was made welcome right away, the people I worked with turned out to be great work mates.
The gaffer was a lovely man called John Wright, his wife Joyce was the company secretary she was a very nice lady.
If I had one criticism would have about John Wright? it was that he was too soft on us lads, lads or should I say “the crazy gang”.
Let me name the boys and I use the word boys lightly, there was myself, Rod Birch [demented rat], Paul [macca] McHugh, John Barnet, Chris workman, Stevie Gorle.
Well one of our great pass times in work was “wanging” the modern equivalent is Frizbee, but we used a lethal paint tin lid. You can ask Rod, not as sweet an innocent as he seems, the work was easy going but at times we worked very hard ,the jobs we did were,


Chrissy Wokman, he used to turn out Fibre Glass mouldings.
Rod Birch-Machinist, Routers, Spindle Moulders etc
John Barnet-Stevie Gorle, Vacuum Moulding
My self-polishing-vacuum moulding.
Paul [macca] Mchugh-tool setter.


But I must tell you know one thought they were better than the other and that's how we liked it.
We once talked John Wright into buying us a stereogram we loved it only trouble was it was not very loud, so Macca an Rod wired a big speaker to it, and boy was it loud!!! so loud we got complaints from the house's close to the works. The best was THE ASTON HIPPODROME said that our music was so loud, that their punters could not here the bingo caller, we had to laugh.
Then there was THE BARTON ARMS our local we were in there every dinner time and night time we never got drunk? but not far from it.
When we were late back from dinner John Wright would read us the riot act. He often got very angry with us, but always calmed down, once the machinery started humming.
Well I think I will end it here a get rodders to write something.
As he was one of the main instigators so come on rod put your side on paper? If all work places were like Cagos, and all bosses like John Wright I would work there tomorrow….provided Rod, Macca, Chris, John Barnett, and Stevie, were there as well. Thanks boys for a brill time I will never forget? any of you cheers.
Dick Sheppard
Click to expand...
 
Well I lived right next door to Cago Plastics at 57 Burlington Street, fortunately I left in 1967 before the crazy gang and the stereo started or I would have been round there complaining like a shot.
 
Sylvia just be very glad you never met up with the author of the article. Mr Richard Sheppard, I'm not prepared to say on this forum what hed have said to you, but it would have been choice. If he reads what Ive said I'll be in deep water :knuppel2: ;D
 
Rod, although I lived next door to the factory I don't remember the name Cago, was it run by another firm previously? I remember my friend's neighbour Harry Collins worked there late 50s early 60s.
 
Yes....... The factory stretched back to Barton Street. The front section was rented from John Wright the owner, it was a Press Shop with some pretty heavy machines in, pressing components for the motor industry. That came to an end in the mid seventies, just after the Pub Bombings. We then installed a huge Shelley, Vac-Former in some of the space.

As it happened when it was a press shop, I wouldnt go down there, the ladies who worked the Presses would eat us alive, I'm really not joking, teenage lads were not safe!! I only went down once, I cant say in this open forum what happened.

As a child the rear section did something with Mirrors/Glass we used to nick little broken peices from their scrap bin to use as reflectors in sunny weather. When I started there in around 71/72 The floor had a good thick coat of fibreglass resin maybe in inch deep in places. I strated work as a fettler, but was soon put to work on the spindle moulder machines, converted to cut the waste plastic from the dust covers we made for stereos, and skylights for Volkswagon Beetles. We also manufactured huge round streetlights for Brum City Centre to light the expressway.
We found a bomb at the rear of the buldings, they sent a single policeman to guard it, till the army arrived. We also tried to grow some naughty plants on the roof, but it didnt work. Every day was like a holiday with family but we did work hard, as well as mess around a lot. I really miss those times Sylvia.... Ive recently in the last couple of years been able to find some of my workmates, and Ive remade a very close friendship with my best mate, and best man from those years.

What was it you were asking Sylvia ??? LOLOLOLOL
 
My first job, was at H.F.Ward, in Highgate Rd., Sparkbrook. £2. 14 shillngs my first Pay packet. :-[
 
My first job was the G.E.C. Moor St in 1950 as a junior in the offices and 34 shillings a week--oh happy days--
 
Mine was at Joseph Lucas on Formans Road, in the drawing office. Took a secretarial course at Lucas Shaftsmoor Lane and then transferred to the buying dept.
 
My first job was fitting toupee's and wigs in town,the wages were rubbish but boy did we have a laugh :2funny: :2funny: :knuppel2:
 
:angel: Mine was at A.D.Hayes as a 'Telephonist & Receptionist' 1963. The firm was just down from Snow Hill station (around the Caroline St area) I can't for the life of me remember the name of the street it's self. The firm had been there for years and even expanded it's premises while I was there (building an addition on the existing factory) The new bit was to house the 'Typing Pool'. The firm dealt in : Nuts, bolts, screws and all that sort of stuff. They also had a factory that is still going in Stourbridge (Looked them up on the net a while ago). Just had a thought they could be in one of the Kelly's directories, seeing as they were an old firm.

Chris :angel:
 
:angel: Well would you believe it ???  I knew the name of the street all the time  :uglystupid2: :2funny: :2funny: However I think I might have got mixed up because we used a side entrance in the next street to reach our office... in the side door up the back stairs to great folk who came in the front door.

Thanx Postie  :smitten:

Chris :angel:
 
Mine was at the BSA in Small Heath
Started on New Years Day 1961 as a junior in the wages office, £2.15s. 0p. a week
They had a "Workers Canteen" and a "Staff Resraraunt"
As a junior member of staff I could get a subsidised dinner and pudding for1/6d
 
West Midlands Gas Board, Wharf Lane, Solhull 1969 - 4 quid a week - after a year I got a 20 quid a YEAR payrise - boy was I minted (today it wouldnt buy many polos)
 
My first job was at the GEC Witton.

Aged 14,I sat inside a huge rotor along with 4 other "children" taping up the windings.  :-\

The shop manager had a office high up on a platform where he could see all that was going on.  :coolsmiley: :knuppel2: :tickedoff:

It lasted all of 2 weeks, then I was "orf"     O0
 
My first employment was as an apprentice/trainee electrician at W. Canning Engineering. I left there to work as a key man in a lock factory in the west of Ireland.
 
My first job was at Telephone House, Newhall Street.

"Met" some interesting people over the telephone lines.(and some rotten ones!! >:()
 
My first job on leaving school in ,64 was in the Production Control Dept of Tubes Ltd in Rocky Lane, Aston, as an office junior. Great days.
 
Looks like most people had a lot of fun at their first jobs and remember them with great fondness. My first job was at New Street Station in January 1957. Birmingham was definitely unchanged then as I had always known it in the Town Centre. I got this job through a railway man who lived across the road from us. He had a "word" with whomever and I was off to an interview. Very nervous I might add. The offices were next door to the Queens Hotel in Stephenson Place. I was l5 years old and the youngest shorthand typist ever hired at that point at New St. I was sent to night school at aged 14 and learned shorthand and typing at Underwood's College in Albert Street....another exciting chance to know Birmingham on those three times a week visits on the bus from Erdington dressed in my school uniform...... so I was looking for a SH/Typist job. When I arrived for the interview with the doyan of Personnel Miss Hardy,she handed me a letter written out in shorthand (Pitman's) I wasn't sure what to do. I thought she would read something to me and I would take it down in shorthand in the usual way. She told me that should I be hired I would be transcribing letters written by the men in the various departments at New Street some of whom were paid more if they wrote their letters in shorthand, a faster way according to her. I was mortified, I could barely read my own shorthand at times and used to take down parts of the sermon at church for practice!!!! I hoped it was a simple letter she was about to hand to me. It was and just about managed to get through it. They hired me to work in the small typing pool overlooking Platform One, gave me a free train pass from Gravelly Hill to New Street and told me I would earn two pounds ten shillings per week. Not much left over after I had paid my "Keep" to my Mother and my bus fares.

The typing pool was ruled over by a Miss Meland who was very strict indeed and almost near retirement age.. There were eight of us. Miss M handed out the work and we typed it up and gave it back for her eagle eyes to check over. She knew the shorthand styles of most of the men that used it but I hated being defeated and made myself learn the men's styles so that I could read and transcribe the letters. It was very interesting since we had the Parcels Department...... things were always getting lost.....Complaints Department...all kinds of human situations here to deal with and the Excursion Department for planned outings for groups....always things going wrong here,stations had been closed and people were directed to them usually at the end of the excursions so they were stranded, etc...letters to the Excursions were usually not of a nice variety! We did have fun, however, and used to move the hands on the big office clock from five minutes before leaving time to five o'clock which was leaving time. Miss M, however, had a trusty wristwatch so we didn't get away with it. Working there was rather like school with a pay packet at the end of the week:o) Miss Meland had a kind streak though and gave us all Easter Eggs at Easter...quite unexpected.

I saw my first fax machine in this office in l958....yes hard to imagine . It was a rather large cabinet with a large metal roller. You fed the letter or memo in through a slot and
it attached itself to the roller where the "ink" would be attracted to whatever was written and then sent to a similar receiver. Some larger stations used fax machines it seems.

New Street Station in those years was a great place to explore and in the winter I
would go and find the best Waiting Room with a good fire and eat my lunch and read
the Reveille(sp). It was exciting watching all the passengers hurrying to catch their trains and Platform One was the sight of some of the most amazing arrivals from London. Actresses, business people, politicians and even Royalty. I also remember seeing some of the great Engines such as Sakura mentioned in his railway piece, all polished and gleaming ready for their journeys. I didn't live near a station so I caught the bus down Slade Road after walking to Stockland Green from my house. I then walked up Hunton Hill to Gravelly Hill Station every morning to catch the diesel and use my free pass. Same thing at the end of the day in reverse. It was very exciting to me going to work on the train.

I was at New Street when the Scouts Jamboree was held at Sutton Park and over 85,000 scouts arrived to attend the Jamboree, such an exciting time. I met a Rover Scout from America at the Jamboree Communications Centre at Sutton Park and we wrote for several months. Last year we met up on the Internet after all those decades.

Everything was very grimy at New Street because of the trains, of course, but no one seemed to notice. I would often escape to the Bull Ring at lunch times to watch that fellow try and esacape from his chains and look around the markets and shops. It always had a circus like atmosphere down there with all the barrows and characters. I left the station to work at John Wilson & Sons (Wholesale Grocers) near to Lucas's. There I got to practice my shorthand skills in the usual way. I was l7 at this time.
 
WHO’S A BRAVE LAD THEN?

I was fourteen when I left school, and not knowing just what I wanted to do my father obtained me a job as a Counter Salesman at the old Beehive Warehouse in Birmingham. It was my job to sell to the public from behind my small box like enclosure whatever they wanted in the way of men’s shirts, ties, gloves, and all of the paraphernalia that men wore and which I could not afford.

Apart from tired and aching feet at the end of the day, I found the job quite a pleasant one. It was most enjoyable meeting the public and talking with them, and serving them to what ever they had a need to purchase. The young lady who was in charge of the next counter to mine was a most pleasant young thing, but rather out of my humble class. Therefore, my imagination was somewhat oft to wonder; though I might add quite respectfully. I having not reached the age of knowing what young ladies were apt to do to a young fellows hormones. Therefore, for the next few weeks it was with silent adoration that I viewed her.

For some reason I had been blessed or cursed, however one looks at it with the notion that if a less fortunate individual was short of funds to make a purchase, I was prompted by some evil imp to slip the desired object into their bag or pocket, thereby incurring the displeasure of my floor manager.
“I had high hopes for your Master Bobby” He said one day as he looked down upon me. My eyes firmly fixed upon his watch, which dangled handsomely from its chain, itself, being stretched across his ample stomach. “I would have liked to have trained you to become a Window Dresser, but instead I have to let you go”.

My father, being an understand patriarch, was able to secure me a job working at Wheatley and Sons Funeral Directors in New Street, my father also being employed there as a machinist. I was somewhat trained in the skill of making the last resting place of the deceased.
“And what do you do Bobby?
“Me? I’m a coffin maker”.
“Oh”.

The building, which housed Wheatley and Sons, was built in the year 840BC or so it seemed by its condition. A three-story building with offices on the ground floor, my father, and a tiny Chinaman working on the second, this floor also housed the French Polishing shop. The top floor was where I worked along side Noah (The father of Shem, Japheth and Ham). The hammer that he used was so old that his forefinger and thumb had left their impressions on the handle of his hammer. I cheated and left my marks with the help of a file.

Far be it for me to query why the coffin shop was situated on the top floor, when the finished job had to be carried down on ones shoulder to the second floor to the polishing shop. As one might imagine the building being so old many thousands of booted as well as sandaled feet had climbed and descended the steps causing them to wear considerably. In fact, the stairway was like one great slippery slide and children would have loved to play on it. Consequently, hob nailed boots were not suited to conquering this man made slide. My dear father, not one to spend his hard earned cash on buying new boots, would get out the old Boot Last and hammer in five pound of hob nails into our boots, including my poor sisters. This, by the way was five pound in each boot. His idea was that after he gave you a push to get you walking or running, according to the strength of the push, you would not stop until you reached your destination. Stopping ones mad flight had to be decided by my brothers and sister as we took our journey to whichever goal father headed us in. I personally favored some ones front hedge rather than crashing through the plate glass of a shop window, if indeed a shop was the destination father sent us off to. On one of my mad flights to the shops at the bottom end of Chinnbrook Road, the neighbors lost
two cats, a mangy dog, and Mrs. Green’s granny who unfortunately could not get out of the way in time. I missed that mangy dog for ages.

I stood one morning having completed a coffin, at the top of the slippery slide, the coffin upon my shoulder. The knack was to step on the old, still visible, edge of the worn steps, where the front of the one step butted up to the tread of the next step. I managed to take three of the steps before I finished up upon my tatty trouser bottom and watched wide eyed as the coffin sped towards the wall of the polishing shop at the bottom of the slide.
The amusing thing about it all was that as the coffin enjoyed itself on its free ride I was gleefully shouting “Wheeeeee” until the wall tuned my work into a jigsaw puzzle.

Situated in one of the timber drying yards was a room where the embalming of the deceased took place. This was done if the body was to lie in state or be shipped overseas.
If the body was to be sent overseas, it had to have an inner coffin made of steel sheeting. Our little Chinaman made these coffins. The edges of the sheeting had to be bent over an eighth of an inch rod, this being done by any normal Englishman with the aid of a hammer. Not our little Chinaman, he would use his thumbs to bend the sheeting, and after some thirty years doing this work his thumbs were bent at right angles to his hands. This was to his liking, because every time he shook hands with you he gave you the thumbs up at the same time.

My father had sent me to this drying yard to bring up a sheet of oak for planeing. These sheets of oak were cut from the larger of the oak trees and sometimes measured seven feet in height by four feet wide and one inch thick. Thankfully, there was an old lift that could be used for taking these sheets of timber to the top floor.

By the time I started working at Wheatley’s I was fifteen years of age, and had never seen a dead body, though I had worked for the firm for a couple of months. I knew that a body was in the embalming room as I had heard some of the drivers of the Rolls Royce hearse talking. The doors of the room were of the old Western Saloon swing type, only from lintel to floor. This allowed the men carrying the coffin to walk through into the room and not have to open the doors neither close them.

Bravely walking up to the doors with the determination of a proven coward, I gingerly pushed the doors open so that I could poke my head through. There I stood, wide-eyed, head poking through a door that had closed upon my shoulders. In front of me was the shining metal embalming table with its guttered edges to allow what blood was drained from the body to run along into a container. I was later told that this was used in the making of Black Pudding. Facing me upon the table feet first there lay an old gentleman. His loins covered with a white cloth and his old head resting upon a wooden pillow. I was staring at my first dead person. I quivered all over but could not take my eyes off him. His color was as pail white milk; his toes were bluish as were his fingertips and cheeks.

It was but a few seconds having past, when a bubble came out of his nose and a hiss, like escaping air came from the back of his throat. I was petrified, I had to get away from this live dead man. I tried to pull my head out of the doorway but the doors being swing doors only clamped themselves tighter on my neck. Pull as a might I could not get away from that which had me wetting my pants. I pulled and the doors tightened even harder, and a sorry excuse for a scream came from my nearly severed head, while the live dead man continued to breath his throaty breath and the nose bubble got larger.

Someone pushed the doors forward, and I am sure that the only thing they felt was a strong gust of wind, which flapped their black jacket, and a blur of something or someone make for the crowded sidewalk of New Street not to be seen again that day.
 
Robert that was wonderful but you have just put me off one of my favourite things with a fry up.....Black pudding!!!! :flower:
 
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