Ah I remember those times well!
I started work at the other end of the 80's and I too spent all of my meagre wages on records and tapes BUT I decided to go direct to the source and took a position with W.H. Smith, my reason, ah that's simple, to get the staff discount on my music 'habit', thus maximising my impressive music collection as I traded away an ever increasing, unfathomable number of hours of my precious youth.
In a later job where I worked 12 hour nightshifts at £1.73 per hour, in a bakery that supplied bread buns to 'Kwik Save style' emporiums of quality goods, (no worry about M&S audits in that hell-hole), I also worked with a 'Mort' literally what he was known as. He too enjoyed nothing more than a little schadenfreude at the expense of the younger lads.
The good thing about Kwik Save back in the day, (albeit from the other side of the curtain) is that you could buy 12 trolleys of shopping for your Christmas big shop for about £30. Yes some of the origins of the produce shall forever remain a mystery, I imagine that's probably for the best but yup when shopping on a budget which I always seemed to be back then it was cheap and had the added bonus of introducing you to some elements of society with whom you would normally not get to cross paths with, rather like a zoo with 19 aisles of pot noodle in the middle.
Sadly I have found myself on the darker side of my 40's working in enormous freezers handling 20kg bags and boxes of wholesale produce, I wholeheartedly and quite categorically sympathise. I like to think those early days in the world of work shape us, build character and teach us independence, although delving in to my own memories after this hugely entertaining, hysterical and at times painfully real read ...
I wonder, did they just leave us with mental scars that we bury beneath layers of comedy, embellishment, and alcohol, and an ever-present dread, we are ever forced to go back?
Awesome read :)
Thanks for the comment!
WH Smug and Sons, I call them.. much to the annoyance of my daughter. It's a term from the 80's which stuck with me.
£1.73 an hour sounds like an awesome rate, almost twice what I got at Kwiksave.
I hope they were better to work for than Kwiksave. I bought many a computer tape from there, and had several arguments when I tried to return them (after ripping them off) for a refund hehe..
Lugging freezer food around in your forties sounds like a nightmare. I was young and fit then, I wouldn't like to do it now.