Dear LPG, 

I noted your request for a few work related stories and thought I would offer a thought on remembering my first ever job, although I think that this is more of a ‘make you think’ story than one which suggests celebration. 

Back in the early 1970’s when I presented myself for my first ever day in the world of work, I managed to get quite a good job according to the school careers officer.  My 18th birthday was also my first day working for the Department of Health and Social Security.  In those days a job with the Civil Service was considered with prospects for promotion and something few workers find when applying for an office job these days… Job security. 

The first day at any job is never easy.  As one of the oldest pupils at school, I had a certain amount of influence, I was a prefect and nearly always listened to when I spoke to younger students. There were other privileges too.  I did not have to wear school uniform and I had many study periods which meant that I did not have to actually be at school all week.  But I suddenly found myself in a situation where I did not know anyone and had to learn how everything worked all over again.

I remember my first ever mid-morning break when I talked to a member of the team who asked me what I was going to do with my life.  I mentioned going to art college in a year or two and he told me something that I found worrying.  He said that once you joined the civil service you had a job for life and most people never leave.

My job was to send foreign documents out to be translated and my desk was opposite my manager’s.   She was a fifty something year old lady who spent quite a bit of time talking to me that day.  She talked about how things were done in her department and also told me a lot about her career. 

She had been in the department all her working life and was now an executive officer of influence.  She talked about all the perks of being a civil servant; all the holidays she had been on, and clubs and societies that were available to people like ‘us’.  I got the sense that she thought that she had done it all and seen it all during her working life.  She had never married but was going to be able to retire early with a long list of places she planned to visit and things that she was going to be able to afford to do. 

Many of the documents that needed translation were birth and marriage certificates that would then help the government decide if the people they referred to were eligible for UK pensions, and I remember a comment she made about the fact that the government gave older people all this money and they wasted so much of it.  I asked her how she thought they should spend their retirement money, and her suggestion that most of them spend far too much of it on things like bingo and smoking, which was wrong in her view.  She decided that they should spend it on nutritional food and making sure that their houses were warm enough in winter etc.   I asked what they should do all day, but I never got an answer to that question.

As I made the journey home on the train that evening, I remember that my first impression of work was that I did not want to end up forty years older with a similar outlook on life as the one I had heard all about that day.  My boss was a lady whose future was all mapped out and a lady who could see that she had worked for all the comforts that retirement had in store for her, but she had missed the point that, everyone had to pay relative amounts of National Insurance and had the right to whatever varying ideas about how best to enjoy their retirement as they see fit.  

So my first ever day at my first ever real job was the day that I started planning to leave that job!  

NR, Kent