My miserable first job experience

I caught the bus, wearing a grey dress with a big white puritan collar and white gloves. I was 16 and off to work. I was scared witless, and the next few hours did nothing to help. It was July 1955. The two women in the bursars office were ‘plain Janes’; no fripperies no frivolity just dead pan and deadly serious. They did nothing to put me at my ease. The building was a few hundred years old, and the bursar’s office was to be my domain. I would mostly doing the small typing jobs they allowed me to do, and I also booked the squash courts for the boys at the college, and did the post. I never once got the post book to balance; that was a mystery I pondered in the sleepless nights.

Clifton College is a very well-known boy’s college, with room for many boarders and a reputation for excellence. The traditions are part of the infrastructure. They lived in ancient named houses with house masters, and wore a distinctive uniform. Amongst the princes from far flung places there were some odd characters; John Cleese went there for instance.

My hated and despised job was going to the attic, where I did the photo copying. It was cold and musty, the stairs were steep, and I was scared of the place which had a ghostly feel, as if all the horrors of the Victorian school system were seeping from the walls.

To say I was not a success was very true. I got the stamps muddled, was too shy to deal with the boys confidently (and they were rather gorgeous, but I couldn’t deal with it). I typed badly and had a stack of letters over every week because people moved away and I had no idea what to do with the letters and had no forwarding address. The shy nature I had then did me no favours; I was like a rabbit in headlights all the time, and went home depressed and sad. The two ‘matrons’ were only in their late twenties but had not a spark of life in them.

So, without support and having no guidance from them I tried to last a little longer. The final straw was when I had a sack of ‘junk’ mail and nowhere to put it, so I hid it. My crime was unbelievably bad. I tried to deliver some of it, even travelling in on the long bus journey at the weekend to walk around to the houses to find the names I needed. The sad thing was my lack of courage – if only I was able to ask, or even make a joke of it as I would now!  But I was just ill equipped and unfortunate in my work colleagues. More caring workmates would have realised I was struggling and might have suggested a way to help.

So I left and worked next for an insurance office. There, the people were nice, but typing insurance policies all day was pretty soon mind numbing. I only found what I really wanted to do when I took a plunge and applied for a job as a psychiatric nurse. The training was three years, one of general nursing exams and two more specific to the facility I worked for. I was happier and more fulfilled doing that job; at last I had found something I could put my heart and soul into. I like helping people and talking to people.

Then at nearly nineteen I met my future husband, and before I could take a breath we were married and off to New Zealand. But that’s another story.

What was your first job like?