EVERYONE’S had a job they could best describe as ‘character-building’. But some people can’t stop going on about them. Here are some they wear as a weird badge of honour.
Bar work
As pubs reopen in earnest next week, people will be regaling each other with dull tales of how they used to do shifts in the Lamb and Flag. Unsurprisingly, they pulled the best pint of bitter in the entire county too. Not the most scintillating job, but most pubgoers just sit there getting pissed, so it’s hardly the non-stop stress of working in the Queen Vic.
A paper round
The shit pay undoubtedly made it a form of child slavery. However these days ‘getting a paper round’ is normally used as a slight on the ‘lazy’ modern generation. To hear some people go on, you could easily believe everyone born before 1980 had a punishing paper round. It’s almost as if some of them might be making it up.
Supermarket work
A few shifts in a week in a supermarket seems to have been a rite of passage for many. And although it might sound – and would have been – totally boring, people will always try to make out it was thrillingly eventful. Shagging behind the deli counter, lettuce fights in the walk-in fridge, spitting in the salad bar. Yeah right. It was Asda, not Sodom and Gomorrah.
Miscellaneous factory job
People love bringing up their time on the factory floor. Yes, they spent hours podding peas or packing boxes or screwing lids on toothpaste. And yes, it was boring. But it was only six weeks of your summer break from Durham University, 22 years ago. Remember how you spent your lunch hour reading The Catcher in the Rye and everyone thought you were a mega twat?
Pot washer
Working in kitchens seems to leave lifelong scars on anyone who did it. Expect excruciatingly detailed accounts of washing pots, filling the industrial dishwasher and alcoholic chefs. Give it a rest though, you weren’t Anthony Bourdain, you did some shifts in a Harvester in the 00s.
