The Retirement Thread

1 lurker | 175 watchers
Apr 2023
8:10am, 20 Apr 2023
26,580 posts
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TROSaracen
Anyone start work when they paid your wages weekly, you’d collect a small brown envelope of cash every Thursday, with a clear window showing some folded notes inside and a few coins rolling about.

Never felt as rich since as those Thursday’s, always a great pub night followed too.

Was a pretty rough place in East London and you’d always go up in groups of 3/4 as some guys were actually mugged for their wages. It was a paint factory in Canning Town.
Apr 2023
8:18am, 20 Apr 2023
31,274 posts
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macca 53
IPJ?
Apr 2023
8:26am, 20 Apr 2023
11,136 posts
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cathrobinson
I did a bit of casual work cleaning cars in my summers from uni at the garage my mum worked at and got cash in a brown envelope like that.
Apr 2023
8:26am, 20 Apr 2023
63,480 posts
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Velociraptor
I had to have a physical exam when I started a holiday job as a hospital ward clerk for 8 weeks in 1984. The occupational health nurse wrote "robust" under the question about "physique" and ripped into me about how my nail-biting would exclude me from clinical roles.
Apr 2023
8:29am, 20 Apr 2023
63,481 posts
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Velociraptor
And I got cash, £44.something, in a brown envelope, and my mother asked me how much I'd been paid and gave me a resounding slap on the face for insolence and ingratitude when I said it was a rude question. Which is only what she has taught me to believe.
um
Apr 2023
8:33am, 20 Apr 2023
7,310 posts
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um
In the 80s we wrote a payroll system.
Part of which was the analysis of what notes and coins would be needed to fill all those brown envelopes. I always thought that was one of the 'neatest' bits of coding I'd done.
I wasn't so enamoured with the slightly tougher NI & PAYE calculations and submissions.
Apr 2023
8:37am, 20 Apr 2023
46,392 posts
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HappyG(rrr)
Yes, money in brown envelopes when doing work on building site, and delivering news papers etc. I haven't got any paperwork from first jobs, as moving house and esp divorce, I was living out of a car for a few months and really only had a couple of boxes and bags with clothes. My tax affairs were a nightmare for about 5 years after that, 2001-2006 until I got myself settled. :-) G
Apr 2023
8:42am, 20 Apr 2023
30,623 posts
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Ness
My Dad was a managing director of an industrial paint company. In his last few years (so up to '92) he changed the production hours so the factory started earlier each morning but finished at lunchtime on a Friday. I think he may have told the staff it was changed so they could have the afternoon off. In reality it was so he and the other company directors could go and play golf! 🤣 His staff used to get pay packets, given out each Friday lunchtime.
Apr 2023
8:46am, 20 Apr 2023
42,477 posts
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EvilPixie
my parents used to run an employment agency
They had to change pay day from Thursday to Friday as people would go drink their wage Thursday and not turn up Friday
Dad was very impressed when he got his first Apple PC and (drum roll) it was in colour :-o
Apr 2023
9:07am, 20 Apr 2023
63,483 posts
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Velociraptor
I started work around the same time as Sigh. Having just been a student, I thought my official salary, £8,800 plus overtime, looked quite comfortable. Junior doctors also got a free room in hospital accommodation at that time, and it's not as if I had any time to spend money. Got my first payslip. Top line £8XX, less than expected because the overtime pay was derisory, but hey-ho. Bottom line just over £500. The same amount, it turned out, as my mother was getting for 37.5 hours a week as a home help organiser.

About This Thread

Maintained by Sigh
A place for baggy spaciousness: "The quality of time, soft attention and ease that we could enjoy 'doing nothing' "
(thanks to TheScribbler for the term (p1516)!)
( see also: neilthewriter.co.uk
and
darkangelswriters.com )

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