Who the hell do you think you are?

[Marc Peters]

Me? I'm a Pensions Implementation Analyst! We've had the "what do you do for a living thread" before. So lets have a "what jobs you did to put yourself through uni/poly etc, in the vain hope you would be doing something better afterwards".

From the age of 16 to leaving Uni, I worked day/nights stacking shelves in Safeways (sometimes in 15 hour shifts), was filing clerk for a property development firm in the city (just off green park), and worked days/nights as a "reprographics operator" (that's a photocopier dude).

Was it worth it? Hell no! But at least I stepped out of uni with no debts

[bgarthp]

I have worked in:
Somerfield stacking shelves + freezers, that sucked.

a petrol station, that was interesting and funny

one night in the Ginsters factory, dull

two seperate 3 month stints working nights in a test tube factory, hot, noisy, repetitive, 3 days on 3 days off, ruins your sleeping patterns but pays a bit more than usual and all mental effort can be directed towards something useful.

A computerised royal Mail sorting office, nights again, best job ever, zero effort, comfy seats, breaks every 50 minutes because of the monitors, not enough work to go around so half the time you just sit there and chat in the open plan office.

spent all the money on cameras, beer and flights.

And now I'm leaving uni' in a week with massive debt :cry:

But I think it was worth it.

[Mike Thorpe]

I've not had many different jobs, but as is the norm, I had a supermarket job (cashier at Sainsburys).

I worked at my college during the holidays doing IT related things, such as preparing for seminars, teaching businesspeople in this new technology called the "internet"

I then worked as a temp Computer Engineer at the University of Manchester. Now I'm senior computer engineer there. Rock.

[Andy Lockwood]

Well, I have a chequered history of all sorts. From shop assistant to gardener, to petrol station assistant, on to manager, left to join Paper Lace as sound engineer, did my back in humping gear, a year off and a disc removal later, joined the RAC as a salesman, got bored with that and now manage a chain of cheque cashing outlets. Started Turn Media a year ago and hope to devote myself full time to it in maybe one more year. Bored to death with cashing cheques. Much more profitable(and fun) doing TM.

[Alan Mills]

Well, whilst still at school I had to seemingly obligatory slave labour job of delivering the freebie newspapers each week. That was basically three evenings a week for a couple of quid. I then moved on the the lofty heights of Saturday shop assistant and then a Saturday job in a local butchers. This was basically cleaning up all the sausage and burger making machines. nasty!

The after graduating, I started as a computer programmer. That would be twenty years ago this year. I started in the scientific world, i.e. Fortran programming for signal processing. Interesting enough but a couple fo years later I moved on and got trained up in a more commercial area of programming and I've been doing this ever since. I now design and develop database systems running the Oracle database engine. That's it. Being doing it for about 18 years now and love it. I'm considered a strange one at work becvause I have no ambitions to move into management or project leadership. I like being on the coalface and so I've stopped there. It does make annual appraisals a bti of a non-entity though. "What we gonna do this year then Alan?" "Er, exactly the same thing". "Ok see you next year then".

[Ian in Northampton]

Worked for Rumbelows - since bought by Currys - delivering TVs to lonely housewives. Shame I was such an innocent...

Worked nights at 50p/hour in Little Chef. Met Geoff Boycott.

Worked on Lord Astor's farm just outside Sandy in Bedfordshire, driving the grain truck alongside the combine. And all too regularly, a large rock would go through the combine, rendering it totally inoperative and forcing us to wiat for Weathereds to come out and fix it. Meanwhile, my mate and I sat against the tractor wheel in the fild, in the sun, chatting of this and that. Bliss...

[Tony A]

After running away from school, I then had to run away from home, because I wouldn’t get a job. Tried finishing ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels at a Tech College, but couldn’t stick that either.

As an agency bod, I clerked in a few different offices, dug holes for artificial lakes, and even sprayed asbestos.

At 30, I nearly matured by becoming a service station manager for the American Mobil people at various outlets.

After that I worked for one of the snottier London Boroughs for 12 years as a gopher-in-a-suit. Surprised myself a year ago by passing a teaching course, and finally found some job satisfaction teaching English to adults.

[Alan Mills]

Worked nights at 50p/hour in Little Chef. Met Geoff Boycott.

Did he beat up any waitresses?

[Ian in Northampton]

Regrettably not. Other than us running out of butter, it would have been the most exciting thing to happen during my time there... I spent 20 minutes trying to convince him that the reason for Yorkshire's problems at the time was his insistence on batting at number one, and I felt he should move himself down the order. He was very patient...