StoryPromptQuestions to ask about a first job
Everyone remembers their first job in specifics — the wage, the boss, the bus fare — long after they've forgotten what they did on an ordinary Tuesday that year.
A first job is one of the few things almost everyone has, whatever else their life looked like — paid work or not, there was a first time someone else depended on what they did. It's also one of the easiest conversations to have, because the questions below have real, specific answers rather than a shrug.
The facts, briefly
| The facts | |
|---|---|
| Before 15 February 1971 | Wages were paid in pounds, shillings and pence (£sd), not the decimal currency used since — a first pay packet from before this date was counted in money that no longer exists in that form. |
| Before 1 April 1999 | No national minimum wage was in force (the National Minimum Wage Act received Royal Assent on 31 July 1998 and the minimum wage took effect on 1 April 1999). Some industries had sector minimums set by wages councils, the last 26 of which were abolished in 1993. |
What to actually ask
The same rule applies here as to any of these questions: ask about specific things, not about how it felt. "Did you enjoy your first job?" gets a shrug. "How did you get there and back?" gets ten minutes on a bus route that doesn't run any more.
First Job
- 01How did you actually get the job — did someone put a word in, or did you ask cold?
- 02What was the wage, and do you remember what you did with the first pay packet?
- 03How did you get to and from work, and how long did it take?
- 04What were you actually trained to do, if anything, before you were left to get on with it?
- 05Who was in charge of you, and what were they like?
- 06What did you wear on your first day, and did you have to buy anything specially for it?
- 07Was there a uniform, a clocking-in card, or some other routine that's long gone now?
- 08What's the first thing you got wrong, and what happened when you did?
- 09Who else worked alongside you, and did you stay in touch with any of them?
- 10Looking back, what did that job teach you that a later one didn't?
“Who was the first person you had to answer to — a boss, a foreman, a teacher, a sergeant — that you really respected, or really didn't?”
That's one of fifty-two questions the weekly email sends, not the only one about working life — the bank also asks what a first job paid, and whether paid work happened at all, since plenty of people in their eighties and nineties kept a house rather than a job. First jobs sit alongside National Service as one of the places a specific date reveals something: questions to ask about National Service is the other.
StoryPrompt emails one question like these a week, for a year, and the answers collect into a typeset book you can download at any point. If a first job is the thing you actually want on record, asking it directly and writing the answer down today works just as well without buying anything — the free 100-question list has the fuller set, and how to record your parents' life story covers what to do with the answer once you've got it.
One question a week, for a year — £25
Written for a British life, including the jobs that paid in money nobody uses any more.
See what £25 includes