What was your first job?

And NO! I wasn't a Drag Queen..... that came later LOL

The year was 1981 and well for me, I couldn't wait to turn 15 so I could get a part time job. But as my birthday is in November I had to wait allll year whilst everyone else I knew got one :(

Finally it was my turn. When I finished school in the December I had just turned 15 the month before and had applied for a Christmas Holiday job at the Coles Department Store in the city in Brisbane as a "Check Out Chick" as they used to call them here which is Aussie slang for Shop Assistant.

And back then they had counters, not check outs. And guess which counter I got? Yep the Menswear Counter! LOL

And I had a ball!!!

Now nobody in our family smoked cigarettes but we sold them on our counter. And when a customer came up to the counter to ask for a packet of cigarettes it would take me forever to find them. I would have to say "What colour are they?" and scan each row that went on forever and ever.....

Back then they were around $1.50 now here in Australia they are approx. $20 per packet! Isn't that crazy....

We were given a badge that said "Hi! My name is Karen...." and sometimes people would say to me: Thanks Karen! And I'd be mmmmm that's really strange, how did they know my name????? (1980's Blonde Moment....)

Now when we got busy on the counter you would have to ding the bell on the cash register twice! And the counter that helped us out the most was "The Battery Counter". Andddddd there just happened to be this cute boyhttp://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3012152287869440550 called Adrian that worked on that counter along with another girl who was a couple of years old than me who really loved the Australian band The Church! (Remember this for later on ok!)

The Cash Register looked a little like this:

And on one day when it was getting closer to Christmas this one little lady that I was serving at my counter was after some underpants for her grandson and she wasn't sure of his size and also at this time my cute boy Adrian had come over to our counter to help out as we were really busy. And the little old lady said to me that her grandson was "About the size of that young man over there. Would you mind going up and asking him what size underwear he wears?" I was sooooo embarrassed because remember I had just turned 15! and so I had to go up to Adrian and ask him what size he wore....... He told me with a smile :) and the little old Lady left happy with her purchase.

And I was pretty happy too :)

We also sold Joe Bjelke-Peterson hats on our counter. (he was a politician back in the day here in Queensland)

Now they sat on a Hat Tree that was on top of our counter, something like this:

And I guess this might come as a shock to you Groover's butttt I'm a tad short! Five foot one and a half (the half is VERY IMPORTANT) and on a good day there was no way I was going to be able to get any of those hats down. One day this lady came in to purchase one for her father as a Christmas present. And lucky me, I got to serve her. Anddddd of course she wanted the hat on the very top of the tree. The only way to get this down was by using a broom and gently lift it off the branch!

And there I was on my tippy toes stretching up tall to get this HAT! Andddddd I got it but on the way down I accidentally let the broom handle slip through my hands and the wooden stick landed smack bang on the ladies head!!!!

OMG I was so embarrassed! I apologised over and over again and she said it was ok but each time she said it should be rubbing her hand back and forth over the growing egg on her head!!!!!!! Oopsy :)

There was a whole bunch of us that had Christmas vacation jobs and we all became good friends. One guy in particular called Basil worked on the toy counter and we all used to give him heaps about this one toy doll on his counter that sang the same songs over and over and over again over the pa system!!! We all hated that doll.

And after the job finished Basil and I stayed friends for a few years and even though we lived in Brisbane we would write letters to each other like pen pals. Now Basil was Greek and his mother wanted him to marry a greek girl and I think she was worried that he and I were "getting it on" but that was never the case, we were just good mates!

There also was another guy that worked with Basil on the Toy Counter called Michael and he and I became great friends too!

And when I look back now I think WOW I kinda did ok for myself back then as not only did I have the cute battery counter boy who asked me out but in the later part of the Christmas School Holidays we had another cute guy start on my counter and he also asked me out!

Maybe I need to get me a job at Coles again hehehe.

Now remember earlier about the girl on the battery counter that liked the Australian band The Church? Welllll that was back in 1981 and if we fast forward to 2005 I made friends with this girl on the Michael Buble website message board who lived here in Australia, not that far from me in Brisbane about an hours north and we decided to go to a Buble concert together and so this was all over email. One night we had a phone call to organise a time to meet up the weekend before for lunch and during our phone call she mentioned nightclubs she used to go to back in the day and mentioned the band The Church!

So I said "Ok I'm going to ask you a random question here, but did you ever work on the Battery counter for Coles in the city over the Christmas holidays?" and guess what kids? She DID! It was the same girl all these years later and now she liked Michael Buble's music! Talk about a very very small world :)

Here is a pic of Maureen and I earlier this year!

We don't look a day over 15 & 17 do we? I SAID DO WEEEEEEEEEE???? hehehe

So Groover's this brings me to the end of the story of my first job! I would love to know what yours was and what fun and game yous you got up to!

Night

Me xxx