Peter Moore: Kids, recognise the benefits of a summer job

This is the time of year when students try to find a holiday job, an opportunity to earn some pocket money ready for next term.

Some may put it into an account to fund a gap year, although this is likely to be heavily sponsored by the bank of mum and dad. But holiday jobs offer more than just a few extra quid. They are highly educational, although not in the academic sense. They can be a first step in the University of Life.

My holiday jobs were back in the 1960s and 70s. I know that the past is another country, but in my experience, good and bad, I did learn some useful lessons.

The first job was in Keymarkets. It was the first shop in my hometown to adopt the bizarre new idea of a self-service supermarket. My parents thought the idea of a shop where the customers simply walked around and helped themselves was an invitation to shoplifters. Looking back over 50 years, I think they may have been right.

I was stacking the shelves. Everything had to be priced. As there were no barcodes, if a price changed, so did all the sticky labels. Facing up meant bringing all the tins at the back to the front, a nightmare for the baby foods which were in tiny tins. The lesson here – I need to get qualifications so that I do not spend my life stacking shelves.

My next job was in a geriatric hospital. Both the hospital buildings and the patients were geriatric. Today all our patients would be in private residential homes. I learnt to clean up beds; I won’t go into details in case anyone is reading this eating their tea. I also made beds, served food and drinks and even helped the staff to lay out a patient who had died. I got to know the patients, and even though most were confused, they were still interesting people.

The staff were tremendous and very supportive of a naive teenager. When the local GP visited, he walked in, only spoke to the matron, ignoring the rest of us, and then left. I made a personal decision. In the unlikely event that I achieved my ambition to become a GP, I would always smile and acknowledge the hard-working staff. In my career I visited hundreds of residential and nursing homes. I always tried to acknowledge the staff who keep the place running. I know what their job is like.

Undoubtedly my worst job was on the factory floor. We were making small transformers for model racing cars. As they came along on the conveyor belt, I had to pick them up, put them into a press and pull a lever. They came through at between 1,500 and 2,000 a day. It was so boring that, after a while, I pulled the lever without a transformer in the machine. There was a crunch, the machine head broke, and I was not popular with the management.

I also found the firm had banned all trade unions, and the staff were treated appallingly.

The pay was poor, and there was no minimum wage, but we were reassured that it would be made up with a bonus. At the end of the first week, I went to collect my pay. “What about the bonus?” I asked. “Students don’t get the bonus”. I resigned and worked very slowly for the next few days. Lesson – trade unions can have an important role.

A few years later I heard that the factory had closed. It was pulled down, and now there are NHS offices on the site.

My best job was as a porter in a large mental hospital, now also closed. In some wards there were sixty psychogeriatric patients, one qualified staff nurse and two auxiliary nurses. They knew their patients and were very caring despite the pressure. They never complained. In the stores there were about twelve staff, usually sitting round playing cards. These staff always had a good moan. The lesson here – often the less people have to do, the more they moan.

So my message to all older students. Get a holiday job, good or bad. Any few quid I earned has long since been forgotten, but the lessons set me up for life.