Your first job in Coventry

The lad I had mentioned before Paul who helped me with the Christmas Trees became a real good friend, we used to play cards in the rest room top floor overlooking the Precinct the men were segregated from the women during rest breaks and dinner time. Two floors below the restroom was a canopy that skirted Woolworth Some of the food that was served up in the canteen was a bit rank it has to be said when most of the staff could see the food being served in the public Cafe and then going for dinner in the canteen and being served rubbish food, edible just about, after many complaints nothing was ever done about the quality of the food. If the food turned out to be rubbish we used to scrape it out the window onto the canopy below to feed the birds( the birds had stronger stomachs than us) . On one occasion we had steamed Cod with parsley sauce ,gee it was horrible none of us could eat it we moved our plates to one side and began to eat a bag of crisps. Just then in walked Paul with his dinner in hand, he sat down and began to taste his dinner. I cannot repeat his response, the words were equal to any American late film on the TV. He stood up from the table and launched his dinner out the window. We knew strait away it had missed the canopy below by the amount of force he used , we ran to the window to see where it had landed. It landed alright , right on the head of a lady pushing her child in a pushchair the sauce was not only spread over the ladies head but also over the child's face. She must have wondered what had happened ( no bird could have done that she must have thought ) so many people had seen what had happened and were quick to go over to the lady to assist her in cleaning up They all looked skyward to see all of us looking out of the window, by then she had been told what had happened and proceeded into the store to report the incident, not long after that the manager came into the room Paul owned up to what had happened and he was dismissed a few hours after that. One thing did come out of all this the food improved . I know I should not say this but she did look funny although it could have been much worse. Colin.

Well I am glad that lady and baby did not suffer in vain. To think you were not responsible - for once !!!!!

I wonder if after reading this you will believe in luck? A strange tale from the past, working at Woolies back then was almost like being in a big family, they used to organise day trips and parties / Dinner dance etc. We were booked on a day out to Weston super Mare , we turned up at the Pool Medow Bus station, and started to chat to the other day trippers while we waited for the Coach, the Coach arrived and then I remembered we needed a packet of fags ( we smoked then ) I ran round to the shop nearby to get a packet of fags. Now I am not the best when it comes to money that's why my wife (girl friend then) looks after the dosh! she gave me a

Now I know the old saying:- Some people have all the luck. so I daresay it is how you look at it RKid. I have been very lucky in life with regard to husband and family, health, never wanted for anything, never short of a dollar (hubby saw to that) so I /we never moan when we have to tear a losing lottery ticket up. But then, I am lucky to be sharing this forum with all you folk. (hope you don't still smoke RKid !)

I got my first "paid employment" when I met track manager Phil Storey at the Ten-Pin Bowling, fibbed about my age (14, but on the tall side), and got a job on the track at Brandon on Saturday nights. It felt very much like winning the lottery at the time! But my first "real" job came when I had a gap of several months between leaving KHVIII and going to university. As I had an interest in computers, and my dad (Arthur Walker - if anyone else worked there) worked in the heavy press shop at GEC Stoke, he suggested I put in for a temporary vacancy as a computer operator in the then-new building in Brindle Avenue. One of their operators was about to go on maternity leave, so they needed someone to take her place. They ran a three by eight hour shift system, Monday to Friday, because the computer had to be running continuously - I think it took about 6 hours just to process the pay!. I was initially assigned to a team of about three or four on the 6am-2pm shift, and then after a couple of weeks, during which I was obviously judged "OK", the boss - Reg Binns (I wonder if anyone else remembers him? Used to drive a beautiful MG Magnette.) - called me into his office. As several of his staff were women, and they were not allowed to work after 10pm, he was seriously stuck for staff on the 10pm-6am shift, and asked if I'd be willing to do it. I really wasn't keen, but he made it more and more attractive as he spoke: - I would be paid double time, for night shift work, and as I was a teenage lad, who "should have better things to do with his evenings", if I was a bit late he would cover for me, but - better still - he would give me every Friday off - with pay! So I signed up for this. There were only two of us on the night-shift. My team leader was - if I remember right - an ex-RAF guy, who I got on with very well. After everyone else had gone, our job mostly involved monitoring the teletype, and from time to time it would tell us to "remove Magnetic Tape number 123456 and replace it with Tape number 98765", or words to that effect. These were the 2400ft tapes, the size of a large dinner plate, and with about a hundredth of the capacity of the tiniest of USB sticks you can buy these days. The payroll run required dozens of them. The computer itself occupied a room that must have been 20 metres by 10, or thereabouts, so when the computer didn't need our attention, we would do time trials racing around between the tape decks on our ergonimically designed and wheeled office chairs. We were quite well-matched, but I think I beat him a bit more often than he beat me. One night, we were allocated a new task. Hundreds of brand new mag tapes had arrived, and we had to get them out of their expanded polystyrene packaging, put sticky number labels on them, "initialise" them, and store them in the racks. This went OK, until we were finding ourselves knee deep in polystyrene, and several big dustbins already full. My team leader sat down for a smoke and tried to think how we could get rid of all this rubbish, and casually dropped his fag-end in a small metal waste paper bin that contained some of the polystyrene fragments. They instantly vanished, leaving nothing but a tiny wisp of smoke. This of course was the solution to our problem, and we set up a nice little process, ripping the poly into smaller bits, tossing them into the bin, and setting fire to them. Problem solved! The only evidence was a small puddle of sticky resin in the bottom of the bins. We turned up to work next night to find the place in total disarray. The afternoon shift told us that a smell "like burning electrical cables" had been detected by the morning shift. They had reported it, and the works fire brigade had tried - unsuccessfully - to find the source. They then also called in the City Fire Brigade, and together they pulled up all the flooring and pulled down all the ceiling tiles, and still couldn't find it. The computer had been switched off - for its own protection - all day. My team leader and I expressed our sympathy for the rotten day they'd all had, but kept our other thoughts to ourselves. When the others had gone, Reg came in, smiling as usual. He told us the whole sorry tale, including how serious the problem might have been if it had indeed been an electrical fire, and we again sympathised and kept our other thoughts to ourselves. Then, he calmly looked down into one of the bins, casually nudged it with his foot, and told us that "I know it won't happen again though, don't I?". And strangely enough, it never did!

Hi JohnnieWalker, Hi all I had a school holiday job in the transmission stores from the time of being fifteen. I loved it. Christmas, Easter & Summer. 62/63.

Hello from Perth Johnnie Walker, Seems to me after reading your latest post you and a certain other member on this forum should compare memory notes.

Hi Dreamtime, from Queanbeyan - just down the dusty track from Perth! There are a few "certain other members" on this forum that I'd like to "compare notes" (I hope you mean "share a few beers") with! Next time I'm in Cov, it will be on my agenda - along with a nostalgic tour of the pubs that still remain from the 1960s. I suspect, from various posts, that Phillip is even older than I am, though only by a few years - my work experience at GEC Stoke must have been around the first half of 1966, so we wouldn't have overlapped. The GEC in those days was a good "corporate citizen" - I wonder if today's businesses would have been so accommodating.

Hi JohnnieWalker & Dreamtime, I really did enjoy my time at the GEC, to the point where I did concider staying on (as I was invited too). My last period there was the summer 63, where I was helping out in the Automatic Exchange lab-stores. The man in charge there was Mr.Phipps. When I was in the transmission stores I reprted to Mr. Frank Miller, who still volunteers as a helper at Walsgrave hospital.

My final posting on Woolies. I guess i was a bit of a little scamp. As a maintenance engineer one on my duties was to check the operation of the flushing systems in both the men's and Ladies Loos. Well that was my excuse, to operate the flush (as in a normal flush system ) the handle had to be pressed , this lever went through the wall and was attached to a chain which operated the flush in the normal way. I used to love it , on a Saturday morning when the toilet cubicles were always full I used to run from one end to the other flushing each toilet in turn ,then I stood by for the screams lol. How about this, the cafe had taken delivery of a complete set of tables and chairs,The old tables and chairs were removed. By the same delivery men. Now all was ok until a few days later, a team of men in white coats moved in and removed half of the new tables and chairs , no one questioned it I stood and watched them remove said items, we just thought a mistake had been made or some of the items were faulty they left the cafe without trace. How about that for cheek? The mangers were running around like headless chickens. One of my most horrible of jobs was to make sure the toilets were working ok. Now the following account is of me making a complete botch of a job . Not too sure what day it was but the cafe was busy as per usual, the men's toilets had been reported blocked. After opening many inspection plates in order to determine where the blockage was I narrowed down the location of the blockage to a pipe that ran down a riser in the cafe, I removed the fascia board to reveal another inspection plate. I placed a few chairs around the area were I was to work, I gingerly undid the screws, pulled at the plate in order to see if the blockage was above or below this plate, it was dry . Because nothing came out, This indicated that the blockage was above this plate, so what I should have done is put the plate back and seek help by calling in a Drain cleaning agency. But what I did do is go and get a torch from the workshop so i could have a look up the pipe, and leaving the plate off that is what I did. When I returned all hell had broken out. I cannot describe the outcome as it could prove distasteful , but what a mess. What had happened I found out after was the blockage had moved down the pipe to below the hole made by my removal of the plate that meant that the contents of the pipe could not go down below this point as the blockage had moved and the only way for the contents to go was out of the hole and into the cafe causing the customers to run The contents ran a cross the floor and down the stairs . What a mess. I will not go on to describe scene . I got into a bit of trouble with that one, part of the cafe was closed for The rest of the day while we cleaned up. It sadden me when they split Woolies into various shops and even more sad when Woolies were closed. When we worked at Woolies most of us most of us were unaware of the stigma that was associated with working at F W Woolworth . I enjoyed my time, I met my Wife, made a lot of friends and you felt that you belonged. R.I.P. Woolies.

What stigma, Radford Kid? It was a brilliant place

Hello Anne, the stigma I refer to was the Micky take by the writers of comedy sketches that appeared at the time on Tv and Cinema I cannot recall what sketches but they tended to demean Woolworth staff. As for me I loved my time at Woolies, maybe I have it wrong, maybe someone else reading this may have picked up on it. I don't know. Colin. Ps , did you work at Woolies?

That's true and they were invariably named "Sharon" or "Tracy". In real life two of the most helpful staff who ever served me at Woollies were a "Sharon" and a "Tracy"! Sadly the store was in rapid decline by then and finding a member of staff at all after that was a chore. By the end I didn't even want to set foot in the place any more. Scriptwriters have since moved on to denigrating staff in the fast food industry.

I must have been reading this link, while the Radford Kid was relating his Woolworth's escapades in the Cafe on this topic and I think he has to click-on the staircase to open up the Cafe................................ Cafe

Thanks Foxcote for a most wonderful link , I was enthralled with that site, it sure brought back memories. Shame it was not Coventry but the design and layout was the same in every store and a reference made to the old slogan "Nix for Six" meaning nothing over Sixpence. Thanks very much for that I did enjoy. Colin