Member-only story

I Used To Work For £4.50 Per Hour

Has this changed much when I was 16 in 2013?

Shamar M
Work City
3 min readMar 27, 2024

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Photo by Blake Wisz on Unsplash

Yes, you saw the headline correctly. I used to work for £4.50 per hour.

When I was 16, my dad told me to go and find a job before I got too comfortable living off my parents. I’ll never not be comfortable living off someone else’s money, but he was right.

A small handful of my friends had part-time jobs doing standard cashier work, retail, or supermarket, and I was jealous of them. I wanted my own cash to buy my own clothes in my own bank account so I could buy things without needing parental approval.

After one or two interviews, my first job was at the famous Toys R Us.

Yes, the rumours are true. We got to ride the electric cars and bikes, we got the first pick of the toys, and we played hide-and-seek when everyone left the store.

If you’re reading this under the age of 23, you will not understand what it felt like as a kid to walk into Toys R Us and be inundated with everything under the sun, to be able to argue with other random kids about going on the bikes and smashing into the shelves knocking everything over.

Ah, I miss retail stores.

Anyway, despite working in a play haven, there were negatives to my job. The first being that…

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Work City
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Published in Work City

Work Culture, Business, Leadership, and Productivity by people who can laugh at their mistakes

Shamar M
Shamar M

Written by Shamar M

27. Based in the UK. PG DIP HR Management. Chief of publication The First Time. Editor in About Me Stories.

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