Joeys

all you gotta do is smash their fone(preferably over their head)and at that point for probably the first time that week you WILL actually have their full attention.ran into a former one a couple of weeks back.took offence at me calling him by his work nickname in the boozer concerned but hey if the sh1t fits wear it.

to be fair most of us dont work cos we want to,its cos we HAVE to.and dont forget that once we were that joey.ok i was never as bad as some of the organ donors weve had walk thru the door but youve only gotta talk to some of the cretins-sorry i meant members of the public-to realise that if thats the folks constructing them youve gotta expect a fair percentage of dummys.most of em function fairly well considering they were assembled by unskilled labour.....

I have a book of sample questions from when i passed my "eleven plus" exams, several people with degrees could not answer half the questions i was expected to when i was eleven.
I then went onto secondary school and failed everything because i just did not want to be there, typical nightmare pupil.
Started college and flew through everything with ease because i wanted to learn what was being taught, and that is the trouble with a lot of the youths of today - they are usually pushed into things rather than wanting it.
As soon as a mother asks if there is a job going for their son or dsughter i am on the defensive. He or she should get off their ar5e and come and ask themselves and if they did i would then be helpful.

Me and my bro left school at 15 and passed the aptitude test s to become postal cadets we didn't start because of our age we would have had a good pension by now . so we got jobs on the Yts on £ 27.50 a week at local garage s Paul at the Ford dealer in colne in the bodyshop me at the Fiat dealer Burnley in the parts dept 6 months later in the workshop because I pested the boss. we both liked it I'm still in the trade now my brother no

was raised on a sink estate with our house backing onto fields that the locals used as a dump.started off dragging old tellys/nicked bikes/burnt out motor bikes etc into our place to pull em apart and see what i could get to work cos it was my best chance of ever having summat like a tv/radio/pushbike whatever cos the home circumstances werent good with poverty/council care etc rearing their ugly heads,all me and my siblings would have was whatever i could get/scrounge/nick as most of the others had assorted problems.wouldve been about 8 or 9 at the time.saturday job as soon as i could get one,was doing a milk round before school at the same age.too bright for the local school so more or less stopped attending at 13+(tho i did go back for the exams at the official leaving age)and with the sorta timing/luck i had gotten used to by this stage headed for adult employment at the same time that our glorious fuhrer margaret officiated over the 3 million unemployed that a lotta you will remember.half a dozen assorted jobs that all ended with getting laid off,one of em was a firm making car batterys.when it folded one of the bosses offered me and another guy a job at a fast fit he owned,id done tyre fitting as a sat job before so had a go.lasted about 3 mnths but got the bullet.drifted from there into other garages in the area and got a good rep from it and ended up in london doing mots etc.i had picked the brains of everyone id worked with over those first few years and while never getting a formal apprenticeship was rated as pretty good by the folks i worked with.did the full nvq bout a decade back just to make it official.lessons learned the hard way stick the best.be nice to folks on your way up in life,chances are youre gonna need em on the way back down again.....basic ground rules.show up on time,show up EVERY day not just the ones you fancy,pay attention to what youre doing and finally actually do summat while youre there.any employer will snatch your hand off.no need for unemployment if you can follow those basic rules and it wont matter how literate/numerate you are(or aint!)

Having had a crash course in dozer driving my job involved driving around in a 'lagoon' shoveling liquid sh1t or pushing it to be more precise towards a big hole where a bloke with a grab loaded into a huge holding tank and from there to lorries which would spread it on farmers fields.
For overtime I used to rebuild broken lorry springs using leafs from other broken springs and the broken leafs were used to plate the bottom of the dozer buckets to stop them wearing holes in them.
The government of the time cut back on spending to the councils and my boss used the sub contract off the councils so he had to lay 11 of us off last in first out basis so I got laid off.
Couldn't get a job machine driving over the gravel works so it was another job change.
Got a job driving 7.5 tonners delivering green grocery to schooner an Berni inns for those of you old enough to remember.
When I wasn't driving I was in the workshop repairing them.

To be continued...

Sorry if you found it boring   Not everyone did the c&g route , I didn't. Never had a problem getting a job and there is an awful lot of other stuff that went on in those years, luckily for you that is a shortened version 

A relative worked at a tyre and exhaust place, blagged me a job ‘blowing and balancing’ tyres after I left school. Worked my way up the ladder from there.

Whole family were in the motor trade, going back to my grandad. Started off at 14 in the school holidays in the parts department. Next school holidays were two weeks in the accounts. Next ones were in the forecourt (actually filling up cars and adding Redex shots), body shop, workshop, valeting bays, showroom, etc.

Left school at 16 and went into a sales/driving/workshop/parts mixture for a couple of years (managed to keep well away from the accounts department luckily). I'd been doing DJing most nights too on the club circuits and one day got offered a job working in a club in Italy, or rather one in the mountains in the winter and another in the summer. Five months working every night, one month off, five months on, and so on for six years. The money was amazing. I married an Italian, we had a daughter and came back to the UK.

Back into the motor trade in 1981.

Been in it ever since. After moving from site to site within the group I was lucky to get my own place in '85 (took over a Shell garage from the old tenant who was retiring).