My first job at sixteen isn’t on my CV
My first taste of working life came at sixteen, on a temp job over the summer holidays at a Wimpy on Cheltenham High Street. To my teenage brain, that felt almost adult. A proper chain, on a proper shopping street. People streamed past all day. I was being paid real money. £1.60 an hour, with a ten pence credit towards lunch for each hour worked. I didn’t know it then, but it was the beginning of my education in the kind of work that never appears on a CV yet quietly shapes who you become.
The uniform, the grill and the till
The uniform alone marked me out. Red dungarees and a baseball cap years before caps had the slightest whiff of cool in Britain. It was more children’s TV presenter than budding creative director. I made burgers on the flat top, wiped down tables, scrubbed things that absolutely did not want to be scrubbed and, on better days, graduated to the till. That was the role I secretly coveted because it felt like the beating heart of the place. You took orders, chatted to people, pretended you knew what you were doing.
Each morning I cycled the four kilometres into town, legs still half asleep. The ride home involved the same route but with the fragrance of French fries clinging to me like an unwanted souvenir.
Becoming Mr Wimpy
The pièce de résistance was my cameo as Mr Wimpy at children’s birthday parties. As the temp and not a particularly big sixteen year old, I was the obvious candidate for the job none of the permanent staff wanted. Colin, Duncan and Judith (funny how those names have stayed with me) always managed to be mysteriously busy whenever the costume appeared. It lived in a broom cupboard.
You’d squeeze into this oversized, slightly rancid foam creation, trying not to inhale too deeply, then wobble out to greet a room full of hyperactive kids determined to test the structural integrity of your suit. They’d poke, grab and tug until you wondered whether your identity would survive the morning. Nothing teaches humility quite like being investigated by a seven year old convinced there is a real person hiding under it. I swore quite a lot inside that costume.
What those first jobs actually teach you
Looking back, that job taught me the shape of hard work in a way no school ever managed. You learnt to graft. You learnt to be on your feet. You learnt to deal with people in all their moods. You learnt the quiet dignity of doing something properly even if no one notices. And, in my case, you learnt to keep your sense of humour firmly intact.
We likely all have jobs that never make it onto a CV. They’re the ones that sand down your rough edges, give you your first sense of independence and teach you what you will and absolutely will not put up with in a workplace. Mine just happened to involve red dungarees, a bicycle and the occasional stint as a foam rubber mascot.
And if I’m completely honest, part of the reason I wanted to write this down now was the simple joy of recreating that ridiculous Mr Wimpy scene with DALL-E, thirty years after I last wrestled with the costume.