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Saturday Question: What Was Your First Job, Did You Buy Scent?

Hello Fellow Fumies,

At ULG we have a Saturday Question. Everyone gets to chime in with an answer, chat with other responders and it’s a fun event each week. Taking sides never means taking offence and everyone keeps it respectful and light, even though we can sometimes trawl the depths.

The idea is you’ll see it on the weekend or chime in through the week. Hopefully you will come back regularly and see if anyone has responded to your comment and you can reply to them. The aim is to generate real conversation and connection even though we are scattered around the globe.

Just to be clear, it’s Portia hosting today’s Saturday question. Undina is doing stuff and asked me to fill in this week. Can’t wait to read and respond to all your comments. Feel free to chat to each other too. Let’s see how many comments we can accrue.

Saturday Question: What Was Your First Job, Did You Buy Scent?

Ahhhhh! Memories of my teen years, how I came to be who and where and what I am. You all know how much I love discovering things about you all, so here’s a piece of me. Please share a piece of you in the comments.

My Answer:

Even before it was legal for me to work I spent my Thursday nights and Saturdays (after sport) sweeping up hair, making coffees, washing heads and selling tobacco products at a local hairdresser/tobacconist. The one thing I wanted more than anything was financial freedom to choose what I got. It was $small/hour (cash in hand) and at the age of 13 having $small per week PLUS my pocket money from Dad for house chores (which I did soooo grudgingly, what a shit kid i was!) I was the richest kid I knew. The joy of being able to take myself to the cinema or McDonalds (which was my first proper job when I came of working age) without having to beg for money was a big incentive. Having enough to buy my choices in clothes, though Mum enjoyed clothes shopping with me so much that I rarely had to pay.

On the naughty side, by 13 I already looked like an adult so I could buy booze and cigarettes. Being able to buy the people I loved gifts was another amazing thing that I’ve never lost the joy of. So I didn’t buy scent for myself but I did buy it for my Mum a little later on when I was old enough to be a Squirt Bitch at the department store. Those early days she got a soap, some powder with a big puffer and/or lotion from our local chemist (drug store) that would come in a boxed set, boxes were best because easiest to wrap. My Dad was easy, he wore Tabac Original and that always came in a sensible pack of scent, soap on a rope and deodorant.

My Saturday Question to you is:

What Was Your First Job, Did You Buy Scent?

38 thoughts on “Saturday Question: What Was Your First Job, Did You Buy Scent?”

  1. A sales assistant at the local Marks & Spencer store during my summer holiday – it was torture for my feet! I bought a teeny weeny bottle of Worth’s Je Reviens, which I managed to eke out for the rest of the holiday. And carnations each week for my mum.

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  2. My first job for a couple of days during summer holiday was peeling tulip bulbs. I think I was around 10 years old. It was cash-in-hand. I don’t really remember how I spent it.
    My first proper summer job was in the tax office at age 16. I remember feeling very rich and buying a ridiculously expensive designer jacket.

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  3. I worked as a library monitor at my school, putting chairs back neatly under tables and books back on the shelves, occasionally cataloging new ones. Collected cash wages in a packet every week. I was very thrifty so didn’t consider it a fund for anything special, although during that time I was buying perfume anyway – The Body Shop was one of my favorite stores to browse.

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  4. My first job was working for my dad (a small town lawyer) over the summer when his regular secretary was home with her young kids. Cushy job – air conditioning, flexible hours so I could go to swim club practice, probably massively overpaid. But I did learn to take dictation and type really well, which has come in handy through life. I was not interested in perfume, though. A some point during college I must have bought some but really didn’t take it up until well into adulthood.

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  5. I was also 13 & did the hairdresser Saturday girl thing. I could only work 4 hrs, from 8am-12md & got 70p. A very long time ago! I used to get straight on the bus to the stables & spent the money there.
    I did buy scent at my next job, at a dog clipping parlour. Longer hours, better pay.

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  6. You asked for it, Undina. I was 15 when I started my first job, basically about 500 feet from my parents home. It was a Polish smorgasbord restaurant called Warsaw. While I hated the job of dishwashing, for $1.00 per hour no less, there was lots of free food, which I absolutely loved. Barszcz, pierogi, sauerkraut, kiszka and czernina. Whatever eastern European (Slovak) DNA I have, about 39%, I completely aligned with this menu. This gig didn’t last a long time but it was something I will always remember.

    The fragrance I had purchase at his time was Grey Flannel by Geoffrey Beene. Still something I love, but so which I could get my hands on an original formulation.

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  8. First job? Other than the ones that feel like allowance (e.g. from a music store uncle), I will say my first job was at a local bakery. Of course that makes me wonder if my love for gourmands started then. Anyway, no perfume purchase because I was too poor. Plus, even though the parents would be okay giving me money, if I say it’s to buy perfume, I would have gotten the stink eye 🤪.

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  9. My really really first job was as a babysitter for our neighbors. I was 11. They had a toddler and an infant, and I was paid the enormous sum of 25 cents per hour! But babysitting continued to be my paid work until I was 16, when I got a summer clerical job at the company where my dad worked (that came with the small merit scholarship they funded for 2 kids of employees every year).

    I did buy some fragrance with my babysitting money, for my mother. When I was about 13, my family did a summer exchange with another family we had known in Brussels. Their 13 year-old daughter came to live with us for half a summer, then I went and lived with her and her family for the other half. On my way back to the US, I went to the airport duty-free store and bought my mom a travel spray of Chanel No. 5 eau de cologne or eau de toilette. My dad traveled a lot for work and always brought back gifts, so I did the same for him and my mom. I was very proud of myself!

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  10. I’m not sure it was even possible to get a job where I grew up before getting some education – either higher or some tradesman one. My first job was during my fourth year at the university – a part-time translator at a marketing company. It was a 5 minutes walk from the university, so I could easily get there after classes. I was translating into English and typing letters and other materials.
    I don’t think I bought any perfumes with those money because I was still a signature scent person, and those were too expensive for me to buy (so, my grandma gifted it to me, and I cherished it).

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  11. It’s been so much fun reading about the variety of first jobs. My first job was on my dad’s large farm (it would probably be called a cattle station in Australia, since our main focus was Hereford beef cattle and growing crops to feed them) But from time to time my dad would decide to grow a new cash crop. When I was 15 he grew many acres of potatoes that were sold to companies that made crisps and chips. The potatoes would be dug up by a machine and then brought to a conveyor belt where a few of us would “grade” and quality check the potatoes. The ones that were too tiny or had gone rotten had to be plucked out before they went into the truck.

    It was a very dirty job as potatoes grow underground but I was very excited for the $. I bought a bottle of Dana Ambush and put the rest in my college savings.

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