General Chat

when we first started working for the university here, we were paid twice a month .............. on the 15th and the last day of the month.

At first, we got a cheque with out pay slip, and had to take the cheques to the bank ourselves.

But then they started paying the cheques directly to the bank ............... but that was such a hassle for the longest time.

Because several times a year, the cheques would not be in your account on the expected date.

That's when we got in the habit of making direct payments from the bank 2 or 3 days after our salaries were supposed to be deposited.

Then they changed the system so that everyone was paid once a month, on the last day. That took some getting used to, as we were used to budgeting for 2 weekly payments.


It all works like clockwork now, of course ................. even goes into the bank early if the last day of the month falls on a weekend or a Stat holiday

DET .................


We were paid for 12 months, beginning of September to end of August, but the July cheque was double the amount.

It may have been either because the staff at the Education offices were on holiday in August, OR because the single teachers almost all left the area in summer, while everyone else went on holidays ................... so it would have been difficult to hand us our cheques.

But the real problem was that we were paid at the end of the month (naturally enough!), so getting through the month of September was hard, especially if you had been unwise and used your August money to go on holiday :-)

I worked for a year as a 'bonus clerk' in the wages office of a factory. Every Friday morning someone collected the money from the bank (until they were mugged on the way back - then the money was delivered) and then we sat at desks with the little brown envelopes, wage slips and money in the middle and put the right amount in each envelope. Oh the drama when we finished and there was a coin or note left on the table lol - we had to check each envelope till we found which one was short. If we were a coin short we would put it in ourselves rather than go through them all - no one ever came back to say they had too much, but a penny short and they would be hammering on the door.

Aaaahhhh he little brown envelope. When I left school I worked for the local authority and was given the "responsibility" of checking the pay clerks figures then checking the cash with the amount on the front of the envelope, them putting it in the envelope. Phew what a responsibility. The senior pay clerk was name Horace a terrifying man, and once told me off for laughing whilst I was working' he used to tut tut all the time, and peer at me over his glasses. Needless to say I do enjoy a laugh so I did not endear myself to him.

Thinking about it now the poor man was probably only about fifty years old, how cruel we were to laugh at him. Happy days!

SylviaInCanada - I believe that teachers do get a payment during the school holidays, the school year running from the beginning of September - end of August.

When I worked term time only in a school (with the students but not as a teacher) they divided our per rata salary by 12 so that we had an equal amount each month of the year.

My first full time salary was also in a brown envelope something in the region of £17 plus commission. £9 went to mum who put away some of it for the next rail season ticket, and about £4 straight into a savings account.

I am nearly 60 and left school in 1969 and have never been paid weekly. Never had any cash paid to me in a little brown envelope. Yet thought nothing of it, even though I saw Dad and Granddad with their weekly pay packets, and would watch Granddad sort it all out into different 'piles' ie Gran, Rent, bills etc.,

Have always been paid monthly via a bank account.

I remember too getting a bit crafty with pay rises. My mum insisted she got half of the increase which I got very annoyed about eventually so I would lie about how much I got so she got about a third rather than half . Plus too she thought she was entitled to the increase on the gross amount rather than net amount after tax etc etc which annoyed me even more .

I can't remember how much I got when I first went out to work or how I got paid. I changed jobs ofen, sometimes to get better wages or because the job was boring! I worked in offices most of the time, and often did a part time evening job in a Wimpy bar or pub or nightclub bar. Somewhere at my house, I have an exercise book which I used when I first moved into a rented house, had had a bedsit before but not a whole house so it was a novelty and I wrote down the weekly? monthly incomings and outgoings, must have been around 1972 I think. I will have to have a look for it and see how much I earned then, working for a local housing office.

I do vaguely recall getting brown envelopes. It's fifty years last month that I started full time work so I am sure I was paid in cash at that time.


Lizx

actually, being a teacher created its own difficulties with being paid.

i don't know what happens now, but back in those days, we got a double pay cheque at the end of July for July and August.

But we were then not paid again until the end of September.


It was VERY difficult to budget for that length of time!

........... especially as a single person living in digs when you needed to pay rent, buy food, travel costs, etc.



In case you're interested, I had just reached £100 per month take home pay in July 1967 when I quit my job to get married

Two months later I started work in Texas as a technician in the university ................ my take home pay was $400, which was then worth about £200-250

Boy, did we feel wealthy!

Love these stories thank you everyone, keep them coming :-D

My Dad used to lie to my mother about exactly how much he was paid.

Mum was very proud of the fact that he always handed over his pay envelope on a Thursday unopened, and waited for her to give him his "money" for the week

I remember hearing her tell neighbours that.

After she died, Dad told me that he did open the envelope, and extracted 10 bob or a pound ......... he told Mum that he'd opened the envelope to check that it was correct. But he never showed her the pay slip, so he never told her the exact amount if he got a pay increase.

The, when she ran out of money on Tuesday or Wednesday, he could hand her a few bob which "I haven't had to spend this week"


I gather she never cottoned on to it :-D



I remember getting paid for my Saturday job from 1952 to about 1957 with the money wrapped in a piece of paper ............... on there would be marked my base pay plus anything I had earned in commission (it was a ladies and childrens dress shop). It wasn't even an envelope!!

Every job I did from then on involved money being handed to me ............ delivering mail at Christmas, working in hotels, etc etc

By the time I got my first full time real job, teaching, in January 1965 .................... I got a cheque every month. That meant I had to find time to get into the bank to pay it in!

I remember the brown envelopes............ I also remember searching lots of stationery shops until I found some.

My father said I had to contribute 1/3 of my pay......... he was a selfish man, didn't hand over very much in the way of "housekeeping"....... I learned to lie about what I earned. When I got a pay rise I only handed over half of it...... with a different amount scrawled on the new brown envelope.

Many years later I confessed this to my aunt (dad's sister) and she howled with laughing........because she did the same thing to her mother (that was in the days when they handed over the full pay packet and got handed some "pocket money").

Mine was 15shillings a week take home 12/6d a week used to buy a workmans weekly ticket on the railway to travel up to london . you had to be there by 8am. we started work at 8.45 so we would go and have a coffee first at Cannon Street station buffet before travelling on to Blackfriars .

I started work with Unilever at their head office as a filing clerk , would travel with my elder sister who also worked for them in their Coast Staff dept . this was for staff who worked in their offices in Nigeria and the Gold Coast and Sierra leone.

I gave my mum 5shillings from my paypacket and spent 2s6d on my train fare and 2shillings for the tally man that I got big items from like coat and shoes .This left me with 3 shilling for my own amusement !! Once a week trip to the flicks was all I could afford after buying toiletries etc .

This was in 1952

I also did the banking when I was at woolworths. Used to walk round to the bank carrying a largish brown leather bank bag containing hundreds of pounds sometimes even more at busy times of the year. Can you imagine anyone doing that these days. I think not.

Remember the "cash runs" Andrew. You used to take 3 tons of pennies and haypennies to a bank down the road and exchange them for a 10 shilling note.

I once walked along West Bromwich High St from Midland at the end to our bank (National Provincial) with two small packages in my suit pocket about half a mile I should think). Both packages contained £5,000 in £10 notes. No security, total trust. To me it was just stock :-)

My next wage packet will be an old age pension. And that is 4 weekly. Heavens knows how you budget for that :-S

I used to put weekly wages into those little brown envelopes when I worked at a large Woolworths store.. I enjoyed my work there.

When I started work for a bank, one of the branches I was at was in the middle of some large industrial companies who paid weekly in cash. The amounts of actual cash in the branch was staggering, could be in excess of half a million pounds at holiday/Christmas time. The sheer volume was enourmous, filled several large cash safes. It was in shrink wrapped in bundles of 5000 notes. The factories were persuaded to take £10 instead of £5 notes which reduced the bulk considerably, but it was still a full time job for 2 people to look after it all,

Andy

Happy days!

At least it gave the maties something to do, opening their pay packets.

My first weeks wage was just under £4. I remember the little brown envelopes too. Not least because I used to put the money in them and hand them out for the dockies in Pompey. (Well to their foremen).