Was your weekend job when you were young the best job you ever had?

just enough money to have fun, buy clothes and run a car

Run a *car*?? I could just about make rent.

Was your favourite weekend job the best job you ever had?

In classic interview style, I'm going to ignore your question and answer a different one first. I had three jobs before I joined the Army that probably fit these criteria. I worked at WHSmith for one summer. That was great. I enjoyed the work and the people and the customers. It wasn't difficult, although my abiding memory is of challenging a customer on their credit card signature only for them to produce their Police warrant card to prove their signature. I still made them do it again.

The next one was the funniest. I spent three months working in a sock factory. But I wasn't making socks. Oh no. I was the sole employee of a wholly-owned subsidiary sock *importing* business based in the same factory. I had a little platform all of my own that was full of imported socks and my job was to remove the imported socks from their boxes, to remove the importer's packaging, to add my employer's packaging and then to put them back into a different box. I didn't talk to another human being for eight hours a day. I listened to Radio 4 on headphones for the entire time.

It was heaven.

The third one was working the bar at my local pub. That was the most fun job I've ever had and I'd do it again in a shot. Obviously much more sociable than the factory job, but having a clear role in a social context, with the comfort of an entire bar between me and the rest of the world was great.

Do you still see people you worked with all those years ago?

Hell, no.

Does your company employ weekend workers?

Yes, but not many teenagers on the NHS Bank.

Should a weekend job be a rite of passage as a teenager?

Absolutely not. Some teenagers are motivated to work. Some are not. It's as simple as that. Let the motivated ones work, but don't push the others into doing something they're not ready for.

What are teenagers missing if they do not get this experience?

Very little, imo. Or, perhaps more expansively, they are missing out on both positive and negative experiences that, overall, balance out. The single most significant benefit of having a job before the age of 18 is to have a CV to speak of, and a job reference, and a tax history. Those really are the only important elements and they're helpful but by no means the end of the world to not have when starting work as an adult.

Hi Robey, thank you for this fantastic response which drew pictures in my mind. I will be referencing your experiences in my blog. Please let me know if you would like to contribute to my podcast.

Hi Robey, thank you for this fantastic response which drew pictures in my mind. I will be referencing your experiences in my blog. Please let me know if you would like to contribute to my podcast.