Quality of Life at Work

I recently wrote a post on LinkedIn about my son’s positive experience of work in his very first job and a lot of people reacted to the post. Work culture has moved on so much since I started my first job! I worked in a pub for £1.90 an hour (very olden days!), but we were only paid until closing time at 11.30pm. The job of cleaning toilets, mopping floors, hoovering carpets and washing out ashtrays was on our time, the argument being that we got tips, which supplemented our low pay. We wouldn’t finish until 1am or even later and tips weren’t guaranteed either, but it was the way it was and you didn’t argue with the boss. Work in the 1990s was very much about feeling lucky to have a job. A job in a pub for a teenage girl also involved quite a bit of agility in ducking the greasy hands of leering drunks most weekends…

So many of us tell stories of our first jobs that were a hard graft for little pay - miserable experiences that taught us the value of money and the lesson that nothing comes easily. My son Eric (16) works in a bar and restaurant too and spends most of his time washing glasses, sweeping up or collecting empty plates from around the venue. However the similarities to my first job end there - he is paid the same hourly rate as others, gets his share of the tips, was paid for his initial trial days, received a paid day of barista training, is halfway through a comprehensive, online hospitality training programme and gets a free staff meal everyday!

He’s expected to work hard and be on time, but he’s learning the value of money, the value of work, the value of a team and the value of feeling valued. He knows he is lucky to have this job - he really likes it, he is enjoying the independence and the experience he is getting on how to deliver customer service and insights into running a restaurant.

It’s brilliant that he has this early exposure to the importance of feeling valued and he already feels a strong sense of loyalty because his employer treats him well. I know that over the next 50 or so years of his career, however it turns out, he'll encounter both good and bad employers, but I do hope that this early, positive experience teaches him his worth as a worker and that he settles for nothing less in the future.

I'm grateful to Press Up Hospitality Group, who run the Elephant & Castle in Brittas Bay.