First jobs are dreadful - but you should get one anyway

Here's a fun game: what was your first job? Mine was a classic of the genre: at 16, I went to work (after school and at weekends) on the checkouts at a local supermarket.

- VICTORIA RICHARDS

I can still remember my wage (£3.32 an hour), the checkout code for Maris Piper potatoes (1014), the pain of having to start work (quelle horreur) at 6.15am on a Saturday - and the pervasive sense of mindless, crushing boredom.

It was so utterly torturous that I used to draw little circles on my hands to represent each hour of my six-hour shift and would colour in the quarters - every 15 minutes - just to have some sense of the time passing. Once, someone had a heart attack at my checkout. Another time, a regular customer waited for me outside and asked me out (and yes, he was old enough to be my dad - and no, the store manager did nothing about it). Still, I remember thinking at the time, it could be worse: I could've been on the fish counter.

I highly recommend asking friends, loved ones and family members about their first employment, because it returns some hilarious (and horrifying) results: my ex-husband stuffed sausages at a factory in Bristol; my mum washed up in an East End cafe when she was just 13 - and her wages were “a scone with cream and jam”. My sister-in-law cleaned hotel rooms when she was 15 for £3.25 an hour; while her sister worked in a sandwich shop, where her only job was to “make coleslaw”.