Paper rounds as a Kid

DavieCramb01 said:
Coments anyone?
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Rubbish pay, supermarkets pay more and it's more entertaining work, you get to talk with people etc...


And laziness and being spoiled. Be smart with your parents, make deals, parents want me to go on a holiday but I don't, made a deal that my dad buys me a 24'' monitor when I get back if I come :).

That aside child support money doesn't get used on clothes or other rubbish, but on luxury's, like new speakers or a new phone :).
 
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my mate got one in november stuck it out till january quit he sent out christmas cards to customers and gets a £150 tip of them all for christmas

and thts one round

next christmas he is planning on getting 3 :O
 
Tefal said:
So you get a holiday and a monitor ? :o
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Yes, I don't want to go on a holiday because it means going to my family in Poland, rules I have to keep, not being able to sit all night gaming, no internet, I don't have anything to go for there imo... A holiday where I can't do what I want ( sleep when I want, get drunk when I want, game when I want, make noise when I want) is not a holiday, but more like work, I need to sleep as long as I want to relax...

So I'm usually like:

If you want to spend hundreds on going there, why not spend hundreds on things I'll actually use and enjoy... And that usually means my parents make a compromise for me...
 
Happily did a free-paper round for about 3 years till I turned 17. Earned between £7 and £20 depending on leaflets (avg. about £15) and took about an hour, hour and half at most. It was good at 16/17 because I got a further £10 EMA so I actually felt quite minted lol. Certainly provided good weekends!

Dad gave me another fiver a week if I got a better job and let my brother take the paper round, so I got a job at Co-op earning about £20 a week more. Although I lost my EMA during second year of A Levels.
 
I did the local free Gazette for £2 per week when I was 11-12. Then I managed to get the big boys job- delivering the local daily paper every evening for £13 p/w.

The stick I used to get from some people was unbelievable looking back. People used to properly give me a rollocking for delivering the papers after about 6pm. Collecting the money was like pulling teeth. People used to rip me off, not pay etc.

Horrible job looking back at it. I was buzzing when I quit. I had sooo much time on my hands after school.
 
Paper round from 11-16, neighbour's lawn mowing from 15-18, petrol station from 15.5-21. Worked all the way through O & A levels, but not during term time at university. Couldn't have handled that and working hard to fail a physics degree. :-)

[secret_policeman]Eee, yunksters terday dunno they's born![/secret_policeman]

To be fair though I'd crawl over broken glass if I had kids to make sure they didn't have to do the same (paper rounds anyway). I hated it, especially getting up in the dark during proper, good old fashioned northern winters to slog through snow or rain, getting cold & tired. Then doing the same to get to school. So I can understand why parents easily fall into the trap of spoiling their children. I doubt it's intentional (though buying an easy life is always tempting), but by protecting them from the harsh realities of life for too long, I'm certain they do them no favours in the long term.

The 'good' news is that a long overdue period of recession (or economic stabilisation as it ought to be called) should to shock a whole generation into some common sense. The credit card, live-life-on-the-financial-edge lifestyle which has developed over the last 15 years or so for so many families will no longer work with credit rationing.

Andrew McP
 
i would go to school and come home on a firday with 10 stacks of papers infront of my door,must have been atleast 500 papers,i got just under £70 a week and i probably dumped 80% of the papers.
 
I had one as soon as I was 14 until I got a weekend job at 16. Sometimes it was just mornings (£18 a week iirc), sometimes afternoons aswell (£11 a week).
 
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markyp23 said:
How did it teach you that hard work pays off?
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Remember that when you're young you have no living expenses or tax to pay. That money is worth much more in 'real' terms because it's straight in your pocket. No deductions, no bills to pay, no responsibilities. You also have to remember that inflation means that money was probably worth considerably more than it is today.

It's also important to see such work as part of a 'real life education', rather than a proper wage. It's an experience springboard from which you jump off into the real world of work, because full time education prepares you for roughly SFA!

Andrew McP
 
markyp23 said:
Of course my parents "gave me handouts". I was 12. I only needed a few pounds a day for food and the occasional treat to keep me happy. Oh wait, you bought ALL your own stuff and were paying rent at age 12?

I'd happily have paid the £11 A WEEK (£1.83 a day assuming no Sundays) just to not have to get up at a ludicrous hour in wind and wet. Literally scouring the streets for coppers for 20 minutes a day would rival this for a lucrative idea.
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Couldn't afford a few quid a day for lunch.
Took me own lunch or didn't eat it at 12.

Didn't pay rent and I doubt you did.

And yeah basically all luxurys for me were paid for by me, parents couldn't really afford to give me or my sister pocket money. I think you were just being lazy becuase your parents were giving you handouts more than anything.
 
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